And Here's the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on Their Craft

by Mike Sacks

  That's interesting. It's almost like the Peggy Sue character in Peggy Sue Got Married. Lindsay is both removed from and living through the experience at the same time.

  Right. The big difference is that she's still that age and she's still susceptible to it. And that's what I love. It's that dichotomy of feeling above it all while, at the same time, getting drawn into it.

  That's why I love the “Looks and Books” episode, where Lindsay's new friends convince her to take her father's car, which then gets smashed. She thinks, I'm supposed to be the smartest out of all you people, and I turned into an idiot. And now I'm in the biggest trouble of my life, because I forgot who I was or who I think I am.

  But at least Lindsay knows she'll escape. For some characters, such as Nick, there is no escape. He realizes, even at this young an age, that he probably won't be going to college and achieving the success that Lindsay likely will achieve. That's a very melancholy theme for a prime-time show about teens.

  That was a really important element for me, because I grew up in the Rust Belt and I saw people like that, these kids whose fathers were in, say, the auto industry. And there was a real sense from a lot of these kids that they had to go into the Army or into a factory and they wouldn't be able to go to college. They knew, even at that age, that there was no escape. This is a serious matter, and to portray that realistically was very important to me.

  Back when I was going to college, The Cosby Show was popular. And NBC would broadcast these public-service announcements. The Cosby kids would say things like, “Don't do drugs, because you've got a lot to live for.” And I used to think, Well, okay — it's easy to say that, but some people are sitting at home and aren't from a rich family and might have no future. And here's a kid actor making shitloads of money, and he's telling everyone they have a lot to live for? It's hypocrisy on the grandest scale. Seeing something like that was always a motivation for me to create something more realistic.

  That was one of the things I dealt with in the “I'm With the Band” episode, where Nick auditions to become a drummer. Lindsay tells Nick, “You've got to follow your dreams! You can be anything you want to be!”

  When I wrote that episode, it was my way of saying, “Actually, no. That's nonsense. You might have that attitude, but that's not the way the world works.”

  In almost any other TV show, Nick would have performed wonderfully in the audition and then made the band.

  And even if he didn't make the band, they would have told him, “Hey, man. You're really good!” There would have been a wink of encouragement in the end, and he would have walked out of that audition thinking, Yeah, maybe I can do this.

  But that's not interesting. And it's also not funny in that heartbreaking way. The cruel side of me likes creating situations where people get buried deeper and deeper. I find that really amusing — the fact that Lindsay starts out encouraging Nick to follow his dreams and then ends up feeling sorry for him and making out with him and then getting stuck with this nightmare boyfriend, well … that's real life to me.

  You've said that good writing is when characters don't always say what they feel. Would this be an instance of that?

  Yeah. Lindsay doesn't tell Nick how she really feels, because she wouldn't in real life. You want characters to respond as they would in real life. They're saying things quickly without thinking about them. But when you write, you can take months to finish a script. So everything the characters say has been so well-thought-out that it becomes almost perfect. But that's just fake.

  And sometimes characters don't need to say anything at all. Just a look or an expression will do.

  Some of the funniest jokes in Freaks and Geeks are just expressions. When Bill looks off to the side and makes a face, that's the punch line. It's not a Neal Simon — y kind of joke with clever wordplay. You don't need that. You can get away with a lot by having just a simple expression. In the last episode, when Lindsay is getting on the bus and leaving her family for two weeks, supposedly to go to an academic retreat but really headed off to follow the Grateful Dead, what would she really say in that situation? When I was writing that scene, I thought, What would she say when she was looking back at her mother? Nothing much. You don't want to break your mom's heart, so you just smile and get on the bus.

  How extensive and detailed were the backstories for each of the Freaks and Geeks characters?

  I actually wrote a huge character bible, about eighty pages. That's not to say we used all of these backstories, but it really helped me as a writer. If you create character background, there's less chance of writing details that don't feel germane to the character. Even if it's something as specific as what clothes they wear and what music they listen to and what type of furniture they have at home, it becomes very, very helpful.

  How much care went into the writing of each episode?

  Tons. Tons! You know, there was a side of me that was relieved when we got canceled. I was just exhausted.

  When you're working on a television show, the pace is just nonstop. You work so hard to get an episode perfect, and when it's done, you then have to deal with the next forty-five. [Laughs] It's overwhelming. That's why a lot of TV probably isn't as good as it could be; there just aren't enough hours in the day.

  We did only eighteen episodes. I really don't know how you do it season after season. To me, it sounds nearly impossible.

  Did the writing change when you knew you were on the verge of being canceled?

  The pace accelerated, because we had all these stories we wanted to do, and we didn't have much time to do it. We wanted to have Sam date Cindy, and then for their relationship to slowly fall apart. But because we were going to be canceled, we had to push that story through very quickly. I feel that poor Cindy Sanders was completely kneecapped. We set her up as a straight girl, and then, in one episode, we turned her into a monster.

  Fans of this show were very loyal, and a lot were quite upset when they weren't able to learn what happened to these characters. They took it very personally.

  Oh, yes. A lot of people were very upset. But my feeling is, Do you know what happened to 90 percent of the people you went to high school with? And do you want to know? Quite frankly, I don't. I don't want to hear a potentially sad story. I want to remember them as they were. Mystery is sometimes a good thing.

  In a sense, that's what I liked about the show ending so suddenly: loose ends are never tied up in real life.

  But doesn't life contain enough mystery and loose ends? And isn't that what fiction provides: a tidy ending that you can't always find in life?

  I'm not saying that it wouldn't have been fun to have created a second season, but I'm happy with the way things ended, especially for the geeks. In the last episode, “Discos and Dragons,” the coolest guy at the school, Daniel, spends a night playing Dungeons & Dragons with the geeks, and he becomes a part of their world. I really liked that validation for the geeks.

  But, yes, it would have been fun to have done something with the characters after they all returned from summer vacation. After summer, everyone comes back different. Some of my friends in high school were these super-nerds, just really awkward guys, and they would return from summer vacation as these enormous stoners, to the point where they never talked to me again.

  Summer is the perfect time to re-invent yourself.

  You find your vices. You get laid. You become cool. You go on a trip, and that changes your life.

  It would have been fun to have a second season, because we were going to really play with that element and explore how some of these characters would have changed. We were going to have Bill Haverchuck [Martin Starr] become a basketball player. We were going to deal with little Sam Weir becoming really tall and handsome, which happened to John Francis Daley in real life. Where would he go? Would he stay with the geeks? Or would he start hanging out with the popular crowd?

  I really wanted to have Kim [Busy Philipps] become pregnant. Neal [Samm Levine] was going to join swin
g choir. We were also planning on having Coach Fredricks marry Gloria Haverchuck, Bill's mom. But, again, loose ends are never tied up. Even if Coach Fredricks did marry Bill's mom, you know, the day after they got married they could easily have broken up.

  Do you think Lindsay would have left town after graduating?

  She would have definitely gone away. To me, Lindsay is such a free spirit. I've always joked that she would end up being a performance artist in the Village for about ten years, and then, after that, she'd become a lawyer.

  From time to time, I've toyed with the idea of doing a show with Lindsay as an adult. And who knows? I talk to Linda all the time. It could still happen.

  How would the writers have dealt with the characters if they had stuck around and graduated? Would you have shown the characters in college? Or working their jobs?

  I've always said that this wasn't a show about high school; this was a show about a small town. It was not going to be a show in which, six years later, everybody is still in high school. Every year would be a school year. And certain students would graduate, and we would have to deal with what jobs they were doing and who went to community college and who went away.

  There are two books of Freaks and Geeks scripts, and with both you did something rare. Instead of publishing transcripts of the finished shows, you published the shooting scripts. I don't know why more writers don't do this. It's much more interesting and informative to the readers, especially if they, themselves, want to write.

  Publishing those shooting scripts was a reaction to Woody Allen's Four Films. When that book came out, I rushed to the store and bought it. But when I saw that they were only transcriptions of his movies, I thought it was the biggest rip-off ever. There were literally lines in the book like, “Ah, ah, ah, I just, ah …” I was never happy with books like that. They never helped me as a writer.

  There's a very, very small group of people who are going to read a book of scripts. So it might as well be a textbook and show the readers what the process is truly like. The majority of the people reading a book like that are going to be people who want to write scripts. So let's make it truthful.

  Do you think you could create a show like this again? Or are there too many elements that have to come together to duplicate that type of magic?

  I don't buy that theory. If there's any magic, it only exists to create a chemistry within a group of talented people — actors, writers, directors, producers — who are willing to work together and allow each of the others to do their best work. I personally don't think that's a hard mix to create again. It's not always going to work, but I think it could work if enough talented people with a vision are willing to make it work.

  At the end of the day, none of us is that different. Freaks, geeks, jocks, whoever. The events we experience as human beings are fairly similar. The circumstances are different, and the surroundings and the social strata are different. But, you know, insecurity is insecurity. And loneliness is loneliness. And the basic human circumstances are all the same. If you're telling honest stories that are done in a special way, magic can definitely be duplicated.

  I hope. [Laughs]

  Excerpts from the Freaks and Geeks Series Bible

  By Paul Feig

  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

  Bad Company - freaks

  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

  Kenny Loggins - geeks

  Lynard Skynard - freaks and farmers

  Marshall Tucker Band - freaks and farmers, some geeks

  Molly Hatchett - freaks and geeks

  Meat Loaf - geeks

  The Steve Miller Band - freaks and geeks

  Van Morrisson - 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

  The Tubes - freaks and geeks

  Santana - freaks and geeks

  Carly Simon - teachers

  Simon & Garfunkel - teachers

  Patty 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

  War - geeks

  Paul McCartney and Wings - geeks, some freaks

  Crosby, Stills & Nash - teachers

  Yes - freaks, some geeks

  ZZ Top - freaks, some geeks

  Frank Zappa - only the coolest of freaks

  The Alan Partridge Project - geeks

  Billy Joel - geeks

  Bob Seger - geeks, some freaks

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

  Ted Nugent - freaks

  Led Zepplin - freaks

  April Wine - freaks, some geeks, lots of Canadians

  Triumph - mostly girl freaks

  REO Speedwagon - geeks

  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

  Pablo Cruise - geeks

  Gino Vanelli - girls from every group

  David Bowie - freaks

  Pat Benatar - geeks and freak girls

  Billy Squire - freak girls

  Boston - geeks

  Golden Earring (Radar Love) - freaks

  UFO - freaks

  Deep Purple - freaks

  Head East - a few freaks, a few geeks

  Steely Dan - geeks, geeks, geeks

  Aerosmith - freaks

  The Knack - geeks

  38 Special - freaks, some farmers

  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 or 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 2 or 3 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 2nd season), occasionally polyester slacks

  Shoes: Tan suede earth shoe hybrids with rimpled soles (remember those things? The soles were shaped like 2 “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)

  Coat: Parka, faux-Members Only jacket (maybe), windbreaker with stripe or father's sporting goods store logo embossed on back (cheap, low-end looking)

  Accessories: Always a belt, sometimes with a large copper novelty belt buckle (like a train or Model T car or a tennis racket)

  Neal

  Overall look: Neal fancies himself a snappy dresser, but he's got an old man's fashion sense. Very conservative looking (imitating his father, who's a scientist). He always tries to be neat and smoothed out.

  Shirts: Solid color dress shirts, usually with light tan sweater vest, sometimes checked or small vertical stripes, always tucked in

  Pants: Mostly dress slacks (a little too tight), khakis, never jeans

  Shoes: Dark brown leather slip-on boat shoes, loafers

  Coat: Corduroy parka (a jacket trying desperately to be stylish), shawl sweaters with belt

  Accessories: Wide belt, one or two pens in pocket of dress shirt (no pocket protector!!!), calculator case on belt, lots of stuff in his pockets (mini-flashlights, pen knife, notepad, small gadgets) — Bottom line, Neal's a nerd who's trying to dress up