Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers (8 page)

We make twenty-two episodes of our show a year. Some shows make twenty-four episodes. On
The Office
we once made thirty, I think, including six or so hour-long shows. So at a time when it’s never been harder to do something new and interesting, we still have to churn out episode after episode at breakneck speed.

The entire network TV system is creaking under the weight of this brave new world. I’d actually argue that this is good, in many ways, for the creative process. Obstacles are good, generally, for writers, and the increased scrutiny for television is the natural result of its massive leaps forward in quality; it’s being treated, as it should be, like an art form worthy of criticism and discussion.

And please do not think I am in any way complaining about my job. There is quite literally not another one I would rather have. I write largely exactly what I want to, spend my days giggling like a goon, work with my friends, and get paid well—a scenario which makes me, by a wide margin, the luckiest son of a bitch in America, if not the world. I only intend to delineate the unique dilemmas currently faced by network TV writers: Make it great, but make it very fast and make a whole lot of it, and also make it appeal to a wide swath of the American public who have a billion other tailored-to-them choices.

What do you look for in a writing staff? Who do you want in your writers’ room?

Staffs should ideally be like the X-Men—lots of different weird mutants with specific voices and talents. If everyone on your staff is an improv performer from Chicago, or a sci-fi nerd from an Ivy League school, or a stand-up, you’ll only get the specific kind of joke that that group provides. There’s no specific ratio. Just variety is all. Ideally, we have ten or twelve different weirdos with bizarre life stories and unique experiences we can mine for stories and jokes.

Writers’ rooms can be ugly, no question, but the
Parks and Rec
writers’ room rivals Disney World as the happiest place on Earth. We have our bad days, and our grumpy days, but overall it’s a very supportive, goofy, and joyous place to work. We’re very lucky.

Do you think the atmosphere of the writers’ room can affect the tone of a show?

Absolutely. There are basically two kinds of comedy writers—laughers and nonlaughers. Nonlaughers bum me out at a very deep level. It’s almost as if they think that laughing at other people’s jokes is a sign of weakness or something. I’ve never understood it. If your staff is filled with a bunch of nonlaughers, the show can take on a bloodless, cold tone.

In the past, you’ve spoken about the “click” that takes place in a writers’ room when a joke hits. You call it the “sweet spot.” Can you remember any instances of this “click” happening on either
Office
or
Parks
?

It happens constantly. [
Parks
writer] Dan Goor wrote a line for Ron Swanson where someone asks him if he is scared to eat in a bowling alley restaurant, and he says, “When I eat, it is the food that is scared.” That click was so loud it rattled the furniture. I wrote a joke for Dwight Schrute [on
The Office
] where Jim offers him a shamrock keychain, saying it’s good luck, and Dwight says, “‘A real man makes his own luck.’ Billy Zane.
Titanic.
” That was a “click” for me. It just seemed so Dwighty that he would identify with that character in that movie. Those moments are few and far between, and they’re surrounded by millions of crappy jokes and clumsy stuff that you throw away, but when you hit one it’s the best feeling. Seth Meyers described the Weekend Update equivalent—writing a joke that you know is going to kill—as swinging the bat and being so sure you’ve hit a home run that you don’t even watch the flight of the ball. You just put your head down and trot around the bases. The millions of crappy jokes you write make that rare feeling that much better.

What do you look for with submitted spec scripts from potential writers? What are some dos and don’ts?

I would say that the most valuable and unteachable asset in a comedy writer is a unique voice. That is my top priority in hiring people—does this person sound like everyone else, or is there something about how he or she puts words and sentences and ideas together that sticks out? So many writers on
The Office
and
Parks and Rec
have owned irreplaceable voices, and so many actors as well. It’s something I’m incredibly proud of on this show—the uniqueness of the voices we present. It makes jokes more interesting, characters more interesting, stories more interesting.

When we hired the writer Emily Kapnek for
Parks
, I was given one of her scripts—it was an original—and I knew almost instantly that I wanted to hire her. I was sold with one particular joke midway through. It made me laugh out loud, which happens rarely when you’re reading hundreds of scripts at a time.
3

Do you see any common mistakes, across the board, with young comedy writers?

Complacency is a classic mistake. Some people get to a certain point and go, “Okay, I’ve figured it out!” Writing isn’t a thing you figure out—ever. My favorite things I’ve ever written, I hate. That might sound like a weird thing to say. But anything I’ve ever written that I felt was really great, I inevitably will look at two years later and think, Oh, God, this is so amateurish and terrible. But that’s a good thing. If you ever feel like you’ve solved anything in writing, you’re just setting yourself up for a huge fall—and you’re wrong. Because it’s not math or science; it’s a weird, nebulous, hard-to-define thing. One person’s favorite show in history is another person’s least favorite show in history—or worse, it’s a show they’re indifferent to. And to stay vibrant and successful, you can’t ever feel like you know what you’re doing. Your attitude has to constantly be, “Who is this rank amateur, and how can I teach him how to write?”

The tricky thing about TV is that there’s a lot of money involved. It’s very easy to get to a certain point in your career, whether it’s your first staff job or whether you become a producer on a show, and then go, “I can breathe easy now.” No writer should ever breathe easy. You should constantly figure out how to write better stories and better jokes, more three-dimensional characters, how to change what isn’t working. If you don’t, you’re gonna lose your touch. It’s not like riding a bike; you can’t just put your pen down for a year, pick it back up, and be right where you were.

Writing is an art that has a weird aspect to it.

Weird in what way?

Part of its success depends on how the audience reacts to it. You can get philosophical about it and say that a perfectly written script just exists in space and time as a beautiful testament to the power of the human soul or something, but the practical reality is that you have to film it and put it on TV, actors have to act in it, and the audience gets to weigh in at some point. If you ever feel complacent with yourself, then you’re basically saying you don’t need the other part of the equation. And if you’re a TV or movie writer, you definitely do. Not just for your career, but to have people who weigh in on whether or not you successfully communicated what you wanted to communicate.

It’s a strange business. It’s really where the rubber meets the road—the rubber being art and the road being commerce.

Writer,
Conan

What follows is the writing packet I submitted for
Late Night with Conan O’Brien
. (I submitted this sample in 2008, was hired in early 2009, then followed the show to Los Angeles to write for
The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien
. I now write for
Conan
, on TBS, and by the time this book is published, I will most likely be writing for
O’Brien Nights
on eBay.tv.)

Accompanying each entry, in italics, are my thoughts on each specific idea: what I think I did right, what I think I did wrong, what I’d now do differently. I’ve also assessed each idea with a handy, though purely speculative, “Prognosis for Ever Making It to Air.” I’m making these calls based on my perceived merits of the piece, weighed with my experience in seeing what types of pieces and jokes tend to make it out of the writers’ room, through rehearsal, and to air.

Todd Levin’s Submission Packet for
Late Night with Conan O’Brien

“Riff,” the Late Night Bully

Riff was Conan’s school bully all through high school. Although he hasn’t seen Riff in years, now that Conan is a very big success he’s decided to bring Riff on the show and finally settle his score. However, when Riff comes onstage it becomes immediately clear that something horrible has happened to him, which has temporarily rendered him physically vulnerable. (In one appearance, Riff is in an electric wheelchair and can only speak through an electronic voice synthesizer.)

Because of Riff’s delicate condition, Conan always feels too awful to make fun of him, even as Riff taunts him. Eventually, Riff pushes Conan to his breaking point and he finally halfheartedly insults Riff, leaving everyone aghast. When Conan tries to apologize, Riff claims there is only one way he’ll accept an apology, and that way usually involves Conan humiliating himself in front of the entire show to Riff’s delight as Riff exits the auditorium shouting, “Smell ya later, Boner O’Cryin’!”

Current Thoughts:

In my mind, this was a classic
Late Night
bit—a loud-mouthed character interrupting Conan, making him uncomfortable somehow, and then humiliating him before making his exit. That said, this premise has two immediately obvious red flags. Riff is a consciously “character-y” name. Putting your character in a crazy outfit or assigning him an implausibly cartoonish name like “Pudge O’Shaughnessy” or “Benedict Cumberbatch” are loud announcements that the audience is about to experience a wacky comedy sketch. As I’ve spent more time doing this, I’ve discovered it’s often better to let your character play it real, unencumbered by a silly comedy name, so it’s a little more unexpected when he inevitably says or does very foolish things.

This idea also has two really dangerous built-in expectations of the audience: They must sympathize with an asshole character and then turn against the show’s host—the reason they’re watching the show in the first place. Good luck!

Prognosis for Ever Making It to Air:
Highly Unlikely

Bootleg Round-Up

In New York, you can find someone selling bootleg DVDs, CDs, and even computer software on every corner. They’re dirt-cheap, but you have to be careful, because sometimes the quality can be sort of dubious. Conan shows off some of the bootlegs he’s purchased off the street in this consumer awareness segment:

DVDs—you never know what you’re going to get, so you have to read the packaging very clearly.

• Sicko
  (In small print: “the Michael Moore sex tape”)
  
• The Fantastic Four
  (The four pictured on the box are Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Girl, the Human Torch, and an older-looking Asian man dressed up as Dracula)
  
• Law & Order: Special Victims Eunuch
  —
  Season Three
  (CONAN: “I thought it was a translation problem until I watched the DVD”—plays a clip from it, and it’s just a regular episode of SVU but all the male characters’ voices are incredibly high-pitched)
  
• Ratatouille
  (Conan plays a clip from it, and it’s just cheap news footage of real, live rats running around in a KFC)
  
• Girls Gone Wild, Vol. 4
  (Conan plays a clip from it, and it’s footage of college-aged girls who have been raised by animals. In one scene, a feral girl with matted hair sucks from the teat of a wolf.)
  

Current Thoughts:

Kind of a mixed bag here comedically, but I actually think the premise is sound. Plus, it’s one of those types of segments that are essential to a nightly late night show—an easy-to-produce and easy-to-repeat “desk piece.” (Named so because they’re typically bits the host can present right from his desk. Conan’s Celebrity Surveys and Fallon’s Thank You Notes are good examples of this kind of joke delivery system.) The simplicity of this format is deceivingly hard to crack. It must be generic enough to accommodate all kinds of jokes, familiar enough to require very little setup, and fresh enough that it hasn’t already been attempted in more than a half century of late night comedy. Most desk pieces on late night shows typically fulfill one or two of those requirements; all three is pretty rare. In the history of late night talk shows, I don’t think there’s been a better desk piece than
Late Night with Conan O’Brien’s
Actual Items. Familiar but totally unexpected, highly visual, and it came with an endless supply of inspiration.

On paper, desk piece pitches are often not inherently funny—Celebrity Surveys is basically “Conan asks three celebrities to answer a single question, and the third celebrity’s answer is very crazy!” That’s why it’s good to include several beats as proof of concept.

FYI: I was tempted to remove the Michael Moore joke because I still can’t believe I sent in something so awful, but I felt it was more important for others to learn from my mistakes. Hero? You decide.

Prognosis for Ever Making It to Air:
Pretty Good

Late Night
Recession Survival Tips

There’s no denying that this current economic crisis has really gotten all of us down. That’s why Conan has put together some great tips to help viewers save money and fight the recession blues.

Don’t have enough money to take your kids to Six Flags this year? Why not turn your own home into a first-rate theme park? Video montage includes:

• Kids step into a clothes dryer with an amusement park sign attached to it that says “The Tumbler.”
  
• A young boy stands in front of a microwave set to cook for thirty minutes. An amusement park sign reads “The Sterilizer.”
  
• Two kids enter through a door marked “House of Horrors,” to discover an old man sitting on the bed, completely naked, clipping his toenails.
  

Turn even the most depressing meal into a feast fit for a king with Dinner Jackets, zippered pouches designed to look like high-end foods. (We see a mom ladling a thick, gruel-like substance into a Dinner Jacket styled to look like a T-bone steak.)

Bam Bam Banker: Who says you can’t have fun while the economy craters around you? Next time you’re stuck in a dull meeting, why not play “Bam Bam Banker,” a recession-era twist on the popular road game, Punchbuggy. [We see a group of businessmen in a conference room, all staring out the window. They are each yelling the names of various colors—“Come on blue!” “Let’s go red!!” etc.—until, suddenly, a body dressed in a white shirt and blue tie plunges past the window. One of the businessmen shouts, “Bam Bam Banker Blue!” and punches each of his co-workers in the arm, etc.]

Current Thoughts:

At
Conan
, this kind of piece is called a “thrasher.” It’s a term I still don’t fully understand, although I know it when it applies. A thrasher is a long piece built around a basic theme, and incorporating many types of comedy executions—video, live walk-throughs, curtain reveals, short sketches, etc. This one has a bit of variety in it. The theme park idea would probably work best as a taped piece, while “Bam Bam Banker” could probably be done live in the studio, with a small set.

I didn’t even remember this piece from my packet, but I think it’s aged better than some of the other ideas. Also, I realize now I’ve stolen from myself, because later, when I was (briefly) writing for
The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien
, I produced a piece about Disneyland suffering from cutbacks and included the joke about an industrial clothes dryer standing in for a theme park ride.

Prognosis for Ever Making It to Air:
Extremely Likely

Desk Piece—DVD Commentaries

Late Night
previews some of its favorite special-edition DVD commentary tracks.

• The Bourne Ultimatum,
  Special “Commuter Buying Newspaper” Actor’s Commentary: One of the film’s extras from the scene that takes place in a crowded London train station gets his own commentary track, in which he spends all of his time prepping the audience for the split-second moment in which his character gets bumped into by Jason Bourne.
  
• The Constant Gardener,
  Gardener Audio Commentary: During an especially harrowing scene in
  The Constant Gardener
  , two professional gardeners point out and discuss various gardening techniques evident in the film.
  
• Incredible Hulk,
  Hulk Audio Commentary: An enraged, barely verbal Hulk provides a running commentary on the action, growling statements like “Hulk found Liv Tyler joy to work with” and “Hulk really admire mise-en-scene here. Think Zak Penn truly visionary director.”
  
• Two Guys on the
  Into the Wild
  Audio Commentary Who Are Pretty Confident They Would Have Fared Better Than Chris McCandless: Sort of self-explanatory, two skeptical jerks constantly point out obvious mistakes Chris McCandless makes in his attempts to live in the wild.
  

Current Thoughts:

Another desk piece that would have been easy to produce—pre-existing footage from film with a new audio track. I would bet this idea, or some variation on it, has been pitched dozens of times before and since, on many different talk shows. I wouldn’t even be surprised if someone has attempted it. Here, I hope the specificity of the jokes saved a pretty generic concept. If not, I hope the show’s head writer accidentally skipped past this one while reading my packet.

Prognosis for Ever Making It to Air:
Decent, Though It Could Be Dismissed Outright Purely on Suspicions That Another Late Night Show Must Have Already Done This Idea

Characters: Candidates for the “New Characters” Parade

THE JIHADIST WITH BEAUTIFUL LEGS

A man walks out in a cleric’s robe and threatens to blow up the entire show. When he tears open his robe to show the bomb strapped to his chest, we can see he’s also wearing daisy dukes and high heels, and has smooth, beautiful legs. Stripper music plays as he laments, “It is my gift and my curse!”

Current Thoughts:

Character walk-throughs were a big part of
Late Night
and I included these once I felt like I’d already fulfilled my submission packet requirements with other ideas. I would imagine that most writers would have a difficult time submitting a packet for
Late Night
without including a few ridiculous and pointless characters.

This specific character is kind of a lame idea, really, but I think it could be salvaged with a very good performance. (Even now, if I’ve written a semi-decent script, I know it will be improved significantly by casting Brian Stack, one of the show’s longtime writers and maybe the single best sketch performer I’ve ever seen.) When I see a lot of sketch comedy, I am surprised by how much its creators will underestimate the importance of casting. (One of my comedy pet peeves—this is meant to be a platform for my grievances, right?—is seeing a twentysomething sketch actor with an uneven coat of silver spray in his hair attempting to play the father of another twentysomething sketch actor when there are thousands of great older actors who would be game and could very naturally play the comedy straight.)

Prognosis for Ever Making It to Air:
Questionable

EDDIE AMPLIFIER, THE HUMAN SOUND EFFECTS MACHINE WHO JUST WANTS TO TALK ABOUT A RECENT PERSONAL TRAGEDY

Instead of entertaining the audience with his arsenal of vocal sound effects, Eddie grimly recounts some recent bad news, adding realistic vocal sound effects in the most inappropriate and sad places.

Current Thoughts:

I would have loved to do this, even if it had the potential to be a huge bummer on the show. Sadly, though, well after getting hired, I learned that the stand-up comedian Jerry Minor has performed a similar bit onstage. Points off for lack of originality.

Prognosis for Ever Making It to Air:
Cut in Writers’ Room

WHIZMORE, THE CHEEZ WHIZ WHIZZING WIZARD

A man dressed in a full wizard costume, including long white beard, stands onstage and “pees” Cheez Whiz out of his robe and onto a cracker, and then eats the cracker. That’s pretty much it.

Current Thoughts:

I will fist-fight any one of
you
in defense of this pitch. I still think it would be a delightful thing to see on television. And yes, that comment at the end—“that’s pretty much it”—was actually in my submission.

Prognosis for Ever Making It to Air:
Snowball’s Chance in Hell, Though It Has the Novelty of “Worst Thing We’ve Ever Done on the Show” Potential

Summary:

Your reward for trudging through my submission packet is some advice I hope you will find as simple as it is practical. That is, please try to remember that demonstrating a clear understanding of a show’s particular comedic voice might get your packet read past its first idea, but it’s not necessarily enough to get you into that malodorous den of zero-moral-boundaries thinking known as the writers’ room. For that, never underestimate the importance of carefully weaving your own voice into your submission well enough that it cannot easily be separated from your ideas. That’s the balance that I think is important to strike: supplying something familiar that no one ever saw coming.