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Good news! Andy Barker P.I. has a premiere date! It is: Thursday, March 15 at 9:30 (8:30 central) on NBC. You know this as the 30 Rock time slot of course, but don’t worry, they’ll be back. We’re just borrowing the slot for five weeks of Andy Richter-flavored comedy.

This is, of course, the show I’ve most recently been working on, and I love it. You’re going to love it, too. It’s got Andy, who is charming and hilarious, and Tony Hale (Buster from Arrested Development), and a mind-blowing guest appearance by Amy Sedaris in one of the eps. This is a classy operation, gentle readers, a really funny show, and I hope you check it out! (I’ll remind you again when it gets a little closer.)

Lunch: shabu shabu — beef and veggies and noodles cooked on the tabletop.

I watched an episode of Medium the other night, gentle readers, and I noticed something interesting. They do very abrupt scene transitions on that show, clearly on purpose. The space between the last line of dialogue in one scene and the first line of the next one is generally the same as between two lines in the same scene. It gives an interesting effect, because as a viewer you have to adjust on the fly — oh, we’re in a new place now — over and over.

I haven’t seen a produced Medium script, but it would obviously reflect this stylistic choice. Scenes wouldn’t end with the very-commonly used, almost automatic stage direction: “Off her reaction, we… CUT TO:” since the cuts do not come off reaction shots.

The question on the table, then, is, to what extent is it important that your spec script reflect stylistic idiosyncrasies like this one? (I’m not just talking about Medium here, but about all the shows you might spec and all their little quirks.)

There’s actually not an obvious answer to this one, since, as we’ve discussed before, you never know if the person who is going to read your spec will be very familiar with the actual show. As a result, it’s possible you could violate all sorts of rules that a show follows and still be fine if your storytelling is sharp and your dialogue is snappy.

But why not get it right? If I were writing a Medium, I would execute the scene transitions in their established style. I would also try to make it very, very clear that I was making the choice to do so. After all, you don’t want an uninformed reader to think that you’re making abrupt, jarring transitions because you don’t know how to do lingering emotional ones. I might even go so far as to do something like this:

ALLISON
Some line of dialogue

INT. NEXT LOCATION

And I would do some kind of variation on that for the first several transitions, making it clear that I’m making a choice. I wouldn’t even blame a writer for going so far as to write a stage direction like:

And in classic Medium-style, we cut right into:

Lunch: tried to get to sushi, but LA was a big snag today. Ended up at Jack in the Box with those stuffed jalapeno things. Good.

Ooh, gentle readers, you know it’s always a fun day when there’s a guest speaker. Today I’ve invited showrunner-type Jeff Greenstein, currently of Desperate Housewives, to speak a little more about highbrow jokes and obscure reference jokes in general. He speaks first about jokes whose brows are so high they’re not even on their own heads anymore:

“You know, the best examples I can think of are some of the jokes in the “earlier, funny” Woody Allen films. Jokes that wind up getting a laugh on pure rhythm, even if you don’t get the reference, e.g.: “As Balzac said, there goes another novel” or “When it comes to relationships, I’m the winner of the August Strindberg award.” [Another] one of these is SO ASTOUNDINGLY OBSCURE that it’s actually TRANSCRIBED INCORRECTLY in the published script of Manhattan: Diane Keaton’s character refers to her crippling headaches as “like Oswald in Ghosts” (meaning the syphilitic character in the Ibsen play), but the transcriber, obviously assuming Oswald means Lee Harvey, renders the line as “like Oswald and ghosts,” which means exactly nothing.”

Hee! I love knowing this stuff, don’t you? Now, it’s pretty clear that a joke at this level of difficulty is not going to help your spec script. The rhythm of a joke might draw a laugh in a crowded jovial movie theater, but it’s not something that works very well on the printed page.

So I suggest you aim a bit lower. There are certainly reference jokes that are almost as obscure, though not highbrow, and this makes them at least a bit more likely to find an audience. Jeff gives a really cool example:

“… [M]y all-time, ALL-TIME favorite obscure-reference joke was on 3rd Rock. They had a scene in which Dick Solomon (John Lithgow) goes to the airport to pick up his supervisor, the Big Giant Head, played by William Shatner. “How was your flight?” asks Lithgow. “Terrible,” Shatner replies. “There was some kind of gremlin on the wing!” Lithgow gasps: “THE SAME THING ONCE HAPPENED TO ME!!”

Of course this is a staggeringly ingenious reference to the fact that Lithgow and Shatner played the same role, that of a terrified airline passenger who thinks he sees a gremlin on the wing, in the Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” — Shatner in the original series, and Lithgow in Twilight Zone: The Movie. Phenomenal.”

Readers aren’t going to be impressed by an easy joke. Writing an easy joke is like being an easy date. Make ’em work for it. They’ll appreciate it more.

Lunch: cheese-jalapeno bagel from the local Coffee Bean

Let’s go to the mailbag, shall we? Such an interesting question just arrived from Eric in San Mateo. He wants to know the difference between a “high-brow” and a “low-brow” joke. Ooh, interesting!

Well, at least as I’ve heard it used, this is a distinction that pretty much has to do with the set of cultural knowledge you need to have to get the joke. “High-brow” jokes presuppose a familiarity with high culture. “Low-brow” jokes assume you know your pro-wresters.

Frasier was the happy pasture of high-brow jokes. Remember how they used to use those title cards between scenes? In one episode one of the cards read “A Mall and the Night Visitors.” In order to get the joke, viewers had to have heard of the Menotti opera “Amahl and the Night Visitors.” That’s pretty high-brow.

A short-lived comedy that I loved as a child was called “Friends and Lovers,” about a concert bass player played by Paul Sand. He entered one scene while descending from the stage brushing at his sleeves. He explained that the last movement had been so passionately performed that he was “covered in conductor hair.” The fact that you need some familiarity with the head-shaking habits of orchestral conductors — well, that makes it high-brow. The same joke could be altered to be about a heavy-metal band (front row fan exclaims excitedly that he’s covered in lead guitarist hair) and now it’s low-brow. See the difference? Johann Sebastian Bach = high-brow. Sebastian Bach = low-brow.

I’m sure you’re seeing by now that this distinction doesn’t line up neatly with good jokes or bad jokes. It also doesn’t line up with smart jokes and dumb jokes. You can make smart jokes that require knowledge of low culture and dumb jokes that rely on knowing high culture.

And sometimes it gets really complicated. When Niles Crane pretends to be interested in a book called “The Legends of NASCAR,” and pronounces it Nazkhar, as if it were an Arabian citadel, is that high-brow or low? It requires that the audience know what NASCAR really is, and that they laugh at Niles for not knowing it… which seems low-brow. On the other hand, his apparent assumption that it’s some little-known exotic location — well, it’s a kind of high-brow assumption. A puzzler!

If you’ve got characters making any joke that reflects a cultural background that you’re not very familiar with — high, low or whatever, make an effort to get it right. If your character is supposed to know about opera, don’t make every one of their jokes refer to fat German women just because you’ve only heard of Wagner. Similarly, if your character is supposed to know about cock-fighting, don’t just make up a bunch of likely-sounding terminology. Do some research. Also, the jokes will get better. Specificity is one of the main ingredients in humor, so the more you know about a subject, the more likely you are to be able to be funny about it, whether your own brow is naturally low, high or uni.

(In other mailbag news — I’m very sorry Jackie in Australia, but I’m not allowed to read the writing you sent to me. Thank you though, for *wanting* to send it to me!)

Lunch: hot udon soup with mentaiko (spicy cod roe)

UPDATE: Menotti died the day after I posted this. How weird is that?

Okay, I just had an interesting realization. I don’t know why this is only now occurring to me, but it’s huge, and I have to apologize. This whole thing about writing original pieces instead of specs for existing shows? This whole thing that turned our world upside down? Forget it. Forg. Et. It.

Know why? Because I’m an idiot, that’s why. Because I forgot that the ABC/Disney Writing Fellowship Program still only accepts specs for shows currently in production. And that’s one of the only open doors in town. It’s the BEST open door in town. It’s the door I want you, gentle readers, to storm en masse.

The advice about writing spec pilots, short plays and short film scripts is for those of you who either already have an agent, or those of you who are submitting material to prospective agents. Most of you, however, are not doing that yet. Most of you are trying to get that first foothold. And the name of that foothold is still, “Wanna read my Grey’s Anatomy?”

To you, gentle readers, I apologize. And to ABC, may I just say that you might want to consider changing your submission policy. If the pieces you’re asking to see no longer reflect the material that young writers will need in order to get work… well, then.

Lunch: scrambled eggs with hot sauce and tortillas

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