by Mike Sacks
Another aspect of your writing I've always admired are your segues. They create a type of flow similar to a movie's. For instance, in “Rooster at the Hitchin' Post” from Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, you juxtapose scenes of your brother getting married with scenes of him almost drowning when he was a child. Back and forth, back and forth. It becomes very effective.
I was just going through that process earlier today, actually. I had these two paragraphs that I wanted to connect, but they were redundant. I thought, Oh, I don't need any of them. But then how does one go from here to there? It's like when you're a kid and you put the sofa cushions on the floor and you can only walk across the room on the cushions. But all of a sudden you don't have any cushions left, and you have to get to the other side. The next available cushion is twelve feet away, and you're like, This could take all day. So you take off your pants and you stuff your shirt into it and you make a cushion to get from here to there. Hopefully no one will say, “You made that cushion, didn't you? You can't do that!” With a bit of luck and work, it'll all seem natural.
Are you happier now than you were growing up? If so, does that help or hinder your writing?
I don't think my childhood was any more miserable than anyone else's, really. I mean, it didn't help to be gay, but there were people who were gayer than me and who had it worse than I had it. When I was young, I did think, Well, this will pass and I'll get older and things are bound to get better. But my childhood wasn't epic. It wasn't biblical. My parents never did lock me in a dungeon. They never cut off my feet and ate them.
One thing I noticed when I was teaching writing was that my middle-class students were ashamed of their upbringings. It used to be that poor people were ashamed, but that's not the case anymore. Rich people aren't ashamed, either. It's only the middle class who are ashamed. They tend to feel that their lives are inherently worthless, because they grew up in the suburbs.
Many of my students used to write stories about growing up on the streets; it was never believable. For me, it was sad that they were ashamed of something they were not responsible for; it wasn't their fault they had braces on their teeth — or that on the last day of school their parents picked them up in expensive cars.
So when I started writing about my childhood, I thought, “I am not going to write about that time of my life with any degree of shame.” What does that even mean, feeling that your life is that unworthy of attention?
Your breakthrough story was “SantaLand Diaries”, which was about your experiences working as a Christmas elf at Macy's in New York.
Yeah. I read that piece on NPR in December 1992.
It surprised me how well, and how quickly, your humor translated to the NPR crowd. Before you read “SantaLand Diaries,” I'm not so sure I had ever heard an NPR anecdote about a 40-year-old retarded man with a dent in his forehead urinating on Santa's lap.
[Laughs] That wasn't me, by the way.
I was surprised, too. The whole piece as I wrote it would have taken about an hour to read. It was Ira [Glass] who edited it down to nine minutes or so. What surprised me more than anything was how many people listened to NPR's Morning Edition. I never listened to Morning Edition because I was always asleep when it came on, so I didn't really have any notion of what the show meant to people. But the reaction was instantaneous. It was like that moment that everyone dreams about — the before and the after.
After I read that story, my phone immediately began to ring. And it rang and rang and rang and rang. A telephone operator called and said, “I just want you to know I'm late for work, and it's all your fault because I listened to your story on the radio.” Then the phone rang again, and it was Alec Baldwin.
What did Alec Baldwin have to say?
“Loved the story on the radio. Do you think you could send me and Kim [Basinger] a tape?”
Did you hear from the rest of the Baldwin brothers? Billy? Adam?
No, but I never expected to hear from anyone. I didn't expect anything like that to happen.
Has there ever been a time when you've wanted to write humor for a different format, such as for television or the movies?
I never seriously wanted to write for television. There was a time when I thought I wanted to write for soap operas. But the type of writing I always wanted to do is exactly the writing that I'm doing right now. I never really even watch television.
A producer from Seinfeld once called and asked if I'd like to write for the show, even though I had never seen it. This must have been an insult to them; here's this number one show, and I've never bothered to ever watch it. So they said, “Why don't you watch the show and then talk to us?”
I watched the show and I wrote them a letter saying, What if this happened in an episode? Or what if that happened? And that was the end of it. I never heard back — which wasn't too much of a surprise.
What were your suggestions?
I wanted the Elaine character to have a psychiatrist, who would tell her, “You need some companionship. I have this dog I want to give you.” Basically, it would be his own dog that he wanted to get rid of.
I had just seen a dog with elephantiasis of the testicles. They were huge and covered with scabs from having been dragged on the ground. So I thought this psychiatrist's dog could also suffer from this, and it would make all of Elaine's friends react in a certain way. A small dog with huge testicles. I didn't think of an ending for it — that was just the premise. I thought it might be entertaining, but obviously it didn't happen.
Actually, I remember that story later appearing on Full House.
If it did, I couldn't tell you.
Do you have any humor pet peeves?
I think the biggest danger is always when a writer tries too hard. At readings, people will come up to me and say, “Everyone says that I write just like you, so here's what I've written. Maybe you can help me get it published?” I often think, “God, I hope I don't write like this.” They just try so damn hard! It's almost as if they think there's a math equation to the whole process: “I need three jokes per page. I need one here, and one here, and one here.” Often what makes me laugh is simply word choice — not jokes. In his book Foreskin's Lament, Shalom Auslander wrote, “My family and I are like oil and water, if oil made water depressed and angry and want to kill itself.” That's perfect.
When you write humor, people think that you just record into a tape recorder and then someone else transcribes your words. It doesn't occur to them that you have to choose this word over that word — and do so very carefully. I'm often asked in interviews, “How long have you been a storyteller?” To me, that implies some woman in bare feet who comes to the local library and tells stories. I just cringe when people say that. Most people have no concept of writing, or what's involved with the process.
You've talked about your obsessive-compulsive disorder in the past. Does O.C.D. affect your writing?
Yes, and I've always been lucky in that way. I like doing the exact same thing at the exact same time every day — that's what my life is, and that's what I'm all about. So once I started to write for the first time — really, from the very first day — I never had to force myself to write. I don't think I've ever missed a day of writing in more than twenty years. I work seven days a week.
I get up, I go right to work, I take a break, and then I go back to work at night. I don't just sit at a desk for two minutes and then say, “Oh, okay. I tried. Maybe tomorrow.”
It's the same sort of obsessiveness that makes me want to stay in bed until 10:26 every morning. I'm just wired that way.
You literally wake up at 10:26 every morning?
Sometimes I'll open my eyes at 10:22, and then I'll lie there until 10:26. But I don't ever sleep beyond 10:26.
That's something that obviously can't be — or shouldn't be — taught in writing programs.
No, but you can't teach a lot of things. That's the scam of any kind of art school. There are a lot of people who excel in school, but once t
hey don't have homework anymore, whether it's painting or writing or whatever, they can't function. They need a professor telling them to write a story by such and such a date.
In the real world, the most important part is sitting there and writing. It's not easy to function in that vacuum, but that's what you have to do.
Do you find that writing helps alleviate your O.C.D. symptoms?
If I wasn't writing, I'd be obsessively doing another activity every day at the same time.
How many pages of publishable text do you write in a day?
When I had to turn in Me Talk Pretty One Day, I was writing a half-page of text a day — fifteen pages a month.
Your work seems to be both critically and commercially popular among a variety of people: all age groups, straight, gay — across the board. That's rare for a humor writer.
I don't know why my work would be more popular than another writer's. I don't understand why people would respond to something I wrote more than they would to what someone else wrote. Even if I wanted to please a certain segment of the audience, I wouldn't know how. When I first began writing and reading in public, it was for a gay crowd — my audiences were all gay. Soon, the audiences began to look so different to me. If I were to set out to make this or that segment of society happy, I wouldn't even know how to start. I just write what I want to.
When your books do well, there's always a guilt that comes with it. I always think, “It's so unfair. What about this other person? I feel guilty — as if I'm not a real writer.
I think most successful writers — except for egomaniacs — feel at least partially guilty that they're doing well.
I've known writers who suffer from that guilt so profoundly they can't enjoy any of the spoils. I'm not to that point yet. With that said, it's still no big picnic to be who I am.
There's no one who's harder on me than myself. And that goes for my writing. Nobody's harder on what I write than me.
I suppose if life were a joy, you wouldn't be a writer.
No, I wouldn't.
You're now being published in The New Yorker on a consistent basis. Did the magazine mean anything to you growing up?
It didn't come to our house or anything. I wasn't aware of it until I was about twenty.
How did you end up writing for The New Yorker?
There was an editor there named Chris Knutson, and after Barrel Fever came out, he called me and said he was editing Shouts & Murmurs. He asked if I could write something, and I did, and they ran it. I just couldn't believe it.
But I would never have written anything if they hadn't asked me to. When Chris left, David Remnick called and asked if I had anything available. When he came to France I met with him, and I told him I didn't have anything at the time that was appropriate for The New Yorker. He said, “Stop worrying about what you think is a New Yorker story, and then everything will be fine.”
I stopped worrying about it. And everything was fine.
Do you have to write for space for The New Yorker? Are you limited with the number of words you're allowed to publish?
Never. What usually happens is that my editor, Jeff Frank, will give the piece to David Remnick, since David has the last word. If Jeff's not sure, he'll show it around to the other editors, and then he makes some suggestions for me. But, generally, these changes take less than an hour to make. I can write a piece as long as I want — or as short.
To this day, when I have a story in The New Yorker, I'm just amazed. When I receive an issue, I always open to the contents page and I think, “Oh, wait a minute — that's my name! That's my name in The New Yorker!” I'd love for my 20 year-old self to see it.
Well, we've been talking on the phone for more than five hours now, you in Paris and me in New York. You must be exhausted, and, more important, my ear is killing me. Do you usually go to bed later than this?
I do, yes.
Where are you now?
In my apartment — upstairs in my office.
Do you have a view of a Paris street?
Yes.
What goes on in Paris at three o'clock on a Monday morning?
Well, tonight there's … huh, I just stuck my head out the window. There's nobody on the street. It's different on a Friday or Saturday night, when it's so loud you'd think the street is a fairground. But it doesn't bother me. If the people were yelling in English, “Party!” and “Marty!” and “You're a fucking asshole!,” then that would get on my nerves. But not when it's in French. It just becomes like the sound of the waves, or an exotic bird.
I thank you for your time … now get some rest. I realize you have to be up in exactly seven hours and twenty-six minutes.
I do, thank you. Good-night.
George Meyer
George Meyer's “Suicide Note Dos and Don'ts”
Do curse the living.
Don't recommend movies or restaurants.
Do mention a “hidey-hole” of gold coins.
Don't pin the suicide note to your shirt. It looks desperate.
For two weeks in 2002, TV writer George Meyer gave rare public performances at a West Hollywood theater, co-starring in a play (which he also wrote and directed) called Up Your Giggy. Between sketches, Meyer delivered monologues that took aim at many of his favorite targets, including advertising (“an insane, diabolical siren song dragging us all to a horrific Koyaanisqatsi”), God (“a ridiculous superstition, invented by frightened cavemen”), and, of course, marriage (“a stagnant cauldron of fermented resentments, scared and judgmental conformity, exaggerated concern for the children, dull weekends in Santa Barbara, and the secret dredging-up of erotic images from past lovers in a desperate and heartbreaking attempt to make spousal sex even possible”). For Meyer's longtime fans, it was further proof that their comedy idol hadn't lost any of his decidedly caustic wit over the years.
Dissecting cherished institutions such as family and religion was nothing new for Meyer. Since 1989, he's been one of the most revered and celebrated writers on The Simpsons. Though it was “Life in Hell” cartoonist Matt Groening who first conceived the show (initially as a series of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show from 1987 to 1989), Meyer is largely considered among the writing staff to be its behind-the-scenes genius among geniuses. If you need further proof, just read any newspaper or magazine article about The Simpsons. There will most likely be a quote from a Simpsons writer, explaining how Meyer is, more often than not, responsible for the best lines and jokes.
To truly understand Meyer's satiric worldview, however, it's necessary to take a closer look at the Simpsons episodes attributed solely to him. As pointed out in the 2004 The Believer interview with Meyer, his episodes tend to share the following common theme: A character giving up on an “institution or belief system.” It could be Homer deciding that he doesn't want to go to church anymore (“Homer the Heretic,” 1992, Episode Three), or Bart walking out on a family holiday (“Bart vs. Thanksgiving,” 1990, Episode Seven), or even Lisa — the character whom Meyer, a fellow vegetarian and environmentalist, most identifies with — losing faith in the American political system (“Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington,” 1991, Episode Three). The Simpsons may have originally been based on Matt Groening's family, but their hearts and souls belong to Meyer.
Meyer's distrust of authority (political, religious or parental) began at a young age. Born in Pennsylvania in 1956 and raised mostly in Tucson, Arizona, Meyer was the oldest of eight children in a family of strict Roman Catholics. He's often remarked that his Catholic upbringing was difficult — “It wound my spring almost to the breaking point,” he told Believer. He attended Harvard University in the mid-seventies to pursue a degree in biochemistry, but somewhere along the way got wooed by comedy. He became president of The Harvard Lampoon, the legendary platform for the careers of countless TV and movie writers, many of whom would go on to write for The Simpsons.
After graduating in 1978, two of his Harvard friends (Tom Gammill and Max Pross) recommended him for a staff writing positi
on at Late Night with David Letterman, where he stayed for two years (1981–83). After Late Night, Meyer had little difficulty finding writing work, penning scripts for the Lorne Michaels–produced The New Show (1984), as well as for Saturday Night Live (1985-1987). Then — bored with television — he gave up the lucrative, albeit pressure-filled, lifestyle and fled to Boulder, Colorado.
To some, it might have seemed like career suicide. But Meyer wasn't entirely unproductive while living in seclusion. With the help of some fellow writers, including Jack Handey and Bob Odenkirk, he published a small zine called Army Man (billed as “America's Only Magazine”). Although it was little more than a photocopied, self-published newsletter, twelve pages long and filled with absurdist jokes, one-liners, and cartoons, it attracted a cult following. Army Man lasted only three issues and had a distribution in the low triple digits, but it was widely read in Los Angeles, eventually finding its way into the hands of a producer named Sam Simon, who just so happened to be looking for writers for a new TV show called The Simpsons.
For Meyer, The Simpsons was a perfect match: a creative environment in which his ideas and sensibilities were appreciated. As The New Yorker observed in a profile of Meyer in 2000 (and quoting the poet Robert Pinksy from an article he wrote for The New York Times), the show “belongs to its writers … to a degree that is almost unheard-of on television.” The show was such a comfortable fit that Meyer, who was eventually made one of the executive producers, has remained with it in some capacity long after most of his colleagues have moved on to other writing projects. Not surprisingly, Meyer was picked to co-write The Simpsons Movie (2007), and he'll likely have a hand in every subsequent incarnation of the animated family he helped turn into superstars.
Did you always intend to write for television?
When I was young, I wanted to be a priest, then a ballplayer, then a Bond villain. I wanted a lair that was equal parts comfy and death-dealing. I didn't even think about writing for television until long after college. It was like saying, “I'm going to be a professional sweepstakes winner.” It just didn't seem like a real career.