Poking A Dead Frog Part 10

I would trust Terry's account in this area. He was always collaborating and getting into awful squabbles about credits. He was a generous man and easily taken advantage of-picked apart, really-by the wolves.

How does a writer like Terry Southern age-where you always have to produce work that has the capacity to astonish?

Some keep it up. Some fade. Others simply push on. Churchill once said, "If you're going through h.e.l.l, keep going." Terry had an especially tough time throughout the last decades. Had the culture changed? Was he out of sync? There is always that worry.

It's a shame. He had the most unique voice of any writer I knew. He was a brave man in print, but vulnerable in life-no doubt a familiar story.

I once leased an apartment in New York that had an S&M room. Terry saw the black walls, the mirrored ceiling, the whips and chains stored in the closet. A room that had his name on it. He said, "Grand Guy Bruce, would you mind terribly if I crashed in here for a bit?" I said fine. It was three in the morning.

I then realized that painters were coming at around seven in the morning to ready the room for my young son Drew, who was moving in for awhile. They were going to repaint the all-black walls.

One of the painters said, "We can't work. There's a man sleeping in that room." I said, "Don't worry about it. Just paint around him." Terry fell asleep in this Marquis de Sade room, and woke up hours later with photos of Mickey Mantle on the walls. He didn't say a word, just shook it off and went on his way.

You leased an apartment with an S&M room?

It was a lovely place, had a great terrace, lots of s.p.a.ce. It just happened to have a guest room with all that bondage equipment.

What was Terry doing in the room before he fell asleep?

He'd had a big night. Let's put it that way.

Do you think Terry wasn't respected in the latter part of his career because he wasn't producing "quality lit"?

Terry is the one who invented that phrase. He was an easygoing man, contented, amused by life. I don't think he ever felt bitter or resentful with the way things turned out in his career. I know he had grave financial difficulties toward the end of his life-but he wasn't a complainer.

He was respected throughout his life by the people who counted, so to speak. And there are all these new readers coming along. His books and films exist, ready to be enjoyed.

You've written eight novels and more than one hundred short stories. After all these years, is writing still difficult for you?

Actually, I've written more than two hundred short stories-half of them are languishing in an archive.

But G.o.d yes, writing is still difficult and always will be. I'm suspicious of writers who go whistling cheerfully to the computer.

Are there any writers' tricks you've learned over the years that have made the process a bit easier?

I'm hesitant to begin a short story unless I know the last line, or a close approximation of it. I'm always apprehensive when I begin work each day. After a lifetime of this, I still can't get it clear that the actual process of writing tends to erase the fear.

I'm not the first to point out how essential it is to, on occasion, discard a favorite pa.s.sage in the interest of pushing on with a good story. Isaac Bashevis Singer said that the wastebasket is a writer's best friend. He also said that a writer can produce ten fine novels, but it doesn't mean that the next one will be any good. It mystifies me that after a lifetime of writing it would still be like this. I should be able to solve any problem-but it doesn't work that way. Each story or book presents a new challenge. That's probably a good thing, though. It keeps me on my toes.

Do you still write every day?

Yes-or at the very least, I worry about it.

I do some teaching, and I put the emphasis on focus, as well as the importance of making every sentence count. [Novelist] Francine Prose once quoted a friend as saying this requires "putting every word on trial for its life." I believe this. You can read the entire works of a major writer and never find a bad-or unnecessary-sentence.

Do you have any specific instructions for those students who want to write stories with humor?

I'd suggest you stay away from irony or satire; there's very little money in it. You're likely to wind up with reviews-like some of mine-that say, "I didn't know whether to laugh or cry." There's no such question in d.i.c.kens. Most readers would prefer to know exactly where they stand, where the author stands, and how to respond. Ergo, no irony permitted.

I'd advise students not to try to be funny. Nothing is more depressing than someone caught making such an effort. If a story or sketch is intrinsically funny, if it deserves to be funny, it will make people laugh. Truth-bitter and unadorned truth-is a good guideline.

Asking yourself "What if . . . ?" is a good starting point for a story. What if I befriended a pimp and he asked a straightlaced character to watch over his stable of women while he was in prison? That later became a story I wrote for Esquire called "Detroit Abe."

As for television writers, in comedy or drama, there's a simple rule: Include the line "We have to talk," even if your characters have done nothing but for half an hour. Producers love that line. Writers are brought in and paid a fortune for their ability-and willingness-to write that line.

Finally, I also like the writer Grace Paley's piece of advice: "Keep a low overhead."

ULTRASPECIFIC COMEDIC KNOWLEDGE.

BRUCE VILANCH.

Writer, the Emmys, the Academy Awards, the Tonys, the Grammys

Writing Jokes for Awards Shows

What's the joke-writing preparation for a televised awards show, such as the Oscars? How much time and effort are we talking about?

A tremendous amount. People have no idea. Billy Crystal came up with the idea of creating a huge playbook, almost like a football team would use for a big game. The script itself is three hundred pages. It's a big hefty tome, and it's kept offstage, generally offstage left. The host will leaf through it during commercial breaks. It's mostly based on what might happen during the broadcast. "Suppose this happens. What if that happens?" You know, just in case. So, you end up creating a lot of material: "Oh, if that happens, we're covered." You study who's nominated to win all the awards, the movies these people are a.s.sociated with, everything that's necessary to come up with jokes. A ton of research.

How many of these jokes, on average, end up being used during the performance?

Out of the hundreds that we write-really, hundreds-if one or two are used, it's a big deal. We'll start the actual writing process about two months before the ceremony-usually in December for a February or March broadcast.

Is the notebook divided into subjects? Into categories?

There's an entire rundown of the show, and we write potential jokes into the script at the point where they would occur. But we always give ourselves room for on-the-spot improvisation. There are some things we could just never predict.

At the 1992 Oscars, n.o.body expected Jack Palance, a seventy-three-year-old man, to start performing one-armed push-ups when he won the Academy Award [for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for City Slickers]. But we knew something was going to happen. Billy had worked with Jack in City Slickers and knew what Jack was capable of.

But, no, we didn't know exactly what he would try to do. And that's the great thing about the Oscars. Something will happen that's unwritten, and it's always way funnier than anything we could have dreamt up. And it's then up to us to work off those situations.

People tend to forget what exactly Jack Palance said before dropping to the ground to perform push-ups.

Right. The first thing that Jack said when he got up to the podium was, "Billy Crystal. I c.r.a.p bigger than him." Talk about your visuals. And then there was kind of a shocked reaction, and that's what made Jack drop to the floor to do something that would allow the audience to forget that he had just said "c.r.a.p" in front of most of the universe.

Once Jack did those push-ups, we, the writers, were standing backstage, thinking, Okay, no holds barred. He made this joke about Billy, so now Billy can do anything about him. The floodgates opened. We wrote a couple of jokes about Jack's prowess, and then Billy came back and said, "Look, do more. Write more." So we did.

It must be frustrating to come up with so many jokes each year, only to have only about 2 percent used. Have there been any jokes you wished had been used but weren't?

There've been a few. We had one joke [in 2003] that involved Steve Martin coming out after the monologue, and he was going to say, "I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that my fly was open throughout the monologue. The good news is the camera puts on ten pounds." But Steve wouldn't say the joke; he said it was a "c.o.c.k joke." He just didn't feel comfortable doing a c.o.c.k joke on the Academy Awards. I said, "But it's not a c.o.c.k joke! It's a camera joke." Everybody loved the joke. Even the network censor thought it was hilarious. We could have gotten away with it because it didn't cross any kind of line, but the fact that the network censor thought it was hysterical meant we had done something right.

It might very well have become a cla.s.sic if he did say it.

I know, but Steve felt it was just a little too anatomically correct. You can see the visual a bit too easily. I can understand why he would come to that conclusion. The host has to decide, "Do I want to take the audience to that place?"

The Academy Awards is a strange show to work on as a comedy writer. You're writing jokes for over one billion people, of all ages, countries, backgrounds. How do you determine what is and what is not appropriate without sapping out all the humor?

You have to be careful not to cross that weird line. There are celebrities you just can't make jokes about, whether because it's cruel or because they'll be in the audience, or just because it's too embarra.s.sing a situation. Keep in mind that whatever a host says is going to live with them for the rest of their career. The choice you have to make is, Do I, as a comedian, want to be remembered for this joke or not? You can't unring that bell.

Can you tell me about the backstage writing process during an Oscars broadcast? How do the writers work? Together or separately? Writing down jokes? Pitching them out loud?

It's frantic. It's chaos. It makes the fall of Saigon look tame. It's all happening so, so quickly. My favorite example is from 2003, when Steve was hosting. Now, this goes back to something happening just before the commercial break that you can work off of. Michael Moore had won for Best Doc.u.mentary Feature for Bowling for Columbine, and he made a speech against the second Gulf war. Some in the audience booed, but we also noticed that some of the stagehands started booing him, too. When we returned from commercial break, Steve came out and said, "It's so sweet backstage, you should have seen it. The Teamsters are helping Michael Moore into the trunk of his limo." That was a joke that we came up with in the wings.

Who are you writing for? The live audience in the auditorium? Or the audience at home?

You're playing to the auditorium because they're the ones who are giving the immediate reaction that the home audience will hear. You're always playing to both of them, really, but I think what you want most is a reaction from the live audience, clearly.

The problem is that the vibe in the room changes as the night progresses. As the night gets longer, there are more and more audience members who have not won an award. Their high hopes have disappeared. For every winner, there are at least four or five who won't win. It gets chilly. The audience is not really paying attention. At this point, you're getting down to the big awards; it's been a long day. The audience really would like to get out of there and start drinking-those who aren't already potted, that is. So, by the end, the audience is not really paying close attention. Also, there are a hefty amount of seat fillers, because people have children, have to relieve the babysitter, they get bored, they just leave. Say, for an example, there are ten supporting actor nominees, and those categories are given early. Those ten faces will be gone, generally, by the middle to the end of the show. And they'll be replaced by secretaries from Paramount who might not be too keen to laugh.

But if you're in the audience, you can always sense a degree of excitement. In particular, when Letterman hosted the 1994 Oscars, the live audience was enjoying it; they were having a good time. But his performance did receive terrible reviews.

I really enjoyed watching that show. I think a lot of people did-that is, until Letterman convinced us otherwise.

But that's his persona, you know. That's what you get when you hire him. I liked his performance, too, but I do think the mistake he made was to try and duplicate routines from his late-night show to the Oscars. n.o.body had tuned in to see that. I always think it's better to take a fresh approach. That's what the audience really loves. And Letterman also would comment on whenever a joke wouldn't hit, which is something Johnny Carson would do on The Tonight Show. But that doesn't work at the Oscars, either.

Were you responsible for some of the jokes that bombed the night Letterman hosted, such as the Uma/Oprah joke? The joke was that Uma and Oprah sound similar. And the follow-up joke was that Keanu sounds similar to both Uma and Oprah.

No. The Uma/Oprah joke was written by Rob Burnett [executive producer, Late Show with David Letterman], who lethally takes credit for it. Just lethal. I told Rob not to do it. I thought it was a bad idea to have David Letterman from New York TV making fun of these huge stars from Hollywood.

Hosts are vital to the show's tone. It's a very specific role that the host plays. You have to bring your personality, but you have to do it in a clever way, so it doesn't feel like a retread of what you do at your other job. I think that's what happened with Letterman. The comedy didn't translate well.

It takes a very specific type of performer to do well at the Oscars. Ellen DeGeneres [in 2007] had a different approach, and I don't think it worked. She was very daytime. There wasn't a sense of occasion. She was scared, I think, and wasn't willing to go the extra mile. James Franco [in 2010] didn't work out well at all. He was really out of his comfort zone. He's not a live stage performer.

It's better if the hosts are comedians. They have to have a bit of an att.i.tude. It's easier for us writers to find words that suit a comedian's att.i.tude. Actors tend to act. It's tough for them to play themselves, to have a persona. You'll never see Johnny Depp performing An Evening with Johnny Depp.

What's it like to write for celebrities presenting awards, many of whom are not used to performing comedy before a live audience?

It's tough. It's constantly a negotiation of some sort. Each of these celebrities has a flotilla of a.s.sistants who are advising them of what to say and not to say. A lot show up with their own writers, depending on who they are. And it's hard for me to b.i.t.c.h about that. That kind of goes with the territory. So that doesn't surprise me. What does surprise me is when you get people who don't do this kind of performing for a living and they go into a major panic and every single word has to be edited by everybody. By their hairdressers, their yoga instructor, their publicist, their pet psychiatrist. Everybody's got an opinion. And all of those people who are supposedly helping are really enemies of comedy, because they don't want anybody to get into trouble. You can't be funny by saying, "I'm not going to get anybody into trouble." You know, that's the risk you run. Read Freud on jokes and tell me that you're not ever going to get anybody into trouble.

PURE, HARD-CORE ADVICE.

KAY CANNON.

Writer/Producer, 30 Rock; Producer, New Girl; Writer, Pitch Perfect The biggest thing that I learned as a writer at 30 Rock was the importance of self-awareness. You are sharing fourteen hours a day with the same people, and having the same conversation all day long. You need to learn what role you play every single day in that configuration. I think a lot of writers end up not finding success, per se, because they don't have that self-awareness to know where they fit in on any given day. For example, I know now that some days I have to be at the head of the table, I have to run the room, I need to be the leader. And then some days I tell myself, "Oh, this is a day where I have to sit back. This person is taking it. My job today is to be a good listener and support and add whatever I can." I've seen so many people crash and burn from not understanding that, and feeling as if their role is something else. The truth is, in a writers' room-and specifically in comedy, because you do so much together and it's such a group process-if you're not fun to hang out with, and you don't have that self-awareness, you're not going to do as well.

When I was a staff writer on 30 Rock, one of the most valuable things I learned was to just listen and learn from the people who've done it for a long time and are a thousand times better at this job than you are. If they're stumped on some story problem or a joke, and you feel you have a good idea, that's when you should talk. But just don't talk for the sake of talking. Again, understand where you fit in with the group. And that changes every year, because you get promoted, and the dynamics change and people leave and new people arrive. In the comedy world, at least in comedy writers' rooms, it just feels like your personality is a big deal, almost a little bit more than what you put on the page.

When rewriting or taking notes, trust your gut if you really feel strongly about something. But understand that it's a fine line between "Are you being thoughtful" and "Are you being lazy?" I find that sometimes I'll receive notes from the network or the studio, and I'll be like [emits moan of dread]. And I stop and think, Am I being lazy because it requires a lot of work to make that change? Or am I being thoughtful and just trusting my gut that I know better than they do? You have to really mull it over.

If you want to write for television, I strongly suggest that you watch a lot of television. Like, a lot. If you want to write movies, I strongly suggest watching a ton of movies. When someone says they're a TV writer and they don't own a TV, I just want to roll my eyes until they get stuck that way. [Laughs] If you're going into an interview for a very particular show, you've got to know everything about it. I'm always shocked when someone admits that they've only seen a few episodes of a show they now work on. You just think, How did you not watch every episode before coming here?

I was writing [the 2012 movie] Pitch Perfect from season three to season six of 30 Rock. It was pretty tough doing both. So I would write every weekend. And then I would write on the subway ride to work, and then I would write over my lunch hour. I was just constantly writing. And again, it goes back to you just really having to be pa.s.sionate about what it is that you're writing. I actually have such a love-hate relationship with writing. I kind of hate it. [Laughs] But you have to tell yourself, "I get to do this." More importantly, "I just have to do this." There's nothing worse than having it in the back of your mind, that it's something you need to do and you're not getting to. Maybe you've felt that way. You've thought, I'm so tired, I've worked all day writing. How am I opening up this computer and starting this other project? But if you really want it, you'll do it.

I do a thing where when I'm writing I put my television on Bravo, and I pause it on whatever show. Then I write until it unpauses itself, about forty-five minutes in, and then I get to watch for however long it's been paused. When it catches up, I go back to writing and pause again until it undoes itself again. That's my Sat.u.r.day fun. [Laughs] Aren't I a blast?

CAROL KOLB.

Carol Kolb isn't a household name, except among comedy nerds and obsessive fans of The Onion, "America's Finest News Source," the most consistently brilliant news parody of the last twenty years. But for comedy aficionados, Kolb is an almost mythical ent.i.ty. "We're still not convinced that Carol Kolb . . . is a real person," a writer at Gawker, the popular New Yorkbased gossip blog, once admitted.

Kolb was born and raised in Spencer, Wisconsin-two-and-a-half hours north of Madison. She enrolled at the University of Wisconsin to study English and Latin, and found her way to The Onion only by chance, when Todd Hanson, one of the original Onion writers, visited her apartment to see the Madison Museum of Bathroom Tissue. The collection of more than three thousand rolls of toilet paper, taken from such tourist attractions as Mount Rushmore and the Alamo, was just a quirky hobby Kolb had invented for no other reason than to amuse herself. But the museum attracted national attention. She was featured in Time magazine in 1997, and later that same year, she was asked to join The Onion's writing staff.

She became indispensable. Kolb quickly went from managing editor to editor in chief, and in 2001 moved, along with the rest of The Onion, to New York City. When The Onion tried their hand at TV in 2007, launching the Onion News Network, a web video series and (eventually) TV show, Kolb was brought on as head writer, helping The Onion win its first Peabody Award in 2009 (for creating satirical news that was "not infrequently hard to distinguish from the real thing"). After the Onion News Network was canceled in 2012, Kolb moved to Los Angeles with her husband, comedian Tony Camin, and started writing for TV shows such as Kroll Show and Community.

Was your childhood enjoyable? Were you happy as a child?

I wasn't. I came from a really small town in Wisconsin, population 1,754. I had fifty people in my graduating cla.s.s. Everyone was really stupid, including the teachers. Half of them were clearly hired just because they could also coach the sports teams. Most of the boys in my cla.s.s would be gone for a week during deer-hunting season. I was always extremely shy. I got good grades but I never talked, and I had a "crying problem." All the elementary school report cards my mom kept say "cries too easily" and "can't stop crying," all the way up through fifth grade. One report card reads "Crys easily." With a y.

What was your home life like growing up?

I did have fun, but basically my childhood was pretty sad and pathetic. My parents fought-and still do. It's now approaching fifty years. My dad worked at the Land O' Lakes cheese factory, the only building in town over three stories, at a series of soul-sapping jobs in departments like "Slice" and "Loaf." He didn't really spend time with us, ever. He got one vacation a year and he'd spend it on a two-week fishing trip to Canada with his friends. I never thought to complain. I saw the other kids at school whose families couldn't pull it together to get them a Halloween costume, or who, when we were older, talked about how their dad got drunk and tried to stab them. So it never really occurred to me to be critical of my dad just for not coming to my Christmas pageants.

My mom didn't work after having kids and she always felt guilty about this-but also I think she was just afraid to get out there. She started losing her hearing when I was still young and that was part of the reason. Also, we only had one car and my dad took it to work-things like that got in her way. Not that she has ever been diagnosed, but she definitely has some anxiety disorder. At The Onion, I wrote an article called "Area Mom Freaking Out For No Reason Again" [July 22, 1999], as well as several other articles based solely on her. But she also has this dark sense of humor and would say very funny things in a straight, matter-of-fact way.

For instance, after my dad had a heart attack, he would still always be yelling about something, and my mother would mutter under her breath, "How was your heart attack?"

Ultimately, I credit her for my sense of humor.