TALES FROM THE SCRIPT: THE BEHIND-THE-CAMERA ADVENTURES OF A TV COMEDY WRITER (8 page)

For the previous two years, i had worked on a successful television variety show, made good money, met some famous movie stars,
and worked with talented, creative, fun people. Then, it was all gone.

That’s the way i felt when i heard that
The Jim Nabors Hour
was
cancelled and would not be renewed for the coming season.
The Jim Nabors Hour
got off to a roaring start. Even before the
show aired, it was picked to be the solid hit for the 1969-1970 season
by some advertising people, who supposedly knew things like that in
advance. They were right. The first show aired on September 25, 1969,
and got mixed reviews but spectacular numbers in the ratings. We finished #4 for that season. CBS loved us and they loved Jim nabors.
The second year, we were opposite a new variety show on nBC,
The Flip Wilson Show
. Flip did well and knocked us down a few
notches in the nielsen ratings, but it wasn’t really Flip’s success that
caused the cancellation. Our show was still doing well in the ratings.
We were no longer #4 in the nation, but we weren’t much below that.
We were still ranked higher than
The Carol Burnett Show,
yet her show
was renewed.
CBS was embarrassed by their reputation as a “hayseed” net

work. Some other shows that CBS cancelled during the 1970-1971
season were
Mayberry RFD, The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres,
and
Hee Haw.
Jim nabors was considered a little too “hayseed” to stay
on the network, although Glen Campbell’s
Goodtime Hour
survived
another season.

Although i was a relative rookie in the television world, i sensed
that it could be a cruel atmosphere. When you’re up, you’re up; when
you’re down, you’re a lot more than down. You become a pariah, a
leper, good for nothing but the set up for various put-down gags.

Being out of work in the writing profession was scary, because
i never knew if i was ever going back to work again. it was also exhilarating. While i worked, i was out of circulation. i had a job and
an income. When i was out of work, though, i was available. People
wanted me.

if terminated from engineering, a worker had to go looking for
work. in show business, work came looking me, so it was a rather
heady sensation.

Then, too, there was the thrill of negotiating, and i could be quite
bold in my negotiations because i didn’t do it face to face. i had an
agent who acted as my “muscle.” Agents are good at that.

That reminds me of Bob Hope’s joke about Ronald Reagan when
he first ran for President. Bob said, “Reagan is one politician who
doesn’t lie, cheat, or steal. He has an agent who does that for him.” it’s
uncomfortably close to true.

Let me tell you a story about typical agent “muscle.” A writer
friend of mine had a birthday party at his house. it was on a very
interesting night for those in Los Angeles. A few weeks earlier, notre
Dame’s basketball team had defeated UCLA and ended their record
streak of unbeaten games at 88. That particular night was the rematch.
UCLA was out for revenge, and most sports fans wanted to watch it.

When we arrived at the house, that writer’s wife told us that no
one was to touch the television set because it was a birthday celebration. no stupid basketball game was going to take center stage. All of
us at the party obeyed meekly.

A bit later, my agent arrived. He burst through the door and
shouted, “What the hell’s going on here? The ball game’s on.” With
that, he marched over to the television set, turned the game on,
and sat down and watched it. We huddled around behind him and
watched, too.

That’s the kind of chutzpah that agents lent to the writers they
represented. We wouldn’t dare ask for certain things, but we had no
hesitation about telling our agent what we “demanded.” We had him
or her ask for it, and they did.

So, there’s a certain sense of power in tangling with major players
like nBC, CBS, ABC, or production company executives over what
we wanted or what we’d settle for . . . provided that it was our agent
who went in and was forceful in our place.

So, it was kind of a nice feeling when my agent called and said,
“
Laugh-In
wants you.”
Laugh-In
was a landmark show in television
comedy. it was a smash when it premiered in 1968, and it was still
going strong.

They wanted me, and i was thrilled. i was thrilled, that is, until i
found out how much they wanted me for. They offered less than i was
making per show on my second year on
The Jim Nabors Hour.
not
only was i not getting the increase i thought i deserved, i was being
demoted.

i instructed my agent that i wanted at least the amount of money
that i would have made had i continued on
The Jim Nabors Hour.
if
they wanted me, they’d have to pay for me. See, it was nice to have
someone do the brute work for me. it was like turning to the person
in the next seat and asking, “isn’t it terrible the way Mike Tyson bit
Holyfield’s ear? Go in the ring and kick him in the shin for me.”

My agent went back to the
Laugh-In
people and told them how
much i wanted and gave them all the reasons why i was worth that
much and should get that much.

i told him i didn’t want the job.
My agent said, “Let’s have breakfast.”
i said, “Only if you pay. i’m out of work.”
He also gave me some fast but powerful advice to digest along

with the breakfast. He said, “You’ve only been in the business for two
seasons. You’ve only held one job. if you disappear for a season, you
may disappear forever. People forget about you. Once you’re down
in this business, people can be cruel.”

My agent said, “Take the job for this amount. if you’re good,
you’ll make it up along the way. But stay in the business.”
i took the job and the free breakfast.
George Schlatter, the executive producer of
Laugh-In
, loved to
discover new talent. He once read some jokes on a box of popcorn
marketed as “Screaming Yellow Zonkers.” He called whoever was
called to find out about those things and learned the name of the guy
who wrote most of the gags on the carton. He hired him to work on
Laugh-In.
George was always on the lookout for new talent. His show was
unique and different, so he wanted writers who were not the cookiecutter, Hollywood writers; he searched out potential that was unique
. . . and cheap.
George discovered me, but he almost discovered someone else
in the process. Phyllis Diller was a guest star on
Laugh-In
and she
brought along her own material. Schlatter liked the jokes, picked
up Phyllis’s pages, and noted the name and phone number that were
handwritten on the back. it was a new York number. George called
and asked, “How would you like to come to California and work on
Laugh-In
?”
The gentleman was surprised and delighted. “i’d love to,” he said.
They talked in more and more detail about what would be expected, but it became apparent that they were talking about different
things. George realized that he had called the number of the hair stylist
that Phyllis had planned to use when she worked a gig in new York.
George told the hair-stylist that he wouldn’t be working on
LaughIn
after all. Then, he had to call Phyllis and ask who wrote those jokes.
She gave him my name and number. That’s when George contacted
my agent and told him they wanted me, but for less than i made on
my second year on
The Jim Nabors Hour.
i started working on
Laugh-In
with a chip on my shoulder. i felt
underpaid and underappreciated. i also felt that the show had taken
advantage of me. They had hired me at a low salary when i was out
of work. All of the other writers felt the same way—underpaid and
underappreciated—probably because they
were
underpaid and underappreciated.
Most of us on the
Laugh-In
staff were inexperienced, insecure,
and scared. At the beginning of our writing careers, we were certain
that there had been some mistake. Things went well. We made good
money and turned out funny product, but we felt it was just too good
to be true. The common fear was that
they
, whoever
they
were, would
discover
their
mistake, knock at our door, and proclaim, “Sorry, we
got the wrong guy. You have to give all the money back, pack up your
belongings, and leave town.”
if someone had come to our door and said that, we’d probably have responded, “i’ve been expecting you.” Then, we’d give the
money back, pack up our stuff, and leave.
All of us on that staff had some variation of that fantasy/nightmare. We wanted to do well on the show and be better than everyone else. We were concerned about our performance and cut-throat
about wishing that everyone else would do poorly.
When the Script Supervisors handed out the scripts each week,
each of us would take a copy to our own private corner and count
the number of jokes that we got in. it reminded me of movie cavemen each grabbing a piece of meat and hoarding it so that none of the
other barbarians would steal it.
We all tried to get an edge. One writer came to work one morning
and “got inspired.” He started to think out loud. A joke was formulating in his brain and he wanted to let it continue, so he coaxed someone else into typing the gem while he continued to create.
He threw out a line and his cohort typed. Then, he added another
line that was typed. The lines he adlibbed were good, and they kept
building one upon the other. When it was done, it was a powerful
joke. We were all impressed.
Then when i got home that night, i read the exact same joke in
Reader’s Digest.
His entire performance in the office was to convince
the rest of us that he had brilliantly conceived that joke on the spot.
That’s how much we wanted to better our colleagues.
We all not only wanted to get credit for our contributions but to
downplay anyone else’s participation. One day each week, the entire
staff of twelve writers gathered to write the “Cocktail Party” jokes.
(The Cocktail Party was the part of the show where everyone in the
cast danced, and then action froze, while someone said something
funny, which was followed by action continuing. We needed lots of
gags for that segment and that’s why all of us gathered to generate the
material). Whenever we wrote jokes on the show, we put our initials
at the top of the page. if i wrote a joke with my partner, Rowby Greeber, we put at the top of the page GPRG, which stood for Gene Perret/Rowby Greeber. if Bill Richmond wrote a gag with Alan Katz,
they typed BRAK in the upper right hand corner. That was done so
the Script Supervisors could call the specific writers if they had a
question or wanted some changes made.
When all twelve of us worked on the “Cocktail Party” jokes, the
top of the page looked something like this:
GPRGBRAKJMDRJWJRRWJSFDML
At one of those sessions, the typist typed that at the top of the
page before we had the joke written. As we were trying to come up
with a new line, one of the writers, Jim Mulligan, announced that he
had to leave because he had some sort of appointment before lunch.
it was about 11:30. The rest of us continued.
Would it be possible to black out the initials JM from the long
list of initials in this paragraph. it would seem to be more dramatic if
we actually see it blacked out. i know we explain that with the next
sentence, but it would be nice to actually see it. Maybe we could just
overwrite it. For example -- GPRGBRAKJMDRJWJRRWJSFDML
There was also a compulsion among the young writers to always
be funny. Everyone was always “on.” Everyone was always doing jokes.
At lunchtime, one writer asked the waitress, “Do you accept substitutions?”
She said, “Yeah, i think so.”
He said, “Then in place of the french fries, i’ll have an all expense
paid trip to Bermuda.”
Someoneelsechippedin,“Doyouwantthesuntanlotionontheside?”
The jokes were sometimes at our own expense.
Often after work, we’d gather at the SmokeHouse, the restaurant
across the street from the
Laugh-In
offices, to have a cocktail or two
and discuss the day’s happenings. That place was a typical cocktail
lounge, small tables, dark, and quiet.
One particular evening, a writer had to leave early, but the check
was slow in coming. He said, “i’ve got to get my bill. i’m late.”
i said, “Don’t worry about that. i’ll buy your drink.” He’d only
had the one.
instead of thanking me politely, he stood up in mock rage, knocking his chair over in the process. Heads turned toward us. He pointed
his finger at me and shouted, “i don’t care what you say. no man
should ever touch another man in that place.” Then he stormed out.
Sometimes, the jokes were at my expense. i still dressed like an
engineer instead of a Hollywood writer and i took some ribbing for it.
Then, i bought myself a pair of really hip shoes, or at least, i thought
they were hip; everyone else thought they were just funny looking.
When i wore them to the
Laugh-In
offices, they became the straight
line for a lot of gags.
Finally, in an effort to end the barrage of one-liners, i said, “You
guys can kid about these shoes all you want, but, you know, they were
given to me by my uncle on his death bed.”
Another writer looked at the shoes, and then looked at me and
said, “What did he die of—embarrassment?”
The ultimate in joke-after-joke exchanges happened one day
when all of the writers barged into George Schlatter’s office. We were
going to go out to lunch together and one of the writers was already in
George’s office. We stopped by to see if he’d like to join us.
As soon as we walked in, the jokes started flying, good ones, bad
ones, clean ones, dirty ones, and put downs of people who were there
and people who weren’t. Finally, when we exhausted our repertoire,
we all went out to lunch.
The writer that we had walked in on was a bit grumpy. Someone
asked him why. He said, “i was in with George pitching an idea for a
new show and he was very interested.”
We said, “That’s great.”
He said, “Then you clowns stormed in, tossing your jokes around,
and the meeting was over. i’ll never get a chance to sell this to him again.”
We had no idea. Someone apologized for all of us.
Another writer said, “Why didn’t you just tell us to go f--- ourselves?”
The writer said, “i think i did and somebody topped me.”
Laugh-In
was not only unique on screen, but off screen as well.
Most variety shows that were on the air in those days taped the entire
show as a single unit. They did it twice, though. They’d tape a dress
rehearsal in front of a live audience followed about an hour later by
the taping of the air show.
Laugh-In
worked differently. That show
blocked and taped each segment of the show separately. They rehearsed one sketch, shot it, struck the set, and then worked on the
next segment.
Writing procedures were different, too. We didn’t have writers’
offices, per se. We had apartments in a rundown motel that had been
converted to permanent residences. You can imagine how classy they
were when your next door neighbors were a bunch of crazy, insecure
television comedy writers.
One of our Script Supervisors liked to party at night and drink,
so he often slept in one of the writer’s motel rooms. Several mornings, we began the day by helping him locate his car. He’d parked it
somewhere in the neighborhood the night before, but could rarely
remember where.
That Script Supervisor drank and his partner smoked and swallowed everything that one wasn’t allowed to smoke or swallow, and
they weren’t too fond of one another. Again, everyone wanted to do
better than everyone else, including our own writing partners.
At one party, they got into a fierce argument. One of them was
cowering in a corner begging not to be shot. The other aimed a monkey wrench at him. The interesting part was that neither one of them
knew it wasn’t a gun that was being used. The guy holding the monkey
wrench was drunk enough to think it was a gun and the one the monkey wrench was aimed at was stoned enough to think it was a gun, too.
no harm was done, though. Luckily, the monkey wrench misfired.
On calmer mornings, we began the workday with our writing assignments, handed out by the above mentioned Script Supervisor/
combatants. The writing assignments were a menu of the work we
were expected to get done by end of day. They consisted of things like:
Three crossovers for John Wayne
Three crossovers for Raquel Welch
Five lines for the Joke Wall
A two-page sketch for Ruth Buzzi
A Big Al bit
And so on.
Each of those was a different segment of the show. Some assignments were only a single joke; some were brief bits or sketches. none
of them exceeded three pages. Like the show, our writing was to be
brief, punchy, and a bit wacky.
My writing partner came up with a gag that worked beautifully
on the show. A husband and a wife were fighting in a living room
decorated with polka dot wallpaper. The husband stormed out angrily, slammed the door, and all the polka dots fell to the floor. it was
a funny sight on camera, but it was a major engineering feat. Each of
the polka dots was a separate piece of material with a tiny hole in it.
Then a series of pins came through the wall and supported the polka
dots. When the actor slammed the door, the stagehands triggered a
device that pulled the pins and the polka dots were released to the
floor. it was a funny joke that cost about $5,000 to build. To amortize that set, the producer asked us to do other jokes that utilized the
wall. it was practically impossible. The joke was done. it was funny,
but variations couldn’t be done on it.
Laugh-In
also had a unique stationery situation. That was before
the days of computers, so all our work had to be typed with carbon
paper copies. We had paper that consisted of one sheet of normal
paper with about seven carbon papers and onion skins attached. We
handed in two copies to the Script Supervisors, kept a copy for our
own records, and threw the other sheets away.
i wrote fast, and i liked to overwrite. if someone wanted five
jokes, i wrote fifteen and let them decide which five were the best. So,
if they wanted three jokes for John Wayne, i’d turn in ten.
One day, the Script Supervisor asked me to stop that. i asked
why. He said, “You’re wasting an awful lot of paper.”
i was astounded. There was a show that was costing hundreds of
thousands of dollars to produce and was generating small fortunes in income for the producers, the stars, and the network, and they wanted me
to stop writing a few extra jokes because i was wasting too much paper.
i ignored the admonition because i was having good success getting jokes into the script (yes, i counted joke pages, too), and i had to
be there so many hours, so i felt that i might as well be writing.
The other procedure we followed was to hand in the jokes to the
Script Supervisors at the end of the day. We were to put the originals
in one bin, and then put the first carbon copy in the other bin. At the
end of one particular workday, i thought i had followed the procedure, and then i sat in the outer office talking to the production assistants who worked there. Our Script Supervisor, the one who often
had trouble finding his car in the morning, came tearing out of his
office waving pages around.
“Who handed in these jokes?” he screamed. “Who handed in
these jokes?”
Since all the pages had initials at the top, there was no reason for
him to ask who handed in the pages when he had the pages in his
hand that had the initials at the top that would tell him who handed
them in. it happened to be me who handed them in. i confessed.