July 3, 2009 - The Austin Chronicle

SCREENSTough CrowdThe setup: 21 depressives, neurotics, and social misfitswalk into a book. Meet comedy’s all-stars.BY KIMBERLEY JONESThe title of Mike Sacks’ new book on comedy, And Here’s the Kicker: Conversations With 21Top Humor Writers on Their Craft, sounds straightforward enough, but it really only hints at whathappened when Sacks started talking with comedy greats from past and present, including BuckHenry, Harold Ramis, Mad magazine’s Al Jaffee, and The Simpsons’ George Meyer. Another 19interviews didn’t make the final cut; “some of them,” says Sacks, a humorist and Vanity Fair staffwriter, “were really quite awful.”These aren’t quick chats, but rather the fruits of two years’ research and around about 10hours of interview time per subject. In his book, Sacks digs into the inner workings of the comicmind (a sometimes deeply troubled one) and into the inner sanctum of the writers’ room, fromCaesar’s Hour to Saturday Night Live. He plucks practical advice on what not to do when tryingto get a job (in case you were wondering, “it’s not smart to send in a résumé on a Mylar balloon”).And every so often, Sacks fawns, if just a little bit. (Like you’d keep your cool talkingto a guy who once wrote for the Marx Brothers.) Put together, And Here’s the Kicker, which hitsshelves on July 8, is a fascinating mix of cultural reportage, how-to, and hagiography.Austin Chronicle: So howmuch are the humorists includedin your book an indicator ofyour own comedic sensibility?Are these “the ones” for you?Mike Sacks: I had carteblanche. I could pick whoeverI wanted. Truthfully, alot of them said no – SteveMartin said no; Albert Brookssaid no; Tina Fey said no. Alot of women said no. Butthese are people that I justlove. … It just mattered tome if I liked their work andif they were willing to talk tome for 10 hours.AC: Did your opinion of someof the writers change in the process?MS: Um, yeah. I would say that in somecases my respect grew, and in other cases,it didn’t. … But some of these people areso consistent – Bob Odenkirk, MarshallBrickman, Mitch Hurwitz, David Sedaris –that I couldn’t help but be awed by thesepeople. Like, Larry Gelbart’s been producingsince he was 16 years old, and he’s nowin his 70s. And the people he’s written forare Bob Hope upwards, Tootsie he wrote,M*A*S*H [the TV series].Irv Brecher – he was 94 years old when Ispoke to him. And that guy was absolutelyamazing. He remembered his phone numberfrom 70 years ago. And he was still, youknow, funny and remembered stories. Just tobe able to talk to people like that was worthit. … It was just a bridge to another time …to ask him what it was like to write for theMarx Brothers or [to be contemporaries with]Dorothy Parker or S.J. Perelman. It was justastonishing. And unfortunately that time hasgone. With him dying, there’s not too manyleft who have dealt with those classic humorwriters. But it was so great to be able to talkabout them as real people and not just aspeople one reads about.44 T H E A U S T I N C H R O N I C L E JULY 3, 2009 a u s t i n c h r o n i c l e . c o mAC: You mentioned MarshallBrickman, who used to beWoody Allen’s co-writer. Inyour book, Brickman talksabout the original cut of AnnieHall – I don’t suppose youasked him if that original cutexists somewhere in a bunker?MS: I did.AC: You did?MS: Yeah, I wanted to publishthe full script in theback of the book. He said hewas fine with it, and then hesaid, “But you just have toask Woody.” And I thought,“That’s not going to work.”So I asked Woody Allen’s sister,who represents him, and she said no way.I just wanted to look at it, and he said he’d bewilling to have me over just to look at it, butthen, I don’t know. I guess he changed hismind. I think it’s the type of thing where theyfeel that it turned out so well as is that maybethe original script wasn’t as good as peoplemight have imagined it to be.AC: There’s also the moment in that interviewwhere Brickman is talking about Annie Hall,and he says: “Who knows why that film works? Ihave no idea.” When I read that, I couldn’t decideif I should feel happy or completely dejected thateven Marshall Brickman didn’t know what he wasdoing when he did it, or how he did it.MS: Right, well, I think his point is that evenwhen you have a tremendous amount of talentinvolved, there’s so much room for error thatyou never know how it’s going to end up. Andthat one had a tremendous amount of problems:It was re-edited, rewritten, they had togo back for more shoots, and I think they werekind of surprised that it turned out to be thisexplosion. It just hit at the right time in theright way. You know, he’s worked with WoodyAllen before on movies that haven’t been assuccessful. I guess it’s always a mystery as tohow something will turn out. …JUSTIN BISHOPI think a lot of it is kind of luck. ToddHanson [The Onion’s head writer] – here’ssomeone who was working washing dishesand was just doing this for fun, no expectationsthat it would lead anywhere. He wasn’tstudying humor in college – I don’t think hegraduated college. He was very talented, andhe was lucky. He hooked onto a good thingat the right time, at the right place. I thinka lot of these people will admit that they’retalented, but they also admit that they knowa lot of talented people that they came upwith who are still waiting tables or workingtemp jobs or whatever. There’s definitely luckinvolved with that.AC: It was a little disheartening to hear someonelike Larry Gelbart, who’s had so muchsuccess, still sound so frustrated at the end ofhis career.MS: It was. I felt bad for the guy, because,as you said, he doesn’t have much time tospare, and he’s working on these projectsthat never get off the ground, and youthink, “Hey, if this guy is having problems,then anyone can have problems.” But at thesame time, it’s sort of reassuring to hearthat everyone is struggling at every level.… There aren’t writers who reach a pointwhere they just sit back and relax and everythingthey write will either be published orproduced. Even David Sedaris writes piecesthat aren’t published.AC: What about the dream dead-person interview?The one that you wished you could haveincluded?MS: Well, I’m a big fan of Jean Shepherd.Have you ever heard of him?AC: I recognize the name.MS: He used to write for Playboy …AC: Wait, he didn’t write A Christmas Story,did he?MS: He did. In fact, he was the narrator.AC: Really? He had a great voice.Mike Sacks spent two yearsinterviewing comedy greats from pastand present, including Buck Henry,Bob Odenkirk, and David Sedaris.MS: He was a radio personality. He’s a greatwriter. [He wrote] very, very funny storiesabout his childhood that are done in a verysolid manner; they’re not done in the nostalgic-typeway. And he died not too long ago –four or five years ago.Also I think S.J. Perelman, maybe.But, you know, the reason I wanted todo this book, too, is because there are nobooks out there with interviews or an oralhistory from current humor writers. A lotfrom Your Show of Shows and things likethat. So I didn’t really wish to interviewthose who are past – it was more importantto me to interview those who were going tobe classic humor writers in the future, whomight not have had a chance to be in a bookyet and talk about their craft and the waythey came up.AC: Two “future classics” you spoke with areStephen Merchant [co-creator of the BBC’s TheOffice] and Paul Feig [Freaks and Geeks]. Ibring those two up because Feig talks aboutcomedy that’s rooted in the pain center, andMerchant talks about comedy that hits thepleasure center. In terms of your own likes anddislikes, which do you gravitate to more – thepainful comedy or the pleasurable?MS: Well, I find painful pleasurable. That’swhat I was trying to ask both of them: Can’tthere be a pleasurable pain center? And PaulFeig said yeah, there can be, but no one’sgoing to watch it – or not necessarily no one,but not to the degree that it would be a hugehit. There’s always a small degree of peoplewho are going to like that, but mostly peoplewant to feel it in the pleasure center of thebrain rather than the other center.The humor that I like is usually connectedto characters. It’s authentic to their character,and if that character happens to be a loser anda sad sack, well, then that’s just part of it.