Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers by Mike Sacks Read Free Book Online Page B

consists of you, dressed in a tuxedo, with drawn whiskers on your chin, waving large double-jointed arms. Meanwhile, Graham Chapman is dressed as a drag queen. And there’s another character wearing an elephant head. All are looking directly at the camera, asking the audience for help in finding a “fishy.”
    I was surprised with that one. I pitched it and was shocked after it was voted in. I was totally surprised by that vote. Each of us had different styles of comedy. Mike and I would write, I suppose, zany sketches. John would write bits more having to do with character and human nature. This sketch was silly, with no greater purpose. So it was sort of extreme, and we didn’t always agree on extremes. But when we did fight, it was always over the material. It was never personal. Or mostly never personal.
    What’s amazing about Monty Python’s Flying Circus is just how close those original TV shows came to being erased by the BBC.
    That’s true. The BBC came very close to erasing all of the original Python tapes, at least from the first season. What happened was that we got word from our editor that the BBC was about to wipe all the tapes to use for more “serious” entertainment—ballet and opera and the like. So we smuggled out the tapes and recorded them onto a Philips VCR home system. For a long time, these were the only copies of Python’s first season to exist anywhere. If these were lost, they were lost for good.
    This happened quite often with BBC comedy shows from the sixties. It happened with Spike Milligan’s show from the late 1960s,
Q5
. All those shows are gone—or mostly gone. It happened with Alan Bennett’s [1966] show,
On the Margin
. It happened with a British TV comedy series from the late sixties,
Broaden Your Mind
, a show I worked on before
Python’s Flying Circus
. All these tapes are gone. They were taped over in order to record sporting events.
    Comedy shows from the fifties, sixties, and seventies were often erased in order to save money. It happened in the U.S. with the first eight years of, as well as with shows featuring the comedian Ernie Kovacs. And it happened, as you were just saying, in the U.K. with many BBC comedies. But how much, exactly, was the BBC saving when they would reuse these tapes?
    I don’t know. I would guess around one hundred pounds per tape reel.
    So to save roughly $150—in today’s money, at least—the BBC was willing to erase original comedy that could never again be duplicated?
    If they’d been wiped, I don’t think we’d be talking now, actually. Python wouldn’t have been discovered in America. And we might not have made as many series for TV. And we may not have created any movies. It goes to show how tenuous history is. It can go in any direction.
    Which direction would you recommend young comedy writers head?
    If you want to create comedy, try to make people laugh. If you can make people laugh, head in that direction. If nobody laughs . . . well, that’s not good news. [Laughs] Head in the opposite direction.

PURE, HARD-CORE ADVICE
DIABLO CODY
    Screenwriter/Director, Juno, Young Adult, Time and a Half, Sweet Valley High
    I couldn’t have grown up less connected to Hollywood. I lived in a very conservative Polish-Catholic community in the south suburbs of Chicago. I went to Mass and received communion six mornings a week. The idea of a “professional writer” was a fantasy. My parents told me that I couldn’t write for a living, that it was just a hobby some people had outside of their real jobs. I love my folks, but they’re the two most practical, risk-averse people I’ve ever met. As a result, I truly appreciate Hollywood. It’s full of grandiose, insane dreamers with entitlement complexes. Some people find that obnoxious, but to me, it’s fun. I never knew characters like that growing up. I never knew anyone who said, “I deserve to be famous.” In Hollywood, that’s every other person you meet! God bless these