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

by Mike Sacks

  I think he was looking to get out of L.A. for a while, and he liked using Santa Fe as a base. He was traveling a lot, performing at Playboy Clubs and other clubs around the country. He wasn't famous yet.

  He had already been a television writer for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour [CBS, 1967–69], but he was now focusing on his stand-up act.

  Was his stand-up persona already firmly in place, or was it still evolving at this point?

  I told him, “Instead of a spear through the head, Steve, what about an arrow? It's lighter and not as unwieldy.” No, I'm guessing his comedy character was pretty much developed by then. A few years after I met him, I moved to San Antonio, Texas, and one night I saw Steve performing on The Tonight Show. I said, “Hey, my neighbor!”

  I sent Steve some samples of my humor column and asked if I could write for him. He liked my material and said yes. Later, when he got his first NBC television special, Steve Martin: A Wild and Crazy Guy [November 22, 1978], he called me out to L.A. to work on it. It was the proverbial “lucky break.”

  Steve's material was brilliantly funny and a true breakthrough. It was silly and stupid, which a lot of comedy people are afraid of. They'd rather do satire, with a capital S. I've never liked that sort of humor.

  Did you contribute jokes to any of Steve Martin's albums?

  The only album I contributed to was Steve's last, The Steve Martin Brothers [Warner Bros., 1981]. One of the jokes I wrote was “I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, and wholesome things that money can buy.”

  How would you define Steve Martin's sensibility? It's aged very well and, to this day, seems quite modern. I'm thinking not just of his stand-up act but his first book, 1979's Cruel Shoes. One sees the influences from that book on, among other publications, McSweeney's.

  What's great about Steve's sensibility is that it appeals to smart people and dumb people alike. That, to me, is the best comedy.

  I think Cruel Shoes is hilarious. Seeing very short, almost cryptic comedy bits like that probably influenced me to write “Deep Thoughts.”

  How did “Deep Thoughts” get started in 1991?

  Originally, it started in print, as a kind of parody of sensitive, diary-type writings. I had several published in the eighties in a college magazine called Ampersand, and also in National Lampoon and George Meyer's Army Man magazine. Later, they began to appear on Saturday Night Live.

  Did you feel that you had a backlog of jokes that needed an outlet and “Deep Thoughts” could be it?

  No, it was always its own thing. And I tried and tried to get them published as a book, with no luck. I have a folder full of rejection slips. I realized that a way to have them seen — and subsequently published — was to put them on TV. I worked on SNL, so why not?

  How do you know when a Deep Thought works? Do you show it to anyone else? Or does it just ring true for you, and you're confident it'll work?

  It's weird, but I'm not a very good judge of “Deep Thoughts.” The ones I think are great usually turn out to be not very good. And the ones that I think are okay — or pretty good — are usually the ones that people really enjoy.

  What are some of the ones you think work?

  One I've always liked is: “Anytime I see something screech across a room and latch onto someone's neck, and the guy screams and tries to get it off, I have to laugh, because what is that thing?!”

  Or: “Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.”

  There are others, but I'm forgetting them. I'll e-mail them to you.*

  Jack Handey's Favorite Deep Thoughts:

  If you define cowardice as running away at the first sign of danger, screaming and tripping and begging for mercy, then yes, Mister Brave Man, I guess I am a coward.

  To me, it's a good idea to always carry two sacks of something when you walk around. That way, if anybody says, “Hey, can you give me a hand?” you can say, “Sorry, got these sacks.”

  You know what would make a good story? Something about a clown who makes people happy, but inside he's really sad. Also, he has severe diarrhea.

  How high is your attrition rate for jokes?

  For “Deep Thoughts,” the attrition rate is about ten written to one chosen. On a good day, I can write six or seven.

  Can you give me some that have failed?

  There have been so many clunkers, it's hard to isolate just a few. The main reason they didn't work is they didn't get a laugh. Seriously — for me, sometimes a joke or a piece fails because it's too intentionally dark or intentionally weird. Weird doesn't equal funny.

  Was there a reluctance at first on Lorne Michaels's part to put “Deep Thoughts” on SNL?

  Yes. I think there was a feeling that a writer shouldn't have his signature on his work. I wrote some good sketches for the show, bided my time, and eventually was given “Deep Thoughts.” It turned out to be pretty popular, and they were eventually published in four book collections.

  Most SNL viewers don't know which writers are responsible for which specific sketch or joke. But you and Robert Smigel seemed to be the exceptions — both of your names are front and center. Was this one of the advantages to “Deep Thoughts”?

  I wasn't trying to get my name out there, so much as to get “Deep Thoughts” on the air. And, ironically, a lot of people think Jack Handey is a made-up name — a character the show created.

  How did you get the job at SNL?

  I first worked for a prime-time version of Saturday Night Live called The New Show. This was in 1984 on NBC. Steve Martin had recommended me to Lorne Michaels, the producer. I gave up a great house I had been renting in L.A., confident the show was going to be a big hit and I'd be in New York forever. But it was a huge bomb. The show had a great cast, and just an amazing writing staff — people like James Downey, Al Franken, Tom Davis, Buck Henry, Max Pross, Tom Gammill, and George Meyer, who later went on to write for The Simpsons.

  Do you remember any of the sketches that George Meyer wrote for The New Show?

  He wrote one sketch I loved about a guy who realizes he's been drugged: “Been drugged … must get help ….” Along the way he meets other people who, coincidentally, also sound like they've been drugged, but actually haven't: “You drugged, too?” “No … from Portugal … English not so good.” Another guy staggers as if he's been drugged, but it's just that his shoes are too tight.

  Later, when we were both at SNL, George wrote a piece that got huge laughs at read-through. It was a radio version of The Road Warrior, in which the characters had to clumsily describe the action, because it was on the radio. That piece never made it to air. A lot of George's material, like mine, was relegated to the last fifteen minutes of the show — or didn't get on at all.

  George has a truly astonishing comedy mind. He can magically come up with a great, out-of-the-blue joke. I wrote a piece at SNL about salmon migrating upstream. Two salmon were talking about how hard it was to get over a waterfall. George's line was to have one salmon say: “I think the key is you can't be afraid to look stupid.” How do you come up with a line like that?

  George and I shared an office at The New Show. Our office was in the old Brill Building on Broadway, overlooking the Winter Garden Theatre. Cats was playing then, and every night a parade of limos would pull up front. One night, George looked out and said, “Look — the pigs are coming to see the cats.”

  Do you remember any of the New Show sketches you wrote?

  I wrote one sketch called “No Camera,” about a couple who forget their camera, then see all kinds of weird, photographable things: Bigfoot, Jackie Onassis, Hitler sword fighting with an angel. That sketch went to dress rehearsal three times, with three different sets of hosts, before it finally got on. I think the low point was when the sketch was being performed by Paul Simon and his then-wife, Carrie Fisher. There was a technical screw-up and they were both just standing on the set waiting. Paul Simon turned to the audience and said, “Don't blame
me — I didn't write this.” The piece finally got on another show when Candice Bergen and Buck Henry co-hosted.

  The New Show, from what I've read, had some very funny and clever moments. Why didn't it last beyond twelve episodes?

  Low ratings. At the time, there were only sixty-five or so prime-time network shows on the air, and I think we'd usually come in 65th. It was a good show, but if there's one thing I've learned about TV comedy, it's that people don't like sketch comedy in prime time. In Living Color was the exception that proves the rule. Also, The Carol Burnett Show. So I guess what I'm saying is that people love sketch comedy in prime time. No, I'm sticking with my first pompous statement.

  That the show even lasted as long as it did was probably due to Lorne's influence with the network. One bad thing about The New Show was that it was not live, like SNL. So if there was a screwup, you could re-tape things. Sometimes we'd end up shooting a sketch three or four times, and the audience would get bored, and the actors would try new lines, because the audience had already heard the original jokes. So, eventually, the audience would just get up and leave. I remember one of the writers, Tom Gammill, once yelling after them: “Go on, get out of here, you quitters!” That really made me laugh.

  After The New Show failed, I moved back to L.A. and worked on some other projects, including Michael Nesmith's very funny show, Television Parts [NBC, 1985] — once again, a good sketch show in prime time that didn't get renewed. When Lorne Michaels came back to SNL in 1985, he and producers Franken and Davis hired me to join them there.

  Was Michael O'Donoghue still writing for SNL when you joined? He originally left in 1978, but returned in 1981 to become head writer.

  Michael had left again when I joined the show, but Cheryl Hardwick, who was the musical director at SNL, was married to Michael. And after read-through, she'd take the scripts home to him. She later told me Michael liked my material — I was thrilled — and they invited me over to their apartment. Michael was an amazingly funny writer, yet he also had this fearsome reputation of cutting people apart with withering remarks. But when I met him, he was very nice.

  He and Cheryl once invited me and my wife, Marta, to a Halloween party at his place. Cheryl played the piano, and people recited Poe — it was all very intellectual. Then Michael O'Donoghue stood up and announced that everyone was now going to witness the unveiling of a new, wonderful painting by a young artist, who was then introduced. I thought, Oh, no. He's making fun of this poor guy.

  Michael said the name of the painting was Desi Arnaz as a Young Man. With a flourish, the painting was unveiled, and there, indeed, was a large oil painting of a young Desi Arnaz, sitting nude on a chair, facing the viewer — only instead of male genitalia he had a big vagina. There was an audible gasp from the entire room. It was a pretty professional-looking painting, actually.

  I barely knew Michael, but he was an incredibly gift ed comedy writer. Aggressive, dark comedy, when it works, is really the best. And he knew how to do it.

  Did you work closely with James Downey, SNL's head writer, for many years?

  I did. Jim is not only a great comedy writer, but that rarest of things: a great comedy producer and editor. His influence in getting funny material on the air, from the mid- eighties to the mid-nineties, was enormous. He has a very eclectic sense of humor — much more so than mine — and if he thought something was funny he would champion it. It made you so happy if Jim sparked to an idea of yours.

  Here's an example of how Jim's mind works: He once went to one of those places in Times Square where you can choose your own headline and have it printed on the front page of a fake newspaper. So Jim had one made up to read something like “CITY COUNCIL TABLES REZONING RESOLUTION.”

  The guy at the fake-newspaper shop was explaining to him, “No, no, you want it to say something like “JACK'S BIRTHDAY CANDLES START FOREST FIRE.”

  Jim remained unconvinced.

  He really is a stunningly smart and charming guy, as well as being flat-out funny.

  Do you have any favorite sketches you wrote for SNL?

  One of my favorites is “Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.”

  Sometimes you can't tell if a sketch is any good or not. And sometimes you feel as if you're hitting a “sweet spot.” That was a sweet-spot piece.

  What other SNL sketches of yours do you think hit the sweet spot?

  Probably “Toonces, the Cat Who Could Drive a Car,” “Tarzan, Tonto …amp; Frankenstein,” and “Happy Fun Ball.”

  The “Happy Fun Ball” commercial parody from 1991 was very influential. The format is used by humorists to this day: A short, dry setup (“The toy sensation that's sweeping the nation!”) and then a long list of repercussions (“Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball”; “If Happy Fun Ball begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head”).

  Another sweet-spot piece. Unfortunately, it's all too common to not hit the sweet spot.

  I also loved to write sketches that had anything to do with James Bond. Comedy writers just love James Bond.

  Why is that?

  I don't really know. Maybe because he's so macho, or because he's such a serious type of character. Abe Lincoln is a very serious character and is also a favorite of comedy writers. Both are bigger than life. And, of course, both drink martinis and drive fast cars.

  What was it about “Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer” that you liked so much? Was it Phil Hartman's performance?

  Phil Hartman was a writer's dream, because he could play anything. Sometimes certain cast members would be “light” in the show, meaning they didn't have much to do. But Phil was never light — he was so versatile. And he never got flustered. You could go to him in the makeup room a minute or so before the sketch and tell him you had changed certain lines, and he was always cool with that.

  Phil was just amazingly talented.

  Were there any sketches for SNL that you felt didn't come off as you envisioned — where you were unhappy with the result?

  Many of them. The obvious fault of most of them was “This idea is not funny” or “These jokes are not funny.” Sometimes the set or prop or a sound effect would not be what you had envisioned, or there were technical glitches, like a window that was painted shut that a character was supposed to open. Or you forgot to change something on the cue cards, so the actors were standing there helpless while you were already having a beer backstage, feeling like a moron.

  When Andrew Dice Clay hosted [May 12, 1990], I wrote a piece having him explain sex to his young son. The joke was that he used overly graphic terms. At first the censors were okay with it, but when he did a dirtier-than-expected monologue, they decided to cut words out of my piece. The show was on a five-second delay, just for Clay. So they started bleeping out words, manually, as the sketch was going — but that's not easy to do, and one of the “dirty” words slipped by. Jim Downey shouted: “One of our planes got through!”

  Some writers, such as Harry Shearer and Bob Odenkirk, have been very critical of the creative process at SNL. They've said that SNL isn't a writer's show. But you seem to have a different take. You've said that SNL is a show where writers are never forcibly re-written.

  I don't like to be re-written, and I don't like to write for characters I didn't create. SNL is probably one of the few shows where a staff writer can achieve that freedom. Maybe it's changed somewhat now, but Lorne was always very good about protecting writers and giving them creative freedom. And it was very smart of him, too, because he knew that writers would really dig deep and work hard if they controlled their own work.

  Writers were never made to change pieces, or even cut them down. It might be suggested they do so, but they weren't forced. I once wrote an SNL sketch called “Sore Toe” [February 15, 1986], starring Jerry Hall, Mick Jagger's then-girlfriend. The premise was that Randy Quaid had a sore big toe, but he stupidly kept inviting the toe to get hit: “Son, why don't you use that hammer to pound a nail in that loose floorboard, right there by my sore toe.” I came up w
ith an absurd ending that wasn't really logical, but it made me laugh. Jerry Hall says, “Your father has gone and hung himself.” The ending made absolutely no sense, which is why I laughed so hard backstage, along with some other writers. But Mick Jagger, who's a friend of Lorne's, lobbied hard to get that ending changed. Lorne never did force me to change it. It went on as written.

  Another important thing with SNL writers is that they cast their own pieces. You would never see “Fireman #1” in the script. The producers would never cast an actor to play the fireman — the writers did that. The script would read “Mike Myers” or “Phil Hartman.” That gave the writers tremendous power. The cast had to be nice to us.

  Fred Wolf, a writer friend from SNL, was once talking about all the crazy studio notes he now receives as a screenwriter in Hollywood. “SNL was the best job I ever had,” he said.

  How did you make the jump from writing for television to writing humor for The New Yorker?

  I have always written print humor. It was my first love. It's the only place where you have control and your name is on it. Before The New Yorker, I had done humor pieces for National Lampoon, Playboy, Los Angeles Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and lots of other newspapers.

  I was editor of my high-school paper, and I received a journalism scholarship. But I was always more interested in writing my humor column than reporting. The column was called Witty Words to Whittle By. My friend Rob Meek came up with the name. How or why I started writing humor is a mystery to me. Maybe it was to try to be popular. But why humor? How did that come out? Comedy writers and comedians tend to be obsessive-compulsives, which you may have noticed. I also am prone to that. So maybe that's where it comes from — just bad brain wiring that allows one to make weird chemical connections one normally wouldn't make. Hence, jokes. Of course, the downside is it makes you check your alarm clock eight times before falling asleep.

  Is O.C.D. a condition you've noticed with many other humor writers? When I spoke with David Sedaris, he mentioned how badly he suffered, and still suffers, from the condition.