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Special for the gentle readers of Texas: I will be signing copies of “Finding Serenity” tomorrow night in Arlington at the Border’s Books. I’m doing this in conjunction with the Can’t Stop the Serenity Event being put together by the amazing people of Equality Now. Please stop by the store and say Hi!

A.C. in West Hollywood writes in with a question about the supporting documents that you have to turn in along with your writing sample when you apply to the ABC/Disney fellowship. He’s talking about the resume, bio and “statement of interest”.

My advice is to be pretty straight-forward with things like this. Your writing sample is going to do most of the work. It’s probably a pretty rare case when the other documents tip the scale, so don’t overwork them. It’s safer to come across as pleasantly competent than it is to seem desperate. So I’d recommend against putting your resume in sonnet-form or writing your statement of interest from House’s point of view. Don’t out-clever yourself.

The bio might help you if you have a really fascinating personal background. Did you grow up on an otter farm? Mention that. But if your story is fairly typical, I would recommend not trying to hype it up. The worst thing that can happen is to sound false.

The place to put some passion is your statement of interest. If you’re going through all of this work to assemble an application then you really do have a passion for some aspect of television writing. Be honest with yourself and with them and say what it is. What do you love about television? Why do you think it’s the kind of work you’re suited for? Most of all, be positive. Don’t say that TV stinks and you’re hoping to save it.

Got extra time? Don’t waste it on the bio. Use it to take another pass through that spec. That’s the real golden ticket.

Lunch: Philly cheese steak

Okay, apparently I just can’t leave this alone. I’m all hung up on this “I thought you said you could…” set-up. And it occurs to me that this is a really good exercise. Take a set-up and think of all the punches that you can to follow it. They don’t have to be outright jokes, but should at least have some attitude to them. This is a pretty good simulation of what you do in a comedy writer’s room, actually. On Ellen we were often all working in our offices simultaneously on the same jokes, generating lists that looked a lot like this:

MAN 1
I thought you said you could drive!
MAN 2
Yeah? Well, I thought shut up!

Or

MAN 1
I thought you said you could drive!
MAN 2
It’s two pedals! I assumed I could!

OR

MAN 1
I thought you said you could drive!
MAN 2
I also said this was my real hair, so you knew I couldn’t be trusted!

OR

MAN 1
I thought you said you could drive!
MAN 2
We were talking about golf!

And so on forever. I’m not saying these are great, just that they exist. And that there are always more. Give it a try with another set-up. Something like “Are you wearing that?” or “Is this ketchup?” Go ‘head, come up with as many as you can. And set the bar low. This exercise is about quantity, not quality.

And here’s the big secret. This isn’t really just about finding jokes. This is about finding possible attitudes for your characters. I mean, look at what the list above really represents. The first choice is petulent, the second is sort of absurdist, the third is flippant and the fourth is confrontational. Would I have considered all those colors if I’d approached the scene another way? I don’t think so.

I knew jokes revealed character. Maybe they can also create it. Hmm…

Lunch: more bread and cheese and apples

I’m home sick today, gentle readers. I have myself a bit of a cold. But I don’t stop working for you just because I’m full of New Daytime Tylenol for Chest Congestion. In fact, I’ve been applying myself to that little problem of clam rehabilitation from yesterday. Here, then, might be a slightly fresher pay-off for that “I thought you said you…” set-up. Let’s see how this hits you:

MAN
I thought you said you could drive!

WOMAN
Really? That’s interesting. Because I thought you said you could avoid getting us chased down a poorly-maintained access-road by a crazed interstate trucker!

(Imagine it all read with a sense of escalating panic, optimally, by the cast of Moonlighting.) Now, I haven’t invented something new here. Jokes of this structure are around already, but since the punchline involves a restatement of the plot, it’s going to look different in each new incarnation, which will help it feel fresher. And a lot of the joy of this one is going to lie in the wording of the plot-recap. Length, awkwardness and over-precision will probably work to your advantage in this kind of joke.

The point of all of this? Keep looking. Just because you’re certain you’ve exhausted every way to pay off a set-up, doesn’t mean there isn’t one more that just hasn’t occurred to you yet.

Lunch: Sourdough bread, cheddar cheese, sweet pickles

Friend of the blog Erin has just pointed out a category of clam (an overused joke) that I hadn’t noticed before. She sites examples like:

“I thought you said you could cook!”
“I didn’t say I was a good cook.”

Try Googling the phrase “I didn’t say I was a good” and see what comes up — it’s quite a harvest. This is clearly an overused joke form, although, honestly, it’s barely a joke. Friend of the blog Erin asks if this is a clam that can be rehabilitated.

I don’t think so. There was a brief period where it got a second wind, when the second line was changed to the amusingly blunt, “I lied.” But now that has grown hoary with age as well.

If you want to say that someone is bad at something, I suggest that you avoid the “I thought you said…” set-up altogether and go at the joke in a different way.

But, for the sake of fun, let’s imagine that for some reason the thing you want to preserve is the notion of something being misheard or misunderstood. It looks to me as though there are at least three joke forms that use this. We’ve already looked at the first one, in which the humorous element is that the person is asserting and then denying some ability with a claim that they’ve been misunderstood.

Here is the second one, which is about actually mishearing the original assertion.

A Catholic learns what his daughter has been up to: “Did you say prostitute? Thank god, I thought you said Protestant.”

In a clever variation on this form, it wasn’t the words, but the grammar, that was misheard:

Mickey Mouse explains the grounds for his divorce from Minnie: “I didn’t say she was crazy. I said she was fuckin’ Goofy.”

Then there is the final category, in which the original statement was misunderstood because the hearer either made a very logical assumption about the point of the original statement:

“I thought you said your dog does not bite!”
“That is not my dog.”

And:

“But I thought you said your husband had a vasectomy.”
“He did. That’s why I have to take every precaution.”

Or the hearer failed to make the most logical assumption:

“I thought I asked you to take those penguins to the zoo!”
“I did, but I had some money left, so we’re going to the movies.”

I think these last two examples — the vasectomy one and the zoo one — are the jokes I’ve come across that best use the misunderstanding framework. And you know why they work best? Because they’re character-based. They look like language-tricks, like the “Goofy” one, but they’re actually jokes about assumptions, not mishearings. Anyone can mishear. But when you assume you reveal your character. Both the cheating-woman in the vasectomy joke, and the van-driver in the second joke, made an assumption that reveals their character.

Now, obviously, these are jokes that I’ve pulled off the rack. You can’t put them in a script; you have to make up ones of your own. But once you understand the mechanism, that part’s easy.

As you’re going through your script, look at the jokes. If they don’t reveal character, if they’re jokey-jokes that anyone could say, look for alternatives. Write something that tells us about the characters.

Lunch: stuffed jalapenos at Jack in the Box

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