Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers by Mike Sacks Page A
Authors: Mike Sacks
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including “You have shit for brains.” That would be Stercus pro cerebro habes .
That’s right, as well as the Latin phrases for “You are a total asshole” [
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 space alien. Every once in a while, you run into these space aliens. There’s no other explanation.
A space alien in the sense that he was disconnected from the rest of us?
Yes. But he was also connected—I suppose a space 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.
And to be fair to comedy writers just starting out, there really isn’t much money in it.
No, there isn’t. There never really was, but there’s a whole lot less now. It’s just not a viable thing. It really isn’t.
The New Yorker
, to its credit, is still viable, but often they’ll just publish an unfunny piece by somebody you’ve heard of instead of a very funny piece by someone you’ve never heard of.
It’s just so difficult to write humor for print. I tried to figure this out recently. When I was at the
National Lampoon
, I think I wrote a million words. God help me, most of them were supposed to be funny. I can’t imagine anyone doing that again. I can’t imagine
myself
doing it again. Send the guys in the white jackets and nets. Looking back, you just can’t believe it.
You once said that it was Doug Kenney, the co-writer of Animal House and Caddyshack , who—more than any other National Lampoon writer—was able to get things done in Hollywood. Why was that?
The real beginning for
National
That’s right, as well as the Latin phrases for “You are a total asshole” [
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 space alien. Every once in a while, you run into these space aliens. There’s no other explanation.
A space alien in the sense that he was disconnected from the rest of us?
Yes. But he was also connected—I suppose a space 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.
And to be fair to comedy writers just starting out, there really isn’t much money in it.
No, there isn’t. There never really was, but there’s a whole lot less now. It’s just not a viable thing. It really isn’t.
The New Yorker
, to its credit, is still viable, but often they’ll just publish an unfunny piece by somebody you’ve heard of instead of a very funny piece by someone you’ve never heard of.
It’s just so difficult to write humor for print. I tried to figure this out recently. When I was at the
National Lampoon
, I think I wrote a million words. God help me, most of them were supposed to be funny. I can’t imagine anyone doing that again. I can’t imagine
myself
doing it again. Send the guys in the white jackets and nets. Looking back, you just can’t believe it.
You once said that it was Doug Kenney, the co-writer of Animal House and Caddyshack , who—more than any other National Lampoon writer—was able to get things done in Hollywood. Why was that?
The real beginning for
National
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