Poking A Dead Frog Part 3

When we hired the writer Emily Kapnek for Parks, I was given one of her scripts-it was an original-and I knew almost instantly that I wanted to hire her. I was sold with one particular joke midway through. It made me laugh out loud, which happens rarely when you're reading hundreds of scripts at a time.3 Do you see any common mistakes, across the board, with young comedy writers?

Complacency is a cla.s.sic mistake. Some people get to a certain point and go, "Okay, I've figured it out!" Writing isn't a thing you figure out-ever. My favorite things I've ever written, I hate. That might sound like a weird thing to say. But anything I've ever written that I felt was really great, I inevitably will look at two years later and think, Oh, G.o.d, this is so amateurish and terrible. But that's a good thing. If you ever feel like you've solved anything in writing, you're just setting yourself up for a huge fall-and you're wrong. Because it's not math or science; it's a weird, nebulous, hard-to-define thing. One person's favorite show in history is another person's least favorite show in history-or worse, it's a show they're indifferent to. And to stay vibrant and successful, you can't ever feel like you know what you're doing. Your att.i.tude has to constantly be, "Who is this rank amateur, and how can I teach him how to write?"

The tricky thing about TV is that there's a lot of money involved. It's very easy to get to a certain point in your career, whether it's your first staff job or whether you become a producer on a show, and then go, "I can breathe easy now." No writer should ever breathe easy. You should constantly figure out how to write better stories and better jokes, more three-dimensional characters, how to change what isn't working. If you don't, you're gonna lose your touch. It's not like riding a bike; you can't just put your pen down for a year, pick it back up, and be right where you were.

Writing is an art that has a weird aspect to it.

Weird in what way?

Part of its success depends on how the audience reacts to it. You can get philosophical about it and say that a perfectly written script just exists in s.p.a.ce and time as a beautiful testament to the power of the human soul or something, but the practical reality is that you have to film it and put it on TV, actors have to act in it, and the audience gets to weigh in at some point. If you ever feel complacent with yourself, then you're basically saying you don't need the other part of the equation. And if you're a TV or movie writer, you definitely do. Not just for your career, but to have people who weigh in on whether or not you successfully communicated what you wanted to communicate.

It's a strange business. It's really where the rubber meets the road-the rubber being art and the road being commerce.

ULTRASPECIFIC COMEDIC KNOWLEDGE.

TODD LEVIN.

Writer, Conan

Writing a Submission Packet for Late-Night TV

What follows is the writing packet I submitted for Late Night with Conan O'Brien. (I submitted this sample in 2008, was hired in early 2009, then followed the show to Los Angeles to write for The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. I now write for Conan, on TBS, and by the time this book is published, I will most likely be writing for O'Brien Nights on eBay.tv.) Accompanying each entry, in italics, are my thoughts on each specific idea: what I think I did right, what I think I did wrong, what I'd now do differently. I've also a.s.sessed each idea with a handy, though purely speculative, "Prognosis for Ever Making It to Air." I'm making these calls based on my perceived merits of the piece, weighed with my experience in seeing what types of pieces and jokes tend to make it out of the writers' room, through rehearsal, and to air.

Todd Levin's Submission Packet for Late Night with Conan O'Brien "Riff," the Late Night Bully Riff was Conan's school bully all through high school. Although he hasn't seen Riff in years, now that Conan is a very big success he's decided to bring Riff on the show and finally settle his score. However, when Riff comes onstage it becomes immediately clear that something horrible has happened to him, which has temporarily rendered him physically vulnerable. (In one appearance, Riff is in an electric wheelchair and can only speak through an electronic voice synthesizer.) Because of Riff's delicate condition, Conan always feels too awful to make fun of him, even as Riff taunts him. Eventually, Riff pushes Conan to his breaking point and he finally halfheartedly insults Riff, leaving everyone aghast. When Conan tries to apologize, Riff claims there is only one way he'll accept an apology, and that way usually involves Conan humiliating himself in front of the entire show to Riff's delight as Riff exits the auditorium shouting, "Smell ya later, b.o.n.e.r O'Cryin'!"

Current Thoughts: In my mind, this was a cla.s.sic Late Night bit-a loud-mouthed character interrupting Conan, making him uncomfortable somehow, and then humiliating him before making his exit. That said, this premise has two immediately obvious red flags. Riff is a consciously "character-y" name. Putting your character in a crazy outfit or a.s.signing him an implausibly cartoonish name like "Pudge O'Shaughnessy" or "Benedict c.u.mberbatch" are loud announcements that the audience is about to experience a wacky comedy sketch. As I've spent more time doing this, I've discovered it's often better to let your character play it real, unenc.u.mbered by a silly comedy name, so it's a little more unexpected when he inevitably says or does very foolish things.

This idea also has two really dangerous built-in expectations of the audience: They must sympathize with an a.s.shole character and then turn against the show's host-the reason they're watching the show in the first place. Good luck!

Prognosis for Ever Making It to Air: Highly Unlikely Bootleg Round-Up In New York, you can find someone selling bootleg DVDs, CDs, and even computer software on every corner. They're dirt-cheap, but you have to be careful, because sometimes the quality can be sort of dubious. Conan shows off some of the bootlegs he's purchased off the street in this consumer awareness segment: DVDs-you never know what you're going to get, so you have to read the packaging very clearly.

Sicko (In small print: "the Michael Moore s.e.x tape") The Fantastic Four (The four pictured on the box are Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Girl, the Human Torch, and an older-looking Asian man dressed up as Dracula) Law & Order: Special Victims Eunuch-Season Three (CONAN: "I thought it was a translation problem until I watched the DVD"-plays a clip from it, and it's just a regular episode of SVU but all the male characters' voices are incredibly high-pitched) Ratatouille (Conan plays a clip from it, and it's just cheap news footage of real, live rats running around in a KFC) Girls Gone Wild, Vol. 4 (Conan plays a clip from it, and it's footage of college-aged girls who have been raised by animals. In one scene, a feral girl with matted hair sucks from the teat of a wolf.) Current Thoughts: Kind of a mixed bag here comedically, but I actually think the premise is sound. Plus, it's one of those types of segments that are essential to a nightly late night show-an easy-to-produce and easy-to-repeat "desk piece." (Named so because they're typically bits the host can present right from his desk. Conan's Celebrity Surveys and Fallon's Thank You Notes are good examples of this kind of joke delivery system.) The simplicity of this format is deceivingly hard to crack. It must be generic enough to accommodate all kinds of jokes, familiar enough to require very little setup, and fresh enough that it hasn't already been attempted in more than a half century of late night comedy. Most desk pieces on late night shows typically fulfill one or two of those requirements; all three is pretty rare. In the history of late night talk shows, I don't think there's been a better desk piece than Late Night with Conan O'Brien's Actual Items. Familiar but totally unexpected, highly visual, and it came with an endless supply of inspiration.

On paper, desk piece pitches are often not inherently funny-Celebrity Surveys is basically "Conan asks three celebrities to answer a single question, and the third celebrity's answer is very crazy!" That's why it's good to include several beats as proof of concept.

FYI: I was tempted to remove the Michael Moore joke because I still can't believe I sent in something so awful, but I felt it was more important for others to learn from my mistakes. Hero? You decide.

Prognosis for Ever Making It to Air: Pretty Good Late Night Recession Survival Tips There's no denying that this current economic crisis has really gotten all of us down. That's why Conan has put together some great tips to help viewers save money and fight the recession blues.

Don't have enough money to take your kids to Six Flags this year? Why not turn your own home into a first-rate theme park? Video montage includes: Kids step into a clothes dryer with an amus.e.m.e.nt park sign attached to it that says "The Tumbler."

A young boy stands in front of a microwave set to cook for thirty minutes. An amus.e.m.e.nt park sign reads "The Sterilizer."

Two kids enter through a door marked "House of Horrors," to discover an old man sitting on the bed, completely naked, clipping his toenails.

Turn even the most depressing meal into a feast fit for a king with Dinner Jackets, zippered pouches designed to look like high-end foods. (We see a mom ladling a thick, gruel-like substance into a Dinner Jacket styled to look like a T-bone steak.) Bam Bam Banker: Who says you can't have fun while the economy craters around you? Next time you're stuck in a dull meeting, why not play "Bam Bam Banker," a recession-era twist on the popular road game, Punchbuggy. [We see a group of businessmen in a conference room, all staring out the window. They are each yelling the names of various colors-"Come on blue!" "Let's go red!!" etc.-until, suddenly, a body dressed in a white s.h.i.+rt and blue tie plunges past the window. One of the businessmen shouts, "Bam Bam Banker Blue!" and punches each of his co-workers in the arm, etc.]

Current Thoughts: At Conan, this kind of piece is called a "thrasher." It's a term I still don't fully understand, although I know it when it applies. A thrasher is a long piece built around a basic theme, and incorporating many types of comedy executions-video, live walk-throughs, curtain reveals, short sketches, etc. This one has a bit of variety in it. The theme park idea would probably work best as a taped piece, while "Bam Bam Banker" could probably be done live in the studio, with a small set.

I didn't even remember this piece from my packet, but I think it's aged better than some of the other ideas. Also, I realize now I've stolen from myself, because later, when I was (briefly) writing for The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, I produced a piece about Disneyland suffering from cutbacks and included the joke about an industrial clothes dryer standing in for a theme park ride.

Prognosis for Ever Making It to Air: Extremely Likely Desk Piece-DVD Commentaries Late Night previews some of its favorite special-edition DVD commentary tracks.

The Bourne Ultimatum, Special "Commuter Buying Newspaper" Actor's Commentary: One of the film's extras from the scene that takes place in a crowded London train station gets his own commentary track, in which he spends all of his time prepping the audience for the split-second moment in which his character gets b.u.mped into by Jason Bourne.

The Constant Gardener, Gardener Audio Commentary: During an especially harrowing scene in The Constant Gardener, two professional gardeners point out and discuss various gardening techniques evident in the film.

Incredible Hulk, Hulk Audio Commentary: An enraged, barely verbal Hulk provides a running commentary on the action, growling statements like "Hulk found Liv Tyler joy to work with" and "Hulk really admire mise-en-scene here. Think Zak Penn truly visionary director."

Two Guys on the Into the Wild Audio Commentary Who Are Pretty Confident They Would Have Fared Better Than Chris McCandless: Sort of self-explanatory, two skeptical jerks constantly point out obvious mistakes Chris McCandless makes in his attempts to live in the wild.

Current Thoughts: Another desk piece that would have been easy to produce-pre-existing footage from film with a new audio track. I would bet this idea, or some variation on it, has been pitched dozens of times before and since, on many different talk shows. I wouldn't even be surprised if someone has attempted it. Here, I hope the specificity of the jokes saved a pretty generic concept. If not, I hope the show's head writer accidentally skipped past this one while reading my packet.

Prognosis for Ever Making It to Air: Decent, Though It Could Be Dismissed Outright Purely on Suspicions That Another Late Night Show Must Have Already Done This Idea Characters: Candidates for the "New Characters" Parade THE JIHADIST WITH BEAUTIFUL LEGS.

A man walks out in a cleric's robe and threatens to blow up the entire show. When he tears open his robe to show the bomb strapped to his chest, we can see he's also wearing daisy dukes and high heels, and has smooth, beautiful legs. Stripper music plays as he laments, "It is my gift and my curse!"

Current Thoughts: Character walk-throughs were a big part of Late Night and I included these once I felt like I'd already fulfilled my submission packet requirements with other ideas. I would imagine that most writers would have a difficult time submitting a packet for Late Night without including a few ridiculous and pointless characters.

This specific character is kind of a lame idea, really, but I think it could be salvaged with a very good performance. (Even now, if I've written a semi-decent script, I know it will be improved significantly by casting Brian Stack, one of the show's longtime writers and maybe the single best sketch performer I've ever seen.) When I see a lot of sketch comedy, I am surprised by how much its creators will underestimate the importance of casting. (One of my comedy pet peeves-this is meant to be a platform for my grievances, right?-is seeing a twentysomething sketch actor with an uneven coat of silver spray in his hair attempting to play the father of another twentysomething sketch actor when there are thousands of great older actors who would be game and could very naturally play the comedy straight.) Prognosis for Ever Making It to Air: Questionable EDDIE AMPLIFIER, THE HUMAN SOUND EFFECTS MACHINE WHO JUST WANTS TO TALK ABOUT A RECENT PERSONAL TRAGEDY.

Instead of entertaining the audience with his a.r.s.enal of vocal sound effects, Eddie grimly recounts some recent bad news, adding realistic vocal sound effects in the most inappropriate and sad places.

Current Thoughts: I would have loved to do this, even if it had the potential to be a huge b.u.mmer on the show. Sadly, though, well after getting hired, I learned that the stand-up comedian Jerry Minor has performed a similar bit onstage. Points off for lack of originality.

Prognosis for Ever Making It to Air: Cut in Writers' Room WHIZMORE, THE CHEEZ WHIZ WHIZZING WIZARD.

A man dressed in a full wizard costume, including long white beard, stands onstage and "pees" Cheez Whiz out of his robe and onto a cracker, and then eats the cracker. That's pretty much it.

Current Thoughts: I will fist-fight any one of you in defense of this pitch. I still think it would be a delightful thing to see on television. And yes, that comment at the end-"that's pretty much it"-was actually in my submission.

Prognosis for Ever Making It to Air: s...o...b..ll's Chance in h.e.l.l, Though It Has the Novelty of "Worst Thing We've Ever Done on the Show" Potential Summary: Your reward for trudging through my submission packet is some advice I hope you will find as simple as it is practical. That is, please try to remember that demonstrating a clear understanding of a show's particular comedic voice might get your packet read past its first idea, but it's not necessarily enough to get you into that malodorous den of zero-moral-boundaries thinking known as the writers' room. For that, never underestimate the importance of carefully weaving your own voice into your submission well enough that it cannot easily be separated from your ideas. That's the balance that I think is important to strike: supplying something familiar that no one ever saw coming.

PURE, HARD-CORE ADVICE.

ANDReS DU BOUCHET.

Comedian; Writer, Conan, The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Best Week Ever Recently, I was trying to think of some sound advice for aspiring comedians and comedy writers, and the thing I kept coming back to was how different the comedy landscape is now to when I was starting. There are two big differences: 1) There are way, way, way, way more people now pursuing stand-up, comedy writing, and acting as a career, and 2) There are many more tools and inst.i.tutions in place to facilitate the pursuit of comedy as a career. Between the ability to take cla.s.ses at UCB, to network on Facebook and Twitter, to post your own videos on YouTube and Funny or Die, and the endless avalanche of blogs and Tumblrs, aspiring comics can instantly begin creating comedy, finding an audience, and receiving feedback on their material. But, like I said, these tools have increased the number of aspiring comedians exponentially. Currently, it seems that comedy is no longer the exclusive territory of the emotionally confused person drawn to it as a means of finding themselves and working through their anger and fear-that would have been me. Now it's become legitimized as a career that you can pursue after college. You can basically take Comedy Grad School if you go to the Upright Citizens Brigade or any one of the other improv programs.

That being said, my advice to aspiring comedians and comedy writers would be to start with one very basic question: Is this really what I want to do? Because it is for a ton of other people. And since there's so much white noise of constant, relentless comedy content pouring out of all these aspiring comics and writers, you're going to need a very unique comedy voice to stand out, and you're going to need to work very hard for a very long time to separate yourself from the pack.

Actually, perhaps an even better question to ask yourself would be: Do I need to be doing this? Most of the comedians I know, myself included, felt there wasn't a choice in the matter. It wasn't, "Oh, neat, this will be a fun career to pursue." It was, "I need to figure out who the f.u.c.k I am by making people laugh." So once you've worked through all those questions and feelings, my advice becomes simple: Write and perform comedy constantly and relentlessly for years and years until you're awesome at it, all the while making tons of great friends in the comedy world. Eventually, one of those friends will get their foot in the door of "s...o...b..z," and opportunities will begin to open for you.

If you can do anything else with your life and still be happy, do it, for crying out loud.

HENRY BEARD.

"'Do you like what you doth see . . . ?' said the voluptuous elf-maiden as she provocatively parted the folds of her robe to reveal the rounded, shadowy glories within. Frito's throat was dry, though his head reeled with desire and ale."

So began the opening paragraph of Bored of the Rings, a 1969 full-length book parody of the J. R. R. Tolkien fantasy novels. The book is remarkable for a few reasons: Unlike most parody books, it's remained in publication for more than forty-five years. Also, as one of the first parodies of a modern, popular bestseller, it's inspired several generations of pop culture parodists, including future writers for Sat.u.r.day Night Live, The Onion, and Funny or Die. But perhaps most significant, Bored was the first major work from two young writers named Henry Beard and Doug Kenney, recent graduates of Harvard University who were just a year from co-creating one of the most influential-if not the most influential-comedy magazines of the twentieth century: the National Lampoon.

Born on June 7, 1945, Beard grew up from the age of nine at the Westbury Hotel on Manhattan's Upper East Side. He first discovered his writing talents at the Harvard Lampoon, but comedy writing was just a recreation for Beard, not a serious career aspiration. After graduating from Harvard in 1967, he planned to attend the university's law school, but after applying in a "halfhearted way," he was rejected. In an equally fortuitous spurning, he and fellow Harvard scribe Doug Kenney were booted out of Harvard's ROTC program, in Beard's case for failing to attend a military ball. "We all went up to the ROTC offices to try to get a hearing," Beard says, "but the colonel in charge refused to see me." Instead, he ran into a sergeant, who recommended that he join the local Army Reserve. He did, and it saved him from a stint in Vietnam.

In 1970, Beard-along with Kenney and Rob Hoffman, with a generous loan from Matty Simmons, one of the publishers of Weight Watchers magazine-founded the National Lampoon. Within a few years, the Lampoon had more than one million readers. n.o.body was safe from its take-no-prisoners, slash-and-burn satire, from Richard Nixon to John Lennon. Even the Kennedy a.s.sa.s.sination was open for ridicule. "My insurance company?" Kennedy asks in a full-page Lampoon ad parody, as Oswald points a rifle out a sixth-floor window behind him. "New England Life, of course. Why?"

Beard served as the Lampoon's executive editor from 1970 to '72, and then editor-in-chief from 1973 to '75, where he watched over a motley crew of brilliant satirists including Christopher Cerf, Michael O'Donoghue, Sean Kelly, Chris Miller, P. J. O'Rourke, Bruce McCall, Michel Choquette, and Gerry Sussman. Beard has often been described as the magazine's "calm center," especially during moments of crisis or tension, which were constant occurrences. In an article published by the Columbia Daily Spectator in 1972, Beard recounted how the National Lampoon received numerous death threats, including nine sticks of dynamite sent from Utah. One letter from American soldiers in Vietnam read: "We would all like to hang you by the Toes and Beat you with a big stick until you couldn't walk."

Far from just an editor-and one of the very best editors of humor in the publis.h.i.+ng world-Beard was also an accomplished writer, penning many of the Lampoon's most popular recurring sections, such as News on the March, and larger features, like 1974's "Law of the Jungle," an incredibly dense doc.u.ment, written in legalese, that delved into the complicated rules of the animal kingdom. A short excerpt: "The crows are still paying royalties to the heirs of an obscure, long extinct reptile, for their [copyrighted] use of their 'caw-caw' cry. Interestingly, the heirs are a subspecies of flounder, who are, of course, mute. Animal law is full of such fascinating arrangements." The twelve-thousand-word piece, according to Beard, was written "in less than a day." In comparison, this entire interview-including introduction-runs less than half that length.

Unlike his Lampoon peers, Beard never made the transition from print into other comedy genres. He had no involvement with any Broadway musicals or radio shows or TV shows or the wildly successful Lampoon movies like Animal House. Instead, he quietly retired from the magazine in 1975 and went into near seclusion. Beard, in the years since, has been described as "enigmatic," "reclusive," and "odd." He is not known for giving interviews, having turned down every opportunity to partic.i.p.ate in the numerous biographies written about the Lampoon.

Over the past three decades, Beard has written, or co-written, thirty-five books, including Latin for All Occasions (1990), French for Cats: All the French Your Cat Will Ever Need (1991), The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook (with Christopher Cerf, 1992), O.J.'s Legal Pad: What Is Really Going On in O.J. Simpson's Mind? (1995), and Encyclopedia Paranoiaca (with Christopher Cerf, 2012).

In doing research for this interview, I read that your father was born in 1881. I find that incredible. The distance between 1881 to the 1970s-era of National Lampoon feels like it could never, in any possible way, be bridged. Such two vastly different worlds.

It's true. And it is incredible. Even more incredible is that my great-grandfather was born in 1834. Try connecting the preCivil War era with America in the 1970s. Just a huge gap. But, yes, my father was born in the nineteenth century. Believe it or not, he had a friend who was on the t.i.tanic.

Did his friend survive?

Lawrence Beesley was his name, and he survived. He was in second cla.s.s, a few decks below the top deck. Like my father, he was a Christian Scientist, and clearly he did not smoke or drink. He was reading in his bunk when he felt a b.u.mp. He walked to the top deck, where he saw a few people milling about. No one seemed in a great panic. That's really what fascinated me. Everyone was calm. There was very little noise.4 He returned to his room to read and then heard from above a shout, "All pa.s.sengers on deck with lifeboats on." Beesley went up to the lifeboat deck, and everyone was saying that the men should be on the left side, the port side, and they'll be picked up there. And Beesley, being no fool, said to himself, "Hmmm, I think my chances are better here on the starboard side." He wasn't pus.h.i.+ng women aside-I believe this to be true.

He stayed and saw a rescue boat being lowered. The guy operating the boat yelled, "Hey, you. We got room in here. Do you want to jump in?" So Beesley jumped off the rail and into the lifeboat, which floated away. It was one of the first to escape. Beesley later said that everyone in the boat thought they'd have to later slink back in shame when the t.i.tanic didn't sink. And they'd all look like a bunch of cowards. Well, that was a problem they did not have to confront. Beesley later wrote a book about his experiences [The Loss of the SS t.i.tanic: Its Story and Its Lessons by One of the Survivors].

Did you ever meet Lawrence Beesley?

No, he was long gone. I spoke to my father a little bit about it and he told me the story of what Lawrence had told him. Lawrence also told my father that when the t.i.tanic went down, he saw the boat tip over. He said it broke-not quite in half-and he heard the boilers come loose in their mooring and go out the side of the s.h.i.+p, like a huge locomotive going under. He saw the funnels go down. And this description of the splitting of the s.h.i.+p turned out to be accurate when [in September 1985] they found the pieces on the ocean floor. It had broken exactly where he had said it had broken.

Did you, too, grow up under the Christian Science faith?

No. My father was a Christian Scientist, but he had come from a long line of Protestant Irish who ended up in the South, in Birmingham, Alabama. When they came over from Ireland, Alabama was a pretty prosperous place. My father was born there, and then lived for awhile in Louisville.

You weren't raised in the South. How did your family eventually end up north?

My father's mother, my grandmother, was very smart. She was also a very difficult woman who lived to be one hundred. She was evacuated out of Atlanta ahead of Sherman's army when she was a child, and I think she ultimately came to realize that, at least for the time being, the South had no future. So she packed up the family and moved north. My father eventually ended up in New York City, where I spent a few years, before I was sent off to boarding school at the age of ten, in 1955, first to the Rectory School and then to Taft, both in Connecticut.

Do you think that attending boarding school molded you into the comedy writer you later became?

Oh, completely. I don't recommend it. But if you want to get a perfect education as a writer, and if you want to have eight years of Latin before you go to college, well then, this is the place to go. Basically all we were taught was how to read and write the English language. We had to write a thousand-word essay every week. At Taft, in the English cla.s.s, they had an exam called the 2-8-2. You had a little blue book, and the teacher would write a phrase from a Shakespeare play on the board. You had two minutes to think, eight minutes to compose, two minutes to correct, and then you put your pencils down: 2-8-2.

That is how you train writers.

Often writers have all the time in the world.

Absolutely, and we don't do s.h.i.+t. Then again, in boarding school, with no girls, there wasn't a h.e.l.l of a lot to do besides write that thousand-word, stupid-themed essay each week.

I'd a.s.sume that Latin later came in handy when you wrote Latin for All Occasions. The book, published in 1990, helpfully provided readers with the Latin translation of hundreds of phrases, including "You have s.h.i.+t for brains." That would be Stercus pro cerebro habes.

That's right, as well as the Latin phrases for "You are a total a.s.shole" [Podex perfectus es] and "Screw you and the horse you rode in on" [Futue te ipsum et caballum in quo vectus est]. So, for that alone, maybe all those years of boarding school were worth it.

Were you allowed a television at boarding school in the late 1950s and early 1960s?

No, we weren't even allowed a radio. I can't ever remember hearing or watching much comedy at all, although later, I clearly remember Ernie Kovacs. More than anyone, Kovacs had a huge impact on me. Completely unexpected and original. There was no one else like him.

His shows were so primitive. Very low-cost sets. Everything was shot on kinescope, which is just filming off a TV screen. But the comedy was amazing. He had a skit called "The Nairobi Trio," which was three performers dressed as gorillas with derby hats and overcoats, pretending to play music. Beyond bizarre, but it worked. Where did that idea come from? The guy was a s.p.a.ce alien. Every once in a while, you run into these s.p.a.ce aliens. There's no other explanation.

A s.p.a.ce alien in the sense that he was disconnected from the rest of us?

Yes. But he was also connected-I suppose a s.p.a.ce alien who fit in on Earth-and that's the only way to produce resonant humor. If you're too connected, it becomes tedious. If you're too disconnected, it doesn't work. You have to be separate but still secured. Genius, absolute genius.

One of the things I love about your career is that it's strictly geared to print, which almost seems like a lost art. Most comedy writers now only seem interested in print if it somehow leads to a TV or movie career.

My generation came along when there was a huge changeover. I graduated from Harvard in 1967. When people graduated from the Harvard Lampoon, they went to law school, they became architects, a few of them went on to medical school, or they went to work on Wall Street. If you were a writer-and there weren't many-you mostly wrote for print, not Hollywood. Most clung, of course, to The New Yorker, Playboy, and books. Within ten years of my graduation, however, all the writers headed west, to write comedy for television shows.

Do you ever wonder if future generations will have either the interest or the talent to concentrate solely on humor for print?

Print is a totally different beast. It requires, without patting myself on the back too hard, some discipline. Television comedy is very tight, very carefully written and rewritten and rewritten and rewritten and rewritten. But it's not quite the same. And you know you've got the backup; you've got funny people to make faces when a line doesn't work. It's different. I suppose some writers will still keep writing humor for print, but it doesn't seem quite as natural as when I was coming along.