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

by Mike Sacks

  People feel such a strong attachment to Annie Hall.

  It was, among other things, a reasonably accurate record of what it might have been like to live in New York at that time. In a way, it's an anthropological document. It was sort of at the tail end of the new Hollywood, the revolution that started, I guess, with Easy Rider, when the Young Turks from U.S.C. film school took over Old Hollywood — those years when Elliott Gould was in every other movie. There was an air of promise, an aura of possibility. It was sort of like the cultural equivalent of what happened socially in the sixties, when you felt that there was a possibility for something new and exciting. And I'm not sure that exists anymore. I think there's a kind of nostalgia for that now, when everything's become so corporate, so homogenized and controlled. That generation in the seventies used movies as their way of defining themselves culturally, the way kids now use music. Film for us was really a very important cultural experience. We loved foreign films by Bergman, Truffaut, Resnais, Fellini.

  What were your thoughts when you saw the first cut of Manhattan? The same as Annie Hall?

  I never saw the first cut. I just saw the final film. I thought it was fine. And it looked wonderful. I did have one discussion with Woody about a scene. It was the only time we ever had a real disagreement. In this particular scene, Woody lists Groucho Marx, Louis Armstrong's “Potato Head Blues,” Flaubert's Sentimental Education, Mozart's “Jupiter” Symphony, and a few other things that make life worth living.

  And I thought, Why Sentimental Education? Why not Madame Bovary? And how do you pick the Jupiter Symphony over another Mozart symphony? Woody was doing the same thing he accuses Diane's character of doing in the movie — ranking works of art. Plus, isn't that a tad myopic? How about things that really make life worth living? Kids. Family. Love. Sacrifice. Yes, it can be argued that this is the character's view of the world, but I thought it was dangerous — the line between who Woody was in life and the characters he was playing in his movies was pretty fuzzy. And I said, “The critics are going to kill us! It's a pretentious, narcissistic, solipsistic view of the world that you're offering up.” And he said, “Nah, you're crazy, nobody's going to say anything, it's going to be fine.”

  And he was right. The only person who criticized us was Joan Didion in The New York Review of Books. She said something to the effect of: “Who in the hell do they think they are with their things worth living for?”

  I've always felt that that particular speech was essential to the broader theme of the movie — that an obsession with minutiae takes our minds off the bigger issues.

  Maybe you can extract a theme from that dialogue but, honestly, we were not writing to proselytize a point of view like that, although I guess it's sort of inherent in the movie. None of that was really in the air when we were writing the screenplay. Most of what we talked about was conversation and plot.

  To me it's a very dark movie, with these over-educated, anxiety-prone characters looking for meaning in life. It had a much darker tone than Annie Hall.

  Yes, it's dark. But it's a much more conventional film than Annie Hall. Technically, it's a romantic farce that's based on deception.

  When you look at Manhattan, can you tell who wrote what? What scene or joke you came up with and what Woody came up with?

  Sometimes, but the great rule I learned from Woody is that when you get in a room with another person, you're both responsible for the result — assuming that there's a reasonably equal level of talent. This is not as coy an answer as it might appear. Even though a great line or idea might be uttered by one person, it may have been triggered or stimulated by what the other party said. This happens all the time in collaborations, so the safest and fairest way of attributing ownership — though probably less satisfying to the curious — is to attribute everything to both parties.

  It sounds like Manhattan was a lot easier to get right than Annie Hall.

  Manhattan has a much more traditional structure. It proceeds in logical time and there are no flashbacks. Also, the style is totally naturalistic, and the logical demands are greater than in Annie Hall, which established a style that allowed the movie to go anywhere. Annie Hall jumped around in time and used many alienating devices, such as direct addresses to the camera, subtitles, split screen, and a cartoon. A lot of the material in Annie Hall could be shuffled and re-arranged without too much damage to the structure; that would have been harder to pull off in Manhattan.

  How did you eventually write for the Muppets?

  I was an enormous fan of Jim Henson's; I really thought he was a genius. I was finally introduced to him by a mutual friend, and when Jim was given the green light to develop a pilot for ABC, he asked me to work with him. This was the 1975 TV special called The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence. The Muppets were making fun of sex and violence on television, complete with a beauty pageant featuring the seven deadly sins. The humor was somewhat mature for a show featuring puppets.

  As evidenced by the following two jokes: “What's black and white and red all over? The Federalist papers!” Also: “Knock knock. Who's there. Roosevelt. Roosevelt who? Roosevelt nice, but Gladys felt nicer.” Did you write either of those jokes?

  I don't remember, truthfully. But I did create, or help to create, a few of the Muppet characters, like the two old men in the balcony, Statler and Waldorf, and the Swedish Chef. Somewhere out there, there's a cassette of me speaking in a mock Swedish accent that Jim Henson listened to in order to capture the mood for that character. Maybe it'll show up one day on eBay.

  You wrote and directed a movie called Simon, released in 1980. The plot involved a think tank that performed a social experiment on a character played by Alan Arkin. The purpose of this experiment was to convince Arkin's character that he was an alien.

  I always looked at Simon as being a film for the seventies. It was satirical of the culture at the time — especially TV and faith in science. All of that seemed to be in the air then.

  In one scene, a group of believers pray before a giant TV set. I take it you're not such a fan of television?

  TV is just a medium. What I'm not a fan of is how TV has replaced more meaningful cultural values and experiences — like reading and group activities. Watching TV is an isolating, rather than a socializing, experience. It creates passivity in the viewer. Most of TV is a sales tool; the culture and entertainment aspects are just a means of delivering markets to merchandisers.

  Do you have any interest in writing more humor for the page? You've written a few pieces for The New Yorker, but not in a long while. It's been more than thirty years.

  I'd love to. In college I was introduced to the writings of S. J. Perelman, Robert Benchley, and the whole New Yorker bunch. What they were able to do with the written word had an effect on me similar to when, at the age of eleven, I first heard Eric Weissberg play Scruggs-style five-string banjo. It was like watching someone levitate.

  The first thing I ever wrote for The New Yorker was actually published. It was called “What, Another Legend?” It involved a fake press-release for a fictitious, 112-year-old black clarinet player. But those pieces are not so easy. They take some time to get right. I am forever indebted to my editor at The New Yorker, Roger Angell, who led me through my overwritten stuff and edited it down to what finally appeared in print. At one point, many years ago, someone from The New York Times took me to lunch and asked me if I would be interested in taking over for the columnist Russell Baker. And I said, “You're crazy. I could never do that each week!” Baker, as I recall, did two columns a week. I couldn't imagine doing that. Besides, I didn't really have a voice then.

  How would you describe your voice now?

  I don't know. If it's anything, I suppose, it's anti-sentimental.

  Can you give me a specific example?

  In Jersey Boys, there's a scene in the second act when the two members of the Four Seasons who are left, Frankie and Bob, are sitting and having a cup of coffee. And Bob says, “Look, I think you need to go ou
t on the road.” And Frankie replies, “You want me to go out by myself? What if they don't like me as a solo singer?”

  Originally, the next line was: “Frankie, this is your time.” And it never sat right for me. So I changed it to: “Frankie, what makes you think they liked you before?”

  It's a nice little change, because it defines the relationship between these characters very quickly, that they're able to deal with each other like that. Also, it's funny and it's not sentimental. What I like to do is to turn ninety degrees from something that's headed towards sentimental and undercut it.

  That's a very Jewish sensibility.

  The Jews have always had something amusing to say while they're getting the shit kicked out of them.

  I can attest to that.

  Right. So it's the abhorrence of unearned sentiment, I guess. Which is defined as asking the audience to feel more for the characters than God does. By the way, I still can't believe I wrote Jersey Boys.

  Why did you? What was it about the story that appealed to you?

  When I heard that the Four Seasons had sold about one-hundred-seventy-five million records here and abroad, I blinked. And then, when I finally met with Bob Gaudio and Frankie Valli and they told me the story of their rise from blue-collar New Jersey, with their involvement with the Mob, with being poor, to finally making it, the whole arc of success and failure, I realized that this was not only a true story, but it was a very good story.

  Are you a fan of musicals in general?

  Some, like Guys and Dolls. But not a fervent aficionado. I'm more of a movie guy. That's where I was for twenty years. But when musical theater works, there's really nothing like it. You almost never get a movie audience to stand up and cheer, because they realize on some level — not a very deep level, actually — that what they're seeing on-screen has already happened. In a very real sense, movies are dead. In live theater, the audience gets to bond through the live event, with live actors and singers. It's all happening in real time in front of their eyes, and it can be a deeply moving and socializing experience.

  How is writing for the stage different than writing for the screen?

  It follows the same general rules about character and action, of course, but in many ways writing for the stage is a totally different animal. For instance, initially, I'd write a scene and then end it with, “Then we cut to….” And I would have to be reminded that in the theater you don't “cut” to anything. So it's a different set of rules — how to get people on and off the stage, how to make smooth transitions, remembering that there are no close-ups or reaction shots. The audience looks where it wants to look, and it's the job of the author and director to make you, in the audience, look where you need to look.

  Because of the fluidity and freedom of theater, you can do many things without apology — and without being necessarily naturalistic. Great productions of the classics have been done with minimal sets and props — a table, a drop, some lighting. You couldn't get away with that in a movie, in which the “contract” with the audience is different. Movies are, on a certain level, documentary.

  It's time to end the interview, so I'm going to pull out one of my stock, yet extremely popular, questions. Do you have any advice to the aspiring comedy writer on how to discover their voice?

  Search your roots and your heritage, your ethnic background, the way people speak. Most great comedy comes from minorities — ethnic, social, economic. If you think about it, most comedy ought to function as a corrective — against one or another social or cultural or economic inequity. Perhaps I should modify that to read “real or imagined” social or cultural or economic inequity.

  Then there's the issue of language and style, which gets into the equation somehow. But even that definition doesn't cover the entire waterfront, as it doesn't exactly include parody or other literary forms, such as with Benchley and Perelman and others. And yet, it's a good start.

  So, by searching your own roots and using what you have at your disposal, does this make the comedy more authentic and true, and thus more real and funny?

  I really have no idea as to why something is funny. I know it has something to do with the correct matching of performer and material, or some set of commonly held assumptions about the world, or an attitude. I get dizzy trying to deconstruct it. I do know that when I can match a comic performer or writer with some sociological turf, then the comedy has, for me, a better chance of landing: Jonathan Winters and his characters from the Midwest. Or Woody Allen, from a Jewish-urban landscape. Or Chris Rock, from the upwardly mobile, urban-black perspective. And so on. I do know that those performers who seem to come from the Land of Media have a more difficult time making me laugh — the exception is David Letterman, much of whose humor is deconstructionist and exhibits, or tries to conceal, a hilarious rage against the various forms of media, like advertising, political doublespeak, and so on. So there are exceptions.

  Any advice for the comedy writer on how to succeed in the movie or TV business?

  My feeling is that there are already too many comedy writers. What we need is people in health care. Learn CPR and how to fill out a certificate of death.

  And if you're not into CPR and still want to pursue humor writing?

  Have an uncle who runs the New York office of the William Morris Agency.

  And if you're not lucky enough to have an uncle who runs the New York office of William Morris?

  Then you must go into health care.

  Quick and Painless Advice for the Aspiring Humor Writer, part four

  GETTING YOUR HUMOR PIECE PUBLISHED IN THE NEW YORKER

  An Interview With Susan Morrison, Articles Editor

  On average, how many submissions do you receive each week for the Shouts & Murmurs section?

  I'd say around one hundred.

  Do you read submissions from the slush pile?

  My assistant reads all of them, and then gives me the promising ones. We have found a number of new writers this way.

  What should a writer include with their pitch?

  A short cover note is fine — it's not that important to me. Also, pitches and queries don't really apply with humor pieces: it's better to just write the piece and submit. As an editor, you have no way of knowing whether a piece is going to be funny until you read it.

  What sort of mistakes will doom a writer's chances?

  A writer once tucked a submission into a flower arrangement. I like flowers, but I found that pretty creepy.

  I see a lot of obvious parodies of things that have already been done — for example, the New York Times wedding announcements. Or sometimes the approaches are just too schematic. People write listy, high-concept pieces in which you get the joke right off the bat and then it just chugs along without enough surprise. When Madonna published a children's book, I received a lot of submissions about other children's books written by celebrities.

  What's your preference: e-mail or hard-copy submissions?

  E-mail to the Shouts & Murmurs submission address: shouts@newyorker.com. Also, keep in mind that if you're submitting a topical piece, it's a good idea to write “time-sensitive piece” in the subject line.

  Do you need an agent to be published in Shouts?

  No. In fact, I feel that dealing with agents on short pieces is a nuisance.

  How often is a humor writer discovered on the Web?

  Not too often. I have contacted a few writers I've read on blogs or on McSweeney's, but I can't think of any that we've then published.

  A more common move is for me to ask a funny screenwriter or television writer, such as George Meyer, Paul Rudnick, or Andy Borowitz, to try writing a piece for the magazine.

  Jack Handey has said that his pieces are rejected about one-third of the time. Does that hold true for other regular Shouts contributors?

  I think that rate sounds a little high for Jack, but maybe he's right. Every writer will have a piece rejected now and then — even pieces by Johnny Carson or Woody Allen. The first ti
me Carson submitted a piece he enclosed a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

  Did you end up publishing it?

  Yes, we ran that piece and a couple more of his. I rejected one or two later.

  You feel no pressure to accept a piece by a Johnny Carson or a Woody Allen?

  I don't think you're doing anyone a favor — not readers, not the writer — by publishing a piece that isn't up to snuff. Usually there is a particular reason — the concept isn't fresh enough, for example. But if a piece is just not up to par in a general way, I'll simply say that it didn't do anything for me.

  What do you mostly edit for on a typical Shouts & Murmurs piece?

  I trim when the piece is too long for the space we have or because the concept doesn't quite sustain itself. I probably subtract jokes more than I add them; I tend to make pieces dryer rather than wetter. I also like to clarify a narrative throughline when there is one. I prefer pieces that tell a story with a beginning, middle, and an end to pieces that are just some kind of a list.

  Who has to approve a manuscript before it's published? Just you, or are there other editors involved?

  I have to like it, and then [the editor in chief] David Remnick has to like it, too.

  For writers eager to be published in The New Yorker, what advice would you give?

  Reading back issues of The New Yorker is always good. You get a sense of the sort of pieces that work here, what the ballpark length should be, and what subjects we've already covered. Mostly, though, it's important for a writer to have an original voice and a distinct sense of what is funny to you. There are certain writers whose work you'd always recognize, even without a byline, because the sensibility is so distinct. Also, doing a great job with a topical, newsy subject will always get our attention.