Socal Mom by Donna Schwartz Mills

Confessions of a Comedy Geek

Most of the people who come here are aware that I was a production assistant on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show while aspiring to write for television myself.

Of course you know that, because I never stop reminding folks, lest you all think I've always been the 50-Something suburban gymnastics mom you see today. I really was a capable and accomplished young person once, and I may even have been borderline cool.

I think that's why I had SO MUCH FUN at last week's PBS showcase for television critics. For one thing, I ALWAYS enjoy it when my silly little blog is treated with the same respect shown for "real" (traditional) media. But TWO of the presentations dealt with comedy and comedians... and once a comedy geek, always a comedy geek. So I hung on every word spoken by veteran stand-ups Lewis Black and Richard Belzer as they talked about George Carlin and what made his work so extraordinary.

Carlin's daughter Kelly was also on hand to help promote the network's broadcast of the Kennedy Center's tribute to him as recipient of this year's Mark Twain Award (set to air February 4th).

The discussion reminded me of my days on the Carson show (I was the writers' assistant), when the guys would parse jokes and sometimes get into heated (and somewhat academic) discussions about what constitutes "funny."

I became even more nostalgic later that afternoon, when Amy Sedaris took the stage to talk about "Make 'Em Laugh," a six-part series tracing the history of comedy in America, from the turn of the 20th Century. Amy narrates the series, which debuts tonight and is hosted by Billy Crystal. Each episode deals with a different aspect of funny business.

I've seen five of the six episodes already (thanks to the DVD review copy the PBS folks gave all in attendance - like I said, "treated with respect"!) - and the entire series is comedy geek heaven. 

Tonight's program consists of two episodes:

1: "Would Ya Hit a Guy with Glasses?"

Subtitled "Nerds, Jerks & Oddballs," the hour features clips from silent comic Harold Lloyd to Woody Allen, Phyllis Diller, Jonathan Winters to Steve Martin, Robin Williams, Cheech & Chong and Andy Kaufman through to stars of today, like Steve Carell and Seth Rogen. But it's the commentary from admirers like Judd Apatow, Michael McKean, Richard Lewis, Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock that put it all into context.

I love that they went to Bob Hope's comedy writers (Harold Kanter and Larry Gelbart) to talk about the evolution of Hope's material. Of course, the man isn't around to do new interviews, so all that's left are his writers! Still, it's always nice when someone reminds the public that while comics are naturally funny and witty people, most are usually supported by an army of writers.

Most illuminating for me is the focus on how difficult it was in the 50's and 60's for females who aspired to be comics: Jean Carroll, Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers and Lily Tomlin are all represented, and they talk frankly about how difficult it was for women to step out of the accepted role of housewife and mother.

Back then, it helped to be unattractive, which Phyllis Diller says was part of her initial success. People (men) had a hard time surrendering to a female commanding the stage.

I think a documentary on female comedians would be a fabulous follow-up to this series.

The second hour of tonight's program is "Honey, I'm Home!" (Subtitled "Breadwinners and Homemakers"). This is an excellent history of the American situation comedy - from The Goldbergs (which is so old even I'd never seen it before!) to the Simpsons. It's got as many clips, interviews and analyses as the first episode -- and is just as interesting. And funny.

The entire series is wonderful relief from the reruns and reality dreck the commercial networks are feeding us this month -- not to mention the fact that the world seems to be crumbling down around us. I don't know about you, but I don't think I will get through the next two years without my fix of The Daily Show and SNL.  (Alas, you will have to wait a couple of weeks to see those shows covered in the final episode on satire and parody. It's called "Sock it to ME?" - and if you're as old as I am, that phrase will mean something to you.)

As the old saying goes, "Laughter is Medicine."

And if you're a comedy geek like me, you'll love it.

Hey! I'm giving away a Superbowl Party pack (valued at $250) over at SoCal Stuff. Find out what's in the pack and how to win it here.

Requiem for Another Drummer

My friend Karoli posted a link today announcing that the great drummer Max Roach has died.

I'm not a huge jazz fan, but the news triggered one of my Hollywood memories, anyway. And as it's Friday, and I haven't had one of these to post in a very long while, I'm gonna give it to you now.

A lot of people don't know this, but Johnny Carson was a pretty fair amateur drummer. The 60 Minutes interview he did in the 70's showed him letting off a little steam with his drum kit -- which was a gift from one of his closest friends, Buddy Rich.

The day Buddy Rich died, we were supposed to go on the air with one of Johnny's popular Reagan sketches. I don't know how many people who see this blog were old enough to see the show in the 80's -- but I can tell you that Johnny Carson did a really good Reagan imitation. The head writer (my boss) had White House connections. He told me that Nancy Reagan, ever protective of her husband's image, once asked him to stop writing the sketches. He then found out that the President himself enjoyed them so much, he kept a reel of them on Air Force One to entertain his guests.

So the monologue was finished, the Oval Office set was on the stage, and Johnny came out in his Reagan suit, makeup and wig. The sketch began. He said his first line, but no sound came out. For some reason, his microphone was not properly set up.

And then I -- and the studio audience -- saw something that few people ever got to see.

The usually polite, quiet Johnny Carson blew up. He uttered a curse word and went straight to Fred de Cordova. He wanted to know who was responsible for setting up the mike. And he wanted that person fired.

Our sound guy (who incidentally, was an Emmy winner), scurried on the set to fix the problem, while Fred tried to calm Johnny down. After several uncomfortable minutes, the sketch began anew, without a hitch (but perhaps without as many laughs as it would have had).

The explanation, of course, was that Johnny was distraught after learning just a couple of hours before air time that his friend Rich had passed away.

The next day, the Tonight Show was dark. We ran a "Best of Carson" on Friday night, and Johnny was on vacation the following week (I do not recall if that was one of his scheduled weeks off; at that time, Johnny hosted the show live on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and took one week off every month -- except during sweeps, when he would be on four days a week for the entire sweeps period).

The sound guy kept his job.

One Final Post About the Tonight Show

When I applied to my first "straight" job, after 12 years in radio and TV production, the personnel director had a problem with my resume.

"Why have you had so many jobs?" she asked.

I had to explain to her how it is in entertainment -- that work is seasonal, that jobs you think of as worthy of listing (i.e, "permanent") may not last as long as the ones designated as "temporary." That the fact that you keep getting hired means you're good, not flakey (although being flakey isn't necessarily a bad thing in Hollywood -- as long as you get your job done).

Even if you are lucky enough to find yourself on a hit show that lasts more than a six-week run, you will inevitably go on "hiatus." A show's stars, producers and directors (the folks whose names flash by in the opening credits) earn enough money to enjoy these periods with lavish vacations -- or even just getting to know their families again at home.

The rest of the production staff - the assistants, runners and crew - need to plan for this period of several weeks (or even months) when they are off work with no pay. If you are not good at planning your finances (like me), a hiatus can be a stressful time. And if your show abruptly ends without a pickup, you have the additional stress of trying to line up your next gig.

The Tonight Show didn't go on hiatus. Johnny may have taken many deserved vacations, but his staff continued to report to work, day after day. The exception was when NBC ran the Summer Olympics and we got two weeks off... with pay. This was in addition to our regular paid vacation. We also had health insurance and a pension plan and annual raises. Ask any non-union worker in Hollywood -- even 20 years ago, this was unusual. And it's one of the reasons I admired Johnny Carson.

When the WGA held its five month long strike, a work stoppage that pretty much shut down everything in the business, the entire Tonight Show staff (except the writers) continued to report to work. By that time, I had sold my own first sitcom script -- but as I was not contributing writing services to the show, the Guild allowed me to continue working, too. On days I was needed for picket duty, I would run over to Disney or Universal or CBS, carry my sign for a couple of hours and then go to work. (The one exception was the day we picketed NBC; I thought it might be tacky to return to my office right after I'd been marching below it.)

The Tonight Show was dark for the first month, after which it was announced that Carson Tonight was negotiating an interim agreement with the WGA so we could get back on the air. And we did go back shortly before that deal was in place; Johnny wrote the first monologue all by himself and it was good.

It's no wonder that people who were fortunate enough to be on the Tonight Show staff stayed on for years -- lifers. In fact, the only real turnaround was with the junior writers... and the writers' assistant.

It was a comfortable, but not satisfactory for someone with ambitions of her own. It was three years before I sold another script, and I attributed that partly to the security of that weekly paycheck. I figured that if I was a little bit less secure, I might be more motivated to write. So with the promise of a new script assignment and the acquisition of a major league agent representing my partner and me, I quit.

My last day on the job, Fred de Cordova said goodbye to me in his own inimitable manner:

"Hurry up and fail so you can come back to us."

There are days when I wish I could...

Funny Props

In the winter of 1987, Johnny caught a winter bug that caused him to miss a week of regularly scheduled shows. While home sick, he discovered the newest phenomenon on cable: The Home Shopping Network. He came back to work with videos he'd made of the channel in its early phase, complete with pitchmen and women offering to "toot toot" a horn to encourage buyers.

The "Tele-Scam" sketch made its debut in February of that year and repeated several times over the next few years, with Johnny and Teresa Ganzel playing the Art Fern-like shills, selling elaborate prop pieces, like a "cubic zirconium" ring the size of a tennis ball, and a "pet branding set" that even included a little plastic branding iron ("Flipper") for your pet fish. On that first run, the bit was climaxed with a "Jamie Farr Orange Juice Squeezer." This was a bust of the erstwhile Captain Klinger's head, with an old fashioned squeezer on top. It was rigged so that when you twisted an orange half in the squeezer on top, juice would drip out its enormous nose.

It was hilarious. Siskel and Ebert were guests that night, and they begged us to sell that prop to them. Nothing doing; each subsequent time we did that sketch, we finished with Jamie Farr -- and it never ceased to get a big laugh.

Politics

Whatever Carson's personal political leanings were (and several of the articles I've read this last week indicate that he was rather liberal), he never let on to his public. When I arrived there, his longtime head writer was a Republican with connections all the way to the White House. ("I was one of Nixon's speechwriters," he once told me. "I know a lot of jailbirds.") In 1988, Ray supplied jokes to the Bush campaign -- while his partner on the show did the same job for Dukakis. Basically, the political comedy at the Tonight Show was equal opportunity... whenever someone in power did something stupid, he (or she) was fair game. And that's the way it should be.

We'll Be Right Back...

Megan woke up sans fever, so I'm going to spend the rest of the morning finishing up my little memoirs from my days at The Tonight Show... after which, I will lay this topic to rest (until something else comes up that jogs another old memory.)

In the meantime, I've created a new category for these posts, so it'll be easier to find them later.

If you're looking for the first post in this thread, you'll find it here.

For a Lot of Laughs, Call John

As indicated in my previous posts, my contribution to the success of the Tonight Show was pretty minimal (although I dare any TV producer or staff writer to answer his own phones, type/Xerox/distribute his own scripts without any assistants to help. So my role, which did not require an inordinate amount of talent, was necessary).

However, there were occasions when I was called upon to contribute more. Like the time the guys decided it would be funny to write the show's phone number in the stalls of ladies' rooms all over town, with instructions to call during our taping. And then they actually convinced Johnny that this would be a good idea.

The Day I Faxed My Pantyhose

There was a rhythm to those Tonight Show anniversary parties. At one time, these were held at the Bistro Garden, but when the guest list outgrew the restaurant, they were moved to some of SoCal's 4-star hotels.

The party would begin with drinks and tray-passed hors d'oeuvres in one hotel ballroom, with strolling performers from The Magic Castle entertaining us all with card tricks and sleight of hand.

I always thought this was a nice touch -- remember that Johnny started out as a magician.

Silver Anniversary

Most companies hold a picnic or Christmas party for their employees. At Carson Tonight, our big annual event was a party following his anniversary special.

I was told that in the old days (i.e., before my arrival in 1986), the party was only open to the above-the-line members of the staff. And they were required to sing for their supper: perform in a talent show. Mercifully, that practice had ended about the time the guest list was expanded to include the entire staff and crew.

By the time I got there, the special was held on a Thursday night with the show dark on Friday -- the night of the party.

In 1987, Johnny was celebrating 25 years as host of the Tonight Show and the writers were brainstorming over an appropriate gift. They settled on a brilliant idea: a silver-plated rubber chicken.  It then fell upon me to make it happen.

So I started out by calling a trophy shop recommended by our prop guy -- first of all, to ask if they could do it. I was told it would be a two-step process: first, the item would have to be bronzed and then plated with silver. But the chicken in question couldn't be made of rubber. It was too soft. I needed to find a rubber chicken made of hard plastic.

As a TV production assistant, I was often given hurried research tasks needed for completion of a script. Remember, this was before the World Wide Web and Google made it possible to search for just about anything you wanted -- I had to do this the old-fashioned way, by making phone calls to businesses in hope that whoever answered the phone would be willing to drop everything and answer my silly questions. On other shows, I had store clerks refuse ("This sounds like research. Buy something and we'll help you.") It was different when you introduced yourself as a staffer at the Tonight Show. I had store managers run to the shelves to read me the labels off the products they stocked. I remember calling Sears to ask them the name of their best selling paint. (It was "Weather-Beater," which ended up in a joke about Tammy Faye Bakker's mascara.)

So when I called a Studio City novelty shop to ask if they carried hard plastic rubber chickens, I was quick to identify myself and my reason for asking. Unfortunately, they did not have anything like that in stock -- but they did give me the name of one of the city's largest distributors of novelty items, located in Culver City.

And they actually did carry hard plastic rubber chickens. The problem was, they only sold them in bulk. It was going to cost a hundred dollars for something like a gross of chickens -- when we only needed one (two at the most). So once again, I pulled out the Tonight Show card, and how it was going to be a gift for Johnny. They relented and sold me two chickens. We sent one of them off to be bronzed and plated, and we got the job done in time for the big day.

TV writer Mark Evanier has posted links to a wealth of articles about Johnny on his terrific pop culture blog. While there, I read a 2002 Esquire piece which was Carson's last interview. Writer Bill Zehme visited Johnny in his office, and I was gratified to read this:

"...there was a conference table stacked with books and jazz CDs, and various artifacts on display, including a bronzed rubber chicken presented to him by his writers at the end."

Maybe it was tarnished, or perhaps the silver had rubbed off, but I'm pretty certain that was the chicken the writers gave him five years before his retirement.

What Makes a Good Joke?

One of the writers once asked Johnny what he was looking for in a monologue joke. His reply: "It should make me say, 'Why didn't I think of that?'"

The funny thing about comedy is that when you are immersed in it for a long time, you can recognize humor -- but you may not laugh at it.

When I first started on the show, the staff included a veteran writer, whose career dated back to Caesar's Hour. We would watch the tapings together backstage, and if a comic was good, Gary would inevitably say things like, "That's a good joke," or more often, "That's an old joke." No laughter -- just calm pronouncements about the quality of the material.

After a few years of spending my days typing jokes, I became the same way. When we were dating, my husband made the mistake of taking me to a comedy club, and was dismayed that I didn't laugh... at... any... of the jokes.

"What's bothering you?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"Don't you think they're funny?" he asked.

"Yes."

By that time, I'd developed such a comedy immunity that best I could manage was a wan smile. I only laughed out loud at the sickest jokes.

I guess that was a common thing. The guys would often pepper the first drafts of the material with stuff that would never make it past our censor -- but they threw them in just to make Johnny laugh. They would be on things like animal mutilation -- that's the kind of stuff that would get me to giggle while I was typing the piece.

I've gotten over that now and do laugh freely at standups and humor pieces...