Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers (22 page)

I then realized that painters were coming at around seven in the morning to ready the room for my young son Drew, who was moving in for awhile. They were going to repaint the all-black walls.

One of the painters said, “We can’t work. There’s a man sleeping in that room.” I said, “Don’t worry about it. Just paint around him.” Terry fell asleep in this Marquis de Sade room, and woke up hours later with photos of Mickey Mantle on the walls. He didn’t say a word, just shook it off and went on his way.

You leased an apartment with an S&M room?

It was a lovely place, had a great terrace, lots of space. It just happened to have a guest room with all that bondage equipment.

What was Terry doing in the room before he fell asleep?

He’d had a big night. Let’s put it that way.

Do you think Terry wasn’t respected in the latter part of his career because he wasn’t producing “quality lit”?

Terry is the one who invented that phrase. He was an easygoing man, contented, amused by life. I don’t think he ever felt bitter or resentful with the way things turned out in his career. I know he had grave financial difficulties toward the end of his life—but he wasn’t a complainer.

He was respected throughout his life by the people who counted, so to speak. And there are all these new readers coming along. His books and films exist, ready to be enjoyed.

You’ve written eight novels and more than one hundred short stories. After all these years, is writing still difficult for you?

Actually, I’ve written more than two hundred short stories—half of them are languishing in an archive.

But God yes, writing is still difficult and always will be. I’m suspicious of writers who go whistling cheerfully to the computer.

Are there any writers’ tricks you’ve learned over the years that have made the process a bit easier?

I’m hesitant to begin a short story unless I know the last line, or a close approximation of it. I’m always apprehensive when I begin work each day. After a lifetime of this, I still can’t get it clear that the actual process of writing tends to erase the fear.

I’m not the first to point out how essential it is to, on occasion, discard a favorite passage in the interest of pushing on with a good story. Isaac Bashevis Singer said that the wastebasket is a writer’s best friend. He also said that a writer can produce ten fine novels, but it doesn’t mean that the next one will be any good. It mystifies me that after a lifetime of writing it would still be like this. I should be able to solve any problem—but it doesn’t work that way. Each story or book presents a new challenge. That’s probably a good thing, though. It keeps me on my toes.

Do you still write every day?

Yes—or at the very least, I worry about it.

I do some teaching, and I put the emphasis on focus, as well as the importance of making every sentence count. [Novelist] Francine Prose once quoted a friend as saying this requires “putting every word on trial for its life.” I believe this. You can read the entire works of a major writer and never find a bad—or unnecessary—sentence.

Do you have any specific instructions for those students who want to write stories with humor?

I’d suggest you stay away from irony or satire; there’s very little money in it. You’re likely to wind up with reviews—like some of mine—that say, “I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.” There’s no such question in Dickens. Most readers would prefer to know exactly where they stand, where the author stands, and how to respond. Ergo, no irony permitted.

I’d advise students not to try to be funny. Nothing is more depressing than someone caught making such an effort. If a story or sketch is intrinsically funny, if it deserves to be funny, it will make people laugh. Truth—bitter and unadorned truth—is a good guideline.

Asking yourself “What if . . . ?” is a good starting point for a story. What if I befriended a pimp and he asked a straightlaced character to watch over his stable of women while he was in prison? That later became a story I wrote for
Esquire
called “Detroit Abe.”

As for television writers, in comedy or drama, there’s a simple rule: Include the line “We have to talk,” even if your characters have done nothing but for half an hour. Producers love that line. Writers are brought in and paid a fortune for their ability—and willingness—to write that line.

Finally, I also like the writer Grace Paley’s piece of advice: “Keep a low overhead.”

Writer, the Emmys, the Academy Awards, the Tonys, the Grammys

What’s the joke-writing preparation for a televised awards show, such as the Oscars? How much time and effort are we talking about?

A tremendous amount. People have no idea. Billy Crystal came up with the idea of creating a huge playbook, almost like a football team would use for a big game. The script itself is three hundred pages. It’s a big hefty tome, and it’s kept offstage, generally offstage left. The host will leaf through it during commercial breaks. It’s mostly based on what
might
happen during the broadcast. “Suppose
this
happens. What if
that
happens?” You know, just in case. So, you end up creating a lot of material: “Oh, if that happens, we’re covered.” You study who’s nominated to win all the awards, the movies these people are associated with, everything that’s necessary to come up with jokes. A ton of research.

How many of these jokes, on average, end up being used during the performance?

Out of the hundreds that we write—really, hundreds—if one or two are used, it’s a big deal. We’ll start the actual writing process about two months before the ceremony—usually in December for a February or March broadcast.

Is the notebook divided into subjects? Into categories?

There’s an entire rundown of the show, and we write potential jokes into the script at the point where they would occur. But we always give ourselves room for on-the-spot improvisation. There are some things we could just never predict.

At the 1992 Oscars, nobody expected Jack Palance, a seventy-three-year-old man, to start performing one-armed push-ups when he won the Academy Award [for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for
City Slickers
]. But we knew something was going to happen. Billy had worked with Jack in
City Slickers
and knew what Jack was capable of.

But, no, we didn’t know exactly what he would try to do. And that’s the great thing about the Oscars. Something will happen that’s unwritten, and it’s always way funnier than anything we could have dreamt up. And it’s then up to us to work off those situations.

People tend to forget what exactly Jack Palance said before dropping to the ground to perform push-ups.

Right. The first thing that Jack said when he got up to the podium was, “Billy Crystal. I crap bigger than him.” Talk about your visuals. And then there was kind of a shocked reaction, and that’s what made Jack drop to the floor to do something that would allow the audience to forget that he had just said “crap” in front of most of the universe.

Once Jack did those push-ups, we, the writers, were standing backstage, thinking, Okay, no holds barred. He made this joke about Billy, so now Billy can do anything about him. The floodgates opened. We wrote a couple of jokes about Jack’s prowess, and then Billy came back and said, “Look, do more. Write more.” So we did.

It must be frustrating to come up with so many jokes each year, only to have only about 2 percent used. Have there been any jokes you wished had been used but weren’t?

There’ve been a few. We had one joke [in 2003] that involved Steve Martin coming out after the monologue, and he was going to say, “I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that my fly was open throughout the monologue. The good news is the camera puts on ten pounds.” But Steve wouldn’t say the joke; he said it was a “cock joke.” He just didn’t feel comfortable doing a cock joke on the Academy Awards. I said, “But it’s not a cock joke! It’s a
camera
joke.” Everybody loved the joke. Even the network censor thought it was hilarious. We could have gotten away with it because it didn’t cross any kind of line, but the fact that the network censor thought it was hysterical meant we had done something right.

It might very well have become a classic if he did say it.

I know, but Steve felt it was just a little too anatomically correct. You can see the visual a bit too easily. I can understand why he would come to that conclusion. The host has to decide, “Do I want to take the audience to that place?”

The Academy Awards is a strange show to work on as a comedy writer. You’re writing jokes for over one billion people, of all ages, countries, backgrounds. How do you determine what is and what is not appropriate without sapping out all the humor?

You have to be careful not to cross that weird line. There are celebrities you just can’t make jokes about, whether because it’s cruel or because they’ll be in the audience, or just because it’s too embarrassing a situation. Keep in mind that whatever a host says is going to live with them for the rest of their career. The choice you have to make is, Do I, as a comedian, want to be remembered for this joke or not? You can’t unring that bell.

Can you tell me about the backstage writing process during an Oscars broadcast? How do the writers work? Together or separately? Writing down jokes? Pitching them out loud?

It’s frantic. It’s chaos. It makes the fall of Saigon look tame. It’s all happening so, so quickly. My favorite example is from 2003, when Steve was hosting. Now, this goes back to something happening just before the commercial break that you can work off of. Michael Moore had won for Best Documentary Feature for
Bowling for Columbine
, and he made a speech against the second Gulf war. Some in the audience booed, but we also noticed that some of the stagehands started booing him, too. When we returned from commercial break, Steve came out and said, “It’s so sweet backstage, you should have seen it. The Teamsters are helping Michael Moore into the trunk of his limo.” That was a joke that we came up with in the wings.

Who are you writing for? The live audience in the auditorium? Or the audience at home?

You’re playing to the auditorium because they’re the ones who are giving the immediate reaction that the home audience will hear. You’re always playing to both of them, really, but I think what you want most is a reaction from the live audience, clearly.

The problem is that the vibe in the room changes as the night progresses. As the night gets longer, there are more and more audience members who have not won an award. Their high hopes have disappeared. For every winner, there are at least four or five who won’t win. It gets chilly. The audience is not really paying attention. At this point, you’re getting down to the big awards; it’s been a long day. The audience really would like to get out of there and start drinking—those who aren’t already potted, that is. So, by the end, the audience is not really paying close attention. Also, there are a hefty amount of seat fillers, because people have children, have to relieve the babysitter, they get bored, they just leave. Say, for an example, there are ten supporting actor nominees, and those categories are given early. Those ten faces will be gone, generally, by the middle to the end of the show. And they’ll be replaced by secretaries from Paramount who might not be too keen to laugh.

But if you’re in the audience, you can always sense a degree of excitement. In particular, when Letterman hosted the 1994 Oscars, the live audience was enjoying it; they were having a good time. But his performance did receive terrible reviews.

I really enjoyed watching that show. I think a lot of people did—that is, until Letterman convinced us otherwise.

But that’s his persona, you know. That’s what you get when you hire him. I liked his performance, too, but I do think the mistake he made was to try and duplicate routines from his late-night show to the Oscars. Nobody had tuned in to see that. I always think it’s better to take a fresh approach. That’s what the audience really loves. And Letterman also would comment on whenever a joke wouldn’t hit, which is something Johnny Carson would do on
The Tonight Show
. But that doesn’t work at the Oscars, either.

Were you responsible for some of the jokes that bombed the night Letterman hosted, such as the Uma/Oprah joke? The joke was that
Uma
and
Oprah
sound similar. And the follow-up joke was that
Keanu
sounds similar to both
Uma
and
Oprah
.

No. The Uma/Oprah joke was written by Rob Burnett [executive producer,
Late Show with David Letterman
], who lethally takes credit for it. Just lethal. I told Rob not to do it. I thought it was a bad idea to have David Letterman from New York TV making fun of these huge stars from Hollywood.

Hosts are vital to the show’s tone. It’s a very specific role that the host plays. You have to bring your personality, but you have to do it in a clever way, so it doesn’t feel like a retread of what you do at your other job. I think that’s what happened with Letterman. The comedy didn’t translate well.

It takes a very specific type of performer to do well at the Oscars. Ellen DeGeneres [in 2007] had a different approach, and I don’t think it worked. She was very daytime. There wasn’t a sense of occasion. She was scared, I think, and wasn’t willing to go the extra mile. James Franco [in 2010] didn’t work out well at all. He was really out of his comfort zone. He’s not a live stage performer.

It’s better if the hosts are comedians. They have to have a bit of an attitude. It’s easier for us writers to find words that suit a comedian’s attitude. Actors tend to act. It’s tough for them to play themselves, to have a persona. You’ll never see Johnny Depp performing
An Evening with Johnny Depp
.

What’s it like to write for celebrities presenting awards, many of whom are not used to performing comedy before a live audience?

It’s tough. It’s constantly a negotiation of some sort. Each of these celebrities has a flotilla of assistants who are advising them of what to say and not to say. A lot show up with their own writers, depending on who they are. And it’s hard for me to bitch about that. That kind of goes with the territory. So that doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is when you get people who don’t do this kind of performing for a living and they go into a major panic and every single word has to be edited by everybody. By their hairdressers, their yoga instructor, their publicist, their pet psychiatrist. Everybody’s got an opinion. And all of those people who are supposedly helping are really enemies of comedy, because they don’t want anybody to get into trouble. You can’t be funny by saying, “I’m not going to get anybody into trouble.” You know, that’s the risk you run. Read Freud on jokes and tell me that you’re not ever going to get anybody into trouble.