"I Can't Hear You"

I don’t know if this is a frequently heard story I casually picked up or if it’s a story someone told me directly.  That’s how it works sometimes.  You hear a story on the news and you eventually think it happened to you.

I am pretty sure a wonderful comedy writer who happens to be female told me this story about her.  Though I have no doubt it happened a lot.

This wonderful comedy writer worked on the staff of a popular television show.  She was not new to the business.  She had admirable credits and professional respect.

Yet here is what happened.

She is participating in a “pitch session”, the show’s writing staff gathering to “punch up” the script under the direction of the show runner who decides what goes into the script and what doesn’t.

Everyone’s pitching ideas, some involving “story” or “character”, but mostly, it’s about jokes, replacing jokes believed to be funny but it turns out they weren’t.

The wonderful comedy writer pitches a joke. 

The joke is summarily shot down.

She pitches another joke.

Her pitch is totally ignored. 

She pitches a third joke.

She is coldly rebuked for the joke’s “missing the point.”

The woman, although naturally gritty, is human.  The cumulative rejection has its inevitable effect.

Her deflated retreat.

The thing is, she wants to contribute, and she is determined to do so.

Which she ultimately does.

When a joke in the script appears “iffy”, there is always the call:

“Can we do better?”

The wonderful comedy writer believes that she can.  Facing a “Brick Wall” of rejection, she devises a subterfuge.

She turns to the male comedy writer sitting beside her, whispering her “joke pitch” into his ear. 

The male comedy writer pitches the joke.  There is a big laugh.  The joke goes into the script.

That’s how it was back then.  (And may, to some degree, still be.)  A guy pitches it – “Great joke!”  A female comedy writer pipes up – “No dice.”

And now a story about me.

Demonstrating I am not only sensitive to injustice but monumentally self-centered.

And also I can identify.

It is my last job in television.  I am a one-day-a-week consultant on According To Jim, an “okay” half-hour comedy I gave the same care and attention to as to the landmark Larry Sanders Show, on which I consulted at the same time.

I swear, I was equally engaged.

According To Jim’s rewrite procedure involved splitting the show’s writing staff in half, each rewriting one act of the two-act episode, then meeting together for the “finishing polish.”  (As opposed to a “finishing Polish”, where they serve borscht.)

Every week, the show runner divided the (not always the same) writers into two separate “rooms”, one supervised by the show runner himself, the other led by the show’s ranking producer, who’s name was Jeffrey.

Long story short – when they put me with Jeffrey, I had the same experience as the wonderful comedy writer in the earlier story.  Though I pitched my heart out, I got nothing into the script.

Whereas…

When I was in the room led by the show runner, my contributions were enthusiastically received, occasionally inducing loud and prolonged laughter.  So long and profound, in fact, someone would race from the other room to find out what was so funny.

That “someone” was invariably Jeffrey.  

(I wanted to ask him, “How come I’m not funny in your room?” but I didn’t.  Nor when he asked, “Who pitched it?” – meaning the “Big Joke” – did I ever say “Me.”) 

(Humble people would never include that.  Less humble ones would, but only in brackets.)

Sometimes, although you objectively deserve to, you just don’t get heard.  Not infrequently, it’s a gender issue.  Sometimes it’s “birth order.”  (See: The hilarious “Stagecoach” sequence in Avalon.)  Sometimes it’s “For some reason, this guy Jeffrey can’t stand me.”)

With such behavior in rewrites, the script inevitably suffers, because great stuff is left out.  Which is a good reason not to do it.

A more important reason is it’s wrong.

Did I ever not hear people myself?

I probably did.

Hopefully, it wasn’t a lot.

And should the opportunity return,

I would definitely do better.