Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers (45 page)

Actor; Comedian; Writer,
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
,
The Jeselnik Offensive

I wanted to be a writer pretty much my whole life. I wanted to write books. As I got older, I realized what being a novelist meant, and what kind of life that would mean. I decided that that wasn’t the life for me. I was in my early twenties, and I didn’t want to just lock myself in a room and bang away for the next ten or fifteen years on a novel that might not be any good. So I thought maybe screenplays would be the way to go, but I hated writing screenplays—they’re dry and boring, and I found that it was really hard, without connections, to get anyone to read anything you’d written. Even if you wrote a screenplay, to get someone to read that screenplay was a huge pain in the ass. So I abandoned that idea, and I thought, What would be my dream job? Even though I didn’t expect to become a comedian, I thought writing jokes seemed like a lot of fun. Being around funny people was the bigger thing. I think a lot of people want a writing job but they don’t know what that means. They want to just hang out; they want to be around funny people.

I only had one connection in Los Angeles. My dad had gone to college with a guy named Jimmy Brogan, who was the head writer at the time for
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
. Jimmy had been a comedian for a lot of years. I went to the Hollywood Improv and watched him do a set—which was the first live set I had ever seen. After, I said to him, “I want to be a joke writer; I want to do what you do.” I thought he was going to say, “Okay, show up to the studio on Friday, and bring your ID, and we’ll get you in there.” But he just said, “If you want to do that, do stand-up.” I tell people this all the time, that stand-up, even if you don’t want to be a comedian, makes you write, and it forces you to make the material good, because by doing stand-up you’re defending your own jokes. You can’t just write them down. And I found that that was attractive to me because it made you work.

Stand-up is kind of like getting your bachelor’s degree. Or getting a law degree. You can do a lot with it. You don’t have to be a lawyer. With a law degree, you can be a teacher. You can have all kinds of different jobs with that degree. If you get into stand-up and you become a producer, or you become an actor, or you become a writer, it’s not like you’ve failed as a comic. It’s just that being a comic gives you the skills to move on to the next job. And a lot of times, it might seem to be your dream job, but it might end up being a
job
job. There are a lot of bad comedy writing jobs out there—which I would’ve taken at the time—but I’m glad I didn’t get them. I’m glad I didn’t end up on some bad show just churning out crappy stuff. I’m glad I stuck to my guns and just did onstage what I wanted to do.

As my stand-up career kind of heated up, I got hired on
Fallon
. It’s hard to get into a place like that, because when shows are hiring writers, they have one spot open, they’ve been on the air for years, and they usually hire someone’s friend. A writer will say, “Okay, I’ve been here for ten years, you know me, I vouch for this guy, bring him in.” And that’s how you usually get hired. But when producers have to staff a whole new show like they did with
Fallon
, they have to think outside the box, and this was my opportunity. I kind of talked my way in there and said, “Listen, this is gonna be great. I’ll write your monologue jokes,” and I was the first monologue writer hired. I recently read something Tina Fey said: “If you hire a writer, it’d better be someone that you’re happy to see in the hallway at 3:00 a.m.” That’s a big thing, just to be nice, just to be pleasant to be around. I had a total blast, and I was fun to be around, so they liked me, and I thought, Oh, I could do this.

When I was on
Fallon
, they would have these things called “informationals,” where young writer wannabes would come into the office. They’d ask, “I want to be a writer like you. How can I do this?” And it was me and Jeremy Bronson, another writer at the time, and we would sit down with this person and they’d be like, “How’d you guys do it?” And they had their résumé—as if I would ever give a shit about that—and I would tell them, “Well, I did stand-up for six years to get to this point, to get this job,” and Jeremy would say, “Well, I worked in news, I worked for
Hardball
for a few years and then submitted for this show,” and he had submitted to
SNL
and didn’t get it, but they passed his packet along to
Fallon
and he got the job that way. People didn’t want to hear that. There are all kinds of different paths to get to places, but you have to work your butt off. You have to work for a long time to do it. There’s no real shortcut. No one cares how you dress in the interview. It’s like a comedian who hands you their business card. If you’re a comedian, be a comedian. I tell a lot of people to start a blog. Start a blog and write monologue jokes every day. And people don’t want to hear that either. To them, it seems like you’re just throwing stuff in the air. But I know Josh Comers got hired on
Conan
that way. He just had a blog where he’d write monologue jokes every day, and they hired him off of that. So if you have something to show people, they’re gonna be excited by it.

At
Fallon
, we had a fax program for a little while, and people would send in jokes. And they would send in five jokes a day, but a lot of times they would be bad. Or the person didn’t really work on them; they would just be sending in jokes for the sake of sending in jokes. That’s a terrible idea. Because when a job finally came up and we were looking through those packets, we’d be like, “Oh, should we hire Jenny? Jenny has some terrible jokes.” So we’d be like, “No, let’s not hire her.” Jenny would’ve been better off not submitting anything, and then getting it together. If you’re going to submit something, make sure the jokes are really good. Really work on them. If you’ve got twelve hours to do a submission, it might be a better idea not to submit to that job if you don’t have the time to make the packet good. Your name is on top of it, and it’s gonna hurt you down the line.

I feel like a lot of people in comedy get frustrated because it’s not like school, where you show up and those in charge say, “Here are your classes. Go to this and then you’ll take a test at this point.” There’s no structure to this world. But I just very much wanted to get on the tracks. At the very least, you have to get on the tracks. Think of yourself as the train. And keep throwing coal in there and keep moving down the right path.

Who’s the real Adam Resnick? According to actor Chris Elliott, his longtime friend and writing partner, Resnick is (or was) an enormous Russian who doesn’t speak very good English. “The rumor at school was that Adam had grown up in a small town in the Kaluga region of the Soviet Union,” Elliott wrote in his 2012 pseudo-memoir,
The Guy Under the Sheets
, “and when the nuclear power plant there had its big meltdown, the radiation gave him gigantism—which was why by age fifteen he stood over seven feet tall, and was by all accounts still growing.” According to the book, Resnick and Elliott went on to become comedy co-conspirators—a partnership that, Elliott wrote, soon grew “into a tree of fame, fortune . . . debauchery and a few murders.”

Elliott and Resnick have a résumé that’d make any comedy writer worth his or her salt envious; their credits together include working as staff writers on
Late Night with David Letterman
during its golden age (Chris from 1982–90; Adam from 1985–90), the too-hip-for-its-time Fox sitcom
Get a Life
(1990–92), and the initially maligned but now celebrated 1994 feature
Cabin Boy
. Resnick has also written for
Saturday Night Live
and HBO’s
The Larry Sanders Show
. But despite the prominence of their work, both men remain somewhat obscure figures, which only enhances their status as cult icons.

“I truly believe my career would have come to a screeching halt a long time ago, as opposed to the slow deceleration I’m currently experiencing, if not for Adam Resnick,” Elliott says now. “Anything funny that has ever come out of my mouth, supposedly spontaneously, more than likely came out of Adam’s brain first.”

Born and raised in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Resnick spent a less-than-successful three semesters at New York University’s film school before dropping out to intern and then write for
Late Night
, a show still in its infancy. “It was the defining moment of my life—the greatest thing that ever happened to me,” Resnick says. “And probably the first time I felt like I belonged somewhere.” Meeting Elliott would prove to be a large part of it. As Elliott says now of his burgeoning relationship with Resnick, “We come from different walks of life, and yet from the moment we met we both realized that we shared the same sensibilities, laughed at the same things, and were tortured by the same neuroses. We’re two halves of the same coin—like Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner.”

It’s not difficult to understand why their various collaborations didn’t connect with mainstream audiences. It’s remarkable that
Cabin Boy
—a movie about a “fancy lad” named Nathanial Mayweather, a flying cupcake that spits tobacco juice, a boat christened
the
Filthy Whore
, and David Letterman selling monkeys to sailors (among many other oddities)—ever got made, much less distributed. It was a failure both critically and financially, but nearly twenty years later
Cabin Boy
enjoys sold-out special screenings at which Resnick and Elliott occasionally do postshow Q&As. Most of the time, they are greeted with standing ovations. They, and their comedy, were ahead of its time.

This argument could be made with almost all of Resnick’s projects. More often than not, he was two or three steps ahead of the curve. Much of his work, such as the short-lived 1996 HBO series
The High Life
or the 2002 Danny DeVito–directed feature
Death to Smoochy
, had surreal and darkly subversive worldviews and a giddy lack of morality, not to mention characters who were unapologetically unlikable. Sound familiar? Just look to modern comedy classics such as
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
,
Arrested Development
, and
Eastbound & Down
. While remaining somewhat in the shadows, Resnick was paving the way for some of the best comedy of the twenty-first century.

As Elliott attests, “There are only a few people who think originally in comedy anymore. Adam has never compromised his comedic point of view, so besides loving the guy, I deeply respect him.”

In 2014, Blue Rider Press published Resnick’s hilarious, horrifying memoir
Will Not Attend: Lively Stories of Detachment and Isolation
.

What comedy did you enjoy growing up?

Growing up, I was always attracted to old movies—W. C. Fields and Laurel and Hardy and things like that. Screwball comedies from the thirties. I always loved the look of that period, from as early as I can remember. And the music—there’s something about those Depression-era “cheer-up” songs that always appealed to me. So simple and bouncy, yet dark and wise on some level. And ultimately unrealistic. [Laughs] There’s a 1930 song I love by Sam Lanin and His Orchestra called “It’s a Great Life (If You Don’t Weaken).” Good luck with that!

As I got older, and began to watch a lot of movies, I found I laughed the most at things that tend to feel real, rather than joke driven. Dramas like
The Last Detail
. Jesus, I’m pontificating about comedy already. Everything I was afraid of. And from the
Cabin Boy
guy, no less.

We’ll get to
Cabin Boy
soon, don’t worry.

Lovely.

You just mentioned the 1973 movie
The Last Detail
. What in particular did you like so much about it?

It’s just one of those small movies that says so much about life. The directing, by Hal Ashby, is fantastic. And the performances are so good, especially Jack Nicholson’s. Clearly, his character is funny, but he’s not playing it for laughs. The dialogue is not about jokes. He’s like someone you might meet in real life. I’ve known a lot of people who are funny characters, but they’re not trying to entertain you. My father’s a good example. People like that are usually a little tragic on some level.
The Last Detail
is ultimately a tragedy. Same with movies like
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
,
Goodfellas
, and a lot of Robert Altman’s films, including
Nashville
and
Short Cuts
. Those two aren’t exactly tragedies, but you know what I’m talking about.

How about contemporary comedies?

[Laughs] Well, it depends on how contemporary. Does a movie like
Election
[from 1999] count? What about [1995’s]
To Die For
? As far as studio comedies, I’m not so much into ones that are specifically aimed at a younger audience. Even when I was a teenager, I didn’t love movies like
Animal House
. There’s a lot of comedy I enjoy; I just hate rattling off titles. Anyway, most comedies today are pretty much for college kids. I’m out of the loop.

Do you think you’ve changed? Or has the comedy changed?

Well, comedy has just become such a gigantic thing now. There’s just so much comedy. Too much comedy. And it all has to be “relatable” or deeply rooted in current pop culture. The audience tends to want to laugh at things they’ve experienced—weddings, break-ups, hanging out with your buddies, that kind of stuff. For me, the smartest comedy seems to be on TV these days. Shows like
The Office
,
Parks and Rec
, and
Enlightened
—that show blew me away. Not sure I’d call it a comedy, per se.

With movies, a lot of recent comedies are all about this male bonding thing, featuring guys who don’t want to grow up. It’s all about seeing some version of you and your pals on-screen, hanging out and goofing around: “Hey, remember the time Keith puked all over the waitress at Dave & Busters? It was just like in the movie!” I can’t get into that. Hanging out with a bunch of guys and cracking jokes—that would be my worst nightmare. You realize what I’m criticizing, don’t you? Happy, socialized people having a good time. So, to clarify—maybe the problem is with me, not the movies.

I, too, have always found that male-bonding obsession kind of strange. In the real world, do the majority of guys really enjoy hanging around only with other guys? Especially after the age of twenty-five? But then again, I say that as someone who never joined a fraternity.

Right. No, I was never one for male camaraderie. By and large, guys are assholes. I knew that in kindergarten. I just can’t relate to the bromance thing. And isn’t that a lovely term, by the way.

You were never a part of any cliques growing up?

From the first day of school, I couldn’t wait to be an adult and get the fuck out of there—to get away from the teachers, the kids, everyone. So, for me, I don’t recognize anything particularly relatable or truthful in teen comedies. Actually,
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
did a good job of blending moments of broad comedy with something that felt recognizable. But in general, I don’t recall high school as being all that funny. High school is a deep, dark drama.

I went to a typical, middle-class public high school in Pennsylvania in the seventies. The thing I recall the most was that everyone was angry—the teachers, the kids, the guidance counselors.
I
was angry. And if you were a little weird—a “loser” or an “outsider,” to use the great modern comedy trope—you didn’t hang around other losers like you see in the movies. You kept to yourself. Sure, there were stoners and other little factions. But stoners, for example, weren’t on the outside. They were a decent-sized collection of kids who got along and socialized with each other. This idea that nerds or geeks or losers stuck together is a fantasy. And the
last
thing they were was funny. This notion of people like that banding together, even if it’s just supposed to be a comedy, kind of drives me nuts. I’m not sure any film or TV show has accurately captured what school is really like—at least how I knew it. Maybe
Welcome to the Dollhouse
. Great movie.

How about sillier teen movies? Like
Revenge of the Nerds
?

I remember kind of liking that movie—but just as a flat-out silly comedy. I’m not talking about movies like that. I mean comedies that try to wedge in phony sentiment and moments of so-called “truth.” Especially when it comes to relationships. I really remember hating all those Brat Pack movies. Give me a fucking break. I never met kids like that.

Were there any specific comedy writers whose work you grew up admiring?

As far as TV and movies, I liked the writing on
Saturday Night Live
,
SCTV
, Monty Python—those were the big ones for everyone, I guess. Those were the 1970s touchstones that represented a new type of comedy that wasn’t for your mom and dad. But, quite frankly, looking back, Paul Henning meant more to me than any of that stuff.

Paul Henning! Now there’s a name I don’t often hear as a comedic influence.

He was the creator of
The Beverly Hillbillies
and
Green Acres
. I’ve always had a thing for rural humor, I guess, but I got more enjoyment out of those old reruns than just about anything. And they were really funny and smart.
Green Acres
was surreal at times in a way that was very Pythonesque. I think Henning’s humor came out of some sort of a vaudeville sensibility, or a southern Grand Ole Opry tradition. Some might think that the humor is corny, but it’s a smart, knowing kind of corny. I wasn’t so much a fan of
Petticoat Junction
, which he also created, because that had a bit of sappiness to it, but
Green Acres
and
Beverly Hillbillies
—hilarious. On
Green Acres
, the characters would sometimes comment on the credits as they flashed on the screen. Pretty smart material for the time. I really liked
The Andy Griffith Show
, too. So many great character actors back then. That’s the type of thing that’s deep in my bones, more than the dope-smoking comedy culture that grew out of the
National Lampoon
.

That’s quite a leap from Hal Ashby and his movie
The Last Detail
to Paul Henning and his TV show
The Beverly Hillbillies
.

I guess writers have so many things that influence or inspire them. A lot of the time it’s just subconscious. It’s probably a mistake to think about it too much. In some crazy way, Henning connects to R. Crumb in my mind—and there’s a guy who’s really meant a lot to me.