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

by Mike Sacks

  Oh, sure. It's not, “They once did a similar joke on Friends.” Well, I don't want to know what they once did on Friends. Stop telling me that. You're referencing a reference. It's a Xerox of a Xerox.

  It took me ten years to learn how to really perform stand-up, but I think I became a better writer because of that experience. When I performed, I worked in every sort of club you can imagine — from biker bars to strip clubs, to comedy clubs, to big venues. I was in so many different cities and states. I got a real feel for how to make most people laugh in almost any situation. I learned how to find the joke in something when it didn't seem like a joke could be found.

  How would your act differ at a biker bar than at a comedy club?

  It wouldn't be my material so much as my attitude. For a more confrontational audience I might start a little more ad-libby or improvisational. There's risk involved with that, because you can fall on your face pretty fast. The audience won't laugh at shit — they just don't care. But if you score in the beginning, you're gold. You can just recite your act in a monotone and it'll still kill. That's the key: the first thirty seconds in front of a tough crowd is very important.

  Audiences can smell fear.

  [Laughs] Especially bikers. And if they do, you're finished. Dominance is very important. Jerry Seinfeld once said, “To laugh is to be dominated.”

  Self-deprecation is also important, but you don't want to come across as an asshole. You do, however, want to be in charge of the situation.

  Not a bad way to get through life either.

  Actually, that's sort of how I do get through it: assert my dominance and then be self-deprecating.

  What was your stand-up act like?

  It wasn't the type that was going to make me famous. It was a writer's stand-up act.

  Meaning what?

  The act wasn't purely personality-driven. The audiences really liked it, but it would never get me cast in a movie. I enjoyed writing non-existential jokes that were disconnected — I'd take the audience in one direction and then go down another.

  I wrote a bit called “Black Away.” I'd talk in a stereotypical black patois, and then I'd put a few drops from a bottle of “Black Away” on my tongue, and I'd begin to speak with clean, WASP intonations. It would take the black right out of my voice.

  This type of humor never really fit into the Def Comedy Jam style. For what I was doing with comedy, it was not the right time for me. I wasn't into the “pussy” and “motherfucker” comedians. I was more into the genteel, almost urban-Jewish type of comedy — such as Woody Allen's — in which it was the cleverness and the slyness of what I was saying, rather than the force of my personality. I'm Catholic, so I could completely relate to the neuroses and the guilt.

  I'll give you my favorite Woody Allen joke. It goes something like, “Someone broke into my ex-wife's home and she was violated. Knowing my ex-wife, I'm sure it wasn't a moving violation.” It's a brilliantly constructed joke. But, beyond that, what type of mind even thinks of a joke that involves your ex-wife being raped?

  Anyway, I was never going to get a role in a movie like Eddie Murphy or Martin Lawrence would.

  Did you even want to act?

  I did want to act, but I also knew that writing and stand-up was my ticket. As an actor, I'd go in for an audition, but I'd change the lines to make them funnier. That just wasn't the correct etiquette.

  In the early eighties, I appeared on The Facts of Life in a small role [Officer Ziaukus]. I only did a couple of episodes, and I wasn't called back. I would change my lines in rehearsal, and only later did I realize that this was a definite faux pas.

  Did you work with George Clooney? He co-starred in a few Facts of Life episodes around that time as the hunky construction contractor, George Burnett.

  Clooney was on the show around the same time I was, but I never did meet him. We were on different episodes.

  What was your first big writing break?

  I needed to show people that I was funny by writing my own material, so I applied for a writing job at In Living Color — and got it. A lot of that was just timing. My agent heard the show was looking for writers, so I wrote some sketches for a submission packet, and I then met with one of the executive producers, Keenan Wayans. We hit it off, and I was hired.

  Did anyone on In Living Color's staff think Jim Carrey would become as popular as he eventually did?

  We knew — it was obvious. We had no idea that he'd soon be making $20 million a picture, but we knew he was hysterical.

  People forget that Jim had already had his big break: a TV show that had failed [The Duck Factory, 1984], and a few movies [Once Bitten, Peggy Sue Got Married, Earth Girls Are Easy]. So In Living Color was sort of his last shot.

  Carrey really is one of the nicest guys. I loved working with him; he was astonishing. When we wrote In Living Color, we would write enough material to fill a few shows. We'd need a huge packet of sketches at our table reads. Imagine having to read twenty-five sketches. Each of those sketches has a different character, so you're talking about a lot of different characters total for each of the actors. There'd be no chance to read these sketches ahead of time; they were cold readings. But Jim would score every time. He would create these full-blown, three-dimensional characters on the first read. I was just astonished. He was just amazingly talented. To this day, I've never seen anything like that.

  When his career took off, was there jealousy from the rest from the cast?

  The show was just about over by then; it was pretty much in its last days. But there was no sense of jealousy.

  When In Living Color premiered, the reviews often included the word “groundbreaking.” Do you think it was?

  Oh, without a doubt. We felt as if there was nothing else on television similar to that show. It was very exciting and you could feel it in the air.

  I remember traveling around as a stand-up comic during that time. People would ask me what I did for a living. I'd tell them I was a comic, and they would nod. I'd then say I also worked as a TV writer. “Oh, what do you write for?” “In Living Color?” “What! You write for In Living Color?”

  That was the reaction back then. The show was huge. There probably hasn't been anything like it since — as far as black TV entertainment goes. It crossed color lines, which was fantastic; it was all-inclusive. It was also one of the first shows to embrace hip-hop culture.

  You have to remember that I grew up during a time — the sixties and into the seventies — when very few black performers were seen on television. I'm not even that old — just in my mid-forties. But there were basically three types of black performers when I was growing up. There was the chitlin's-circuit comedian, like Redd Foxx, who was really raunchy and played mainly black clubs. His material was underground and would appear on what were called “party records.” It wasn't for the mainstream.

  Another type of black comedian was the civil-rights type, such as Dick Gregory. These were comedians who enjoyed taking on current events. They were really loved by the college crowd and the intelligentsia.

  And then there was the third type: These weren't really black comics so much as just comedians for the mainstream, such as Flip Wilson and Bill Cosby. Cos-by was a storyteller, but Flip was one of the best joke-tellers of all the comics at that time. His show [The Flip Wilson Show, NBC, 1970–74] was very influential, at least for people like myself. Flip was very funny — I just couldn't believe how funny he was. He was all personality — all raw. His was a talent that adapted very well to television, unlike some of my other favorite comedians, like Richard Pryor with his show [The Richard Pryor Show, NBC, 1977].

  Do you think Flip Wilson has received the credit he deserves?

  No, not at all. I think he deserves a tremendous amount of credit for influencing a whole generation of black comedians and writers. Flip has definitely been overlooked.

  When Flip was popular, it was really turbulent time in this country. He was a clean-cut black comic who wasn't offensive.
He didn't scare away sponsors. Nat “King” Cole had a show in the fifties, but it was canceled after a year because it never attracted a national sponsor.

  Flip getting his own variety show was pretty much unprecedented. My family gathered together every week to watch the show, and we all felt a kinship with it. Audiences not only had permission to laugh at a black guy but at a whole cast of black performers. The same thing happened later with In Living Color.

  Did you go straight to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air from In Living Color?

  No, I first went to a show called Sister, Sister [ABC and WB, 1994–1999]. I was there for two years. After that, I wrote for Fresh Prince in 1995. Truthfully, Fresh Prince was a bit of a frustrating experience for me. I did end up writing a couple of episodes, but I didn't last the season.

  The show-runner, basically the head writer — was fired just as I arrived, and the show got a new show-runner. And then this guy was fired. We got another show-runner. This one was not experienced in running a TV show, so I ended up leaving.

  I then started working on the PJs. Actually, I take that back — I worked on a show for Fox called The Show, which was about a white guy who joins the writing staff of a black sitcom. It was a solid idea and fun to work on while it lasted. We had a fantastic actor for the pilot. He was extremely funny and just brilliant, but Fox didn't want him for the series, because they thought he wasn't good-looking enough. That man's name? Paul Giamatti.

  One of the best character actors of our time, and Fox deemed him not quite attractive enough?

  Paul could not have been a nicer guy, and he couldn't have been more hilarious. When the staff heard the news, we were like, “This is insane! Why do they not like this guy?” It was such typical network bullshit.

  I learned a big lesson: Never listen to execs. Just do your own thing. Whether it happens or doesn't happen, at least you did what you wanted and you tried. That's what writers have to get into their heads — no matter what you come up with, it won't ever be as bad as the executives' suggestions.

  Is this why you decided to work with Eddie Murphy in the late-nineties, on The PJs? Were you looking for a more liberating experience?

  Partly. I was very excited about doing something different. The concept was Ed-die's — but it wasn't yet fully formed. He wanted a show that would take place in the projects. He thought all sitcoms were becoming too suburban, and he wanted to do something that was new, that had a different rhythm to it.

  For me, it signaled a nice change of pace from what I had been working on.

  Do you need different chops to write for animation than for live-action?

  It is different. You have to write more detail, and you have to get used to a different pace — a faster pace within the show itself. More material is used.

  There were a lot of things I had to learn; animation's definitely a different beast. Every detail is storyboarded. You don't have the luxury of having an actor sell a joke or an emotion.

  Had you known Eddie previously?

  I had never met him, no. I was always a big fan, but I never appreciated how funny he was until I actually met him. Pure force of character. When he's not acting, he's very quiet and polite and soft-spoken — but he's also very, very sharp. Extraordinarily observant. When that light switch is turned on, it's awesome. It's just ridiculous.

  I remember that during our first table reading for The PJs, Eddie got up and went to the bathroom. He stayed there more than twenty minutes. I was getting scared. I thought, Oh, man, I wonder if he's lost his nerve. He barely worked in television since Saturday Night Live, which was fifteen years earlier.

  I wouldn't say that he was scared, but he seemed a bit nervous. He finally returned to the reading and just wowed everybody. He exudes raw power.

  Eddie Murphy is another example of someone who never attended college and learned everything on his own.

  I always respected Eddie because of what you just said. He's a self-made man, and he carved out his own success by sheer force of will. Then again, I think that his youth may have actually hurt him in the early part of his career — he didn't have a chance to really develop his comic voice.

  He was very talented as a stand-up, but he didn't have much to say at the time. He never had a chance to be an adult; only a star.

  Looking at Eddie Murphy's stand-up films — 1983's Eddie Murphy Delirious and 1987's Eddie Murphy Raw — I'm not so sure he'd be able to get away with half of that material today; particularly, his jokes about homosexuals.

  No, it was very adolescent. But here's the thing: The last time Eddie was a private person was when he was an adolescent. So that's where he left off; that's his point of reference.

  Before he moved into his New Jersey mansion, Bubble Hill.

  Yes, exactly. A lot of people in show business get to an age where they stop growing emotionally.

  What age did you stop?

  At about fifteen.

  Why then?

  It's my age of identification. I like doing magic tricks, I like to play and to have fun, and I'm very curious about many different things. I want to learn.

  Do you think most comedy writers have stopped at fifteen?

  Most comedy writers are still in high school, because in high school you feel like you know more than everybody else. I'd say the majority of comedy writers have stopped at around fifteen or sixteen.

  Comedians are even worse. Maybe 7-years-old — at the most eight. And actors are even worse than comedians! Most are stuck at the ages of three or four.

  How about an actor/comedian?

  An actor/comedian is about eleven or twelve, the period right before their uncomfortable adolescence. They have very low self-esteem, and they're just not sure what the fuck's going on.

  Writers are a little more adult than comedians and actors. There's more of a thought process with them; it's not just a knee-jerk reaction. You don't necessarily need to be around others. You can work alone. But they're still not adults. Otherwise, they wouldn't be writers.

  What was the advantage of using Claymation on The PJs, as opposed to live actors?

  The process wasn't quite Claymation, but more stop-motion. Claymation is reforming the clay. Stop-motion is when you place different pieces onto molded figures to make it appear as if the lips and eyes are moving. You have replacement eyes, replacement mouths. It's a tremendous amount of work. It has all the disadvantages of live action and all the disadvantages of animation. Simple scenes take forever — and are extremely expensive. Each thirty-minute episode cost about a million dollars.

  Were you surprised by the controversy that surrounded The PJs? A few black TV writers, including Yvette Lee Bowser, the creator of Living Single, and Susan Fales-Hill, who wrote for A Different World, were highly critical of what they perceived to be the show's negative stereotypes.

  I was surprised. We were just making a comedy. We never expected people to get up in arms about the show — especially one featuring clay characters.

  I met with the N.A.A.C.P. They weren't thrilled about a few of the characters drinking beer. I said, “But the father in the Family Guy got drunk and fell on his ass in the first episode! And Homer Simpson drinks beer all the time!”

  They said, “Well, those characters are cartoons. Yours are real.”

  We said, “No they're not! They're made out of clay!”

  Some of the jokes were pretty sharp for a show broadcast prime-time on Fox. In one episode, a sign is visible on a Housing and Urban Development — controlled building: “HUD: too little, too late.”

  If we can't make fun of ourselves, who can we make fun of? The N.A.A.C.P. hated everything about the show. They didn't like that we featured a crack addict and a character who ate dog food. But the question was, Who decides what's funny and what's “correct”? The N.A.A.C.P.?

  You can't please everyone. You just try to do what you think is funny. If you attempt to appease advocacy groups, good luck. You can do it, I suppose, but it's not going to be funny.
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br />   It wasn't just the N.A.A.C.P. criticizing the show. Spike Lee also expressed his displeasure. He called the show “really hateful … toward black people.”

  I'm always suspect of people in this business who criticize others' work. Especially someone as controversial as Spike Lee, who is known to paint characters in broad, stereotypical strokes.

  Just because you're dealing with certain elements doesn't mean you're condoning them.

  Exactly. Bill Cosby gets criticized for saying that black families need to take more charge of their destinies, and that black fathers need to be more responsible. That is not a negative message. That's a positive message, and yet he's routinely criticized. But there are people out there who disagree with this. Even if you say the most obvious things, people will still disagree with you.

  In the real world, there are crack addicts and alcoholics. Some of them are black and live in urban areas. We didn't make that up.

  Eunetta Boone, a story editor for The Fresh Prince and a writer and producer of numerous sitcoms, said that the most difficult thing in Hollywood is to be a black comedy writer.

  She also said it was very rewarding, if I remember correctly.

  Do you think there are enough black comedy writers on television?

  I don't know how to answer that question the way it's phrased, because I don't know what you mean by “enough.” I think writing comedy comes from one's particular point of view. I would certainly like more black comedy writers to be able to write on mainstream shows — I think that would be fantastic. But I don't think you necessarily need a certain number from any one group to validate a point.

  There's no reason why black writers should write only for black shows, or why white writers should only be allowed to write for a certain type of show; I think that's silly. If a writer has a unique point of view and there's talent behind it, then that's the important point. Race is a bonus to me in some cases, but it's not a necessity.

  How did you come up with the idea for The Bernie Mac Show? You were the show's creator and executive producer.

  From watching Bernie's stand-up act. In particular, it was his routine about taking care of his sister's kids while she was dealing with a crack addiction — that was based on fact, by the way.