Poking a Dead Frog
Page 15
There was a study from a few years ago where it was discovered that Stephen Colbert has a lot of Republican viewers who don’t quite understand that he’s joking. It’s amazing. I’ve heard people say, “I kind of like him.” I’ll ask, “You do know he’s completely making fun of such and such, right?” And they’re like, “Oh, no. He’s just a cheeky kind of guy, but he’s basically a Republican.” I’d think, Oh, my God, I know Stephen. He’s not! He’s most definitely not a Republican!
In some ways, this happens with our movies, too, which is okay by me. Our movies are fun, hopefully. They’re fun, bright movies, so there’s a lot to enjoy on different levels.
Since you began making comedy films more than a decade ago, it seems that the genre has only exploded in popularity.
I saw a guy the other day at a wedding, and I told him my theory on why we’ve seen this explosion in comedies in the past fifteen years. Number one, America is tacking hard to the right. That sort of extremism always kind of kicks up the need to create comedy. But the second thing is Avid.
What’s Avid?
It’s a digital movie-editing program that directors use, and it’s incredibly helpful. I think Avid is hugely responsible for this boom in comedy. In the past, one would have to shoot the film and edit it, which was a big deal. Now, filmmakers can record the laughs from a test audience at a screening, and we can then cut to the rhythm of those laughs, the rhythm of the audience. We synchronize the laughs with the film. We can really get our timing down to a hundredth of a second. You can decide where you want your story to kick in, where you want a little bit of mood, where you want a hard laugh line. All of this can really be calibrated to these test screenings that we do. It doesn’t mean that it becomes mathematical. It still ultimately means that you have to make creative choices, but you can just really get a lot out of it. Sort of like surgery with a laser compared with a regular scalpel.
We’re able to download a movie onto the computer and literally do all our edits in minutes. The precision is incredible. You play back the audio of the test screening and get everything timed just right. Like, “This laugh is losing this next line; let’s split the difference here.” You’re able to achieve this rolling energy. You can try experimental edits, and do multiple test screenings, and it’s all because you can move so fast with this program. Comedy is the one genre that I think has just really benefited from this more than any other.
This process sounds a lot more useful for comedy writers and directors than reading the suggestion cards from audience members left at test screenings.
Test cards are almost useless to me. I can never get any use out of focus groups or test cards. What works best for me is sitting with an audience, which is the greatest thing. There’s nothing better than feeling the energy in the room. That’s the best, but the audio we use with Avid is incredibly helpful. I think Jay Roach [the director of Austin Powers, Meet the Parents, The Campaign] was the one who started doing it, although the Marx Brothers, eighty years ago, used to take their scripts out on the road to perform them live. They’d then rewrite the scripts based on the audiences’ reactions. We wanted to do this with the script for Anchorman 2, but for whatever reason never got around to it.
What’s the worst audience note you ever received for any of your movies?
There’s no greater comedy killer than receiving a note that says a character’s not likable enough. The second you see someone write that, you know they don’t know a thing about comedy. The entire game is to make your character as awful and irresponsible as possible, while still keeping a toe in the pool of his still being a human being. I mean, that’s the game. That’s the game you’re playing. The more despicable your guy can get away with behaving while still remaining on the side of the audience, the funnier it’ll be. Seinfeld is the greatest example of that ever.
According to showbiz legend, an audience member left the following note during the previews for 1988’s Rain Man: “I was hoping the little guy would snap out of it.”
Come on! Oh, that’s great! That’s fantastic. Kind of typical, unfortunately, although I actually do find some negative notes very encouraging. Or negative reviews. There were some bad reviews I received where I thought, Good. This means the movie’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing. Roger Ebert said that Step Brothers was symbolic of the end of Western culture.9 I thought, That’s exactly the response he should be having. For me, that’s just a sound. It’s like when a boxer gets punched, they make a certain kind of noise that clues the other boxer as to how much damage is being done. So reading that from Roger Ebert felt like we had accomplished what we had set out to do.
For three seasons, you were the head writer at Saturday Night Live, a show that’s sometimes been criticized for still adhering to a writing schedule more conducive to the coked-out seventies than today. Do you feel that SNL’s schedule—including all-night writing sessions on Tuesday nights—is helpful or harmful to the comedy-writing process?
I always found it pretty great, actually. Monday you would get your ideas together. On Tuesday, you’d really start in earnest at around one o’clock in the afternoon. You’d then write for fourteen hours straight. Often, you’d end up writing even longer, until nine or ten in the morning. Some of the best material came out of staying up all night when you were half asleep.
But, yeah, the time we spent at Saturday Night Live was a very different time from the seventies, with all of that craziness. We would go out and drink, but it was all pretty laid-back. You’d be bopping around to different people’s offices. You’d dig in with one group of writers, you’d finish writing the sketch, you’d go visit another group of writers. And I remember just writing crazy amounts. That sense of a deadline is so helpful. It forces pages out of you. So some of the highest volume of writing I’ve ever done in my life was for that show.
Do you remember any specific sketches or jokes that were created solely because you had been up all night?
What usually came from staying up all night were “ten to one” sketches. Meaning, the last sketch of the show that aired at ten to one in the morning. I remember it was once five in the morning, and Ferrell and I found out that Robert Duvall was going to make a guest appearance. We tried to figure out something to write for him. I said, “I’d like for you to give him a sponge bath,” and Ferrell said, “Well, I’d like to sing to him.” And I said, “Well, I’d like for you to give him a sponge bath while you sing ‘Lay Lady Lay.’” And that was it. We wrote a sketch where Will was a weird hospital orderly who ended up giving Robert Duvall a sponge bath while singing Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay.” Four days later it was on the air.
Is the last half hour at SNL viewed with contempt by the writers? Or is it seen as an opportunity to air more interesting material?
I think for a lot of the writers it’s the best. That was the place you wanted to be because you had a chance to get away with a crazy sketch. At the same time, some of these stranger sketches would play well enough that it would then go higher in the show. Which was great, because it just meant more people saw it. But no, no writer ever looked down on the last half hour. The only time you ever saw someone upset would be a cast member who might have written a sketch that was supposed to contain a big, fat hit character and it didn’t quite play. Lorne would sometimes drop something like that to the very end of the show.
What percentage of SNL sketches, on average, would kill at read-throughs with staff members on Wednesday afternoons but never make it to the air on Saturday nights?
Maybe 40 percent to 50 percent. I remember I once wrote a sketch with Ferrell playing a doctor telling a patient that they were going to die. While the doctor was talking to the patient, he was also eating a giant tuna sub. Real messy. The tuna was dripping onto his clothes, dropping to the floor. It just killed in the read-though. But then in the big studio, the audience didn’t get into it at all. It was just dead silence the entire time. Actually, that was a pret
ty common experience.
Were there certain types of sketches that would hit with audiences more than others?
There were many factors at play. A lot of it had to do with the sketch that came before yours. If you were sort of trying to do something small and funny, and the sketch before yours was the Cheerleaders [starring Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri], you’d just get swamped. The audience was looking in one direction with cheerleaders and then suddenly your little sketch would come along and it would just get swallowed whole. That big studio floor could make subtle ideas feel very small, and they could get lost. There were a lot of factors at play.
And, quite often, a sketch would kill in dress rehearsal and would still get cut. I wouldn’t understand why.
Even as the head writer you didn’t understand why?
Even as the head writer I wouldn’t understand why. Will and I once wrote a sequel to our Neil Diamond storyteller sketch. Will played Neil Diamond as if he were on the show VH1 Storytellers. Before each song, “Neil” would explain the songs’ origins. “Cracklin’ Rosie” was about a hit-and-run. “Cherry, Cherry” was about the time Neil killed a drifter. These were really fun, poppy songs, but they each had these horrific backstories. The first of these Neil Diamond sketches went over really well, so we wrote a sequel with Helen Hunt playing Christina Aguilera singing along with Neil Diamond. It got a ton of laughs the whole way through, and then it got cut. I was really baffled by it. But you know, there’s never going to be consistency, really. After you’re at SNL for a couple years, you learn not to look for consistency. You kind of take it as it is and move on and try to remember to be super grateful that you’re working in New York City on a show where you get to write this crazy stuff. My last two years were definitely the most fun I had on that show, because I wasn’t as obsessed with “Why didn’t that sketch get in?” Your first couple years, you think everything should be perfect. Once you let that go, it’s a really fun show to work on.
You came of age pre-Internet, when a site like Funny or Die wasn’t even remotely possible. Do you think your writing and comedy style would have been different if you had grown up connected?
Truthfully, I think it would have been bad for me. I think there’s a chance that I would never have left my hometown. The reason I left Philadelphia to begin with was that there was no sketch, no improv, and that’s what I really wanted to do. If the Internet had been around, I would have found four or five people who also wanted to do it, and we would’ve just started shooting videos. Back then you had to head to Chicago. I’m curious if that’s changed in Chicago. It was like a migration when we were there. There were people from everywhere. In the Upright Citizens Brigade, we had Matt Besser from Arkansas, Ian Roberts from New Jersey, Rachel Dratch from Massachusetts. People were from everywhere.
On the other hand, the truth is that if you’ve got a group of funny friends and you make videos, these videos will be found. Funny or Die has workers that only look for funny videos. The studios, and the networks, they’re all looking for good comedy. It can easily be found now. So that can only be a good thing.
How would you like your movies to be remembered?
As a kid, I just loved watching the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges and seeing that kind of wild, anarchic craziness. I remember thinking, Oh, my God, someone else gets that feeling! I found that really hopeful. When you’re a kid, you just want to throw bottles against a wall. I would love it if my movies played like that. I would love it if in twenty-five, thirty years there are kids watching these movies on Saturday afternoons, and they can’t believe what they’re seeing. That, to me, would be the best—if these movies had that same kind of anarchic, crazy, head-over-feet kind of quality to them. I think the role of comedy is to break down all those barriers we put around ourselves.
Any last words of advice for those writers who are just starting their careers?
I would say that there are a lot of books out there about how to make it, how to audition, and a lot of these books talk about making connections and networking. It’s all about who you know. That’s actually the biggest mistake a lot of people make. It’s really about jumping in and doing it, and just starting to write, starting to make sketches and movies, and just putting them up on the Internet no matter who or where you are. You just have to start doing it—even if you’re not getting paid.
How much of success is just sticking with something? It seems that every comedy writer I know has at least one very funny friend who potentially could have made it as a comedy writer if they had only decided to take—or just stay on—that particular route.
I think most of life is just about the choices you make. I don’t think there are these special, glowing skills people have. If you or I, at age six, decided that we were going to become swimmers, I’m not saying we’d go to the Olympics, but we would have become pretty damn good swimmers. There’s no question that I had friends growing up who were funny as shit. I had a friend who made me laugh harder than anyone. I had another buddy who could have easily been a comedy writer. This guy and I created a fake newsletter in high school that we sent out to fellow students. We created a fake organization; I think it was called Children of the Constitution. It was like an underground newsletter making fun of all of the ass-kissers in our school. He ended up becoming an actuary. Another very funny friend now sells rare books.
All these guys could have made a career out of writing comedy. Part of success is just starting something, working toward a goal, and then living long enough to achieve it.
I suppose that ego also plays a part. Some sense of self-regard that says, I can do this just as well as anyone, so why shouldn’t I give it a try?
For me, it wasn’t a great burst of “I’m funny!” It was a very slow easing into it.
You usually struggle in the dark for years and years. The trick is that if you love it enough you’ll keep going. For people who don’t truly like it, those are the people who usually fade away. Those are usually the ones who say, “I wanna be famous. I want everyone to look at me.” That type of person weeds itself out at a certain point.
Is that a common sentiment you hear from wannabe comedy writers? “I want to be famous”?
It’s the most common mistake out here in Hollywood. The biggest mistake is that people go into comedy solely for the money. It’s just a dead end—always. People will ask me, “How much do you get paid?” Or, even more annoying, I’ll hear, “It’s all about who you know.” That kind of approach. I hear it thousands of times. But it’s not true. There are corporations out here that want to make money. If you’re good, they will find you. You could be in North Dakota putting videos on YouTube. If you’re funny, believe me, Funny or Die will find you. It’s not about who you know at all. That only happens once things begin to percolate, and that happens naturally.
There are two kinds of people in comedy: those who just really love doing it, which is how my group sort of started. We just loved doing it. We weren’t making any money. We would have kept on doing it as long as we could have gotten away with it. I’d still be doing it in Chicago. I’d be teaching improv; I’d be making twenty-four thousand dollars a year. It was never about any kind of money or fame or success. We just loved doing it. And then there’s the type of person who gets into comedy thinking, I’m going to make it. I’m going to break big! And that is not the attitude to have. There are some people who can have that attitude and still make it, of course, but most won’t.
I heard [the basketball player] Kobe Bryant talking the other day about NBA players who love the game versus those players who love the lifestyle the game brings to them. And Kobe felt that that was what separated the great players from the okay players. Athletes who really love to play are the ones who do well, and the athletes who kind of like it, but really want to be successful, well, that’s a much harder road to go down. So you just have to make sure you really love it. I think that holds true for most professions, including
writing humor.
More than anything, though, I’ve found through the years that a lot of people try and set rules when it comes to comedy. The second you start believing that, you are fucked. They say, “This is the way it is.” But these are just general guidelines. The whole basis of comedy is surprise and shock. It has to be. So take all of the rules I just gave you and ignore them. Create comedy that breaks all of the rules. In the end, that’s the most exciting stuff. So, yeah, my last words of advice would be, “Fuck me.”
ULTRASPECIFIC COMEDIC KNOWLEDGE
A List by BILL HADER
Two Hundred Essential Movies Every Comedy Writer Should See
Here’s a list of movies that I find funny and that I think every comedy writer should see. Some of these movies will be obvious (Airplane!), others curious (Eyes Wide Shut), but it’s a personal list, so I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve learned a lot from watching movies over the years—when it comes to both writing and acting—and I’ve found that these films, in particular, were the most influential. I tried to keep the list to movies that can easily be found on Netflix and the like. Enjoy!
9 to 5 (1980)
1941 (1979)
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
Ace in the Hole (1951)
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
After Hours (1985)
Airplane! (1980)
Amarcord (1973)
American Graffiti (1973)
An American in Paris (1951)
Animal Crackers (1930)
Annie Hall (1977)
The Apartment (1960)
Army of Darkness (1992)
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Back to the Future (1985)