JaneEspenson.com

When I got into the television writing business, the hour drama was dead. The Disney Fellowship didn’t even accept hour long spec scripts as submissions. And, what’s more, we were all told that the hour drama *couldn’t revive.* It simply would never be possible, because syndication sales were driving the business and hour dramas didn’t syndicate – didn’t fit into those slots between the news and the prime-time line-up.

I was even told once that the only reason “Law and Order” was picked up, was because it was pitched as an hour that could be split up and syndicated as two separate half-hours: “Law” and “Order.” (Presumably the regular viewers of “Law” would have to check in with the regular viewers of “Order” to find out if the guy arrested at the end of their episode actually did it.)

Things changed. A few successful hours took hold, other business models started shaping what was profitable and what was not… and now hourlong is king and the half-hour comedy is dead. Especially the multicamera shows. Friends and Frasier are gone and, some say, the format went with them, as doomed as radio plays.

At least two of my friends who have spent long and thriving careers in half hour are now dipping their toes into hour-writing for the first time. And many more of my comedy friends asked me to recommend them to hour shows. Where else is there to go?

Does this mean that you should all forget writing half-hour specs and only write dramas? Nope. Because when that pendulum comes back, it tends to do it fast. And right now it’s pulled pretty tautly over to that one side. All it takes is one hot new multicamera sitcom hit and everything will change. And there won’t be that many young writers with half hour specs, so life will be sweet for those who are ready.

Lunch: sashimi. Delicate and savory… mmm.

I needed a new black sweater this week, so I took myself out shopping. I’m not a huge shopper, but I can do it if I have a specific goal. Anyway, I’ve just recently noticed a very weird tendency I have. I will enter a store and find the item I like best *in that store* and buy it. As if I don’t know the difference between liking something best, and actually liking it. What is this? Why would I do that? Weird.

This is how I end up with things in my closet that I do not love. I have to learn that not all stores are created equal.

Neither are all joke types. One that I’m not especially fond of is one I’m gonna call the “Since Joke.” Family Guy is made of Since Jokes. You know the ones. “I haven’t seen a blank that blank since Peter blanked with that random celebrity,” leading into a quick pop of a flashback scene. Note that these don’t actually have to have the word “since” in them. For example: “This is as bad as that time…” is also a Since Joke.

Murphy Brown used a lot of these too, although that show did not actually show you the event in question. They were used primarily to remind us of the world in which she worked – a reference to some political or journalistic celebrity.

Sometimes these jokes are great. Family Guy does absolutely brilliant and hilarious things with these jokes. And here is one I really like from the British series Blackadder, in which the main character expresses his opinion of the just-invented dictionary:

BLACKADDER
It’s the most pointless book since “How To Learn French” was translated into French.

And yet, Since Jokes are not my faves. They sound written, and they don’t lend themselves very easily to exposing character or to forwarding the story. They’re about an event separate from the events of the script, and they’re about as spontaneous as the analogy section of the SAT.

Use them if you’re writing a Family Guy spec. Otherwise, you might want to look for a joke that tells you more about the character saying it.

Lunch: a nifty little salad from the South Beach Cookbook. Zing!

Hi all! This is staffing season, and the game of musical chairs is getting pretty wild. As a result, I only have time for a quick posting today, but it’s a neat little nugget. Suppose your spec has a whodunit structure. Like, say, a House or perhaps a Veronica Mars or, depending on the story you’ve chosen, pretty much any show. (House is totally a whodunit, always, just with microbial bad guys). One way to keep the audience from correctly guessing the identity of the culprit is to raise the actual baddy as a possibility early on and dismiss him. This keeps the audience from screaming: “Why aren’t they considering the sheriff?!” (or “rickets?!”) and correctly guessing the bad guy.

We did this, at Joss’s direction, in my Buffy episode “Earshot.” Xander made a joke, early on, about the ultimate identity of the would-be-killer, which turned out later to be correct. The fact that it was done as a joke was especially nice since audiences tend to dismiss jokes anyway. It kept the moment from calling too much attention to itself.

This same thing was done effectively, but without jokes, on the House episode this season in which the little boy had the same disease as the old woman who had died previously. A cause was proposed, then rejected, and then brought around again.

It’s hard to stay ahead of an audience. This way, you’re banking on their active minds, acknowledging the fact that they’ll have theories of their own, instead of hoping they don’t.

Lunch: In ‘N’ Out burger. With half-Dr. Pepper, half-Coke. I love it when you can mix your own.

You know how stuff gets put in piles around the house? Well, it does in my house. Oh, you know what they should make? Pile-cozies. Brightly-colored plastic or fabric-covered cubes, about nine-by-eleven and maybe a foot tall, that you could just slip down over piles of papers when company’s coming over. Genius! I swear, that’s a brilliant idea. You could make them look like art. Anyway, I just found two stray pieces of blog-related mail that got lost in a pile.

Karen in San Diego sends a great postcard, on which she expresses the wish that I be the one to take over Gilmore Girls. Well, what I can do is assure you that the amazing Rebecca Kirshner will be continuing there, and I’m all agog to see what happens next. Rebecca is remarkably smart and funny and I expect great things.

The other letter is from Brendan, writing from near-at-hand in Studio City. There’s the general praise, (thank you, blush), and a good question. He’s asking about how often it’s all right to call an agent who is reading your material, in hopes of spurring them to read faster. The answer, of course, is a fulsome shrug. You don’t want to let an opportunity dry up due to inattention, but you don’t want to give an agent the impression that you’d be a pest, should he or she decide to take you on as a client. I have no idea what the right answer is. But I know who might. Befriend the assistant. This is always good anyway, because assistants become agents. Also, they are good and overworked people and they could stand to hear a friendly voice. Once the assistant is charmed, they can help you find the perfect moment to give that agent a little nudge. So make a joke, ask about their day, compliment their pleasant phone manner… if nothing else, you’ll make their day easier and an angel will get its wings.

Okay, now to the jokes. I’ve been going around the house chuckling for a while because of a joke I heard weeks ago on House. I’ll just be making lunch or something and I’ll think of it and chuckle. The team has been trying to make a diagnosis, right? And there’s an important new development. They all rush in together to tell House about it:

CAMERON
We’ve got anal bleeding.

HOUSE
What, all of you?

Oh my god. That slays me. It’s fast and short and snappy. It reveals character. And it’s got “anal” in it. It might be the perfect joke.

I think part of why this one tickles me so much is that it’s a joke type I rarely use myself. Let’s call it the Disingenuous Type. I found another example, from an episode of Friends. Joey and Chandler have just listed an advantage of being female. Rachel counters with:

RACHEL
Come on! You guys can pee standing up.

CHANDLER
We can? All right, I’m tryin’ that.

This is of course, a joke for a smart-ass. Got a smart-ass in your spec? Well, this is the joke for them.

Lunch: I finally figured out what made my soymilk-yogurt-tofu shakes so awful. The yogurt and the tofu. Soymilk + banana + natural peanut butter = great!

I’ve been cooking a lot lately. Lots of stuff with soy. And you know what happens? Eventually, you just can’t look a tofu in the face anymore. Bleah. And it occurs to me that you all might be feeling the same way about a steady diet of Buffy exemplars. So I went searching to see what comedy scripts were available online, so I could mine them for cool examples. But, instead, I stumbled across a British web site with comedy writing instruction on it. Looks a bit like this blog, really. I’m not gonna give the link because I’m about to criticize something they say, and I don’t wanna point a finger. Besides, I’ve said loads of dumb things in here, so why invite the tit-for-tat?

Anyway, here’s the quote that jumped out at me:

“There’s nothing you can’t write a joke about – nothing. Someone once told us that some subjects just weren’t funny. He picked up a cushion from the sofa he was sitting on and said, ‘This cushion for instance – nothing funny about that.’ So we decided to prove him wrong and wrote a joke about scatter cushions. No, we’re not going to tell you it – but it turned on the word ‘scatter’ and if you’re any good at this game, you can probably figure it out. Or write a better one. Go on.”

First off, I think they’re talking about throw pillows. So whatever joke they’re thinking about (I suspect it involves the phrase “scatter-logical humour”) won’t work in American English. But I think there’s a bigger problem. This is simply not how I’d approach the exercise. Script jokes – good script jokes – aren’t about things. They’re grounded in character.

Instead of trying to write random jokes about random objects, it would be much better training to write jokes about established characters and their relationship to objects. Niles Crane and a throw pillow, Roseanne Conner and a window treatment, Michael Scott and a handmade quilt… you probably already had a gut reaction to each of those pairings.

Let’s see… Niles is critical of his pillow because it doesn’t perfectly fit the small of his back; “my small is, counterintuitively, rather large.” Roseanne is amused by the whole idea of a window treatment: “I pretty much let my windows go untreated.” Michael talks about how every quilt tells a story if you know how to read the patterns, then he claims that this quilt tells an off-color joke. Then he admits that he’s kidding. Then he tells an off-color joke. Then he apologizes. Then he laughs at the joke.

Those are off the top of my head. They’re not great, but they didn’t take long. But, just thinking “throw pillow… go!” I’d’ve been here all day. I would’ve panicked and decided I couldn’t write comedy. Don’t let that happen to you. If you can write people, you can write comedy.

Lunch: Went to the food court at the local mall, and had a shredded cabbage salad. Pushed it down with something from the Godiva Chocolate shop: a fresh strawberry and banana kabob covered in chocolate. Yum!

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