TALES FROM THE SCRIPT: THE BEHIND-THE-CAMERA ADVENTURES OF A TV COMEDY WRITER by Gene Perret

that cost about $5,000 to build. To amortize that set, the producer asked us to do other jokes that utilized the
wall. it was practically impossible. The joke was done. it was funny,
but variations couldn’t be done on it.
Laugh-In also had a unique stationery situation. That was before
the days of computers, so all our work had to be typed with carbon
paper copies. We had paper that consisted of one sheet of normal
paper with about seven carbon papers and onion skins attached. We
handed in two copies to the Script Supervisors, kept a copy for our
own records, and threw the other sheets away.
i wrote fast, and i liked to overwrite. if someone wanted five
jokes, i wrote fifteen and let them decide which five were the best. So,
if they wanted three jokes for John Wayne, i’d turn in ten.
One day, the Script Supervisor asked me to stop that. i asked
why. He said, “You’re wasting an awful lot of paper.”
i was astounded. There was a show that was costing hundreds of
thousands of dollars to produce and was generating small fortunes in income for the producers, the stars, and the network, and they wanted me
to stop writing a few extra jokes because i was wasting too much paper.
i ignored the admonition because i was having good success getting jokes into the script (yes, i counted joke pages, too), and i had to
be there so many hours, so i felt that i might as well be writing.
The other procedure we followed was to hand in the jokes to the
Script Supervisors at the end of the day. We were to put the originals
in one bin, and then put the first carbon copy in the other bin. At the
end of one particular workday, i thought i had followed the procedure, and then i sat in the outer office talking to the production assistants who worked there. Our Script Supervisor, the one who often
had trouble finding his car in the morning, came tearing out of his
office waving pages around.
“Who handed in these jokes?” he screamed. “Who handed in
these jokes?”
Since all the pages had initials at the top, there was no reason for
him to ask who handed in the pages when he had the pages in his
hand that had the initials at the top that would tell him who handed
them in. it happened to be me who handed them in. i confessed.
He screamed at me in front of everyone, “You put the originals
in the carbon paper bin and you put the carbons in the original bin.”
i said to him, “i’m sorry, but if that ever happens again, here’s
what you should do: take these pages and move them to the other
bin and take the pages that are already there and put them in the bin
you took these from. That should solve your problem.”
From then on, if they asked for three Lee Marvin jokes, i wrote three Lee Marvin jokes. if they wanted two joke wall jokes, i typed two joke wall jokes. no more no less. i generally finished my assignment by about 11:30 and took the rest of the day for nap time and
other personal projects.
Either that or i played with my toys. My writing partner, Rowby
Greeber, had fun writing letters to various people inviting them to appear on Laugh-In . He invited the Pope, who declined. Queen Elizabeth ii also regretted that she couldn’t fit it into her schedule, but he
got nice letters of apology, which he saved and framed.
He also wrote to Mattel, the manufacturers of Hot Wheels, suggesting that they send some of their products that we might use as
material for jokes on the show. in response, he received many of their
    My Laugh-In writing partner, Rowby Greeber, and I reading
over the jokes we got into this week’s script. You know they’re
our jokes because we’re laughing at them.
    latest products. We had cars and tracks running throughout our motel suite, from the bedroom, through the living, and back again. They
helped fill my free time on the show.
    On The Jim Nabors Hour , a typical script was about ¾ of an inch
thick. On Laugh-In , since the gags were each put on a separate page
for taping