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

by Mike Sacks

  You managed to capture Bernie Mac's act very well. It's not easy for a comedian to make the transition from stand-up to sitcom character.

  I was intrigued by the way Bernie would address his audiences. I remember seeing him perform in Charlotte, North Carolina. He said, “Now, Charlotte, you know what I'm talking about. You know Bernie Mac.”

  I thought it was funny that he would personalize the entire audience as if it were an individual. It occurred to me that this would be very powerful thing to do with all of America — to treat the country as one single viewer.

  The show's tone and format reminded me of a reality show; in particular, the style of camerawork.

  I was actually taking my cue from reality shows that had just started around this time. I felt you could transfer some of the unique qualities of this “reality,” if you could call it that, to a fictional world. I wanted a sitcom where you felt you were just observing a family — almost as if you were eavesdropping on the action. I didn't want the performances to be thrown in the audience's faces, so they'd be forced to laugh at jokes.

  Malcolm in the Middle was a hit the previous year, but it had a kind of hyper- reality, comic-book feel to it. It didn't stay within the bounds of our reality. I wanted to do the opposite. I wanted to create situations that were real within this reality.

  Here's an example: There was a scene in the pilot where Bernie is sitting in a chair, talking to the camera about the three kids he's now in charge of watching. You can hear one of the kids, Jordan, crying in the background. Bernie tells Jordan to “shut up, be quiet,” then rolls his eyes and reluctantly leaves the chair to see what the problem is. The camera stays on the empty chair. We — as viewers — had no idea Bernie was going to leave. And because we didn't anticipate this moment, we aren't going to cut away.

  This was all about life happening in the moment. As a writer, it was fun to come up with this type of scene. All of those realistic details were written into the scripts. That was the feel I wanted — to break the rhythm of a typical sitcom.

  The show definitely had its own unique rhythm that was entirely different from any other sitcom on the air at that time.

  I didn't look to television for that rhythm. I looked to the French New Wave movies from the late fifties and early sixties, specifically The 400 Blows and Breathless. The editing style of those films is so interesting to me; the quick cuts, the back and forth, the camera as the viewers' point of view. It was very unpredictable, and I wanted to go for that type of feel.

  To someone who was a fan of those movies, you could see the familiarities right away. But for most people, The Bernie Mac Show just seemed naturalistic. It had an effect on them, even if they didn't quite know the references.

  Did that New Wave style heighten the show's jokes?

  There were many moments you never could have achieved on a three-camera sitcom. You had more at your disposal — more tricks that created truthful moments. Don't forget, the basic premise of this show was that Bernie's sister was on crack cocaine, and Bernie was now in charge of her kids. That's a serious issue. Your heart goes out to these children. I knew if there was an emotional honesty to it — if I treated the subject with pure emotional honesty — I could have Bernie do anything. And, by being honest, I had more leverage when dealing with the darker side of the humor.

  There would be no way to write a line like, “When a kid gets one-year-old, you got the right to hit 'em in the throat or stomach,” and get away with it if Bernie didn't love those kids — and if that didn't come through for the viewer.

  How long did it take for you to notice other sitcoms adopting this approach?

  I'd say a couple of years. Arrested Development came on after our show, and it used some similar elements, although it had an even more realistic look.

  The British version of The Office began around the time of our show, and supposedly Stephen [Merchant] and Ricky [Gervais] liked what we had done. That show just blew me away. You believed these characters' emotional lives. You believed these were real people working in a real environment. Hence, the Gervais character [David Brent] could really get away with anything.

  Is it more difficult to write jokes for that type of ultra-realistic character, such as David Brent or Bernie Mac? The jokes have to be funny, of course, but also tethered to reality.

  I find it easier to write that style of joke, quite frankly. It comes more organically. I find it much more difficult to write the standard style of sitcom joke. It's too artificial. It's much easier to come up with a real response that's genuinely from a character's point of view.

  We were criticized by the Fox executives of The Bernie Mac Show for that very writing style. Fox wanted a funnier show. They wrote me a memo that said: “No more poignancy.” I don't think they liked any episode from that first season. They made me promise to make the show funnier, and I had to beg them to not make the show a gag fest.

  We were on at nine o'clock on Wednesdays and we had good, solid ratings for the entire year. But the execs didn't think those numbers were good enough — they felt they should have been much higher. They never understood the show. I think the executives running the Fox network at that time just preferred big, broad fart humor.

  Isn't it usually the opposite: that executives want more heart and not as many fart jokes?

  They wanted a show like Welcome Back, Kotter, where each of the characters would utter the same exact joke every episode. To me, that's not real. Bernie Mac's family wouldn't be cracking jokes each week like Norm did at the bar in Cheers.

  I was fired in 2003.

  From there, you helped develop the American version of The Office. The success rate for British comedies remade in America is not very high: Coupling, Fawlty Towers, Are You Being Served? These American versions were all disasters.

  Greg Daniels [a writer for SNL, The Simpsons, Seinfeld, King of the Hill] was the show-runner for the American version of The Office, and he did a brilliant job of making that show work. I was a consulting producer, which just meant that I was one of the writers for the first two seasons. We knew about those other failures you just mentioned, but we never worked in the negative. We wanted to give the show the authenticity I was talking about earlier — making the characters as real as possible.

  How heavily involved were Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant in the American version?

  Pretty much not. They gave Greg their blessing, and they didn't interfere. They wanted Greg to find his own way of attacking the subject.

  The show started out a little shaky; it took time to find its legs.

  NBC wanted Greg to shoot the pilot from a script from the British Office. I know that Greg did not want to do this, because he wanted to start fresh. It wasn't the best way to break away from the British version. It was only with our second episode, “Diversity Day,” when a diversity consultant is brought in for a sensitivity-training workshop, that we had a new script and we really felt we were beginning fresh.

  How much does a show like The Office get rewritten? What percentage of your original script ended up on the screen?

  The Office gets rewritten a lot. Some sitcoms are rewritten more than others, but Greg is very much into rewriting scripts to make them as good as they can possibly be. It's more work, but it does pay off in the end.

  At the very least, the story itself is always broken ahead of time by the writing staff.

  What does “broken” mean?

  “Breaking the story” means getting the skeleton of it down on paper. Once you have that structure, you can work from it. It's always easier to have that framework ready as soon as possible.

  The story comes first, and then the dialogue?

  Absolutely.

  Does that hold true for all sitcoms?

  I can't speak for other sitcoms, but it has certainly held true for every sitcom on which I've been a writer or producer. When I was working on The PJs, if the third act didn't work, I'd throw out the entire act. I would do the same thing at The Be
rnie Mac Show. I didn't care about the jokes so much as the story. The jokes are always the easiest to produce.

  I would create the bulk of The Bernie Mac Show in the editing room. Do you remember the episode in the first season when Bernie takes the kids to church [“Saving Bernie Mac,” December 5, 2001]? He's trying to get God into them. But the first act was just too long. We had some good beats in it — meaning those moments that moved the plot along — but that first act just didn't work for me. I gutted pretty much the entire act until there was basically nothing left. It almost immediately went to the second act, but I didn't care. As far as I was concerned, if the first act didn't service the story, it had to be eliminated.

  Again, this was in the editing stage, and hopefully you don't have to do that often. It's always much easier to take care of that during the writing stage.

  How long do first, second, and third acts typically last in a sitcom?

  Not all shows have three acts. But if they do, there's usually what's called a “Teaser” in the very beginning, that will last for about a minute — just a single joke that may or may not be related to the overall plot. The first act is about ten minutes, the second about the same length, and then a third, which might last for one minute.

  With The Office, Greg overshoots on purpose, to have more to work with. He'll shoot about forty pages of script, which is the equivalent of about forty minutes. That's double what's produced for the typical sitcom.

  The first edit will cut the show down to around thirty-five minutes, and then it's edited down further, to twenty-two minutes. That's a lot of material to cut. Keep in mind that it's hard enough to cut down an episode that's five minutes over, let alone twenty. But this allows Greg to have more choices. He can eliminate an entire subplot if it doesn't service his needs for the story.

  I'm assuming that a lot of the writers for The Office might not be so happy to see their jokes removed.

  I would agree with that. But if you want to be successful, you have to learn how to deal with that. These are just jokes. You can always come up with more later. Never become too attached to what you write; otherwise, you'll never survive as a TV comedy writer.

  Let's talk about your appearances on The Daily Show, as the “Senior Black Correspondent.”

  When I was first going to appear on the show, Jon [Stewart] wanted me to play a black conservative. I thought that was funny, but I didn't want to be anti- anything; humor runs dry with that attitude. I'd rather speak more in my natural voice. I wanted to sound naturally contrarian, and not as knee-jerk as I could have been. Sometimes I sound more liberal, sometimes more conservative. Who cares, you know? I'd just like to find my particular truth, instead of being pigeon-holed. It's less predictable this way. If I'm just a conservative or just a liberal, you know what my stance is going to be on these issues before I even open my mouth.

  On one episode in January 2007, you came out against Black History Month. In response to the question, “Don't you feel that Black History Month serves a purpose?” you replied, “Yes — the purpose of making up for centuries of oppression with twenty-eight days of trivia. I'd rather we got casinos.”

  That came from my own particular grounded reasoning. It wasn't a one-dimensional mockery just for the hell of it. Another black comedian might have said that twenty-eight days is not enough to honor the black experience, but I really think twenty-eight days is too much. Maybe there's too much reverence for this sort of thing. I think people would agree with me that it's much better to receive a tax-free casino than an honorary month. I don't think there's much disagreement with that — and the joke becomes richer because of it. There should be no racial loyalty so much as comedy loyalty.

  That motto is on my family crest, by the way.

  I was going to end this interview by asking if you had any pithy comments, but that was pretty damn pithy.

  I like the word “pithy.” Pithy's a good word. I'll try to do it justice.

  For those young readers looking to get started in a TV writing career, what advice would you have for them? As a producer, do you look for anything specific with these scripts?

  I'm sure other writers and producers would have different opinions on what and what does not work. But for me, in general, I look for a unique voice — maybe something I haven't quite read before in terms of style and imagery. I can point out pretty quickly if this writer has a different point of view. Mediocrity is pretty easy for me to sniff out. Try to write from your experience. Try not to be derivative, like so many writers can be with references to pop culture. Investigate your own life.

  Beyond that, only do comedy if you love to do it. I love comedy, and I love to make people laugh. I truly respect the people who came before me and who did it well. It's important to know your history — if only to know what you shouldn't be writing.

  I never thought I would ever be in the same company with the people I now work with. I recently received an e-mail from David Zucker, a co-writer and co-director of the first Airplane! I remember when Airplane! came out in 1980. I was like, I could never be this funny as a writer! Now he's sending me an e-mail saying, “Hey, Larry. How's it going?” I thought, Wow. This is just something!

  I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood, a little down on its heels. For most of my childhood, my father worked as a probation officer. My parents divorced when I was ten. I never graduated college. Things have worked out well.

  And they can for you, too.

  Jack Handey

  Jack Handey has an unusual problem. His name is so famous that most people don't believe he actually exists. They assume he's a marketing creation, fabricated in order to give an identity to one of comedy's longest-running, consistent franchises. “Deep Thoughts With Jack Handey,” which became a staple on Saturday Night Live during the nineties, sounds like something that was invented by a team of writers, not an actual guy named Jack who, unlike almost every other writer to work at SNL, was better than average at self-promotion.

  “Deep Thoughts” first appeared in National Lampoon in 1982, but it was Saturday Night Live that introduced “Deep Thoughts” to a wider audience, transforming Handey, or at least his supposed nom de plume, into the realm of comedy immortality. Each segment would begin with New Age — music played over shots of soothing and idyllic nature scenes. In a calm, reassuring voice, Handey would read what at first appeared to be a saccharine- sweet aphorism. As the text scrolled across the screen, that aphorism would turn bizarre, and then, more often than not, sinister.

  “Deep Thoughts” were essentially one-liners without the corniness of a Borscht Belt routine. It could involve fond memories of a father killed by a clown, or making children cry because they think Disneyland had burned down, or a reminder that laughter won't cure tuberculosis, or the difference between boxing and ballet (hitting), or why it's okay to cut down trees if they scream all the time, for no good reason. At the very least, “Deep Thoughts” proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that almost anything is funny if it ends with the chestnut: “And also, you're drunk.”

  Handey, born and raised in Texas, first attempted to become a professional writer at the San Antonio Express-News, but he quickly learned that he lacked the unironic sensibilities for serious journalism. He was eventually hired as a writer for Saturday Night Live, first in 1975 and then, after leaving the show for a few years, again in 1985. When “Deep Thoughts” became a hit — which led to four bestselling books, including Deep Thoughts (1992), Deeper Thoughts: All New, All Crispy (1993), Deepest Thoughts: So Deep They Squeak (1994) and The Lost Deep Thoughts: Don't Fight the Deepness (1998) — Handey expanded his comedy vision to such SNL recurring bits as “Fuzzy Memories,” which depicted disturbing recollections from a fictional childhood, and “My Big Thick Novel,” which were short excerpts from a supposedly thousand-plus page book. He was also responsible for such popular skits as “Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer” (1991–96), “Happy Fun Ball” (1991) and “Toonces the Driving Cat” (introduced in 1990, and named after on
e of Handey's actual cats).

  After leaving Saturday Night Live in 2002, Handey started writing essays for The New Yorker, but he never veered far from the comedy terrain of “Deep Thoughts.” His pieces — recently published in the Hyperion collection What I'd Say to the Martians and Other Veiled Threats — typically began with a predictable cliché taken into demented, unexpected directions. “Eventually, I believe, everything evens out,” he wrote in one of his more popular New Yorker pieces. “Long ago, an asteroid hit our planet and killed our dinosaurs. But, in the future, maybe we'll go to another planet and kill their dinosaurs.”

  Weirdly enough, the world might never have discovered Jack Handey if it wasn't for another comedy genius, Steve Martin. During the early seventies, they were neighbors in Santa Fe, New Mexico, long before either had accomplished any discernable success. Martin recognized Handey's unique comedy gifts — “Instead of going one leap forward,” Martin told USA Today, “[Jack] goes about three leaps forward” — and hired Handey to write jokes for his standup act, including his 1980 TV special, Comedy Is Not Pretty. Handey penned one of Martin's most memorable routines, called “What I Believe.” With mock sincerity, Martin talked about his personal philosophy, which included such inexplicable tenets as never referring to a woman's breasts as “winnebagos” or “golden bozos,” and his realization that it was a mistake to buy a “thirty-story, one-bedroom apartment.”

  How did you first meet Steve Martin?

  I was living in a 150-year-old adobe house on Upper Canyon Road in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I think I was twenty-three or twenty-four. This was in the early seventies, when I was working as a reporter for The New Mexican. The house had been cut in half. I lived on one side, and Steve Martin lived on the other side. He would come over and play his banjo.

  What was Steve Martin doing in Sante Fe? I thought he was raised in California.