Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers (48 page)

Can you see influences from
Cabin Boy
on comedies that came after? Say, the bizarreness on Adult Swim shows? Or with something like 2012’s
Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie
, another fan favorite, but one that many critics thought went too far?

I haven’t seen that movie, but I doubt anyone was influenced much by
Cabin Boy
. Some people may have liked it, but I can’t see it inspiring anyone to go out and create. [Laughs] I don’t know. There are a few bands and some hip-hop guys who were into it. The dialogue’s been sampled a few times.

How bad was the post–
Cabin Boy
funk for you? Did it prevent you—

Oh . . . can you hang on a sec?

Sure.

[Silence on the other end of the phone line]

Hello?

Did you hear that?

Hear what?

The prostitute screaming.

[Long pause] Are you joking?

No.

Where the hell are you?

My office.

Your office? Where’s your office, the red-light district?

On the Upper West Side [in New York City]. It’s a tiny studio apartment I rent to get away from home to write. I’ve never seen her, but I hear her all the time. The walls are so thin. She entertains businessmen during the day. The doorman says it’s actually a mother and daughter, and they’re both prostitutes. They work separately. They sublet it from some weird guy who’s hardly ever there.

I’m, uh . . . this wasn’t in your official bio. This actually sounds like a character from
Cabin Boy
. So . . . does this in any way prevent you from writing? I would think a prostitute screaming would be the opposite of having a white-noise machine.

I liked it at first, but it’s just annoying now. And they both have a habit of letting the door slam whenever they leave, and my whole apartment shakes. Prostitutes can be so boorish these days.

The glamour of being a writer.

I guess.

You don’t mind being in a room alone all day writing?

No, being alone has always been my MO. There are times, though, if I’m depressed about whatever—and I’m frequently depressed—when I suddenly feel a little lonely and isolated. But then I just go for a walk. I actually think I’d do quite well at Gitmo.

Do you think it hurts your career to be a TV and movie screenwriter in New York rather than in LA?

I guess it doesn’t help, but I just can’t live out there. And I’m out in LA at different times throughout the year, so it’s okay. I love my life in New York and it’s where my wife and I wanted our daughter to grow up. So it’s a trade-off.

What are you working on now? How do you spend most of your time?

I’m in the middle of writing a screenplay and a memoir [
Will Not Attend
, Blue Rider Press, 2014]. Also, I just finished a pilot for ABC that didn’t get picked up.

What was it about?

A nice girl who works in a candy shop in Cape May, New Jersey, gets falsely accused of murder. She’s eventually exonerated, but now she’s tarnished; a lot of people in town still believe she did it. In retrospect, I think it was a subconscious love letter to Fatty Arbuckle. Maybe I should repitch it that way.

How does pilot season work?

It’s a long process that starts around June or July. If you’re not writing on spec, you typically find a producer you think would be a good creative match and talk about your idea. If they like it, you take it to a studio. If the studio likes it, you pitch it to the network. If they get onboard, you have to write the script.

But that’s no guarantee that the script, even though it was bought, will ultimately be shot and broadcast, right?

No, not at all. In fact, the odds are against it. Studios and networks buy a ton of scripts each pilot season. A fraction of those will get shot, and only a small handful will get episode orders.

Does it work differently with movie scripts?

It’s complicated, but in general, the odds are always stacked against getting something produced. And the less commercial the idea, the lower the odds. It’s a tough business, but I think it’s always been that way. The people putting out money expect to make money. It’s a pretty square deal. It’s logical. Still, creative people, like myself, will never stop bitching about not selling something or not getting a project produced and crying, “How can they make that other piece of shit when my thing is so much better?” That’s normal. You can’t think logically when it comes to something you’re passionate about. All you can do is keep trying. And write a lot of projects you’re
not
passionate about to pay the bills. [Laughs]

Over the years, you’ve sold two other movie scripts, not including
Cabin Boy
, that were produced:
Lucky Numbers
[2000] and
Death to Smoochy
[2002]. Were you happy with the way either of those films turned out?

No. But this goes to what I was kind of just rambling about. I sold those as pitches. And the end result was extremely painful for me— embarrassing even—but sometimes I have to make myself stand back and look at the business transaction I entered into: I sold an idea, essentially. After I gave them the script, it had nothing to do with me anymore. I got paid; that was the deal. Any further creative involvement was at the discretion of the director—and, of course, the writer doesn’t get to choose the director. In the case of those films, I was brought into the process, but it was nothing like a true collaboration, and the directors saw those movies differently than I did. I can bitch all day long about how much better the scripts were, and, believe me, I did plenty of that, but in the end, you have to accept what the rules were going in. It’s not easy, though.

You know what? Maybe it’s time for a blow-off question. [Laughs] I can feel my serotonin levels plummeting.

What’s the current status of the worm farm script?

I haven’t picked it up in awhile, but I’m going to do another pass on it. I’ve done several, which is always a good sign. Darren Aronofsky [the director of
The Wrestler
and
Black Swan
] read my last draft and really liked it.

And does he want to make it?

Oh, God no.

We never got a chance to discuss your HBO show,
The High Life
.

Let’s save that for the new volume. I can’t stand to hear the sound of my voice any longer.

Any last words?

I mentioned I wasn’t a fan of the Brat Pack movies, right? Look, here’s the thing—if you’re in this business and you can cover your overhead by writing exactly what you want, you’re living the dream. And if you’re getting
rich
by writing what you want, you’re in an enviable position. But for most writers, it’s usually a compromise. The good news is, there’s always a chance that everything will click on some project and you’ll be happy creatively. And that’s what keeps you writing, I guess. For me, every day that I’m not living back in Harrisburg is a victory.

Thanks for doing this, and please give my best to the prostitute.

Oh, I’m going to give her a little something more than that, if you know what I mean. There you go—comedy.

Creator/Writer,
Freaks and Geeks;
Director,
The Office, Arrested Development, Bridesmaids,
The Heat;
Producer,
Peanuts
movie; Author,
Kick Me,
Superstud

In 1999, you wrote a series bible for
Freaks and Geeks
. Sometimes called a “character bible” or a “show bible,” a series bible is a reference guide that a writer puts together when pitching a new show to networks. It includes details about the show’s characters, setting, plot points, and other minutiae. Can you talk about how yours came about?

The bible for
Freaks and Geeks
was for the executives, of course, but I mostly wrote it for me. When you’re thinking of something for so long and you have a million thoughts in your head and you keep taking notes—and especially when a show is based on truth, something you actually went through—a series bible is almost this stream of consciousness way to dump all that stuff out and then organize it. As a writer, all you can really do is to write honest work. You have to really put yourself in the head of your characters, so anything that helps you do that is great. And this really helped me do that.

It was also really a great way to show the writers for the show what I was imagining, what I wanted the show to be. I wanted to let the writers see the continuity of it all. Also, it was for production design, wardrobe, and the sound of the show; I wanted to portray a very specific look and sound. I went through all my old seventies yearbooks and put Post-it notes in them. I still have the yearbooks and they still have all the Post-its.

At the time that I wrote the bible for
Freaks
—this would be the late 1990s—there was a tendency for Hollywood to think, Oh, everything was crazy in the 1970s. It was all leisure suits and disco and all that. And I was like, “No, that’s not how it looked. That’s not how it sounded to me.” So it was really important to me to kill that mentality. By writing this character bible, it was my way of saying, “Here’s the guide to the seventies that I knew.”

I had never been in charge of a show, and there was a terror for me of pitching to the executives and not having an answer or an opinion when they asked—or of having the wrong opinion. So it also became a way for me to sort it all out.

The details in the series bible are incredible, to the point where you write that the geeks are the ones listening to Electric Light Orchestra and the freaks are the ones listening to Rush.

[Laughs] Right! I mean, it was kind of a fun way to do it. I was surprising myself that all of this was coming out of me, and I was able to go, “Oh, yeah. I remember who liked this. I remember who didn’t like that.” It was all about defining who were the freaks and who were the geeks. For me, these were the two groups who had never been explored. Even when nerds
were
in movies, they were always the valedictorians; all they cared about was schoolwork. In reality, the geeks I knew liked music; they liked pop culture.

I went into this show so afraid of all that had gone before us, and really wanting to have a defense against the network, or anybody else, who was going to try to force me to do things that had been done before in all those high school shows and movies. And so I really needed to have real-life answers.

Executives will sometimes—but not always—ask to read a series bible when a writer is pitching a TV show. They want to get a sense of who the characters are and what this world will be like. But is it always worthwhile for the writer to create one? It seems like a tremendous amount of work.

Absolutely. It is a ton of work, but it’s incredibly helpful to any writer. I’d recommend any writer do it, only to get his or her thoughts in some semblance of order. As a writer, you really need a solid foundation when creating a show—in essence, you’re creating an entirely new world, inhabited by characters coming from your imagination. If the foundation isn’t solid, everything will collapse. It’s a very difficult process. Now, that’s not to say that details won’t change as the show progresses. But by getting everything down onto paper, and by then organizing this world into a cohesive form, it can only help you if the show is bought and later produced.

When you ultimately got the go-ahead for
Freaks and Geeks
and were hiring writers, what were you looking for? The show is infamous for having one of the best writing staffs for any nineties TV show, and included Mike White, who wrote the 2006 movie
Nacho Libre
and created HBO’s series
Enlightened
.

When we were hiring writers for the show, I was not very interested in reading their spec scripts for other shows. I felt that I wouldn’t learn anything about a writer if I was reading a
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
script because I’d just be seeing how they could copy somebody else’s style. Plus, they would already have these characters at their disposal. I preferred to either read somebody’s original pilot or original play or original screenplay in order to see the invention they were able to come up with.

But, keep in mind, that’s just me. Most TV shows find writers from spec scripts for their shows. I think it is good to write a spec script, but to always include something original, too. That is really the hardest thing: creating characters from scratch and creating a situation from scratch.

As a writer, what do you prefer to come up with first? Characters or situations?

What happens with a lot of writers when they develop a TV pilot is that they come up with the context first, and then they fill in the characters. That’s slightly dicey for a new TV show because the concept is only going to be interesting for so long. What the show really hangs on are the characters and what kind of a life they have. I’d much rather see a writer come up with, “I knew somebody like this.” Or, “What would it be like if these three people got mixed together?” At that point, you can then ask, “Okay, what’s the best context for them to be in? What situation?”

Are your scripts meant to be performed verbatim, or do you allow for improvisation?

I think the main problem I see with comedy is that a lot of it is overwritten and it’s created by people who are very precious about their words. You get that a lot in television, especially with sitcoms where writers are very religious about, “You can’t change
this
; you can’t change
that
.” So, what happens is, there’s no life to it.

I do use improv, but sometimes that’s just as simple as loosening the wording of a written joke or a sentence to create a kind of naturalness. It also has to do with rehearsal and how you adapt the script to the actors’ personalities and how you shoot and how many different ways you have to shoot a scene. Actors are great and they can do scenes over and over again, but, at the same time, there’s always going to be a freshness about the first time someone says or does something. You want to get to the point where you’re capturing lightning in a bottle. That is the key to comedy as far as I’m concerned: lightning in a bottle. You have to capture that moment when it first happens, because that’s when it’s funny.

How difficult is it to capture that lightning?

It’s hard. Sometimes it’s hard just because of the technology involved with making movies and television, like not being able to shoot both actors at the same time. Sometimes it’s hard because an actor’s not good at doing it. But you also learn from the actors you work with. Some are amazing at being in the moment and others aren’t. Some don’t know how to handle it correctly, and, if that’s the case, you adjust and find a way to make them fresh when it’s their turn. Some are better right out of the gate. Others need to warm up. Everyone’s different.

When you direct, your head is spinning. That’s why shooting comedy is absolutely exhausting. That’s why when you come to the end of a full day, you’ll have one last scene, and you sometimes feel, My God, I don’t know if I can get through it. The temptation is to just shoot it exactly like the script and be done with it. But whatever you do in that one moment is captured forever—you’ll always have it—so you have to force yourself to make what is hopefully magic happen.

(Written by Paul Feig, last revised May 20, 1999. What follows are excerpts.)

General Notes About the Series

This show must be
real
. The teens in this series will talk like real teens. They will never be too clever or grown up sounding. We don’t want a bunch of teenage Neil Simons spouting off wittily. These kids generally engage in teenage put-downs, they overextend their language (“Oh, yeah? Well, you’re a . . . uh . . . big idiot, that’s what you are”) and never talk in that writers’ “Now that I’m in my thirties, I know what I’d say in that high school situation, so I’ll give this kid a snappy comeback” style of writing. These kids have to deal with each other with whatever is in the lexicon of a teenager and nothing more (and despite the fact that most of us think “if I knew then what I know now, I’d really be cool and in control” the sad truth is that if we knew what we know now when we were in high school, we’d probably get beaten up on a regular basis because teenage bullies don’t respond well to clever put-downs at their expense).

What They Listen To

Here are some of the bands that the freaks and geeks would be listening to in the Midwest in 1980 (the great thing is that, even though the groups divide pretty cleanly on what they listen to, there’s lots of spillover in what they like, partly because of their siblings and parents and partly just because they’re kids who are easily persuaded):

The Cars—geeks

Chicago—geeks

Asia—geeks, some freaks

Bee Gees—geeks

Black Sabbath—freaks

Blue Oyster Cult—freaks

Blood, Sweat & Tears—geeks

Eric Clapton—freaks, some geeks

Alice Cooper—freaks and geeks

Cheap Trick—freaks and geeks

Doobie Brothers—freaks and geeks

John Denver—geeks

Eagles—geeks, some freaks

ELO—geeks

Fleetwood Mac—geeks, freak girls

Foghat—freaks

Peter Frampton—freaks and geeks

Foreigner—freaks and geeks

Genesis—freaks

Jimi Hendrix—freaks

Iron Maiden—freaks

Elton John—geeks

Journey—freaks and geeks

Judas Priest—freaks

Kiss—geeks

John Lennon—freaks and geeks

Lynyrd Skynyrd—freaks and farmers

Marshall Tucker Band—freaks and farmers, some geeks

Meat Loaf—geeks

The Steve Miller Band—freaks and geeks

Van Morrison—nobody

Moody Blues—geeks

Tom Petty—geeks, some freaks

Prince (early)—nobody

Rolling Stones—freaks for early stuff, geeks for “Some Girls”

Rush—freaks

Roxy Music—nobody who’d admit it

Santana—freaks and geeks

Carly Simon—teachers

Simon & Garfunkel—teachers

Patti Smith—“Creem”-reading freaks

Bruce Springsteen—not very big in Midwest, some cooler geeks

The Police—freaks, a few geeks

Supertramp—geeks, some freaks

Jethro Tull—freaks

Queen—freaks and geeks

James Taylor—geeks, some freak girls

Jackson Brown—geeks, freaks who smoke lots of pot

Van Halen—freaks

Paul McCartney and Wings—geeks, some freaks

Yes—freaks, some geeks

ZZ Top—freaks, some geeks

Frank Zappa—only the coolest of freaks

Billy Joel—geeks

Bob Seger—geeks, some freaks

J. Geils Band—freaks for early stuff, geeks for “Centerfold” era

Led Zeppelin—freaks

April Wine—freaks, some geeks, lots of Canadians

Jeff Beck—cool freaks

Robin Trower—freaks

Three Dog Night—geeks

B-52s—nobody

Devo—very cool geeks

Elvis Costello—moody geeks, some freaks

Talking Heads—some geeks, some freaks, mostly no one

The Romantics—geeks, a few freaks

Sex Pistols—no one knows about them

The Ramones—them either

What They Wear

Overall note is that all the students will have about four or five outfits they will wear all the time. Pants can stay the same a lot of the time, shirts change daily (except for some poorer kids). Even cool kids and rich kids shouldn’t have a lot of different changes. Bottom line, all these kids are blue collar or lower end white collar.

The Geeks

In general, the geeks try to dress well but just don’t quite pull it off. Maybe if they were better looking or cooler guys, their clothes would make them attractive. But on them, no matter what they wear, it somehow doesn’t work.

Sam

Overall look
: Sam looks like a kid who cares about how he looks but only up to a point. He dresses more for comfort and his fashion sense is limited to knowing what other kids are wearing and then trying to approximate their look. He thinks he looks better than he does in his clothes (everything looks fine to him from head-on in the mirror but he doesn’t see that what he can’t see doesn’t really hang well). He’s not so much rumpled as the victim of poorly made clothes.

Shirts
: Pullover Velour V-neck shirts with collar (a little baggy and ill-fitting), short-sleeved knit pullover with zipper V-neck and collar (white stripe on edge of collar and sleeves), terrycloth pullover with two- or three-button V-neck and collar (shoulder pieces are darker color than rest of shirt, with a stripe on each upper arm), not usually tucked in.

Pants
: Brown, green, burgundy jeans, never denim blue jeans (until second season), occasionally polyester slacks.

Shoes
: Tan suede earth shoe hybrids with rimpled soles (remember those things? The soles were shaped like two “w’s” and the whole shoe looked kinda pumped up like a loaf of bread—see Paul Feig for details), dark suede tennis shoes (occasionally).