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

by Mike Sacks

  Do you remember the first headline you wrote for The Onion?

  I remember it very well. I came up with the headline in the fall of 1990 and it was called “U.S. Signs Peace Treaty with Canada.” The idea was funnier that it sounds, because it was written just before the first Gulf War. I think I probably came in with a list of headlines, and they picked that one and let me write it.

  Readers of The Onion might assume that it's a fun product to put together week after week. Is it?

  No.

  Is it difficult?

  Not difficult — tedious. On a tedium scale of one to ten, it's a ten. That's not just me being my usual depressive self; that's how everybody feels. It is rewarding, though, when you write articles and jokes no one else would ever publish and the readers love it.

  Comedy is extremely hard. It's not just like, “This is so great!” It's a hell of a grind.

  Why is the process at The Onion so tedious?

  Because it's so time-consuming, and there's such a high attrition rate. We have these long, long meetings where the writers and editors go through and evaluate a huge list of headlines. And then maybe five get picked. It's probably not an exaggeration to say that at this point, with so many different contributors, there might be five hundred headlines for every one that eventually makes it into the final product. We always choose the headlines first, and then write the story.

  And what's done with those headlines that are not chosen?

  They are thrown away.

  Never to be used again?

  They are gone.

  Can they be saved and then used later for individual jokes within a piece? Or maybe for a chart or a graph idea? It seems like such a waste.

  If a joke or a headline idea doesn't make it through the selection process, it disappears for good.

  Does it bother you that the individual voice is eliminated? That your byline won't be on the story? That readers won't know who wrote what?

  Not really, no. It's like being in a band or being in a comedy troupe, as opposed to being an individual comedian or being a solo singer. It's all toward the common good — making the product as good as it can be.

  I'd like to talk about The Onion and Hollywood. Over the years there have been a few Onion movie projects that never got off the ground.

  At least three.

  Is there a disillusionment with the Hollywood process for you?

  Hmm, how can I possibly answer that question in such a way as to convey the full extent of what I mean? The answer is not only yes; the answer is “fuck yes.” The answer is even more than “fuck yes.” My disillusionment with the Hollywood process started at the very beginning.

  Which was with The Untitled Onion Movie in the mid-nineties?

  No, that came later, but that's a good example. That was actually going to be called The Onion's Major Motion Picture: Now a Major Motion Picture, which I still think is a great title. But it went nowhere. Five years of frustration. That project was our big attempt to interact with the larger entertainment industry. And it didn't exactly work out — at least on the big screen. It was later released on DVD.

  What happened?

  We really thought that project was going to be great, because we had a deal with David Zucker, who produced Airplane!, a movie we all loved. But Hollywood and The Onion just aren't a good match. If we were to try to make a movie again, I think we would try to do it independently.

  Was it the creative frustration of not being in charge?

  Partly. As you know, we're from Wisconsin. So we're not part of the entertainment industry. On the other hand, we're not idiots. We sort of knew that there would have to be a lot of compromises. But we had no idea. Even the most cynical attitudes that we could have had going into Hollywood would have proven inadequate to the reality. Our worst-case scenario paled in comparison to the actual-case scenario.

  It was just a series of compromises that began literally from the very first conference call and just continued and continued and continued. And we kept compromising and compromising and compromising. And, eventually, we got to the point where we had the script, but none of us liked it. The script had gone through all these compromises. And then somehow the script got greenlit and we were like, “No! Don't greenlight that! We don't like it!”

  At that point, we did all this emergency rewriting and tried to fix the script. The movie that was eventually shot incorporated some of our changes, but not all of them. The movie wasn't horribly bad or anything. It just wasn't great. And we really, really tried to make a great movie.

  How much did the studio spend on the movie?

  $10 million.

  It was supposed to be released for the big screen in 2004. Why was it only released on DVD in 2008?

  Almost from the very beginning we felt, Oh my god, we don't want a movie to come out with The Onion's name on it that we don't like. We were very lucky to have an agent who had worked into our contract final script approval. But even that gets you only so far. Eventually, we heard it was just never going to be released. That was so disappointing, after all the effort we'd put into trying to fix things — all these rewrites. There were supposed to be reshoots that would incorporate all those fixes, but it never happened. Anyway, by that point, it was almost a relief that it wasn't coming out.

  With the limited amount of interaction I've had with Hollywood, I've noticed a very strange thing. Scott Dikkers put it very well. Hollywood people will say, “I love what you do. Would you come over and work for me and do what you do?” And you respond, “Sure, I'd love to do that.” And you go over to Hollywood, and they say, “I'll tell you what. Why don't you not do what you do? Why don't you do what we do?” Then you're like, “But the whole reason I'm here is that you like what I do.” And they're like, “Yeah, but just do what we do.” I don't even think it's anyone being an asshole or anything … it's no one's fault. I think it's just the way Hollywood works.

  Tell me about The Onion's move from Wisconsin to New York in January of 2001. Why did the staff feel a move was necessary?

  First of all, when The Onion made the move to the Internet in 1996, we had no idea how quickly it would become popular nationwide. There was no reason to believe it would ever happen. It wasn't an active goal. It's almost like when you're in a garage band and you say something like, “Wouldn't it be great if we were famous and rock stars?” But that doesn't mean that anyone thinks it's really going to happen.

  Before we went online, the paper was only available in a few cities, including Madison and Milwaukee. The most ambitious thoughts the business staff had up to that point was to put the paper in more cities and sell local advertising space. There was never any thought of it being a national media presence. Then we got the book contract for Our Dumb Century, and the book eventually reached number one in 1999, which just blew everybody's mind.

  So it wasn't as if we were moving to New York for any reason other than we just wanted to make a move. One of the writers, Mike Loew, said in an interview that the staff just wanted to walk down a couple of different streets in our lifetimes. We were ready. We weren't in our young, formative years anymore. I was already thirty-two. Most of the other writers were about my age, and most of us were now staff ers and no longer had day jobs. And The Onion was already a full-formed adult entity. The move was more a reward for us than any type of goal. You know, just from a personal standpoint, I felt that it would be really nice to go see a live comedy show at a club that didn't suck.

  There was some concern that The Onion would change once it moved to New York. Was that ever a concern of yours?

  It was. We all wondered whether the humor would change, but we self-consciously decided we did not want that to happen. There was a lot of attention when we first arrived, but then there was a period of quiet when not much was written about us. Then these articles came out that implied we had moved to make a big splash, and we had failed to make any splash. What these journalists didn't understand was that all we ever wanted to do was t
he same thing we had been doing in Madison. We never intended to become anything big and new and different. And I think that just sort of confounded certain people.

  The media sort of figured, Well, isn't that what people come to New York to do? You come here in order to re-invent yourself or to move up from one level to a higher level in terms of social status or fame. We never wanted any of that. We just wanted to meet and hang out with people with a like-minded comic sensibility. It's not as if we arrived here so that we could hang out with celebrities.

  That being said, the company has changed in the past few years. There's been a lot of growth, and it's starting to feel like an actual business instead of some slackers in a band.

  How were you treated when you first arrived in New York?

  I have to say we've really been accepted by New York. There were a few journalists who wrote about us in a weird way. One reporter from The New York Observer took me out to a few nightclubs and basically tried to make me look like a hick. Which is not so far from the truth. You really didn't have to stretch the truth too much to explore that angle.

  But, overall, most people really showed us respect, including people we admired, like David Cross and Conan O'Brien and the Upright Citizens Brigade. They've all been incredibly nice to me. I once found myself in the elevator with Conan. He somehow figured out I was from The Onion, and he complimented me and the book Our Dumb Century for five minutes. It was nothing but superlative praise. I just stood there looking up at him, because he's very tall, you know. I alternated between daring to look up at him and then looking down at my shoes. I didn't know what to say; it was just so scary.

  That's one of the strange things about The Onion coming to New York. The standard pattern was reversed in our case. Usually you become a big fish in a small pond and then you make the leap to New York and suddenly you're a little fish in a big pond. But it was the opposite for us. Nobody in Madison really gave a shit about The Onion. And then we moved here, and we began to meet people we really loved and who loved us back. It was very, very strange.

  Why? You didn't feel that you deserved some of the accolades?

  To this day, most of us don't feel like we're part of the New York — showbiz world. We were always, and are still, blown away when people show us respect. How do I put this? It's kind of like growing up watching what's on television, and you get the sense that there are two worlds: there's the world on your side of the screen which is the reality, and then there's the world on the other side of the screen which is from some other planet, where the people are rich and famous and get to be on television. And it never occurs to you that those people are on the same planet and that you don't have to take a spaceship to get from where you live to wherever they live.

  You moved to New York nine months before the events of September 11. What was that time like for you and the rest of The Onion staff?

  Like it was for everybody else. It was fucking horrifying. I saw the buildings burning from my apartment window. It was certainly the most awful thing I've ever witnessed, and I pray to God it's the most horrible thing I ever do witness. None of the staff was feeling irreverent or ironic or saying, “Well, this is our chance to make some really edgy humor.” We were absolutely stunned and emotionally blank. I was absolutely out of my mind.

  September 11 was on a Tuesday. We immediately decided we weren't going to do an issue that week. It was too soon, so we just ran a black banner on the website. But to begin working on the next issue, we had to start the following week. We phoned each other and started talking. At first we were like, “I guess we'll just have to do something lighthearted and non-topical and something that doesn't have anything to do with this.” But the more we talked about it, the more we realized we had to address it head-on, because it was the only thing on everyone's mind.

  It was really risky, and we knew that some people might be off ended, but we had to do it. Normally, we love to off end people. Usually, that's our favorite thing to do. That week, though, nobody felt like offending anyone. But I should point out that we didn't set out to do something historic. It wasn't our intention to do something that no one else had the guts to do. We just sat down, tried to do our jobs, and ended up with that issue.

  What was your contribution to that first issue after 9/11?

  I wrote two stories: the article with the headline “American Life Turns Into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer Movie” and the piece “God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don't Kill’ Rule.”

  I cried when I wrote that “God” piece. And, in the piece itself, God ends up crying.

  There was no room for error in that issue. If you failed, you would have failed on a grand scale.

  Absolutely. One of the writers, Carol Kolb, wrote a perfect story. It was called “Not Knowing What Else To Do, Woman Bakes American-Flag Cake.” That was a very touching story. Very effective. Hit the right notes. Not one of us felt like taking anybody down. It's hard to feel anti-establishment when the establishment is lying in smoking ruins at your feet.

  Did the staff have any idea as to what the reaction was going to be to that issue?

  The first e-mails began to arrive the day of publication and we looked through them. Some of the e-mails said things like, “It's too soon. How can you do this?” But 90 percent were positive. Then they just kept pouring in. It was incredibly humbling and incredibly touching, just the outpouring of support that we got from people for that 9/11 issue. They were really moving in their praise. They were saying things like, “God bless you.”

  The paper seemed to become a bellwether of whether it was okay to laugh again. Even professional humorists looked to The Onion at that time. In my interview with Dave Barry, he said, “God bless The Onion.”

  We were just trying to reflect what everybody was going through, what people were feeling. We were trying to be honest about how we felt. And I think that's why people responded so much to that issue. We were getting a lot of fan mail at that time. The same thing sort of happened after we did the issue about the Columbine High School shooting in 1999. I personally was really, really freaked out when Columbine happened. That hit me really close to home, because that's the kind of kid I was in high school. Wearing the black trench coat and getting picked on by other kids and feeling like an outsider. That's who my friends were.

  What article did you write for the Columbine issue?

  “Columbine Jocks Safely Resume Bullying.” It was an article about how everything was supposedly great again in Columbine. You know, “We've got metal detectors and it's all safe and we can just go back to everything the way it was before.” Again, it was very sad. I was really afraid of how readers would react. We did get some angry letters from people who were offended. But, on the other hand, we got more fan mail for that issue than for any issue we'd run up to that point.

  And then the 9/11 thing happened, and it was the same thing, except to the nth degree. People still talk about that issue when they meet me. They often say that it was a work of genius. That it was one of the greatest things they've ever seen in comedy. I don't know, I'm just really humbled whenever I think of people's reactions to that. The massacre was definitely the most zeitgeist-defining thing that's happened since I've been alive. And the fact that our little paper was important to people during that time, it's just so humbling and so sad that I don't have words to express how I feel.

  Do you regret having written any articles over the years?

  I've never actually thought about it before. But I believe the honest answer would be no. There were articles I worried about and thought I might regret, but no, nothing I've ever regretted writing.

  Are there any subjects that are off-limits for you?

  When The Onion does “irreverent humor” about subject matter some might consider inappropriate for humor, I take it very, very seriously. And I wouldn't make a joke that was dishonest or that had the wrong target. People say you can't make a joke about certain things. We all know certain things aren't funny, such as rape. That's just und
erstood. But in our book Our Dumb Century we had an article — I can't remember who wrote it — but it was set in 1919 and it was about a new study that found women were only at fault in 85 percent of rapes, not 97 percent, as previously believed.

  Do you think the joke works because it was set almost one hundred years ago?

  That's an honest joke about what people believed at the time. The target is the attitude toward rape; the target is not the rape victim.

  Anything can be done — it just depends on what your target is. You can't make a genuinely funny joke at the expense of a rape victim. Is rape wrong? The answer is obviously yes. Are things that are wrong deserving of ridicule? The answer is obviously yes. Are things that are really, really wrong even more deserving of ridicule? The answer is obviously yes.

  A lot of humor writers might be afraid to even tackle it from that angle, or from any angle.

  It depends on what your attitude is toward the purpose of humor. If you think the purpose of humor is to cheer people up, that's one way of looking at it. I don't happen to have that attitude. Maybe it's because I'm an unbelievably depressed guy. Satire is the ridicule of human folly. There's certainly plenty of that to go around.

  I'm not a cognitive scientist. But what I understand about humor is that it's a form of a startle reaction. It's the processing of fear. I certainly know that in my life humor has been all about sorrow and horror. Mark Twain said, “The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow.” He also said, “There is no humor in heaven.” That's one of my favorite things that anybody has ever said.

  Why?

  Because you don't have to be an expert to figure out that humor is connected to the fear response. You know what I mean? Even the smile response of baring the teeth is a fear response in primates. It's a way of processing all of the terrible realities that, if you couldn't laugh at, you'd want to roll over and die.