“He sits there, like this quiet, studious writer. But when he gets in front of an audience, he turns into ‘Shecky’ Pomerantz.”
Not totally accurate, but not inaccurate either. What the observer was referring to was my surprising transformation from Earl, the hardworking scriptwriter, into Earl, the irrepressible Warm-up Man.
My brother used to have this joke. He said about a man, “He had a mustache, but he didn’t wear it.” I have a passion and a small bordering on medium talent for performing stand-up comedy. But like the man who never wore his mustache, I almost never performed.
However, when the creators of Taxi asked me if I’d be interested in filling in as Warm-up Man for the last four episodes of the season, I was terrified – I can feel retroactive butterflies just thinking about it – but I said I’d do it.
First, what is a Warm-up Man? (You may already know, so I’ll go fast.) From Lucy to Seinfeld, Raymond and Friends, television comedies were consistently filmed, or videotaped, in front of a live studio audience. More recently, comedies like The Office and 30 Rock are filmed without an audience, working in a format similar to a movie.
You can’t have an audience watching the filming of a movie. Here’s why. (You probably know, so I’ll go fast.)
Movies, employing a single camera, film the same scene over and over from various angles. Movies also rarely film the story in sequence. If an audience were sitting there, they’d be bored and confused.
They’d also be there for days. If the audience was watching a feature being filmed, they could be sitting there for years. That’s why there was no audience for the filming of Lawrence of Arabia. Sitting in bleachers under the hot desert sun for a couple of years? People have better things to do.
Like most sitcoms of that era, Taxi was filmed in front of a live studio audience. To alleviate boredom, confusion and a prohibitively lengthy shooting schedule, a method was devised where three – and later four – cameras rolled at the same time, covering the necessary angles simultaneously, thus eliminating the multiple filmings of the same action. The scenes were also filmed in sequence, like a play, so the audience could easily follow the story.
From Lucy onward, and on radio before it, comedy benefited from a live audience. Networks believed viewers sitting alone in their homes needed cues for when to laugh, so even when there wasn’t an audience watching, like for the filming of M*A*S*H, an accompanying “laugh track” was insisted upon. Somehow, there was never a concern about who those people were who were laughing at the antics of those madcap medics during Korean War. Maybe it was the Koreans.
The real advantage of having a live audience for a comedy is that the audience energizes the actors. The audience’s presence makes it a “live” performance. People are watching, generating an adrenaline rush in the actors that cannot be replicated working in front of a film crew wondering how soon till lunch.
Now…
To energize the audience so they can energize the actors requires the specialized and generally underappreciated talents of a Warm-up Man. Warm-up Men come in all shapes and sizes, but their primary intention is the same: to deliver an excited and enthusiastic audience to the show. A “hot” audience would not only rev up the actors, it would also jack up the laughter, which will ultimately accompany the broadcast.
I once heard Abe Burrows, the great TV director Jim Burrows’ father, talk about working as a Warm-up Man on a radio show. Burrows believed that the Warm-up Man’s role – delivering a “hot” audience to the show – was so important, it was dangerous verging on irresponsible to deviate from a set script of sure-fire material. He therefore, performed the same “can’t miss” jokes – word for word – before every audience he warmed up.
Earl, the Warm-up Man, did exactly the opposite.
On the afternoon before the filming, I was brought to the office of two of Taxi’s creators, Jim Brooks and Ed. Weinberger, where they said this:
“Okay. Do your thing.”
“What do you mean?” I replied.
“Your bits. Your jokes.”
”I don’t have any bits or jokes.”
“Well, what are you going to do for your warm-up?”
“I have no idea.”
Whatever the opposite of enthusiasm, encouragement and support is, that’s what I read on those two men’s faces. It’s likely they were thinking that they’d made a serious mistake in giving me the job
I’m not joke teller. I’m always afraid that they’ve heard it before, or they won’t laugh or I won’t tell it right. For me, it’s better to just talk. If nobody laughs, I have an available excuse: “I wasn’t telling a joke. I was just talking.”
I can’t tell you how petrified I was. Facing an audience with no prepared material was akin to jumping out of an airplane with no guarantee that the parachute would open. I would never do that. Why was I doing this?
I picked up the microphone and out I went. For a while, I just stood there. Then I said,
“Hello.”
The audience giggled. I don’t know why. But I was off and running.
“How many people have never been to a filming of a television show?”
Hands went up.
“How many people have been to a filming of a television show?”
Other hands went up.
“How many people would never raise their hands just because somebody they never heard of before asked them to?”
Hands went up. Then, they realized what they were doing and they went down. And then they laughed. It wasn’t a joke, exactly, but it worked. It also communicated an irrefutable message.
“We both know you have no idea who I am.”
I admitted I had never done a warm-up before. As if it didn’t show. I told them I wasn’t being paid, at least not in money. Instead, I’d agreed to do four warm-ups for a gift: a state-of-the-art typewriter of that time – the Selectric-Two. Mathematically, this worked out to my receiving one row of typewriter keys for every warm-up I did. That first week, I was working for “z, x, c, v, b, n, m, comma, period and question mark.” Those were important keys, I explained. I used them all the time in my writing.
Everything I said was nonsense. Everything I said was true. And virtually none of it had been prepared.
I informed the audience that we really needed their laughter. Not only did it energize the actors, but if their response wasn’t strong enough, we’d be forced to supplement it with “canned” laughter provided by a machine.
“We’ll only use the “laugh track” if we have to. “Canned”: laughter sounds fake, which diminishes the show.”
‘I guess it wasn’t funny enough for real laughter.’
“Even worse,” I explained, “the ‘laugh track’ was produced a number years ago. Many of the people you hear laughing on it are now dead. A lot of them had recognizable laughs. Their relatives will recognize those laughs when they’re watching the show. Instead of laughing, those relatives will cry.
“So if you don’t want to make a lot of people cry, we really need you to laugh.”
I also urged them not to try and make their laughs identifiable by surreptitiously throwing in their names.
“Ha, ha, h-Harry Horak.”
“Don’t do that. We have to cut those out. And it takes a lot of time. There’s scissors, there’s glue. It’s really quite a problem.”
I went on in that manner. Being silly. Being real. I also lent credibility to the proceedings through my association with the show. Many audience members recognized my name from the credits as a writer. And for those who missed it, I made my affiliation clear by saying,
“I work on the show.”
I was also letting them know, “I don’t just do this.” I may have actually said, “I don’t just do this.” I didn’t want them thinking I just did that.
During breaks in the filming, I answered questions from the audience. “Ask me anything,” I’d brag. “I know it all.” Then someone would ask, “What does the Assistant Director do?” and I’d say, “I don’t know.” I’d then call over the Assistant Director and say , “What do you do?” And then, they’d tell the audience. They’d also tell me. ‘Cause I really didn’t know.
I also filled the time by singing the theme songs from long-gone cowboy songs. Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Maverick, Rawhide, Jim Bowie, Yancey Derringer, “Johnny Yuma was a rebel…” and quite a few others. Singing cowboy songs was the one “constant” in my warm-up routine. Other warm-up men had different claims to fame. One could balance a jellybean on his nose. Another could contort his face to look exactly like a monkey-face from Planet of the Apes. One of the most successful warm-up men hypnotized people and made them do embarrassing things in front of strangers. I sang Tombstone Territory and Sugarfoot.
And that first warm-up? I sang them all with my back to the audience.
Beyond the songs and the silliness, what I communicated most emphatically was the genuine excitement of living a dream. A highly regarded network comedy. And me, Earl Raymond Pomerantz, was a part of it. My unforced enthusiasm sent a simple and energizing message:
“I’m happy to be here. How about you?”
My longest stint as a Warm-up Man occurred when I warmed up the audience during the entire second year of Cheers. I eventually accumulated some reliable material, but for the most part, I just went out there. I remember, one night, the president of NBC was in the audience, and I said, explaining my enchantment with my newly born daughter,
“Babies are puppies with your face.”
That line would ultimately lead to an assignment to develop a television series about my family. But career advancement was never the reason I did warm-ups. I did them because I had to.
Once in a while, the guy who never wears his mustache has to pull the thing out and plaster it on. Suddenly, he’s a totally different person.
He’s “Shecky” Pomerantz.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Monday, June 9, 2008
"Saddle Up! - Part Eight"
Actors who appeared in classic westerns recall their experiences. As imagined by me.
FROM THE CHAPTER ENTITLED: “CRITTERS”
CRITTER NUMBER ONE:
THE RATTLER
“It was always the same story for us. They’re ridin’ along on the prairie – ‘Rattle! Rattle!’ – and they shoot our heads off.”
“When westerns first started, they really did shoot our heads off. Then, all the rattlers got together and we formed a union. There was only one issue: ‘No shooting our heads off.’ We had the producers over a barrel. They needed us. You can’t be ridin’ along on the prairie, and you’re terrified by a bunny rabbit! So they gave in.
“After that, it was – ‘Rattle! Rattle!’ – Bang! Bang! – and we’d play dead. It was easier on everybody. On the rattlers, for sure. But also on the actors. Some of those cowboy stars were terrible shots. They’d shoot at us, they’d miss, and we’d bite ‘em. We couldn’t help it; it’s a natural response. The stars would swell up, and they’d have to close down production for a month.”
“The rattler symbolized random danger on the open range. In the daytime. At night, it was coyotes. I met some coyotes once. They’re actually very nice.”
“A rattler appearance could also deepen a relationship. ‘Rattle! Rattle!’ – Bang! Bang! – and the Leading Lady swoons into the Good Guy’s arms. Sometimes we’d bite them first, which would lead to the sucking out of the poison. Those scenes could get pretty steamy. I had to look away.”
“I’ve had my head ‘blown off’ by some of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Jimmy Stewart blew my head off once. Nice fellah. He gave me a piece of his sandwich.”
“I’ve been out of the business for quite some time. Westerns are out of fashion. And those ‘Animal Rights’ people didn’t help a bit. They’d come to the set with signs: ‘Don’t shoot the rattlers!’ Know what I’d tell ‘em? ‘Mind your own business!’”
CRITTER NUMBER TWO:
STAMPEDING CATTLE
“The first thing you need to know is that cattle, by nature, do not like to stampede. There’s clouds of dust, you can get stepped on, and there’s all that running. Cattle aren’t crazy about running. We don’t even like to walk that much. Mostly, we stand around and eat grass. Once in a while, we’ll lift our heads. Not because we’re curious. We’re looking for the next place to eat grass.”
“The script says:
‘The cattle are bedded down for the night.’
That, we like. It’s quiet, it’s cool, we don’t have to walk, or, as the script more accurately puts it, be ‘driven.’ ‘Driven’s’ exactly the word for it. Walking in that heat, the cow in front of you kicking dirt in your face, you can’t see where you’re going. It’s nothing you would do voluntarily.”
“You know, it’s the craziest thing. In ‘bedding down’ scenes, they’d have a cowboy sing to us. Can you tell me where they got the idea that cattle enjoy singing? We were trying to get to sleep!”
“Okay, so it’s peaceful. The cattle are starting to unwind. Suddenly – it says in the script:
‘Reaching for a lick of sugar, Yancey accidentally rattles the pots. The cattle are spooked and they start to stampede.’
“What a bunch of baloney.”
‘‘Somebody rattles the pots?’ What do we care? One cow says, ‘What was that?’, another cow says, ‘Pots’, and we go back to bedding down for the night.”
“I’m telling you from experience. No cattle ever stampeded from pots. If it’s guns, you run. We know what happened to the buffalo. But pots? Seeing that on the screen, it’s an insult to cattle. ‘Look at the cattle. They’re afraid of pots.’ It’s outrageous!”
“That’s why were never invited to the premieres. Once, we went. The ‘pots’ scene comes on, and all the cattle in the audience went, ‘Bullsh-t, Bullsh-t…”
“They never had us back.”
CRITTER NUMBER THREE:
SHEEP
“We never felt welcome in westerns.”
Sheep were the outsiders, you know? The ‘Other.’ The herd went to some watering hole after work, did they once invite us to join them? No. It was strictly ‘Cattle only.’”
“I mean, come on, it’s a movie, we’re playing a part. Okay, so we’re also sheep in real life, but, we’re all actors, aren’t we? I mean, I understand maintaining your motivation – the West was changing, the cattlemen are being forced to share the range, the sheep are tearing up the grazing land, which, by the way, we can’t help, that’s just the way we eat – but the degree of animosity was totally uncalled for. It’s like they couldn’t tell the difference between Hollywood and Wyoming.”
“You know, I’ve never mentioned this before – it’s so disgusting – but on the last day of shooting, one of them left a ‘little present’ in our water trough. Classy, huh?”
“That’s cattle.”
FROM THE CHAPTER ENTITLED: “CRITTERS”
CRITTER NUMBER ONE:
THE RATTLER
“It was always the same story for us. They’re ridin’ along on the prairie – ‘Rattle! Rattle!’ – and they shoot our heads off.”
“When westerns first started, they really did shoot our heads off. Then, all the rattlers got together and we formed a union. There was only one issue: ‘No shooting our heads off.’ We had the producers over a barrel. They needed us. You can’t be ridin’ along on the prairie, and you’re terrified by a bunny rabbit! So they gave in.
“After that, it was – ‘Rattle! Rattle!’ – Bang! Bang! – and we’d play dead. It was easier on everybody. On the rattlers, for sure. But also on the actors. Some of those cowboy stars were terrible shots. They’d shoot at us, they’d miss, and we’d bite ‘em. We couldn’t help it; it’s a natural response. The stars would swell up, and they’d have to close down production for a month.”
“The rattler symbolized random danger on the open range. In the daytime. At night, it was coyotes. I met some coyotes once. They’re actually very nice.”
“A rattler appearance could also deepen a relationship. ‘Rattle! Rattle!’ – Bang! Bang! – and the Leading Lady swoons into the Good Guy’s arms. Sometimes we’d bite them first, which would lead to the sucking out of the poison. Those scenes could get pretty steamy. I had to look away.”
“I’ve had my head ‘blown off’ by some of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Jimmy Stewart blew my head off once. Nice fellah. He gave me a piece of his sandwich.”
“I’ve been out of the business for quite some time. Westerns are out of fashion. And those ‘Animal Rights’ people didn’t help a bit. They’d come to the set with signs: ‘Don’t shoot the rattlers!’ Know what I’d tell ‘em? ‘Mind your own business!’”
CRITTER NUMBER TWO:
STAMPEDING CATTLE
“The first thing you need to know is that cattle, by nature, do not like to stampede. There’s clouds of dust, you can get stepped on, and there’s all that running. Cattle aren’t crazy about running. We don’t even like to walk that much. Mostly, we stand around and eat grass. Once in a while, we’ll lift our heads. Not because we’re curious. We’re looking for the next place to eat grass.”
“The script says:
‘The cattle are bedded down for the night.’
That, we like. It’s quiet, it’s cool, we don’t have to walk, or, as the script more accurately puts it, be ‘driven.’ ‘Driven’s’ exactly the word for it. Walking in that heat, the cow in front of you kicking dirt in your face, you can’t see where you’re going. It’s nothing you would do voluntarily.”
“You know, it’s the craziest thing. In ‘bedding down’ scenes, they’d have a cowboy sing to us. Can you tell me where they got the idea that cattle enjoy singing? We were trying to get to sleep!”
“Okay, so it’s peaceful. The cattle are starting to unwind. Suddenly – it says in the script:
‘Reaching for a lick of sugar, Yancey accidentally rattles the pots. The cattle are spooked and they start to stampede.’
“What a bunch of baloney.”
‘‘Somebody rattles the pots?’ What do we care? One cow says, ‘What was that?’, another cow says, ‘Pots’, and we go back to bedding down for the night.”
“I’m telling you from experience. No cattle ever stampeded from pots. If it’s guns, you run. We know what happened to the buffalo. But pots? Seeing that on the screen, it’s an insult to cattle. ‘Look at the cattle. They’re afraid of pots.’ It’s outrageous!”
“That’s why were never invited to the premieres. Once, we went. The ‘pots’ scene comes on, and all the cattle in the audience went, ‘Bullsh-t, Bullsh-t…”
“They never had us back.”
CRITTER NUMBER THREE:
SHEEP
“We never felt welcome in westerns.”
Sheep were the outsiders, you know? The ‘Other.’ The herd went to some watering hole after work, did they once invite us to join them? No. It was strictly ‘Cattle only.’”
“I mean, come on, it’s a movie, we’re playing a part. Okay, so we’re also sheep in real life, but, we’re all actors, aren’t we? I mean, I understand maintaining your motivation – the West was changing, the cattlemen are being forced to share the range, the sheep are tearing up the grazing land, which, by the way, we can’t help, that’s just the way we eat – but the degree of animosity was totally uncalled for. It’s like they couldn’t tell the difference between Hollywood and Wyoming.”
“You know, I’ve never mentioned this before – it’s so disgusting – but on the last day of shooting, one of them left a ‘little present’ in our water trough. Classy, huh?”
“That’s cattle.”
Friday, June 6, 2008
"Story of a Writer - Part Fourteen"
You write what you know.
I knew about cowboys, so I wrote about cowboys. But I myself wasn’t a cowboy. Though I do have a big hat. And a marshal’s badge. Everyone who worked on Best of the West got a badge as a “Thank you” souvenir. I had some replica badges made up, with Best of the West engraved on them. The gift seemed appropriate. It’s what I’d have given out if I’d produced the series in 1865.
Of the three series I created. Best of the West was, for me, the funniest. I guess that’s because it was grounded in fantasy – not the fantasy of the real West, but of the western, though, as it turned out, the real West was pretty much a fantasy too. (The main reason westerns lost their popularity is that once we became aware of what the real West was actually like, we didn’t want to see movies about it anymore.)
Best of the West was less about observed life than about observed television. There’s a good reason for my choosing that as my first show. Up to that point, I didn’t have much of a life. And I had watched a lot of television. So, in fact, I did write what I knew. It just didn’t happen to be life.
Then, life started to happen. I met Dr. M, a single Mom with a bright and beautiful young daughter named Rachel. I knew Rachel would be a challenge right from the start. The first time I met her – she was four – Rachel looked up from where she was playing on the floor and said,
“You look funny.”
Not “You’re funny.” I hadn’t said anything yet. “You look funny.”
Okay. Game on!
As a result of now having a life, my creative imagination awoke to new, more grounded-in-reality inspirations. Of course, being me, my imagination turned directly to death.
I imagined a situation where the lead character – surrogate me – suddenly becomes solely responsible for a little girl he has barely met, and who isn’t totally committed to liking him. It wasn’t that I was wishing Dr. M out of the picture; more likely, I was experiencing the unconscious panic of “what if?” Creatively, I was simply following the longstanding tradition of sitcom fathers with dead wives, as exemplified by classic sitcoms like The Andy Griffith Show and My Three Sons.
(This killing off of mothers in half-hour comedies made up for all the fathers who were knocked off in life insurance commercials.
An idyllic tableau: a balmy summer’s day. A father and son, fishing in the middle of a glass-smooth lake. Over this Hallmark card setting, a deep, disembodied voice intones:
“What would happen to your family if you were no longer around?”
At this point, through some snazzy special effects technique, the father would literally be taken out of the picture. He’s there, he de-materializes, he’s gone. Disappeared from the world. You hope the kid knows how to start the boat. And that his hair doesn’t turn white from seeing his beloved father vaporized.)
My series idea was called Second Dad. Following in the footsteps of premise-summarizing theme songs, like Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch, I imagined a Second Dad theme song, sung by the daughter character in the show that went:
My first Dad left us when I was two
A two years later Mommy married you
Now Mommy’s gone and you’re my Second Dad…
Isn’t that sweet? An abandonment and a death in three lines. And off we go to sitcom hilarity.
Second Dad didn’t sell. But it signaled a new direction in my imaginational process. From then on, everything I would create would be grounded in everyday experience, usually mine. I felt confident in my talents as an observer, and I believed two things:
One: If the situation happened to me, it, or something similar, had happened to other people. The audience would be able to identify.
Two: If what I was presenting was grounded in reality, it may not always be hilarious, but it would never feel fake. Instilled with weight, originality and meaning, the story could stand sturdily on its own, rather than merely serve as a coat hanger for wacky situations and sure-fire one-liners.
“Ringing true” would, hopefully, make the stories matter to the audience. The “funny”, I believed, would always be there. Mostly, it turned out that way. Though, occasionally, the earnestness of my approach simmered the comedy in blah.
Before I forget, let me tell the underlying structure of virtually every sitcom episode I ever saw or wrote. Unless the episodes were serialized, like in Soap and the later episodes of Friends, every sitcom episode followed the trajectory expressed, in another context, in Bruce Jay Friedman’s funny play Steambath:
In Steambath, God, depicted as a Puerto Rican steambath attendant controls everything that happens in the world through instructions he delivers via a flashing electronic console. His instructions can be as major as
“Give Canada a little more rain.”
or as trivial as
“Put bigger bath towels in all the rooms at the Tel Aviv Hilton Hotel.”
Included in his instructions about how things should go is this one:
“The old lady with the parakeet, flies out the window, flies back in.”
That’s every sitcom episode I’ve ever seen. Things start normal, they get crazy in the middle, and at the end, they’re back to exactly where they were at the beginning. Parakeet flies out the window, flies back in.
Nothing has moved forward. Nothing has changed. Every episode plays as if the preceding episodes had never taken place.
(The “amnesia” tradition is also apparent in non-serialized dramas. In Gunsmoke, Matt Dillon was wounded at least four times a season – once, he was shot four times in a single ambush. This means that over the show’s twenty-year run, Marshal Dillon was shot a minimum of eighty times.)
With no show of my own, I went back to writing for other people. During its first two seasons, I wrote episodes for Cheers, working for the Charles brothers, whose prodigious talent was matched by their generosity and kindness. The brothers always treated me with deference and respect. Not that I wasn’t helpful to them.
Cheers struck pay dirt with the tempestuous relationship between the “Sam” and “Diane” characters. Due to budgetary considerations, the show couldn’t retain all the characters who’d appeared the pilot for the series, and there was a discussion about whom to drop. When they asked me what I thought, I replied with confidence and certainty:
“You don’t need Diane.”
Another great thing about the Charles brothers – they never listened to me. I also said I wasn’t crazy about the theme song.
On Taxi, I specialized in writing for a character named “John”, who was later dropped from the show. On Cheers, half of my scripts featured “Coach”, played by Nicolas Colasanto, who subsequently passed away. Having me write for them did not pan out well for the actors.
I started out saying, “You write what you know.” Cheers is about a bar and a womanizer. There was not a lot of personal experience I could draw upon. I did my best, but it wasn’t really a great fit. I did write an episode I liked entitled, “How Do I Love Thee…Let Me Call You Back.” Otherwise, my memories are of working with nice people. And giving them terrible advice.
Something was beginning to gnaw at my innards. My mood had something to do with the “come down” of not having my own show anymore, but there was more to it than that. After working on them for eight years, I was feeling impatient with writing half-hours.
It wasn’t just me. It was the situation comedy itself. After fifty years – going back to Amos and Andy and Fibber McGee on radio – the situation sitcom genre was getting tired. The modular hunks of one setup-punch line after another, the obligatory parting joke when a character left the room, the surprise twists in story and joke-writing formulas that had lost their ability to surprise, the entire format was feeling stale and creaky.
The audience was feeling it too. Enthusiasm for comedies, measured by the ratings, was precipitously on the decline. People were growing weary of the parakeet flying out the window. No matter what hilarity ensued along the way, they knew in the end, it was certain to fly back in.
The sitcom needed CPR. And I needed a change. Unfortunately, I’m not a creature of change. I’ve eaten the same breakfast cereal for thirty years – Spoon-Sized Shredded Wheat – no sugar and it stays crunchy in milk. I wasn’t prepared to leave television for the movies, like some of my contemporaries, one of whom wrote The War of the Roses, and another, Good Morning, Viet Nam.
I do things my own way. What is my own way? “Doing nothing”, would be one way of describing it. “Biding my time”, if you’re being more sensitive. It all comes down to the same thing. When I’m not happy with where I am, I just sit there and wait for something to happen.
And wouldn’t you know it? It did.
Next on Story of a Writer: Dr. Huxtable makes a house call.
I knew about cowboys, so I wrote about cowboys. But I myself wasn’t a cowboy. Though I do have a big hat. And a marshal’s badge. Everyone who worked on Best of the West got a badge as a “Thank you” souvenir. I had some replica badges made up, with Best of the West engraved on them. The gift seemed appropriate. It’s what I’d have given out if I’d produced the series in 1865.
Of the three series I created. Best of the West was, for me, the funniest. I guess that’s because it was grounded in fantasy – not the fantasy of the real West, but of the western, though, as it turned out, the real West was pretty much a fantasy too. (The main reason westerns lost their popularity is that once we became aware of what the real West was actually like, we didn’t want to see movies about it anymore.)
Best of the West was less about observed life than about observed television. There’s a good reason for my choosing that as my first show. Up to that point, I didn’t have much of a life. And I had watched a lot of television. So, in fact, I did write what I knew. It just didn’t happen to be life.
Then, life started to happen. I met Dr. M, a single Mom with a bright and beautiful young daughter named Rachel. I knew Rachel would be a challenge right from the start. The first time I met her – she was four – Rachel looked up from where she was playing on the floor and said,
“You look funny.”
Not “You’re funny.” I hadn’t said anything yet. “You look funny.”
Okay. Game on!
As a result of now having a life, my creative imagination awoke to new, more grounded-in-reality inspirations. Of course, being me, my imagination turned directly to death.
I imagined a situation where the lead character – surrogate me – suddenly becomes solely responsible for a little girl he has barely met, and who isn’t totally committed to liking him. It wasn’t that I was wishing Dr. M out of the picture; more likely, I was experiencing the unconscious panic of “what if?” Creatively, I was simply following the longstanding tradition of sitcom fathers with dead wives, as exemplified by classic sitcoms like The Andy Griffith Show and My Three Sons.
(This killing off of mothers in half-hour comedies made up for all the fathers who were knocked off in life insurance commercials.
An idyllic tableau: a balmy summer’s day. A father and son, fishing in the middle of a glass-smooth lake. Over this Hallmark card setting, a deep, disembodied voice intones:
“What would happen to your family if you were no longer around?”
At this point, through some snazzy special effects technique, the father would literally be taken out of the picture. He’s there, he de-materializes, he’s gone. Disappeared from the world. You hope the kid knows how to start the boat. And that his hair doesn’t turn white from seeing his beloved father vaporized.)
My series idea was called Second Dad. Following in the footsteps of premise-summarizing theme songs, like Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch, I imagined a Second Dad theme song, sung by the daughter character in the show that went:
My first Dad left us when I was two
A two years later Mommy married you
Now Mommy’s gone and you’re my Second Dad…
Isn’t that sweet? An abandonment and a death in three lines. And off we go to sitcom hilarity.
Second Dad didn’t sell. But it signaled a new direction in my imaginational process. From then on, everything I would create would be grounded in everyday experience, usually mine. I felt confident in my talents as an observer, and I believed two things:
One: If the situation happened to me, it, or something similar, had happened to other people. The audience would be able to identify.
Two: If what I was presenting was grounded in reality, it may not always be hilarious, but it would never feel fake. Instilled with weight, originality and meaning, the story could stand sturdily on its own, rather than merely serve as a coat hanger for wacky situations and sure-fire one-liners.
“Ringing true” would, hopefully, make the stories matter to the audience. The “funny”, I believed, would always be there. Mostly, it turned out that way. Though, occasionally, the earnestness of my approach simmered the comedy in blah.
Before I forget, let me tell the underlying structure of virtually every sitcom episode I ever saw or wrote. Unless the episodes were serialized, like in Soap and the later episodes of Friends, every sitcom episode followed the trajectory expressed, in another context, in Bruce Jay Friedman’s funny play Steambath:
In Steambath, God, depicted as a Puerto Rican steambath attendant controls everything that happens in the world through instructions he delivers via a flashing electronic console. His instructions can be as major as
“Give Canada a little more rain.”
or as trivial as
“Put bigger bath towels in all the rooms at the Tel Aviv Hilton Hotel.”
Included in his instructions about how things should go is this one:
“The old lady with the parakeet, flies out the window, flies back in.”
That’s every sitcom episode I’ve ever seen. Things start normal, they get crazy in the middle, and at the end, they’re back to exactly where they were at the beginning. Parakeet flies out the window, flies back in.
Nothing has moved forward. Nothing has changed. Every episode plays as if the preceding episodes had never taken place.
(The “amnesia” tradition is also apparent in non-serialized dramas. In Gunsmoke, Matt Dillon was wounded at least four times a season – once, he was shot four times in a single ambush. This means that over the show’s twenty-year run, Marshal Dillon was shot a minimum of eighty times.)
With no show of my own, I went back to writing for other people. During its first two seasons, I wrote episodes for Cheers, working for the Charles brothers, whose prodigious talent was matched by their generosity and kindness. The brothers always treated me with deference and respect. Not that I wasn’t helpful to them.
Cheers struck pay dirt with the tempestuous relationship between the “Sam” and “Diane” characters. Due to budgetary considerations, the show couldn’t retain all the characters who’d appeared the pilot for the series, and there was a discussion about whom to drop. When they asked me what I thought, I replied with confidence and certainty:
“You don’t need Diane.”
Another great thing about the Charles brothers – they never listened to me. I also said I wasn’t crazy about the theme song.
On Taxi, I specialized in writing for a character named “John”, who was later dropped from the show. On Cheers, half of my scripts featured “Coach”, played by Nicolas Colasanto, who subsequently passed away. Having me write for them did not pan out well for the actors.
I started out saying, “You write what you know.” Cheers is about a bar and a womanizer. There was not a lot of personal experience I could draw upon. I did my best, but it wasn’t really a great fit. I did write an episode I liked entitled, “How Do I Love Thee…Let Me Call You Back.” Otherwise, my memories are of working with nice people. And giving them terrible advice.
Something was beginning to gnaw at my innards. My mood had something to do with the “come down” of not having my own show anymore, but there was more to it than that. After working on them for eight years, I was feeling impatient with writing half-hours.
It wasn’t just me. It was the situation comedy itself. After fifty years – going back to Amos and Andy and Fibber McGee on radio – the situation sitcom genre was getting tired. The modular hunks of one setup-punch line after another, the obligatory parting joke when a character left the room, the surprise twists in story and joke-writing formulas that had lost their ability to surprise, the entire format was feeling stale and creaky.
The audience was feeling it too. Enthusiasm for comedies, measured by the ratings, was precipitously on the decline. People were growing weary of the parakeet flying out the window. No matter what hilarity ensued along the way, they knew in the end, it was certain to fly back in.
The sitcom needed CPR. And I needed a change. Unfortunately, I’m not a creature of change. I’ve eaten the same breakfast cereal for thirty years – Spoon-Sized Shredded Wheat – no sugar and it stays crunchy in milk. I wasn’t prepared to leave television for the movies, like some of my contemporaries, one of whom wrote The War of the Roses, and another, Good Morning, Viet Nam.
I do things my own way. What is my own way? “Doing nothing”, would be one way of describing it. “Biding my time”, if you’re being more sensitive. It all comes down to the same thing. When I’m not happy with where I am, I just sit there and wait for something to happen.
And wouldn’t you know it? It did.
Next on Story of a Writer: Dr. Huxtable makes a house call.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
"I Don't Understand"
There are a lot of things I don’t understand. And when I say, “I don’t understand”, I’m not using “I don’t understand” the way Dr. M uses it when she says, “I don’t understand how you can put your dirty dishes in the sink without running water over them.”
When she says that, Dr. M doesn’t really mean, “I don’t understand.” Not in the sense of, “I don’t understand how to program the DVD player.” “I don’t understand”, in the context of my not running water over the dirty dishes in the sink is Dr. M’s way of saying, “You’re an idiot.”
Dr. M’s trying to be polite by saying it another way. And I appreciate that. But she and I both know that when she says, “I don’t understand”, it has nothing to do with the issue of understanding. Unless, in fact, she’s talking to herself, and she’s saying, “I don’t understand why I married this idiot!”
When I say, “I don’t understand”, I mean I really don’t understand. And what would be great is, if you, out there, understood what I don’t understand, and you contacted me and cleared up the thing I don’t understand so that, hopefully, I could, then, understand.
Though there’s the possibility I may still not understand, because, if you apply the “not rinsing the dishes in the sink” standard, I’m an idiot.
Let’s give it a try anyway.
After a yearlong public humiliation of the candidates known as the Democratic Primary, it appears that we finally have our two nominees for the presidency. I like Obama. And I have a really good reason. He agrees with me on just about everything.
I wrote a book – which is currently stored under my desk – entitled, Both Sides Make Me Angry. In my book, I say many of the same things Obama says, especially concerning how, as a result of a polarizing partisanship, each of the two sides – who have remained the “two sides” since the Sixties – has no ability to and little interest in hearing anything the other side has to say.
In my favorite TV drama ever, The West Wing, this entrenched mutual animosity was labeled “the hate the Right has for the Left, and the mountains of disrespect the Left has for the Right.” This continuing hostility has not helped usd solve or even seriously discuss the major problems confronting our country. I believe there’s a better way to handle things. And so does Obama.
Let me be clear here. I’m not saying that Obama stole my ideas. I’m almost certain he hasn’t read my book. If a tall, skinny guy who looks great in a suit had been hunkering under my desk reading Both Sides Make Me Angry, making notes, I’m pretty sure I would have noticed. He’s welcome to read it if he wants to. He can come over any time. And he doesn’t have to sit under my desk. He can sit in my chair.
Anyway…
Now, that the campaign for President has officially begun, the issue I don’t understand moves powerfully front and center. And that issue is:
The Electoral College.
It’s not that I don’t understand the whole thing. I understand some of it. I understand that the Electoral College came into existence, because The Founding Fathers didn’t trust the people to do the right thing when they voted, so they threw in a little “checks and balance”, called the Electoral College.
Because of the indiscriminate head loppings that took place during the French Revolution, the “rule of the people” got a unfortunate reputation. Those Frenchies went crazy. The Founding Father’s went, “That’s not happening here”, and they came up with the Electoral College system to avert the possibility of massive head lopping in the newly-formed United States.
I understand that.
Another issue is that, due to population deficiencies, the small states were afraid they’d be overlooked in presidential elections, if only the popular vote was considered. The candidates would simply campaign in the more populated states, where the greater number of votes could be had, and totally ignore North Dakoka.
I understand that too.
What I don’t understand is why is the Electoral College voting allocation system is “All or Nothing”? Which, except for one state – and I don’t know what state it is but I know it’s small – the Electoral College voting allocation system is:
It’s “All or Nothing.”
A presidential candidate gets one more vote in a state with, say, a million voters in it, and by doing so, the candidate receives every one of that state’s electoral votes.
Why?
When I went to law school – I attended the University of Toronto Law School for five weeks – I learned two lessons. The first lesson was that I had no business being in law school. That lesson led me to leave law school. The second thing I learned in law school was a Latin phrase, which applies to the law, though I’m not exactly sure how, because by the time they explained it, I wasn’t there anymore.
I still, however, remember the phrase. The phrase was this:
Cui bono?
I took Latin in High School for five years. I was good in Latin, though I was immediately aware that this talent presented few career opportunities for a Jew. However, as a result of my useless Latin education, I know what Cui bono? means.
Cui bono? means “To whom does it benefit?” (“Cui” is in the dative case. Just something I happen to know.)
Cui bono? is the Latin cousin of “Follow the money.” “Follow the money” is purportedly a “Deep Throat” Watergate term. In that case, the investigators followed the money paid to the Watergate burglars into the White House, which ultimately led to the President of the United States being kicked out of the White House.
Similarly, if you follow the trail to who benefits from a statute or a policy or a longstanding institution, you can get an understanding of why that statute, policy or longstanding institution came into effect and why, against all logic, fairness and common sense, it hasn’t been eliminated or changed.
The Electoral College is not democratic, but we live with it because it’s a tradition, we’ve avoided the head loppings, and because, generally, throughout our history, the electors have “rubber stamped” rather than overruled the will of the people, as expressed through the popular vote. So far, so okay. We don’t need those guys, but fine. It gives them a job.
But why does the electoral vote allocation have to be “All or Nothing?”
(I’m going Q and A now. I’ll be both Q and A)
Wouldn’t an allocation of electoral votes in proportion with the popular votes in each state be more democratic than “All of Nothing?”
You would think so.
But we’re not doing that.
No.
Why not?
“Cui bono.”
Okay. Who “Cui bono’s” most from the current “All or Nothing” Electoral College allocation?
Republicans.
How?
By winning battleground states through the promotion of “wedge issues”, such as Gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research, gun control, evolution versus “Intelligent Design”, school prayer, sex and violence on television and any other divisive cultural issue they can think of.
How does that work?
By mobilizing passionate supporters, “Wedge issues” win “battleground states”. “Battleground states” win close presidential elections. Therefore, “wedge issues” win close presidential elections.
When did that happen?
In 2000 and 2004. Maybe 1968 too, which employed the “Southern Strategy”, a “wedge issue” based on racial discomfort. And in 1988. Same reason. Remember Willie Horton?
Can the strategy work in 2008?
With a left of center black candidate with a Muslim-sounding name? Are you kidding me?
It is constitutionally possible to change the Electoral College voting system, to make it proportional rather than “All or Nothing”?
It appears that it is. As I said, there’s one state that already does things that way. I tried to research which one it is, but I got tired and gave up. But I’m almost certain it exists.
And you’re sure a proportional allocation would be better?
If “All of Nothing” disappeared, every state’s electoral votes would be in play. There would be no more “battleground states”, because all the states would be “battleground states”. And you couldn’t ignore the small states, because if the election’s close, you’re going to need every electoral vote you can get.
When every state’s a “battleground state”, “wedge issues” lose a considerable amount of steam. Nationally, stem cell research is supported. And so, or pretty close to “so”, is Gay marriage. With the blunting of “wedge issues”, you could focus on the war, health care, education, the environment and jobs. What some – and by “some”, I mean me – would call real issues.
Didn’t California recently try to get an initiative on the ballot making the electoral vote proportional to the popular vote?
Yeah, but that was a scam. These Republican wise guys simply wanted to siphon off some electoral votes in a state where, because of the “All or Nothing” system, they haven’t been getting any. Changing the process isn’t fair unless you do it in every state. That way, you allow Democrats a shot at some of the electoral votes from, say, Texas, where they, of late, have been shut out. The whole country has to change its system at the same time.
Democrats currently control the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Yes.
And Democrats have suffered as a result of the current “All of Nothing” allocation of the electoral votes.
Yes.
Are Democrats calling for a modification of the Electoral College process?
If they are, I haven’t heard about it.
Why don’t they do that?
You got me, Pal.
I don’t understand.
When she says that, Dr. M doesn’t really mean, “I don’t understand.” Not in the sense of, “I don’t understand how to program the DVD player.” “I don’t understand”, in the context of my not running water over the dirty dishes in the sink is Dr. M’s way of saying, “You’re an idiot.”
Dr. M’s trying to be polite by saying it another way. And I appreciate that. But she and I both know that when she says, “I don’t understand”, it has nothing to do with the issue of understanding. Unless, in fact, she’s talking to herself, and she’s saying, “I don’t understand why I married this idiot!”
When I say, “I don’t understand”, I mean I really don’t understand. And what would be great is, if you, out there, understood what I don’t understand, and you contacted me and cleared up the thing I don’t understand so that, hopefully, I could, then, understand.
Though there’s the possibility I may still not understand, because, if you apply the “not rinsing the dishes in the sink” standard, I’m an idiot.
Let’s give it a try anyway.
After a yearlong public humiliation of the candidates known as the Democratic Primary, it appears that we finally have our two nominees for the presidency. I like Obama. And I have a really good reason. He agrees with me on just about everything.
I wrote a book – which is currently stored under my desk – entitled, Both Sides Make Me Angry. In my book, I say many of the same things Obama says, especially concerning how, as a result of a polarizing partisanship, each of the two sides – who have remained the “two sides” since the Sixties – has no ability to and little interest in hearing anything the other side has to say.
In my favorite TV drama ever, The West Wing, this entrenched mutual animosity was labeled “the hate the Right has for the Left, and the mountains of disrespect the Left has for the Right.” This continuing hostility has not helped usd solve or even seriously discuss the major problems confronting our country. I believe there’s a better way to handle things. And so does Obama.
Let me be clear here. I’m not saying that Obama stole my ideas. I’m almost certain he hasn’t read my book. If a tall, skinny guy who looks great in a suit had been hunkering under my desk reading Both Sides Make Me Angry, making notes, I’m pretty sure I would have noticed. He’s welcome to read it if he wants to. He can come over any time. And he doesn’t have to sit under my desk. He can sit in my chair.
Anyway…
Now, that the campaign for President has officially begun, the issue I don’t understand moves powerfully front and center. And that issue is:
The Electoral College.
It’s not that I don’t understand the whole thing. I understand some of it. I understand that the Electoral College came into existence, because The Founding Fathers didn’t trust the people to do the right thing when they voted, so they threw in a little “checks and balance”, called the Electoral College.
Because of the indiscriminate head loppings that took place during the French Revolution, the “rule of the people” got a unfortunate reputation. Those Frenchies went crazy. The Founding Father’s went, “That’s not happening here”, and they came up with the Electoral College system to avert the possibility of massive head lopping in the newly-formed United States.
I understand that.
Another issue is that, due to population deficiencies, the small states were afraid they’d be overlooked in presidential elections, if only the popular vote was considered. The candidates would simply campaign in the more populated states, where the greater number of votes could be had, and totally ignore North Dakoka.
I understand that too.
What I don’t understand is why is the Electoral College voting allocation system is “All or Nothing”? Which, except for one state – and I don’t know what state it is but I know it’s small – the Electoral College voting allocation system is:
It’s “All or Nothing.”
A presidential candidate gets one more vote in a state with, say, a million voters in it, and by doing so, the candidate receives every one of that state’s electoral votes.
Why?
When I went to law school – I attended the University of Toronto Law School for five weeks – I learned two lessons. The first lesson was that I had no business being in law school. That lesson led me to leave law school. The second thing I learned in law school was a Latin phrase, which applies to the law, though I’m not exactly sure how, because by the time they explained it, I wasn’t there anymore.
I still, however, remember the phrase. The phrase was this:
Cui bono?
I took Latin in High School for five years. I was good in Latin, though I was immediately aware that this talent presented few career opportunities for a Jew. However, as a result of my useless Latin education, I know what Cui bono? means.
Cui bono? means “To whom does it benefit?” (“Cui” is in the dative case. Just something I happen to know.)
Cui bono? is the Latin cousin of “Follow the money.” “Follow the money” is purportedly a “Deep Throat” Watergate term. In that case, the investigators followed the money paid to the Watergate burglars into the White House, which ultimately led to the President of the United States being kicked out of the White House.
Similarly, if you follow the trail to who benefits from a statute or a policy or a longstanding institution, you can get an understanding of why that statute, policy or longstanding institution came into effect and why, against all logic, fairness and common sense, it hasn’t been eliminated or changed.
The Electoral College is not democratic, but we live with it because it’s a tradition, we’ve avoided the head loppings, and because, generally, throughout our history, the electors have “rubber stamped” rather than overruled the will of the people, as expressed through the popular vote. So far, so okay. We don’t need those guys, but fine. It gives them a job.
But why does the electoral vote allocation have to be “All or Nothing?”
(I’m going Q and A now. I’ll be both Q and A)
Wouldn’t an allocation of electoral votes in proportion with the popular votes in each state be more democratic than “All of Nothing?”
You would think so.
But we’re not doing that.
No.
Why not?
“Cui bono.”
Okay. Who “Cui bono’s” most from the current “All or Nothing” Electoral College allocation?
Republicans.
How?
By winning battleground states through the promotion of “wedge issues”, such as Gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research, gun control, evolution versus “Intelligent Design”, school prayer, sex and violence on television and any other divisive cultural issue they can think of.
How does that work?
By mobilizing passionate supporters, “Wedge issues” win “battleground states”. “Battleground states” win close presidential elections. Therefore, “wedge issues” win close presidential elections.
When did that happen?
In 2000 and 2004. Maybe 1968 too, which employed the “Southern Strategy”, a “wedge issue” based on racial discomfort. And in 1988. Same reason. Remember Willie Horton?
Can the strategy work in 2008?
With a left of center black candidate with a Muslim-sounding name? Are you kidding me?
It is constitutionally possible to change the Electoral College voting system, to make it proportional rather than “All or Nothing”?
It appears that it is. As I said, there’s one state that already does things that way. I tried to research which one it is, but I got tired and gave up. But I’m almost certain it exists.
And you’re sure a proportional allocation would be better?
If “All of Nothing” disappeared, every state’s electoral votes would be in play. There would be no more “battleground states”, because all the states would be “battleground states”. And you couldn’t ignore the small states, because if the election’s close, you’re going to need every electoral vote you can get.
When every state’s a “battleground state”, “wedge issues” lose a considerable amount of steam. Nationally, stem cell research is supported. And so, or pretty close to “so”, is Gay marriage. With the blunting of “wedge issues”, you could focus on the war, health care, education, the environment and jobs. What some – and by “some”, I mean me – would call real issues.
Didn’t California recently try to get an initiative on the ballot making the electoral vote proportional to the popular vote?
Yeah, but that was a scam. These Republican wise guys simply wanted to siphon off some electoral votes in a state where, because of the “All or Nothing” system, they haven’t been getting any. Changing the process isn’t fair unless you do it in every state. That way, you allow Democrats a shot at some of the electoral votes from, say, Texas, where they, of late, have been shut out. The whole country has to change its system at the same time.
Democrats currently control the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Yes.
And Democrats have suffered as a result of the current “All of Nothing” allocation of the electoral votes.
Yes.
Are Democrats calling for a modification of the Electoral College process?
If they are, I haven’t heard about it.
Why don’t they do that?
You got me, Pal.
I don’t understand.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
"Influences and enthusiasms"
When I was nine, I noticed a panel in a Woody Woodpecker comic book that made me stare and laugh and stare some more and then throw back my head and laugh even harder. That epiphanic encounter could very well have been my comedy awakening.
For all I know, this could be a very old joke, first carved on an obelisk by a funny engraver, or on sketched on a wall by some irrepressible cave-clown – the best comedy is timeless – but I was introduced to it through Woody Woodpecker.
Okay. It’s a skiing scene. The ground is covered with snow. A large tree stands in the foreground of the cartoon panel. Woody, the skier, has stopped on the hill below the tree, and is looking back up. And what Woody Woodpecker observes is this:
There’s a visible ski tread in the snow around one side of the tree. And a second ski tread in the snow around the other side of the tree, thus indicating that
somehow, Woody Woodpecker had skied around the tree. On both sides!
And he’d made it!
The look on Woody’s face reads: “How did I do that!”
The look on my nine year-old face reads, “How did anyone think of that!”
I was amazed – tickled and delighted too – but mostly amazed. Somehow, someone had imagined something that, in reality, can not happen, and, through his drawing, had made it appear eminently possible. From that imagining came – at least from me – a spontaneous eruption of unstoppable laughter.
I know I didn’t think this out loud, or even consciously, but somewhere in my thought- registering apparatus, I made an asterisked and underlined note to myself that said,
“That’s a good job.”
Somewhere, inside, I had the desire to delight people the way that comic book artist had delighted me. And I kind of knew I could do it. I had done it in life.
When I was seven, in art class, we were asked to paint an outdoor sporting scene. I can’t draw – and I especially can’t draw people – so what I painted was a badminton-playing scene, containing a backyard badminton set – a net, suspended on two poles, with four rackets and a “birdie” lying on the ground. That was the whole picture. When my art teacher, Miss Sternberg, peering over my shoulder, asked
“Where are the people?”
I pointed to the ominous strip of sky at the top of my painting and explained:
“They went inside. It’s going to rain.”
Miss Sternberg let this go without further comment. But even at seven, I could sense that she couldn’t wait to crack up the other teachers with this story at recess. And to recount it again to my mother at the next Parent-Teacher Night. Which she did.
Sometimes, the “Funny Bell” rings not because of something you say, but from something you hear.
In Tenth Grade, we were discussing the population problem in our history class. This was in Canada where, at the time, our entire population was twenty-two million people. Referencing the over-population situation in China, one student suggested the solution of relocating ten million Chinese people to Canada. To which Mr. Coulthard, our history teacher, replied:
“If we brought ten million Chinese people to Canada, it would change the complexion of the entire country.”
My “comedy ear” told me what Mr. Coulthard had said was funny. Unfortunately, I was the only one in my class with a “comedy ear” and I wound up sitting in the principal’s office.
Comedy – at the risk of being boringly pedantic – is primarily about surprise. The Woody Woodpecker cartoon surprised the heck out of me. My “people-free” badminton scenario caught Miss Sternberg by surprise. And Mr. Coulthard’s play-on-words “complexion” reference surprised me, but not Mr. Coulthard, because Mr. Coulthard lacked a finely tuned “comedy ear”. Maybe he laughed when he got home.
As an appreciator of comedy, I laugh most, not at punchlines, especially insulting ones, or at broad exaggerations, but at well-observed moments, offering an unexpected, often surreal, twist. Neil Simon is a fabulous joke writer. But some of his jokes are too deliberate for my delicate comic sensibilities. Once in a while, however, he’ll hit me with a startling line that I’ll continue to laugh at for forty years. At the risk of your not laughing at either of them, I will offer up two examples:
The musical Sweet Charity
Example One:
After being dragged out of the river following a failed suicide attempt, a crowd gathers around Charity’s seemingly lifeless body. A member of the crowd observes:
“She looks dead to me. Does she look dead to you?”
To which, another crowd member replies:
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen her before.”
Example Two:
Little Me
Sid Caesar starred and played seven parts in another Neil Simon-written musical.
World War One prisoner of war Noble Eggleston receives a personal package from his girl back home. Eggleston unwraps the package and looks inside:
“Oh. She made me some socks. (HE TAKES ANOTHER LOOK) No, they’re cookies.”
I’m not a fan of dissecting comedy – you end up with unfunny comedic entrails – but in these two examples, Simon started with an identifiable moment and, somehow, that moment triggered, in his imagination, a surprising and therefore explosively funny left turn. My experience tells me there’s a good chance that the writer himself didn’t even know the joke was coming. Suddenly, it’s just there.
Bruce Jay Friedman has written novels, plays and the most wonderful short stories. In this case, for me, the laughter stems from Friedman’s selection of tiny details. In Black Angels, a team of black repair people help a fellow named Stefano fix up his house. Along the way, they present him with a series of repair bills that are inappropriately low. This was Stefano’s response.
“Loving the breaks he was getting, Stefano threw them bonuses, plenty of sandwiches, all his old sports jackets, Venetian blinds that had come out of the attic and books of fairly recent vintage on Nova Scotia tourism.”
The first time I read “Nova Scotia tourism”, I said a prayer to the life-affirming miracle of comic invention. I don’t know if it was or not, but at the moment I read it, the choice of “Nova Scotia” as the venue for the fairly recent tourist books seemed outrageously effortless. And correct. He could have said “Pennsylvania” tourism books, but “Nova Scotia” was where the money was.
Admiration and awe. That’s how I felt when I read “Nova Scotia.” To paraphrase Butch Cassidy, what came to mind when I read “Nova Scotia” was:
“I can’t do that. Can you do that? How can he do that?"
(The truth is, I can do that. Just not as often.)
I’ll write about comedians and sitcom inspirations another time. My appreciation for “half hours” like The Jack Benny Program, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show – which I eventually worked on – had nothing to do with a funny line or a comic situatio. It was the reliable feeling of the entire undertaking. You were in good hands with those programs, and you sensed it. They’d never insult you, and they’d always make you laugh.
My final tip of the hat today is to Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Oh, my God. “The Dead Parrot.” “The Ministry of Silly Walks.” “The World’s Funniest Joke.” “The Man Paying For An Argument” – my own personal favorite – and the extended run in Holy Grail that begins with the king instructing the jailor:
“You stay here. And don’t let him out until I come back.”
to which the jailor immediately responds:
“Right. I’ll go with you.”
Once again, the situation starts real, and then…whoops! – you’re somewhere else. Somewhere magical and sublime. A wonderful place, where anything can happen.
You can even ski around both sides of a tree.
For all I know, this could be a very old joke, first carved on an obelisk by a funny engraver, or on sketched on a wall by some irrepressible cave-clown – the best comedy is timeless – but I was introduced to it through Woody Woodpecker.
Okay. It’s a skiing scene. The ground is covered with snow. A large tree stands in the foreground of the cartoon panel. Woody, the skier, has stopped on the hill below the tree, and is looking back up. And what Woody Woodpecker observes is this:
There’s a visible ski tread in the snow around one side of the tree. And a second ski tread in the snow around the other side of the tree, thus indicating that
somehow, Woody Woodpecker had skied around the tree. On both sides!
And he’d made it!
The look on Woody’s face reads: “How did I do that!”
The look on my nine year-old face reads, “How did anyone think of that!”
I was amazed – tickled and delighted too – but mostly amazed. Somehow, someone had imagined something that, in reality, can not happen, and, through his drawing, had made it appear eminently possible. From that imagining came – at least from me – a spontaneous eruption of unstoppable laughter.
I know I didn’t think this out loud, or even consciously, but somewhere in my thought- registering apparatus, I made an asterisked and underlined note to myself that said,
“That’s a good job.”
Somewhere, inside, I had the desire to delight people the way that comic book artist had delighted me. And I kind of knew I could do it. I had done it in life.
When I was seven, in art class, we were asked to paint an outdoor sporting scene. I can’t draw – and I especially can’t draw people – so what I painted was a badminton-playing scene, containing a backyard badminton set – a net, suspended on two poles, with four rackets and a “birdie” lying on the ground. That was the whole picture. When my art teacher, Miss Sternberg, peering over my shoulder, asked
“Where are the people?”
I pointed to the ominous strip of sky at the top of my painting and explained:
“They went inside. It’s going to rain.”
Miss Sternberg let this go without further comment. But even at seven, I could sense that she couldn’t wait to crack up the other teachers with this story at recess. And to recount it again to my mother at the next Parent-Teacher Night. Which she did.
Sometimes, the “Funny Bell” rings not because of something you say, but from something you hear.
In Tenth Grade, we were discussing the population problem in our history class. This was in Canada where, at the time, our entire population was twenty-two million people. Referencing the over-population situation in China, one student suggested the solution of relocating ten million Chinese people to Canada. To which Mr. Coulthard, our history teacher, replied:
“If we brought ten million Chinese people to Canada, it would change the complexion of the entire country.”
My “comedy ear” told me what Mr. Coulthard had said was funny. Unfortunately, I was the only one in my class with a “comedy ear” and I wound up sitting in the principal’s office.
Comedy – at the risk of being boringly pedantic – is primarily about surprise. The Woody Woodpecker cartoon surprised the heck out of me. My “people-free” badminton scenario caught Miss Sternberg by surprise. And Mr. Coulthard’s play-on-words “complexion” reference surprised me, but not Mr. Coulthard, because Mr. Coulthard lacked a finely tuned “comedy ear”. Maybe he laughed when he got home.
As an appreciator of comedy, I laugh most, not at punchlines, especially insulting ones, or at broad exaggerations, but at well-observed moments, offering an unexpected, often surreal, twist. Neil Simon is a fabulous joke writer. But some of his jokes are too deliberate for my delicate comic sensibilities. Once in a while, however, he’ll hit me with a startling line that I’ll continue to laugh at for forty years. At the risk of your not laughing at either of them, I will offer up two examples:
The musical Sweet Charity
Example One:
After being dragged out of the river following a failed suicide attempt, a crowd gathers around Charity’s seemingly lifeless body. A member of the crowd observes:
“She looks dead to me. Does she look dead to you?”
To which, another crowd member replies:
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen her before.”
Example Two:
Little Me
Sid Caesar starred and played seven parts in another Neil Simon-written musical.
World War One prisoner of war Noble Eggleston receives a personal package from his girl back home. Eggleston unwraps the package and looks inside:
“Oh. She made me some socks. (HE TAKES ANOTHER LOOK) No, they’re cookies.”
I’m not a fan of dissecting comedy – you end up with unfunny comedic entrails – but in these two examples, Simon started with an identifiable moment and, somehow, that moment triggered, in his imagination, a surprising and therefore explosively funny left turn. My experience tells me there’s a good chance that the writer himself didn’t even know the joke was coming. Suddenly, it’s just there.
Bruce Jay Friedman has written novels, plays and the most wonderful short stories. In this case, for me, the laughter stems from Friedman’s selection of tiny details. In Black Angels, a team of black repair people help a fellow named Stefano fix up his house. Along the way, they present him with a series of repair bills that are inappropriately low. This was Stefano’s response.
“Loving the breaks he was getting, Stefano threw them bonuses, plenty of sandwiches, all his old sports jackets, Venetian blinds that had come out of the attic and books of fairly recent vintage on Nova Scotia tourism.”
The first time I read “Nova Scotia tourism”, I said a prayer to the life-affirming miracle of comic invention. I don’t know if it was or not, but at the moment I read it, the choice of “Nova Scotia” as the venue for the fairly recent tourist books seemed outrageously effortless. And correct. He could have said “Pennsylvania” tourism books, but “Nova Scotia” was where the money was.
Admiration and awe. That’s how I felt when I read “Nova Scotia.” To paraphrase Butch Cassidy, what came to mind when I read “Nova Scotia” was:
“I can’t do that. Can you do that? How can he do that?"
(The truth is, I can do that. Just not as often.)
I’ll write about comedians and sitcom inspirations another time. My appreciation for “half hours” like The Jack Benny Program, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show – which I eventually worked on – had nothing to do with a funny line or a comic situatio. It was the reliable feeling of the entire undertaking. You were in good hands with those programs, and you sensed it. They’d never insult you, and they’d always make you laugh.
My final tip of the hat today is to Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Oh, my God. “The Dead Parrot.” “The Ministry of Silly Walks.” “The World’s Funniest Joke.” “The Man Paying For An Argument” – my own personal favorite – and the extended run in Holy Grail that begins with the king instructing the jailor:
“You stay here. And don’t let him out until I come back.”
to which the jailor immediately responds:
“Right. I’ll go with you.”
Once again, the situation starts real, and then…whoops! – you’re somewhere else. Somewhere magical and sublime. A wonderful place, where anything can happen.
You can even ski around both sides of a tree.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
"Why I Can't Write A Movie"
I come out of the latest Indiana Jones sequel and the only thought racing through my brain is, “Why did they make this movie? Besides for money?”
Aside from a sword fight involving a guy straddling two cars (which, I believe, I saw some version of in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie) and a few trees full of enchanting monkeys (who had nothing to do with the movie – the monkeys’ faces reflected visible surprise at being involved), the movie felt ponderous and dull, choosing nostalgia over invention, and displaying little visible effort at having the story make sense.
To date, the latest Indiana Jones movie has made over two hundred million dollars, so what the heck do I know? Except this:
I know movies used to be better.
I’m talking major studio motion pictures. They were demonstrably better. What does “better” mean? Satisfying. Enduring. You come out of the theater without wanting to ask for you money back. I know old people like old stuff, and that we live in a culture where “Nothing’s better or worse, it’s just different”, but I’m telling you:
Today’s movies are worse.
Come on, film buffs. 1939. The Oscar winner was Gone With the Wind, the nominees – among others – The Wizard of Oz (Dr. M’s favorite), Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Ninotchka, leaving no room fo Beau Geste, Gunga Din, Young Mr. Lincoln and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Not the mention The Thin Man. May I have your comparable list of any other year? Or any era, beyond the Thirties and Forties, where, by the way, the movie business was just as passionately committed to making a profit?
Yes, most movies were always terrible. But they made more movies back then. If only ten per cent of movies made per year are any good and you make five hundred movies, the result is fifty good movies a year. If you only make a hundred movies a year, the same proportion leaves you with ten good movies. And I don’t believe we regularly reach that level.
Reasons, reasons, reasons.
What makes current movies so terrible? The movie studios were bought up by larger entities demanding reliable profits. This is something I’ve never understood. If corporations wanted reliable profits, why did they go into the movie business in the first place?
Go into missiles. They’re always making missiles. I don’t know why, they never use them. But I’m certain there’s way more money in missiles than there is in movies. If you don’t like missiles, try Wall Street. Or real estate. Real estate guys buy basketball teams.
The best movie people can get are good seats.
And yet, big companies continue to invest in the movie business. Maybe they just like being invited to the premieres. Bragging rights, you know?
“We made another missile.”
“I met Angelina Jolie.”
“You win.”
Here’s me being incredibly ungracious. I have no future in the movie business, so I can say whatever I want. I don’t know how the presidents of movies studios go to work in the morning. What exactly do they believe they’re doing for a living?
“In the name of profit, I eviscerate a formerly flourishing art form.”
That probably wouldn’t be their answer. They’re probably more positive about what they do. But isn’t that kind of accurate? They transformed the movie business into a money machine?
How did it happen?
Well, the first move was “The Lust for the Blockbuster”, with, hopefully, encouraging sequel potential, though even if the sequel potential isn’t encouraging, they’ll crank them out anyway. Indiana Jones has powerful name recognition.
“Let’s go!”
“But we have nothing new to say.”
“Let’s go!”
Then studios discovered “The Youth Market.” Movies for teenaged boys. To see with teenaged girls. Crank up the sound. Pour on the special effects. Forget believable characters and storylines you can follow. Video games don’t have storylines. Give me carefully-timed jolts of visceral excitement. Sex and gore. Not Al Gore. The gore that flies out of screaming honeys when they explode.
Okay, those are business decisions. We can’t fault those. We live in a business culture, and business requires that you to go for the money. If you don’t give the company the profits it expects, they fire you and get somebody who will. Eager to retain your perks and prestige, you hold your nose and drag moviemaking down another notch.
(I know I’m being very negative, but I have to get this out first. After that, I’ll take responsibility for why I can’t write a movie. It’s in my character, maybe in other people’s too. Before acknowledging failure, I need to diminish the thing I’m failing at. Not that what I’m saying is totally without merit. How much merit, is for you to decide.)
Moving on. To our glorious culture, a culture that requires writers to tell only one story. Over and over.
This is the storyline of all American movies:
Somebody wants something. And they get it.
That’s it. That’s the American story. Everyone gets what they want. Whether it’s a sports movie or a romance movie, the outcome is obligatory: the team wins; the couple ends up together. It’s not the studio’s fault. The audience demands these endings. Otherwise, they feel cheated. They’ve wasted their time.
“I watched an entire debate movie where a team from a small, black college takes on Harvard and they lose? What am I doing here?”
Somebody wants something and they get it. In movie, after movie, after movie. Like a kid who demands that you tell them the same bedtime story every night. The only exceptions are the movies that are made for Oscar consideration. Then, there’s a twist. For the Oscar-aspiring movies, it’s
“Somebody wants something, and they go crazy.”
Or die. Or go blind. Or lose a leg. Or get assassinated. It’s an odd thing. “Winner” movies rarely win the Oscar. Maybe the Oscar voters think:
“They already won in the movie. Let’s give it to the schizophrenic.”
(I know there are exceptions. The exceptions are my favorites. In sports movies, I love Rocky and The Bad New Bears. Both of them lost the title. In romantic movies, I’m crazy about Lost in Translation, and I really liked Once. Those couples didn’t end up together. What makes those movies memorable, for me, is their rejection of the “and they get it” resolution and their resonating humanity.)
I can’t get excited about writing a movie where, not only I, but the entire audience – and maybe the universe – already knows the ending. What’s the point? To be in the movie business? It’s not enough.
The only challenge in writing movies where everybody knows the ending appears to be in the skillful disguising of the inevitable. That seems like a lot of work for zero surprise.
“Can you believe it? The underdogs won the cheerleading competition.”
“Yeah, and against such enormous odds. I’m completely blown away.”
Let’s hear it for “The Sarcastics!”
And yet. Anthony Lane, a gifted and reliable movie critic for The New Yorker injected this in a review of Baby Momma:
“Not that predictability weighs against a film. What counts is not the well-tried grid of the narrative, but the kind of energy you send through it.”
When I read that, the first thing that came to my mind was,
“This movie critic has just given up.”
Predictability is okay as long as you send energy through the well-tried grid of the narrative?
No, it isn’t.
Unless you’ve seen too many movies and have decided to throw your hands in the air and “mark on the curve.”
I believe a writer owes the audience something they haven’t seen before. But that could be a personal quirk. When I wrote the pilot of Major Dad, there was a place in the script where a “Knock-Knock” joke was required. I admit it. I bought the definitive “Knock-Knock Joke” book. I read every single “Knock-Knock” joke. Some of them were pretty funny for “Knock-Knock” jokes. Then, you know what I did?
I made up a new one.
It’s probably just my “Good Boy” nature. I am not wired to steal someone else’s “Knock-Knock” joke. Unfortunately, I totally lack the “new ‘Knock-Knock’ joke” counterpart of a movie idea. I simply haven’t got one.
I wrote for television for thirty years. Not every story I wrote was original, not every joke formulation surprising, but that was always my goal. That’s probably what made the work harder. Trying to be startlingly original in every regard. Larry David pulled it off, but I wasn’t at his level.
Over the years, I’ve written three original screenplays. None of them sold. Being the negative person I am, I then stopped writing screenplays. Unlike other writers, who keep banging away, three “No’s” and I’m out. That’s all the rejection I can handle.
So there’s that.
But there’s also something generally about television writers and the movies. Not a lot of TV writers have successfully made the move. At least, not in comedy. Some of them didn’t want to. Besides the fact that television writers retain far more control over their scripts than all but the biggest movie writers, there is also the question of longevity. Ed. Weinberger, a hugely successful television writer/producer used to say.
“I’ll go into the movie business, when I can have a career in the movie business.”
Go to IMDB. Compare the resumes of television writers and movie writers. Television writers have consistently longer careers.
More importantly, however, there’s the meat and potatoes, the “doing the actual job” consideration. I’ve given the matter considerable thought, and the best I can come up with is that TV and movie scriptwriting are fundamentally different.
The difference is not just that one form is longer. It is that it has something to do with a compositional rhythm. It’s like the difference between a writing a hit tune and writing a symphony. The hit tune has to hit you early, hard and often. The symphony, without lagging, can be more deliberate, luxuriate in its detail, and build methodically to its crescendo. Hit tunes don’t have the time. Neither did sitcoms. Especially the non-cinematic ones I worked on, that were filmed in front of a live studio audience.
It is my belief that the muscles you develop writing in television can be liabilities when you try to transition to movies. Though I wouldn’t deny that what I just said may simply be an excuse.
Nah. It’s true.
One of my favorite comedians from the past was Victor Borge. Borge was a Danish immigrant who once described his transition to life in America this way:
“There was a point, after I’d been in America for a while, where I’d forgotten all my Danish, but hadn’t learned any English.”
That’s pretty much describes my condition moving from television writing to movie writing. It also describes my unwillingness to write anything I've seen before and my inability to come up with anything new. Both situations render me
Speechless.
Aside from a sword fight involving a guy straddling two cars (which, I believe, I saw some version of in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie) and a few trees full of enchanting monkeys (who had nothing to do with the movie – the monkeys’ faces reflected visible surprise at being involved), the movie felt ponderous and dull, choosing nostalgia over invention, and displaying little visible effort at having the story make sense.
To date, the latest Indiana Jones movie has made over two hundred million dollars, so what the heck do I know? Except this:
I know movies used to be better.
I’m talking major studio motion pictures. They were demonstrably better. What does “better” mean? Satisfying. Enduring. You come out of the theater without wanting to ask for you money back. I know old people like old stuff, and that we live in a culture where “Nothing’s better or worse, it’s just different”, but I’m telling you:
Today’s movies are worse.
Come on, film buffs. 1939. The Oscar winner was Gone With the Wind, the nominees – among others – The Wizard of Oz (Dr. M’s favorite), Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Ninotchka, leaving no room fo Beau Geste, Gunga Din, Young Mr. Lincoln and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Not the mention The Thin Man. May I have your comparable list of any other year? Or any era, beyond the Thirties and Forties, where, by the way, the movie business was just as passionately committed to making a profit?
Yes, most movies were always terrible. But they made more movies back then. If only ten per cent of movies made per year are any good and you make five hundred movies, the result is fifty good movies a year. If you only make a hundred movies a year, the same proportion leaves you with ten good movies. And I don’t believe we regularly reach that level.
Reasons, reasons, reasons.
What makes current movies so terrible? The movie studios were bought up by larger entities demanding reliable profits. This is something I’ve never understood. If corporations wanted reliable profits, why did they go into the movie business in the first place?
Go into missiles. They’re always making missiles. I don’t know why, they never use them. But I’m certain there’s way more money in missiles than there is in movies. If you don’t like missiles, try Wall Street. Or real estate. Real estate guys buy basketball teams.
The best movie people can get are good seats.
And yet, big companies continue to invest in the movie business. Maybe they just like being invited to the premieres. Bragging rights, you know?
“We made another missile.”
“I met Angelina Jolie.”
“You win.”
Here’s me being incredibly ungracious. I have no future in the movie business, so I can say whatever I want. I don’t know how the presidents of movies studios go to work in the morning. What exactly do they believe they’re doing for a living?
“In the name of profit, I eviscerate a formerly flourishing art form.”
That probably wouldn’t be their answer. They’re probably more positive about what they do. But isn’t that kind of accurate? They transformed the movie business into a money machine?
How did it happen?
Well, the first move was “The Lust for the Blockbuster”, with, hopefully, encouraging sequel potential, though even if the sequel potential isn’t encouraging, they’ll crank them out anyway. Indiana Jones has powerful name recognition.
“Let’s go!”
“But we have nothing new to say.”
“Let’s go!”
Then studios discovered “The Youth Market.” Movies for teenaged boys. To see with teenaged girls. Crank up the sound. Pour on the special effects. Forget believable characters and storylines you can follow. Video games don’t have storylines. Give me carefully-timed jolts of visceral excitement. Sex and gore. Not Al Gore. The gore that flies out of screaming honeys when they explode.
Okay, those are business decisions. We can’t fault those. We live in a business culture, and business requires that you to go for the money. If you don’t give the company the profits it expects, they fire you and get somebody who will. Eager to retain your perks and prestige, you hold your nose and drag moviemaking down another notch.
(I know I’m being very negative, but I have to get this out first. After that, I’ll take responsibility for why I can’t write a movie. It’s in my character, maybe in other people’s too. Before acknowledging failure, I need to diminish the thing I’m failing at. Not that what I’m saying is totally without merit. How much merit, is for you to decide.)
Moving on. To our glorious culture, a culture that requires writers to tell only one story. Over and over.
This is the storyline of all American movies:
Somebody wants something. And they get it.
That’s it. That’s the American story. Everyone gets what they want. Whether it’s a sports movie or a romance movie, the outcome is obligatory: the team wins; the couple ends up together. It’s not the studio’s fault. The audience demands these endings. Otherwise, they feel cheated. They’ve wasted their time.
“I watched an entire debate movie where a team from a small, black college takes on Harvard and they lose? What am I doing here?”
Somebody wants something and they get it. In movie, after movie, after movie. Like a kid who demands that you tell them the same bedtime story every night. The only exceptions are the movies that are made for Oscar consideration. Then, there’s a twist. For the Oscar-aspiring movies, it’s
“Somebody wants something, and they go crazy.”
Or die. Or go blind. Or lose a leg. Or get assassinated. It’s an odd thing. “Winner” movies rarely win the Oscar. Maybe the Oscar voters think:
“They already won in the movie. Let’s give it to the schizophrenic.”
(I know there are exceptions. The exceptions are my favorites. In sports movies, I love Rocky and The Bad New Bears. Both of them lost the title. In romantic movies, I’m crazy about Lost in Translation, and I really liked Once. Those couples didn’t end up together. What makes those movies memorable, for me, is their rejection of the “and they get it” resolution and their resonating humanity.)
I can’t get excited about writing a movie where, not only I, but the entire audience – and maybe the universe – already knows the ending. What’s the point? To be in the movie business? It’s not enough.
The only challenge in writing movies where everybody knows the ending appears to be in the skillful disguising of the inevitable. That seems like a lot of work for zero surprise.
“Can you believe it? The underdogs won the cheerleading competition.”
“Yeah, and against such enormous odds. I’m completely blown away.”
Let’s hear it for “The Sarcastics!”
And yet. Anthony Lane, a gifted and reliable movie critic for The New Yorker injected this in a review of Baby Momma:
“Not that predictability weighs against a film. What counts is not the well-tried grid of the narrative, but the kind of energy you send through it.”
When I read that, the first thing that came to my mind was,
“This movie critic has just given up.”
Predictability is okay as long as you send energy through the well-tried grid of the narrative?
No, it isn’t.
Unless you’ve seen too many movies and have decided to throw your hands in the air and “mark on the curve.”
I believe a writer owes the audience something they haven’t seen before. But that could be a personal quirk. When I wrote the pilot of Major Dad, there was a place in the script where a “Knock-Knock” joke was required. I admit it. I bought the definitive “Knock-Knock Joke” book. I read every single “Knock-Knock” joke. Some of them were pretty funny for “Knock-Knock” jokes. Then, you know what I did?
I made up a new one.
It’s probably just my “Good Boy” nature. I am not wired to steal someone else’s “Knock-Knock” joke. Unfortunately, I totally lack the “new ‘Knock-Knock’ joke” counterpart of a movie idea. I simply haven’t got one.
I wrote for television for thirty years. Not every story I wrote was original, not every joke formulation surprising, but that was always my goal. That’s probably what made the work harder. Trying to be startlingly original in every regard. Larry David pulled it off, but I wasn’t at his level.
Over the years, I’ve written three original screenplays. None of them sold. Being the negative person I am, I then stopped writing screenplays. Unlike other writers, who keep banging away, three “No’s” and I’m out. That’s all the rejection I can handle.
So there’s that.
But there’s also something generally about television writers and the movies. Not a lot of TV writers have successfully made the move. At least, not in comedy. Some of them didn’t want to. Besides the fact that television writers retain far more control over their scripts than all but the biggest movie writers, there is also the question of longevity. Ed. Weinberger, a hugely successful television writer/producer used to say.
“I’ll go into the movie business, when I can have a career in the movie business.”
Go to IMDB. Compare the resumes of television writers and movie writers. Television writers have consistently longer careers.
More importantly, however, there’s the meat and potatoes, the “doing the actual job” consideration. I’ve given the matter considerable thought, and the best I can come up with is that TV and movie scriptwriting are fundamentally different.
The difference is not just that one form is longer. It is that it has something to do with a compositional rhythm. It’s like the difference between a writing a hit tune and writing a symphony. The hit tune has to hit you early, hard and often. The symphony, without lagging, can be more deliberate, luxuriate in its detail, and build methodically to its crescendo. Hit tunes don’t have the time. Neither did sitcoms. Especially the non-cinematic ones I worked on, that were filmed in front of a live studio audience.
It is my belief that the muscles you develop writing in television can be liabilities when you try to transition to movies. Though I wouldn’t deny that what I just said may simply be an excuse.
Nah. It’s true.
One of my favorite comedians from the past was Victor Borge. Borge was a Danish immigrant who once described his transition to life in America this way:
“There was a point, after I’d been in America for a while, where I’d forgotten all my Danish, but hadn’t learned any English.”
That’s pretty much describes my condition moving from television writing to movie writing. It also describes my unwillingness to write anything I've seen before and my inability to come up with anything new. Both situations render me
Speechless.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Uncle Grumpy on: "The Men Who Lost Dinner"
It’s been a while since we’ve had a visit from my opinionated, but not always wrong, Uncle Grumpy. My uncle doesn’t let me read his posts ahead of time, so I take no responsibility for their content. Refer all your responses directly to him.
Okay, Unkie, the floor is yours.
I’m seeing this horse doctor I go to for my sore shoulder. I call him a horse doctor, because three days a week, he works on people, and three days a week, he works on horses. Not in the same place. It’s not like I go to the barn. And the horses don’t come to the office. It’s on the second floor. They’d have trouble with the stairs.
The stack of Waiting Room magazines includes Vanity Fair. Because I’m me, I skip the gossip garbage and go straight to an article about why the Hillary and the Obama supporters hate each other. That’s gossip too, but with a veneer of significance. Some of us need our gossip disguised as “meaningful discourse.” We fool no one. Including ourselves.
I won’t waste time on the article’s point of view. I’d rather talk about mine. Why do the Hillary and Obama backers hate each other so much? Is it simply a matter of sexism? The short answer is yes. If you’re busy, I’ll see you later. If you’re not, keep reading, though later, you might want to ask yourself why you’re not busy. Uncle Grumpy has no children of his own, so he likes to harass other people’s.
Okay, here’s a confession.
I’m not a feminist. Feminists focus on the interests of women, and I’m a man. Not that I’m totally disinterested. To the extent that feminists are concerned with fairness, I’m with them. But to the extent that feminists demand that everyone see everything exactly their way and brand those who don’t reactionary, sexist pigs – don’t call me, I’m busy.
I’m a man, and I see life from a man’s point of view. Can a man alter his point of view? Of course. Can a man flip a switch and trade in his point of view for a woman’s? Not if he’s honest. It doesn’t work that way.
I imagine early feminists spent little time assessing the price others paid for their advancement. Why should they? They’re seeing things from a woman’s point of view, and from a woman’s point of view it was “Full steam ahead!” A revolution’s like the song in Paint Your Wagon – “Where are we going?” “When will we get there?” That’s the whole deal. “Who did we step on?” Not in the song.
The revolution’s objective was to obliterate male dominance, and, generally speaking, they did pretty well. For some reason, they decided to adopt men’s values to define what dominance meant instead of promoting a more enlightened value system of their own which would really have been revolutionary, but they didn’t consult me about that. They did what they did, and good luck to them.
Feminists focused on economic power, as if there was no other kind. Anyone who believes pre-feminist women didn’t have power never met a Jewish mother. Or a mother (or grandmother) of any ethnicity you care to mention. But apparently that doesn’t count.
What was the price for feminist gains? Well, “male ego” took a beating. “Man the Provider”- that’s over. But who cares? You can adjust. Truth be told, you can relax. Share the responsibility – share the stress.
But there is another loss, a loss that after thirty years, still gnaws at my innards. With lightning swiftness and no “phasing out” period whatsoever, the men of my generation lost…
Dinner.
Or supper, whatever you want to call it. A major meal – maybe the most major – not to dismiss a lot of people’s emphasis on breakfast – gone.
Think about that. Throughout history – and that’s a long time – men were assured of something hot and piping from the oven when they came home from work. Three courses – soup or salad, a main dish and desert. I won’t even talk about freshly baked rolls.
Now, as we know, there’s nothing.
They’re not making dinner anymore. And my generation of men are the first beneficiaries. Aren’t we lucky? Imagine a huge wheel, like in Vegas, one number for every generation in the history of the human species – that’s like, a billion numbers – you spin that wheel…and it lands on us.
Jiminy Christmas, what are the odds!
We’re talking about a monumental change, a salivizing expectation practically encoded in men’s DNA. It was dinner, dinner, dinner – times a billion generations – then, suddenly – no dinner. That has to be a jolt to your system, don’t you think?
Today, the evening meal is a thing of the past, a museum tableau, next to Indians grinding corn. A family sitting around the table, Mom proudly beaming as the feast is passed around. Teachers will have to explain to children who never experienced this abandoned cultural artifact what’s going on:
“Dinner was a longstanding tradition, the product of a clear and generally accepted division of labor. The man shot the bear and the woman cooked it. Then one day, women demanded the right to do what men did. The result? Two dead bears and nothing to eat.”
Okay, that’s my spin on the thing. They’ll probably say something about gender equality and move on to the dinosaurs.
Did women deliberately kill dinner? Of course not. Dinner was an inadvertent casualty of the feminist revolution. Cause of Death: a changing world. Women left for the workplace, and it was “Goodbye” smells coming from the kitchen.
Can men cook? Of course. All the best chefs…blah, blah, blah. That’s not even true anymore, but there are enough of them out there to make the point, so, blah.
Men can cook their own dinner. That’s not the issue.
The issue is, a major thing happened. A cultural upheaval. And it was never totally acknowledged.
It wouldn’t have taken much. “I’m sorry about dinner.” A sincere, empathic statement – not an apology – to show you understand. No flamboyant gesture. No commiserating open letter in the Times. A connecting conversation. An expression of understanding. Maybe written on a cake. Okay, that's pushing it. Not that you have to bake the cake yourself. You could buy it at a bakery, and they could squiggle something on the top.
A moment could have been taken. A friendly discussion of needs, losses and newly-minted expectations. No blaming. No dismissing of the other person’s concerns. Hostilities resolved, as we walk together into the future.
It never happened.
The animosity towards Hillary has a familiar smell.
Is it dinner?
Dream on.
It’s unfinished business.
Okay, Unkie, the floor is yours.
I’m seeing this horse doctor I go to for my sore shoulder. I call him a horse doctor, because three days a week, he works on people, and three days a week, he works on horses. Not in the same place. It’s not like I go to the barn. And the horses don’t come to the office. It’s on the second floor. They’d have trouble with the stairs.
The stack of Waiting Room magazines includes Vanity Fair. Because I’m me, I skip the gossip garbage and go straight to an article about why the Hillary and the Obama supporters hate each other. That’s gossip too, but with a veneer of significance. Some of us need our gossip disguised as “meaningful discourse.” We fool no one. Including ourselves.
I won’t waste time on the article’s point of view. I’d rather talk about mine. Why do the Hillary and Obama backers hate each other so much? Is it simply a matter of sexism? The short answer is yes. If you’re busy, I’ll see you later. If you’re not, keep reading, though later, you might want to ask yourself why you’re not busy. Uncle Grumpy has no children of his own, so he likes to harass other people’s.
Okay, here’s a confession.
I’m not a feminist. Feminists focus on the interests of women, and I’m a man. Not that I’m totally disinterested. To the extent that feminists are concerned with fairness, I’m with them. But to the extent that feminists demand that everyone see everything exactly their way and brand those who don’t reactionary, sexist pigs – don’t call me, I’m busy.
I’m a man, and I see life from a man’s point of view. Can a man alter his point of view? Of course. Can a man flip a switch and trade in his point of view for a woman’s? Not if he’s honest. It doesn’t work that way.
I imagine early feminists spent little time assessing the price others paid for their advancement. Why should they? They’re seeing things from a woman’s point of view, and from a woman’s point of view it was “Full steam ahead!” A revolution’s like the song in Paint Your Wagon – “Where are we going?” “When will we get there?” That’s the whole deal. “Who did we step on?” Not in the song.
The revolution’s objective was to obliterate male dominance, and, generally speaking, they did pretty well. For some reason, they decided to adopt men’s values to define what dominance meant instead of promoting a more enlightened value system of their own which would really have been revolutionary, but they didn’t consult me about that. They did what they did, and good luck to them.
Feminists focused on economic power, as if there was no other kind. Anyone who believes pre-feminist women didn’t have power never met a Jewish mother. Or a mother (or grandmother) of any ethnicity you care to mention. But apparently that doesn’t count.
What was the price for feminist gains? Well, “male ego” took a beating. “Man the Provider”- that’s over. But who cares? You can adjust. Truth be told, you can relax. Share the responsibility – share the stress.
But there is another loss, a loss that after thirty years, still gnaws at my innards. With lightning swiftness and no “phasing out” period whatsoever, the men of my generation lost…
Dinner.
Or supper, whatever you want to call it. A major meal – maybe the most major – not to dismiss a lot of people’s emphasis on breakfast – gone.
Think about that. Throughout history – and that’s a long time – men were assured of something hot and piping from the oven when they came home from work. Three courses – soup or salad, a main dish and desert. I won’t even talk about freshly baked rolls.
Now, as we know, there’s nothing.
They’re not making dinner anymore. And my generation of men are the first beneficiaries. Aren’t we lucky? Imagine a huge wheel, like in Vegas, one number for every generation in the history of the human species – that’s like, a billion numbers – you spin that wheel…and it lands on us.
Jiminy Christmas, what are the odds!
We’re talking about a monumental change, a salivizing expectation practically encoded in men’s DNA. It was dinner, dinner, dinner – times a billion generations – then, suddenly – no dinner. That has to be a jolt to your system, don’t you think?
Today, the evening meal is a thing of the past, a museum tableau, next to Indians grinding corn. A family sitting around the table, Mom proudly beaming as the feast is passed around. Teachers will have to explain to children who never experienced this abandoned cultural artifact what’s going on:
“Dinner was a longstanding tradition, the product of a clear and generally accepted division of labor. The man shot the bear and the woman cooked it. Then one day, women demanded the right to do what men did. The result? Two dead bears and nothing to eat.”
Okay, that’s my spin on the thing. They’ll probably say something about gender equality and move on to the dinosaurs.
Did women deliberately kill dinner? Of course not. Dinner was an inadvertent casualty of the feminist revolution. Cause of Death: a changing world. Women left for the workplace, and it was “Goodbye” smells coming from the kitchen.
Can men cook? Of course. All the best chefs…blah, blah, blah. That’s not even true anymore, but there are enough of them out there to make the point, so, blah.
Men can cook their own dinner. That’s not the issue.
The issue is, a major thing happened. A cultural upheaval. And it was never totally acknowledged.
It wouldn’t have taken much. “I’m sorry about dinner.” A sincere, empathic statement – not an apology – to show you understand. No flamboyant gesture. No commiserating open letter in the Times. A connecting conversation. An expression of understanding. Maybe written on a cake. Okay, that's pushing it. Not that you have to bake the cake yourself. You could buy it at a bakery, and they could squiggle something on the top.
A moment could have been taken. A friendly discussion of needs, losses and newly-minted expectations. No blaming. No dismissing of the other person’s concerns. Hostilities resolved, as we walk together into the future.
It never happened.
The animosity towards Hillary has a familiar smell.
Is it dinner?
Dream on.
It’s unfinished business.
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