by Mike Sacks
I encourage all writers to read Andre Dubus, Raymond Chandler, Raymond Carver, James Agee, Frederick Exley, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. They are a few of the authors who observe with so much wit, compassion, and depth that it constantly reminds me how I should look at my characters and stories if I want to do good work.
It also helps to take a few beatings in the hallways of your high school or go through some sort of childhood trauma.
Good luck!
— Judd Apatow, writer, director, and producer
Quick and Painless Advice for the Aspiring Humor Writer, part one
GETTING HIRED AS A SITCOM WRITER
An interview with Ken Levine, writer and producer of M*A*S*H, Cheers, Frasier, Wings, Everybody Loves Raymond, and
Becker What advice would you give someone hoping to break into sitcom writing?
The most vital piece of advice I can give is to keep writing and to come up with a great script. When producers staff a show, and I've been a producer for a few shows, it's like the Sorcerer's Apprentice — scripts just keep arriving, and then more, and then even more. But every so often you find a good one, and you put it aside. Then you call the agent to ask about the writer, and nine times out of ten the agent will say, “Oh, he's already got a meeting with another show.” What that tells me is that all of the producers in Hollywood have the same five hundred scripts, and everybody recognizes the same four writers.
What is it about these writers that you and other producers recognize?
Their scripts are funnier, they're sharper, they have a better command of the show. There's a kind of a freshness to them. There's a kind of nuttiness to the writing, where the jokes don't feel very stock. You get a sense of whether somebody is funny. I mean, look, it's an inexact science. I've rejected writers who went on to have very nice careers, but the majority you never hear from again.
Do you think that some of them could have perhaps succeeded if they were given a shot and had a chance to learn?
I can teach structure. I can teach dos and don'ts with a script. I can give various tips. But when you have to go into a room and write a scene, either you have a sense of what's funny or you don't. I don't know how or why someone has it and another doesn't.
A lot of new writers take courses on sitcom writing, which I think is really unnecessary. Especially when the course skips a few steps and teaches you how to pitch. Before anything else, you have to learn how to write. And you learn writing by teaching yourself. When I first started, I went to a bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard that had TV scripts on a remainder table. For two dollars I bought an old Odd Couple script and just studied it. I thought, Oh, this is how it works: INTERIOR APARTMENT — DAY. I had no idea.
You figure it out. And then, through trial and error, when you finally have a script ready, you can pitch. My main advice is to try to have a story that stands out a little bit from the rest. Again, you're competing with a lot of other writers. One way to stand out is to write a holiday-themed script. There are two schools of thought on this: some producers don't like scripts that are too out of the ordinary, while others do. But, at the very least, the script will be different from the rest of the batch.
Scripts that are pitched will almost always have a story you've read a million times before. Years ago, I was trying to staff a show with writers, and I remember reading three sample scripts for Everybody Loves Raymond that all had the same exact story: Debra doesn't feel appreciated and Raymond has to take over the house chores for a day. Very obvious stories! I was beyond bored. Not one of those writers was hired.
Another piece of advice I'd give would be to avoid using lengthy stage directions in your script. You need to be very, very sparing. Doing this makes the script easier to read. And — let's face it — you are writing this script to be read, not for the script to actually be shot. So if a producer is just gliding along, page after page, he's probably going to like the script a lot more than if he's had to wade through detailed stage directions.
For instance, instead of writing “Jessica enters the room and sees this and sees that, and then notices that the contents of her drawers are strewn all over the floor,” just make it: “Jessica enters.” That's all you need. Describe the action quickly, and get on with it.
But you can sprinkle the scripts with inside jokes, such as: “Character orders a three-pound lobster (therefore breaking the show's budget).” Small jokes that will reward the reader.
Does a writer hoping to break into sitcoms stand a better chance by applying for a staff position on a new show rather than an existing one?
Yes, because when you apply for a staff job on a new show, you're not competing with returning writers. Your chances improve significantly.
How many sitcom writers do you consider to be top-notch?
It's a very small group. There are plenty of middle-tier writers who are just okay — it really depends on the level of the show.
When I was directing sitcoms, I would talk with the writers about what the script needed. Then I'd go home, and I would know that when I returned the next morning the script would be better — but it still wouldn't be great. I would just know; I could feel it. They were all perfectly nice, hard working writers who were willing to stay late, but they could not produce. They just didn't have the talent. The group didn't have the horses.
What does that mean, “the horses”?
The thoroughbreds — the writers who carry the rest of the group. I could have thrown those same notes at the writers for Everybody Loves Raymond, and I would just know they would turn out a much better draft the next morning. And they would have.
If you're not a top-notch writer, or at least not yet, can you still make a career out of writing for sitcoms?
You can, but it's harder. There's a great line I once overheard a producer at Paramount tell a young writer: “You need to make yourself indispensable. And if you are just a mid-range guy, you are not going to be indispensable.” So, when I go on staff, I want the producers and everyone else to think, Man, we cannot do the show without this guy.
There's so much competition out there. You have to work at the top of your talent. If you don't, you're doomed.
Harold Ramis
Harold Ramis is not interested in dumbing down his movies for the masses. He recalled to Believer magazine that he's baffled when audience members tell him, “When I go to the movies, I don't want to think.” When he hears such a thing, he says to himself “Why wouldn't you want to think? What does that mean? Why not just shoot yourself in the fucking head?
Curious logic coming from a man who made his career writing and directing some of the best escapist movie comedies of his generation. From National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) and Caddyshack (1980) to Stripes (1981) and Ghostbusters (1984), Ramis perfected a comedy genre with a deceptively simplistic formula: lovable characters who are considered losers rebel against the establishment and save the day with their goofball high jinks.
While Ramis's satire may be glaringly mainstream on the surface, it becomes decidedly more subversive and complex when you read between the lines. The New Yorker summed it up best: “What Elvis did for rock and Eminem did for rap, Harold Ramis did for attitude: he mass-marketed the sixties to the seventies and eighties. He took his generation's anger and curiosity and laziness and woolly idealism and gave it a hyper-articulate voice.”
Born in Chicago in 1944, Ramis didn't set out to become the counterculture's most famous comedy auteur. His first dream was to become an actor. In 1969, Ramis joined the Second City troupe in Chicago, where he performed sketch comedy and improv with such future superstars (and collaborators) as John Belushi, Bill Murray, and John Candy. In 1974, he moved to New York to write and perform on The National Lampoon Radio Hour as well as the Off-Broadway sketch revue The National Lampoon Show.
If he wasn't destined for a career in front of the camera, he would go behind it, crafting the words and directing the movies that would transform his friends into stars. (Occasionally, i
n movies such as Ghostbusters and Stripes, he'd even give himself a role.)
Nothing delights Ramis like taking an unflinching look at his own emotional frailties. While he never actually explored that in his early comedies, by the 1990s he had stopped turning to adolescent humor and frat-boy antics for inspiration and had begun to create comedy that better expressed his own thoughts and fears. Perhaps his greatest achievement is Groundhog Day (1993), the story of TV weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray), condemned to repeat the same day, over and over, in the western Pennsylvania town of Punxsutawney. It's a perfect mix of comedy and philosophy; a morality fable with better gags; a film that can be appreciated for its humor alone, or become fodder for intense debates about religion, rebirth, personal introspection, and whether the parallels to Nietzsche were intentional. It should be no surprise that, as The New York Times pointed out in a 2003 article, “[S]ince its debut a decade ago, the film has become a curious favorite of religious leaders of many faiths, who all see in ‘Groundhog Day’ a reflection of their own spiritual messages.” It should also not comes as a surprise that followers of just about every religious discipline — Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, Jesuits, and even atheists — have all assumed that Groundhog Day was an endorsement of their spiritual ideals.
To his credit, Ramis hasn't told any of them they're wrong. Then again, he hasn't said they're right either.
You have very political roots: you're the only writer I'm interviewing for this book who was president of his Hebrew school.
Oh, I'll bet others were, too. They're just afraid to admit it.
What platform did you run on?
I don't remember any kind of an election or anything. I was just a very responsible young fellow, and I felt that being good was the direct path to Heaven.
You've said that irony is more available in Chicago than anywhere else. Why do you think that's the case?
I kind of equate it with this experience of always feeling that you're slightly on the outside of the mainstream. Growing up in what was called “the Second City,” you always felt like you were on the outside looking in. New York and L.A. were the real centers of culture in America, and we were kind of a sideshow. There's always more comedy in being alienated than in fitting in. It's the alternative comedy posture. It's what Rodney Dangerfield created with his “I get no respect” routine. The other end of the spectrum isn't so funny: “I get so much respect.” No one will laugh at how great things are for somebody.
I once analyzed all this. Woody Allen was the great comic genius of my early career, and there was a tendency to measure everything against that standard, that kind of posture. He was always writing about losers and schlemiels and schlubs … did I just use two Yiddish words in one sentence?
You were the president of Hebrew school.
Good point. Anyway, I was never interested in losers. I was more intrigued by the alternative comedy posture. The characters I enjoyed creating were the dropouts and the rebels. They voluntarily opted out of the mainstream. It wasn't because they couldn't join it. It was because it wasn't worth doing. Or there was some serious hypocrisy going on. Or it wasn't cool.
There's a story about Ned Tanen, the president of Universal, which put out Animal House. When he was first shown the film, he was upset with the alternative-comedy stance you took with the Delta House characters.
Right. He was confused, because he thought the main characters should be the good guys, and why would the good guys act like that? He thought they were losers. But anyone who grew up when I did and was in college when I was in college had kind of embraced the rebel. It was a 1960s idea. Counterculture was the new mainstream, and it took the studios a while to catch on to that, I think.
From what I've read, you had an interesting job after you graduated from Washington University, in St. Louis, in 1966.
I worked in a mental institution in St. Louis, which prepared me well for when I went out to Hollywood to work with actors. People laugh when I say that, but it was actually very good training. And not just with actors; it was good training for just living in the world. It's knowing how to deal with people who might be reacting in a way that's connected to anxiety or grief or fear or rage. As a director, you're dealing with that constantly with actors. But if I were a businessman, I'd probably be applying those same principles to that line of work.
How long did you work at the mental institution?
I worked in the psych ward for about seven months, and then I moved back to Chicago and I began to substitute-teach at a public elementary school — kindergarten through sixth grade. While I was teaching, I did some freelance writing for the Chicago Daily News, and I took a few of these pieces to show to Playboy. They happened to be looking to fill an entry-level editorial staff job, which was joke editor, and they hired me.
You must have had quite a peek into this country's sexual underbelly with some of those unsolicited joke submissions. What were they like?
I had a wall of postcards behind my desk that I was going to one day collate, analyze, and categorize, and then do the definitive treatise on the American Joke. It was amazing how many of these jokes were written in pencil on three-ring notebook paper, or came from people who were incarcerated. It was also amazing how many of them dealt with farmers and farm animals.
At the time — it was the late 1960s — the Playboy editors wanted to modernize the jokes a bit, to make them more counterculture. A big part of my job was changing “the farmer” into “a swinging advertising executive.”
Did you start to recognize categories of jokes — basic types and groupings?
I would say in the first month, I already knew 95 percent of the jokes in current circulation in America. I could not hear a joke I didn't know. I could anticipate the punch lines, because most jokes are like any other joke. In fact, the way I did the job was to spend an hour each morning just slitting open the mail and lining the jokes up before me. Then I would read punch lines, one every second. If I knew the joke, I'd throw the card away. I practically recognized them all. But as soon as I'd see one I didn't recognize, I wouldn't even finish reading it — I'd set it aside to savor it later, just because it was new. Not because it was necessarily good, just different.
What percentage of these Playboy-joke contributors actually wrote their own jokes?
Most didn't. There were some submissions from people who considered themselves professional joke writers. The jokes would usually arrive on indexed cards that had a serial number on the side, like “C35.” The next card would be “C36.” The one after that, “C37.” They'd just grab a section of their joke file and send it.
How did you not lose your mind with a job like that?
It was just cool being at Playboy.
But wasn't the magazine already sort of behind the times by the late sixties?
You know, it's funny — I worked there right at the cusp of its success. The circulation was at its peak. The clubs and casinos were around in all the major cities. Hefner was still in Chicago. The mansion was every guy's wet dream. I was working there in '68 when the riots happened at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Hefner started the Playboy Foundation, because he recognized that there was a big seismic shift in American culture. The top brass held a couple of meetings and invited me. There were two of us who had long hair. We were invited as ambassadors of the new counterculture to advise the executives on a couple of corporate decisions. One of the agendas was to bring the Playboy clubs into the mainstream, because the clubs were not attracting young people. But it never panned out. Even the executives could see the handwriting on the wall, at least as far as the clubs went. The young people just weren't filing in.
How did you then go from Playboy to working for National Lampoon?
I never worked for the print version of National Lampoon, only their road show, as a performer. What happened was that I had told my editor at Playboy that I wanted to be an actor, and he knew the director at Second City in Chicago. I auditioned for the spot and got
it. I worked there for a few years, and then I took a year off in the early seventies, and went to live in Greece. And I remember that Joe Flaherty, whom I later worked with at SCTV, wrote me a letter. He said that Second City had just hired a little Albanian guy to replace me. That would have been John Belushi.
John was eventually drafted by National Lampoon to star in their stage production of Lemmings [1973], which was a parody of the Woodstock music festival. After John did Lemmings, he stayed on and put together another stage production called The National Lampoon Show [1975]. He came back to Chicago, and he went to all of the Second City people that he knew, including Bill Murray and Gilda Radner, and asked them to join the show.
Did you write for the show or just perform?
Both. We put the show together like we would a Second City show. We developed material in improv rehearsal, and that became the show. You just kept working the pieces until you had them set, and then you would take them out and try them in front of an audience.
Lemmings really worked. It had a unity to it and a very specific point of view. But The National Lampoon Show was hard-edged and really offensive. I always felt that the show brought out the worst in the audience, and I was not comfortable doing it. I don't think it was our best work. It had no real shape. It was just a bad sketch show.
How did you feel about the National Lampoon sensibility? Were you a fan of the slash-and-burn style they were famous for?
I was a fan of the magazine. I thought some of the material was great, in particular Michael O'Donoghue's Encyclopedia of Humor [1973] and Doug Kenney's 1964 High School Yearbook [1974]. Those guys were good. The humor was very literate and interesting. In a magazine format, they were able to do things that I thought were very creative stylistically. But that was the problem with the show. The magazine didn't translate to the stage. We tried to write a lot of material that was outrageous for its own sake. But the Lampoon material I really enjoyed was the more subtle work.