August 14, 2003
Part The Second
Dominoe: This is all you know, isn't it? Pushing, hitting, and punching! Does it make you feel good or something?
Sharky: Sometimes, yes!
The writers eat free food, look out the window, wish they were playing outside, and count the minutes until they can fuck off for the weekend.
It’s a lot like high school in that way.
Of course, that’s hardly a consolation when you’re a freelance writer and your script is going to be worked on for the first time.
In Which Our Hero Talks About His Drinking, The "A" Story and Burt Reynolds
Friday found Hammy and I in the Small Room with Bucky, Jones, The Load Warrior, the Girlfriend of Big Cock and the Hot One.
Okay. Just a quick tangent on the nicknames.
“The Load Warrior” is some sort of foosball reference. Apparently, all comedy writers play foosball. Except me. I suck at foosball. In fact, I am so bad at foosball, I stayed at least five feet away from the table at all times, out of fear that I would one day be asked by one of the writers to play and in the course of one short game, lose what little respect I earned with the Blimp Maneuver.
The Load Warrior also was the first writer to read our scripts, and the second writer to lobby for us to get a freelance episode.
We like The Load Warrior. We’re all about The Load Warrior.
The etymology of “Girlfriend of Big Cock” lies with her boyfriend, Big Cock. Big Cock got his nickname from the fact that he walks with a long-stepping, slow gait—as if there’s something in his pants he has to step around. Of course, this walk could be due to that fact that Big Cock’s a pothead.
Anyway.
There was no producer in the room.
The horror. The horror.
Keep in mind that you always need someone to Drive The Bus. When a producer is Driving the Bus, you make one stop for lunch and that’s it. Pee quickly. You might miss something. But when one of the staff writers drives the bus, you make about four “I know it can’t work, but wouldn’t it be funny if...” stops, seven “Do you know of a good interior designer / cleaning lady / therapist who’s liberal with the prescriptions” stops, and sixteen “Fucking Producers...” stops.
(A “Fucking Producers” stop, while sometimes tedious and pointless, can also be entertaining. For example: The day before I came in, when Hammy was with the writers, the theme of the “Fucking Producers” stop was, “Things You Hear In Our Show’s Writers’ Office That You Would Never Hear On Another Show.” Some examples:
“No, Lenny and Squiggy can’t do that because they have to be good at their jobs.”
“Do you think it’s too much of a ‘buy’ that the Professor can make a barometer out of a couple of coconuts?”
“What’s Homer’s drive in Act 2?”
Anyway.)
In the first five minutes The Load Warrior, being our mentor, stated that he would be driving the bus, and would be pulling over every twenty minutes so we could switch drivers.
The horror. The horror.
Between the countless stops, we worked on the “A” Story.
Back when Hammy and I were told we’d gotten a script, we gave Pretty Boy (The Executive Producer) twenty “A” stories, twenty “B” stories and twenty “C” stories, hoping against hope that they would let us use one of those ideas for our script.
Preferably, one of the twenty which called for Alyssa Milano.
So the producers (that is, Pretty Boy and Mike The Star) took one of our “C” stories (Paul—the Idiot of the show—tries to get his wife pregnant) and turned it into an “A” story (Paul can’t get his wife pregnant and asks Mike to donate his sperm).
Okay, not bad. Some comedy potential there. And it’s dirty. Hammy and I like the dirty.
Thing is, there was no B story. We just knew it had to be starring Stacy. Apparently, Stacy had complained to the producers that she wasn’t getting enough scenes. The Load Warrior’s proposed solution to this problem was to make Stacy the highest-paid extras in the history of the network, just to show her who’s in charge.
We like The Load Warrior. We’re all about The Load Warrior.
The “C” story was a little bit of business in which James - the Power Idiot of the show - learns a Zen meditation technique which turns him invisible, and enables him to catch Mike and Nikki having sex. You see, Mike and Nikki are keeping their relationship a secret because Nikki works for Mike.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that this show was Melrose Place on crack.
Where was I? Oh, yes. The “A” story.
The only thing I found out about our story on Friday was that Paul had “lazy sperm.”
However, I did find out other things.
On one of our many many many Bus Stops, Bucky starts asking me rapid-fire questions about my drinking habits: “You get drunk a lot? Do you feel good doing it? What do you drink?” To the last question I said “Guinness,” at which he looked at my belly and said, “I can tell.”
Big laughs all around the room. Especially from The Hot One.
At that moment, I swore to myself I’d get Bucky back for that one.
To his other questions, I reply “I don’t drink as much as I used to. In college I drank a hell of a lot, but now I find that with each passing day my hangovers take longer and longer to get over.” At this everyone in the room says “That’s it, Bucky. Think of the hangovers.”
Apparently, Bucky had quit drinking. And a writer who likes the sauce and can’t have the sauce is not a happy writer. My heart goes out to Bucky.
But then again, his wife’s an underwear model. So fuck him.
Back to the “A” story.
It seems that every time I mention a joke or a plot twist to the room I’m either completely ignored or given a dismissive “yeah, that’s funny.” This goes on into the afternoon. During a break I tell all my jokes and plot ideas to The Load Warrior. The Load Warrior calls everyone in and tells everyone my jokes and plot ideas - not passing them off as his own or anything, just telling the room how “we think” the “A” story’s plot could work. After he’s done, the writers all look at The Load Warrior and say, “Yeah. That could work.”
They also laugh at the jokes I told him.
Know this: Freelancers get no love.
During another break, Hammy and I ask The Load Warrior about the “C” story. After all, people don’t usually turn invisible in sitcoms - a fact which seems quite apparent to Hammy and me, but isn’t apparent to anyone else. In fact, whenever we tell another writer which “C” story we have, they get a faraway look in their eyes and say, “Oh, that’ll be funny.”
As it turns out, the “C” story was Prettyboy’s idea.
He got it from Sharky’s Machine. That Burt Reynolds movie.
This was all the justification we had for this storyline.
At four-thirty, The Load Warrior meets with the other writers in the Big Room. Hammy and I stay in the small room and worked on some “B” story ideas which Stacy could star in.
We would have been better off writing more filthy captions under the picture of Alyssa Milano.
At five o’clock, The Load Warrior returns and tells us our “B” story will have Stacy heading up negotiations for a bunch of different ethnic groups, passing herself off as one of them because no one can pin down her ethnic origin.
Apparently, Stacy can do “funny voices.”
On hearing this, I wonder out loud if the storyline isn’t veering dangerously into racist territory, doesn’t Stacy look clearly Italian and isn’t she just a receptionist?
“Don’t worry,” The Load Warrior says, “It’ll be funny.”
To who?
NEXT: The Comedy Gorilla, the Advent of God-Chow, the Stepping on of Toes, and the Hazing of the Freelancer
Posted by J.O.S.Hartung at August 14, 2003 01:39 PM