Dennis Perrin, who keeps the blog Red State Son, has a great interview with Tom Kramer, a filmmaker who worked on the sketch show Fridays. Fridays has become somewhat lost to TV Past save for the legendary staged meltdown by Andy Kaufman on the show. Dennis knows something about comedy, as he penned the wonderful (but perhaps too detailed) biography Mr. Mike about SNL and National Lampoon writer Michael O’Donoghue. Fridays spawned a lot of talent including Larry David, “Borat” director Larry Charles and (must I dismiss him for recent events?) Michael Richards.
Though Tom fully admits that Fridays was a knockoff of Saturday Night Live, he still describes a great gig - an opportunity to work with very smart people doing whatever they wanted. One of the things that’s a bit fascinating about Fridays is how much drug humor played a part in the show. Tom says:
“Fridays" aired during possibly the last time in America that drugs were at all acceptable. It was the early-80s, and drugs were open and everywhere in Hollywood. Some of the writers were veterans of the 60s drug culture, so drug humor, like that of Cheech and Chong, was popular. I personally had very little experience with drugs at the time and didn’t seem to get the humor like most others.
Which explains a sketch like this, where The Three Stooges are played as drug-addled morons (with Larry David sporting very real, very appropriate Larry hair):
Dennis mentions in the interview’s introduction that he’d like to do a larger project on Fridays, either in print or on video. As someone who was too young to catch it, I’m hoping he can get it off the ground. The show does seem uneven - check out the horrible puns in this sketch “Diner of the Living Dead” . (Tom mentions that the live audience was so loud it drowned out the actual sketches - which is quite apparent after some of the groaners like “Hand Sandwich” are delivered here.) Still, Fridays was the start for a few great current comedians and probably where they learned a lot of lessons they apply today.
While doing a massive bookmark clean from Firefox yesterday, I found a little old gem which describes how the theme to the sketch show Mr. Show developed. It’s a short write-up from Eban Schletter, who while writing most of Mr. Show’s music, wasn’t around for the early days. The composer for the first four episodes was Mark Rivers - who’s since written themes for Freak Show and Moral Orel, as can be heard on his myspace page.
Mark ended up doing a few alternate themes - including one with lyrics that is apparently lost for good. But two of the others are on the page for listening in mp3 format, including one that was a suggestion from Mr. Show co-creator Bob Odenkirk that’s based in Mexican circus music. Listening to both, I have a hard time picking one that makes me forget the original. In fact, the alternative theme sounds a little sinister to me. Well, as sinister as something that can come of an out of an accordian (? - I don’t know anything about music).
The curious thing to me is I think I have almost Pavlovian reactions to the real theme. Mr. Show never really failed to deliver for me, so I have all these associations with the song and anticipating being ready to laugh real hard. I fear if anyone was to play the theme right before something like, oh, a Carlos Mencia show, I’d probably end up enjoying far more than I should.
Does anybody else out there have a sight or a sound that evokes a readiness to laugh? Or for that matter, something the other way around, that instantly brings up your guard?
Comedy Central has a new show premiering tonight at 10:30 PM called ”The Naked Trucker and T-Bones Show” which features David Koechner and Dave “Gruber” Allen in roles they started on LA stages. Here’s a leaked clip featuring Will Ferrell as a hitchhiker.
I’ve been meaning to talk about this for forever, but JibJab has really put together a great little idea in hooking up some of these up and coming sketch groups with a big time director, John Landis. The videos are all very impressively produced considering they were all made in roughly three days - which account why they are all cop/law enforcement related - speeds up production time. For somebody who’s also the father of the modern comedy movie - Animal House has been de facto remade once a year since its release - I’ve found it hard to see John Landis touch in these. But that’s kind of by virtue of the product - sketches don’t necessarily need to be played real.
But your mileage may vary. Watch all the videos from the Great Sketch Experiment and vote now. You have until November 16 and if you change your mind between now and then, you can change your vote too. The whole process of making the shorts is impressively documented as well, so there’s more riches here than just the videos themselves. A pretty good way to spend an hour.
I’ve expressed my fatigue with TV shows about TV shows, but Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip has intrigued me simply because Aaron Sorkin’s purpose has been more to use sketch comedy as an exploration of the “culture wars.” Sadly, I think that intent is destroying the credibility of the show within the show, making it incredibly unfunny.
The entire show hinges on the pair of writers coming in to restore a tarnished sketch show to greatness. Either you don’t show us and we take it on faith, or you do and you show sketch comedy as it should be. Sorkin chose the latter. The prior week’s episode showed a cold open that used a Gilbert & Sullivan tune to make fun of the show’s failures in the past. The bombastic splash of a giant orchestra and production number came off as more desperation than humor. This week’s episode saw a sketch called Science Schmience, which was so heavy-handed with fact-spouting against its targets that it played incredibly self-important and holier-than-thou. Many references were also made to a sketch where a player performed as a member of a commedia del arte troupe stuck in modern times that probably required one to read the term’s wikipedia entry for an audience to get what’s funny about it.
The rap on the West Wing was that Sorkin was portraying an idealized White House and here, perhaps, an idealized TV Network and sketch show. The idealized TV Network stuff is great - I loves to live in a fantasy world where execs are backing up producers this much against protesting interest groups. But an idealized sketch comedy show definitely has one thing missing here:
Dick jokes.
I’m not saying change the name of the show to Studio 69, but the culture wars can easily be explored by a sketch such as SNL’s legendary Penis song. In fact, the show would have far less straw man arguments if it explored sketches that are not necessarily baiting conservatives, but rather taste. What is the interest in doing a sketch like that? Is something like that just comedy writers just seeing what they can get away with? A sketch like that might almost be indefensible logically, but it has merit and having characters attempt to verbalize that merit could be incredibly entertaining to watch. Couch the argument in Aristophanes and phalluses if you must, just don’t get so literal that Nate Corddry and D.L. Hughley have to wear enlarged codpieces.
Comedy can be both high and low and the best thing about it is that you can mix the two. A lot of an intelligent points can be made in a sketch can be made by using very crude metaphors - in fact, it’s how the ideas sneak in usually. Word is that Mark McKinney is advising on the sketches for Studio 60, but it’s kinda obvious he’s not writing them. Get a dream team of sketch comedy writers, folks like Bob Odenkirk and Robert Smigel comes to mind, tell them what issues you want the show to reflect and then let them create a sketch that does it without belaboring the ideas.
If Sorkin fears that such a move would not reflect his premise of relevant, brave sketch comedy, he needs only to look at the Daily Show. Jon and company are never afraid to let satire get in the way of a classic dick joke. Or in the following case, somewhere between a dick joke and an ass joke:
Do you think the show is too high minded about sketch comedy?
The first season of The State is now on iTunes. Though much of its alumni have gone on to do incredible work in splinter groups including Reno 911 and Stella, the original sketches which featured the whole troop have been primarily unavailable, save for a 1995 VHS release entitled Skits and Stickers, which has a few sketches from the entirety of episodes, a far cry from our completist DVD releases today. Skits and Stickers is somewhat of a rarity now. Although eight people are trying to sell it from between $48 of $135 on Amazon, there’s four copies for sale on eBay under $10. I picked up a copy when it was originally released and the sketch involving a softened language version of the play Tenement is still one of my favorite bits ever.
There’s hope that strong sales on iTunes will lead to a full DVD release. To help promote the availability on iTunes, the State produced the following dark, dark non-promo-like promo for the release.
The interesting thing about the article to me was a mention that earlier this year Lorne Michaels said he decided to make the number of cuts to preserve SNL’s traditional output of 20 shows a season. First: would NBC say, “here’s a budget, give us how many episodes you can make out of it?” Wouldn’t they want their standard 20 no matter what - after all they got advertising commitments (plus two primetime shows based on SNL)? Isn’t doing 20 episodes with cuts vs. doing less with none a false choice? But if is a real choice, considering the endurance march writing for SNL is, does anybody think Michaels would have been better off going with, say, 13 episodes and keeping these folks?
This list of five awful Saturday Night Live hosts can't entirely be proven, since Lorne Michaels won't let the Milton Berle-hosted episode see the light of day again. Which is probably a good thing.
The trailer for Ghost Town, the "Ricky Gervais plays a dick who learns to be a better person thanks to dead people" movie, just went up. That's probably all you need to see of it.
Paul Scheer says there's going to be a third season of Human Giant, they just got to work around Aziz Ansari's schedule, now that's he's a character in the Office spin-off. (Best Week Ever)
Dennis Perrin, who keeps the blog Red State Son, has a great interview with Tom Kramer, a filmmaker who worked on the sketch show Fridays. Fridays has become somewhat lost to TV Past save for the legendary staged meltdown by Andy Kaufman on the show. Dennis knows something about comedy, as he penned the wonderful (but perhaps too detailed) biography Mr. Mike
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While doing a massive bookmark clean from Firefox yesterday, I found a little old gem which describes 
, which has a few sketches from the entirety of episodes, a far cry from our completist DVD releases today. Skits and Stickers is somewhat of a rarity now. Although eight people are trying to sell it from between $48 of $135 on Amazon, there’s four copies for sale on eBay under $10. I picked up a copy when it was originally released and the sketch involving a 
