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

by Mike Sacks

  A lot of The Ben Stiller Show sketches were brilliant, such as the one you wrote called “Manson,” a parody of Lassie. You played Charles Manson as a lovable, shaggy-man-creature who lived with a 1950s family and had many fantastic adventures.

  You really have to give Ben Stiller and Judd Apatow, two of the creators of that show, a lot of credit. It's so hard to get a sketch show on the air, and it's even harder to make a great sketch show. They were really young, and it was a great experience for me and the rest of the actors on the show, like Janeane Garofalo and Andy Dick.

  But I was never completely thrilled with that show. In fact, I always felt it was a bit of a disaster. None of the episodes were cohesive — the tone and voice was different from one sketch to the next. There were some brilliant moments but, overall, the show was a mess.

  Maybe another reason it didn't gain a huge audience was that it was first broadcast Sunday nights at 7:30. It wasn't exactly typical family fare.

  Absolutely. Part of the success of a show is that you have to be on a network and in a time slot in which you belong and can do well. That show was never going to succeed on that network at that time.

  It also didn't help that we were up against 60 Minutes.

  Was that part of the problem for Mr. Show and why its ratings weren't higher? That it was on HBO at midnight on Monday morning?

  I think the time slot was a problem, but the biggest problem was that it never really had the full support of the network. I do know that two executives — Carolyn Strauss, later the president of HBO Entertainment, and Chris Albrecht, later the chairman and CEO of HBO — were fans. They really made the show happen in the first place. But beyond those two, there weren't many executives at the network who understood the show or liked it at all. In fact, I think a lot of people really actively disliked it.

  Have the executives at HBO since changed their tune, now that the show has been released on DVD and has done extremely well — at least with comedy fans?

  No. You know, this is true of sketch comedy, and maybe it's becoming less true, but I think sketch comedy is about concepts and new ideas. To me, the best sketch comedy, like Python, is not about recurring characters and situations but some thing different and fresh. And viewers might have a lot less patience for that than they would with the tried and true — with the familiar. Audiences like the same characters and the same ideas week after week. It makes them comfortable.

  Why do you think that is?

  I think people are looking at entertainment not for ideas; they are looking at it for an easy kind of distraction. And I think this especially holds true as viewers get older — when there's less patience for being challenged. They reach a point where they don't want to look at a show and have to ask themselves every two minutes, Where are we now? That's exactly why high-school kids and college kids, whose brains are orgasming with ideas, are thrilled by sketch comedy.

  If you go to colleges and see how many goddamned sketch troupes there are, it's insane. It's like, Calm down! There are sketch festivals in which fifty groups are going to perform in three days. What the hell is going on? There can't be that many people who want to do this. But that's where you are headed at that age. Then people get older, and they just don't want to hear a new idea. They want to sit back and watch the same people do the same thing they did last week. That's what TV exists for — it exists to be a mild sedative.

  We've been talking about Monty Python. Fans might assume that Monty Python's Flying Circus was hugely popular when it was on the air in the late sixties and early seventies, but, like Mr. Show, the Pythons didn't necessarily get the credit, or the ratings, they deserved at the time.

  Yeah, that's true. I saw the guys from Python when they re-united to receive an award years ago, and John Cleese got up and said that he wished Python had received the award back when they really needed it. He said, “No one watched the show when we made it.” And now I think about how hard it's been for David and me to get a Mr. Show sketch-movie made, and how we really had no control in the making of Run Ronnie Run!, a film we both really think is subpar. And it occurred to me that Python had a benefactor — George Harrison.

  If you're going to create a comedy like Python or Mr. Show, you need a benefactor. No one's going to take a chance on that type of comedy otherwise. If Python hadn't had George Harrison, they never would have made any movies. It's not like a studio wanted to make a movie with them.

  “On behalf of the group, I'd like to say a word of thanks. We Monty Pythons started together twenty-nine years ago, and here we are receiving this award at last. And, you know, I often think how much it would have helped us when the show was struggling to find an audience, if we'd received an award like this then. But we didn't. In fact, we never did. But you see, now we're all rich and famous — it's a different story, isn't it? … You drag us out in the backwoods of America to give us this bit of shit!”

  — John Cleese at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival (Aspen, Colorado), accepting the American Film Institute Star Award, 1998

  But there has to be at least one Hollywood executive out there willing to make a Mr. Show movie. Fans have been clamoring for one since Mr. Show went off the air in 1998.

  Mr. Show is very much a cult success. Our fan base and our awareness level really goes to a certain place, then stops. And unless we get a benefactor or somebody in a rock band who makes millions, someone who loves us and says, “Here, make a movie,” it's just not going to happen — no one who runs a studio has ever heard of us. It's hard for our fans to understand that, but it's really true. It's funny that I say that, because one of the producers of Mr. Show was Brad Grey, and he now runs Paramount. But did he ever see Mr. Show? I don't know. I'd be willing to bet he never saw an entire episode.

  It was only a half-hour.

  That's just show business. When you are talking about making a movie, you are talking about needing somewhere in the neighborhood of at least $2 million. And who has $2 million to just spend?

  People ask us all the time: “Why aren't you making a Mr. Show movie? What's wrong?” And we tell them that basically we need money, and it's very hard to get. David and I have talked about it, but we just don't feel right asking for it.

  Why not? The script is already written, right?

  I just don't feel comfortable asking for money. But I certainly do tell the studio executives I happen to meet that the sketches are really funny.

  Any sketches that you can tell me about?

  There's one called “The Attack of the One-Eyed Aliens.” It's a takeoff on 1950s scifi films, where the aliens look exactly like giant penises. All of America is in fear. Europe is okay with them, however.

  France especially.

  Right. Europeans have no problem looking at them, but Americans are running and hiding. Then the Army is sent after them, and it's like a horror movie. Another sketch is called “Stripper Town.” It's our version of The Stepford Wives, only all of the women are strippers who string their husbands along. Champagne flows out of the faucets, and you have to pay your Champagne bill every month.

  One of the things you seemed to avoid with Mr. Show was using topical material. The material has remained very fresh.

  We tried to avoid topical material. That was another thing from Python. We would also try to avoid repeating characters. Python had two or three characters that came back a few times, but that was about it. I never liked the recurring character thing on SNL, although it works for that show. When I left SNL, I really wanted to get past that sort of thing.

  Mr. Show also refrained from using too many catchphrases. SNL is notorious for doing just the opposite.

  I am not a fan of the “Pump You Up” and the “Making Copies” type of thing. I don't like that very intentional philosophy of “We are going to grind this catchphrase into your head and you are going to like it.”

  But you did write a sketch on SNL that featured a line that became a catchphrase of sorts: the “van down by the river” line, in Chris F
arley's motivational- speaker sketch.

  I first wrote that sketch at Second City, and I wrote it very quickly. There've been very few things that I've written over the years that just flowed out of me, that were just really strong and pure. And that was one of them.

  It may also be one of the strangest sketches I ever wrote, because it's not really funny. It's only funny with Chris Farley doing that character. It has a catchphrase, but it's different. That character is telling a story with that catchphrase. It paints a picture; the phrase has a lot more meaning to it than just a catchphrase that stands alone.

  It's a sad story, too. Here's a motivational speaker whose job it is to give advice, and yet he's an absolute disaster.

  It's very sad, you're right.

  So why do you think it worked so well?

  It was a perfect marriage of an idea and an actor who made it real. Chris just made that guy come to life. Chris had a real sad side to him, and he somehow used that side to make that character work. As an actor, he was very sympathetic onstage, and very charismatic. Audiences really liked him.

  That particular sketch contains a very strong idea: that this guy uses his own tragic career path as fodder for his motivational speaker bit. But there is a lot more to it when Chris did it, and he made that character whole. It's not a gimmick. You felt like there was a real person in that character. I wrote the idea, and Chris performed it the way it was written and he really made it very popular. They even wrote subsequent sketches after I left the show.

  That character became a lot more cartoonish after you left. The writers seemed to replace the sadness with easy laughs.

  I told Chris and the writers, “Look. Whatever you do, the one thing to remember is: don't start from the ending. Start from the beginning, so that you have somewhere to go.” Almost every time Chris did that sketch after I left SNL, he started by breaking the table.

  It just became one of those dangerous examples of becoming addicted to the big laugh. You become addicted as a performer to that big moment, and you ask yourself, Why am I not just doing my big thing that gets the big reaction? Why am I not just standing up there and doing that?

  You mentioned earlier in the interview that you found the writers' room at SNL forbidding, but beyond the motivational-guy sketch, you did manage to get other great sketches on the air.

  I'm trying to think of some of the sketches that I don't hate. I wrote the Dana Carvey character Grumpy Old Man. I helped write “Mr. Short-Term Memory” for Tom Hanks, which was a Conan O'Brien idea. I remember working on the “Drill Sergeant” sketch when Matthew Modine hosted, which was a takeoff on the boot-camp scene in Full Metal Jacket. And I helped Robert Smigel with his “McLaughlin Group” sketches.

  Robert actually got me on the show. I knew him from Chicago; this was in the mid-eighties. He lived in an apartment with three roommates, and I knew one of them. I then moved into Robert's apartment and became one of his roommates.

  We shared a room.

  You've said in the past that Robert Smigel helped you become a better sketch writer at SNL.

  I don't understand where Robert got his instinct for sketch comedy. I had written many sketches before I got to SNL, but he taught me a lot. He used to talk about finding the core joke of your sketch, which was something that struck me as a great lesson and one of the first things that a writer should think about when it comes to sketch comedy.

  A sketch starts off as an idea, or a point of view. You then take it and you twist it and play with it and try to find an ending for it. But each sketch needs an idea. Robert just had a sense of what the core idea for a joke should be — what mattered in a sketch and how to construct the sketch around what matters. He was very aware. He wrote a lot of sketches that were definitive for our time, for our generation. For instance, the Star Trek sketch from 1986 in which William Shatner tells the Trekkies to “get a life.”

  Robert wrote a lot of amazing sketches. “Da Bears” was his idea. Just so many things. I've said in the past that he saved that show, and I really think he did. He gave that show, I think, the strongest and smartest sketches that it had for a couple of years. When Robert arrived, stand-up comedy was really at its peak, and sketch comedy was not happening. SNL was kind of a mess. But he definitely helped change that.

  There were just so many limitations placed on the writers at SNL, like writing for a host each week. That was a creativity killer.

  A lot of the show's hosts are not actors at all, but athletes, musicians, or politicians. And even if the hosts are actors, a lot aren't fluent in comedy. Did you work on the infamous show hosted by Steven Seagal in April of 1991?

  Yes, I did.

  That was a notoriously difficult week.

  Steven Seagal was insane. He was a tree that spoke. He was unbelievable. He kept saying all week that he had never seen the show; that he didn't even know what we did there. I mean, who could even believe that? He was obviously just pretending he had never heard of the show. He was a scary presence. I was sitting in a dressing room with him and Dana Carvey, and I thought, This guy could really hit me.

  That week was a nightmare. I was helping write a “Hans and Franz” sketch and Seagal said to me and some of the other writers, “If I do this sketch — if I do this sketch — I'm only going to do it under one condition: I have to win.”

  Win what?

  The fight. Hans and Franz were going to challenge him to a fight. And he wanted to win it.

  He thought it was going to be a real fistfight?

  I don't know what he thought. The whole thing was so bizarre. He was also involved in the worst sketch ever done on SNL. On behalf of the environment, Steven Seagal gets in a fistfight with a bunch of corporate guys. It was about eight minutes long, and it had three sets. It ended with Seagal having to fight live on TV, just as clumsy and awkward as can be, where he beats up these guys, these stunt people who were brought in. At the end of the sketch, Seagal turns to the camera and says, with no sarcasm or irony, “That's what you get when you mess with Mother Nature!” Or maybe it was, “That's what you get when you mess with the Earth!” I don't know. The audience — their jaws just dropped. They did not know where to turn. They couldn't back out, and they couldn't leave, because the doors were locked. It was the only time where the APPLAUSE sign came on and the audience just looked at it and squinted and refused the request.

  How was your experience on your two major-studio films, Let's Go to Prison and The Brothers Solomon? The first was released in 2006, the second in 2007. Did you have the creative freedom you had on Mr. Show?

  No, of course not. This is Hollywood. I had total creative freedom at Mr. Show; David and I had complete power over the script, the production, and the delivery.

  Both of those films were made with a team of producers and a script written by other people — all people I like very much and with whom I'm proud to have had an opportunity to work — but they were decidedly mixed experiences compared with Mr. Show.

  The reviews were quite negative for both movies. Do you think this will hamper your chances of making another film?

  I wish those films you mentioned were successes on every level, but they clearly were not. Films are difficult — it's a challenging business. I have learned a lot from my experiences on those films, and my next movie will benefit greatly from what I consider my apprenticeship in the movie industry. I just hope the industry is able to conceive of it as an apprenticeship. If not, I will wrestle that stupid behemoth industry to the ground and kick it in the balls until it gives in.

  I fear that the failure of those two projects will hamper my chances of taking chances in the future. Basically, to be blunt, I am in “director jail” when it comes to features. The box-office returns weren't good, and that will bite me in the ass for most future projects. These projects were very much about not taking chances. Both movies would have been made without me, and it's not my usual way of working. I like to work on the fringe.

  I am now “relegated” to thi
s work the critics seem to like much more. I will work my way back into a place where the industry is willing to take another chance on me. I'm good, and that's coming from someone who hates me more than anyone else could.

  How often do you watch your work? Say, old SNL sketches or Mr. Show episodes?

  Not often. I just don't do it. I have two kids, and I play with them. I'm busy writing or directing, and I have plenty to think about and to work on. Occasionally — maybe every five or six years — there's some reason to watch Mr. Show. And then I'll watch it. It makes me happy. There are small things that bother me about it, but overall it's certainly something I'm very proud of. We knew when we were doing it that this was exactly what we wanted to make and, by and large, it came out how we wanted it to come out.

  I tend to think way more about the sketches that didn't go right over the years — or the movies that didn't go right — than I tend to think about the things that did go right. And Mr. Show is one of those things that went right. So what's the point in watching and examining it? I'd rather think about the future. And all of my many mistakes.

  Todd Hanson

  Todd Hanson's Five Easy Steps to Becoming a Professional Comedy Writer

  Start out life full of intelligence, talent, and wide-eyed enthusiasm.

  Be slowly beaten down by the indifference of the universe.

  Maladapt by developing a horrifying pathology of freakish narcissism paradoxically combined with masochistically low self-esteem.

  Eventually give up hope, curse God, and abandon your dreams.

  You are now ready to start writing comedy.