Mike Sacks - Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today’s Top Comedy Writers
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NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR
Amy Poehler, Mel Brooks, Adam McKay, George Saunders, Bill Hader, Patton Oswalt, and many more take us deep inside the mysterious world of comedy in this fascinating, laugh-out-loud-funny book. Packed with behind-the-scenes storiesfrom a day in the writers room at TheOnion to why a sketch does or doesnt make it onto Saturday Night Live to how the BBC nearly erased the entire first season of Monty Pythons Flying CircusPoking a Dead Frog is a must-read for comedy buffs, writers and pop culture junkies alike.
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PRAISE FOR MIKE SACKS
Poking a Dead Frog
A greater look into the craft and business of comedy writing than you can find anywhere else.... A comedy nerd Bible.
Bradford Evans, Splitsider
No one generates more interesting, revealing, entertaining interviews than Mike Sacks. His love and knowledge of comedy are apparent, and, as a result, the fascinating and sometimes tight-lipped comedy greats open up to him in ways they rarely do. Poking a Dead Frog is a classic.
Bob Odenkirk
And Heres the Kicker
Comedy writers... tend to be depressed, brilliant, erratic, and sometimes even funny. Mike Sackss collection of remarkably frank interviews with twenty-one of them reads like a secret history of popular culture.
Time
One of the most essential comedy resources ever written.... An indispensable window into the minds of many of the most influential comedic minds of the last several decades.
Comedy Central Insider
Compulsively readable... enormously winning... [and] filled with great advice on how to make it in an insanely difficult field. If someone were to ask me how to break into comedy writing, I would encourage them to read this book.... A funny, sad, tremendously insightful group portrait of the comic mind.
Nathan Rabin, The Onion
Entertaining and informative.
The New York Times
A fascinating mix of cultural reportage, how-to, and hagiography... Sacks digs into the inner workings of the comic mind (a sometimes deeply troubled one) and into the inner sanctum of the writers room.
The Austin Chronicle
Laughter may be universal, but the world of comedy writing is shrouded in mystery.... [Sacks] helps lift the veil.
Vanity Fair
Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason
Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason makes you laugh out loud, and at the same time it inspires wonder.... Mike Sacks is not just a sensational comic writer, but a sensational writerperiod.
David Sedaris
A brilliant and hilarious writer.
Comedy Central Insider
A hugely eclectic and highly original collection.
The Huffington Post
The fun in Your Wildest Dreams is watching Sacks unpack his weirdness, and theres plenty of weirdness to unpack.... [A] breezy, imaginative humor anthology.
The Onion
Sex: Our Bodies, Our Junk
Finally, someone has managed to find the hilarious flipside to the unspeakable tragedy we all know as human sexuality.
Jon Stewart
A spot-on parody of earnest sex guides, Our Bodies, Our Junk is a hilarious and addictive page-turner.
Publishers Weekly
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China
penguin.com
A Penguin Random House Company
First published in Penguin Books 2014
Copyright 2014 by Michael Sacks
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Text from the cartoon Item #3715 - Cozy Cardigan by Roz Chast. Used by permission of Roz Chast and Conde Nast Licensing.
Excerpt from Step Brothers movie review by Roger Ebert. Used by permission.
Excerpts from Freaks and Greeks character bible by Paul Feig. Used by permission of Feigo, Inc.
Late Night with Conan OBrien submission packet by Todd Levin. Used by permission of Todd Levin.
Temple of Laughter by Edward Jessen (pages 448 and 449). (www.edwardjessen.co.uk)
Other illustrations by Louise Pomeroy. (www.louisezpomeroy.com)
Photograph by Seth Olenick. (www.setholenick.com)
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Sacks, Mike.
Poking a dead frog : conversations with todays top comedy writers / Mike Sacks.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-101-61327-6 (eBook)
1. Stand-up comedyUnited States. 2. ComediansUnited StatesInterviews. 3. ComediansUnited StatesAnecdotes. I. Title.
PN1969.C65S23 2014
792.702'8092dc23
2014005646
Version_1
For K & Little D,
and for my parents, Elaine and Jerry
Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.
Teller
I was not the class clown.... Ive always maintained that the class clown, the guy [who] when the teacher is out of the room sets the clock back, makes noise, throws water balloons around the room, those kids... grow up and theyre killed in a motel shoot-out.
Conan OBrien
I wanted to play on the dark side, a little bit under the center of tonality. Not really flat, but just on the underneath side.
Chet Baker
And now Ill serve you the beans you so justly deserve.
Chris Elliott as Marlon Brando, Late Night with David Letterman
The late comedy writer Jerry Belson, a veteran of The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Odd Couple, and The Drew Carey Show, among other classic sitcoms, wrote a joke that became one of the most well known, and most retold, in the history of television. Its from a 1973 episode of The Odd Couple:
Never ASSUME. Because when you assume, you make an ASS of U and ME.
The joke is undeniably great. But perhaps the best and most effective joke that Belson ever wroteand he wrote untold thousandsis the inscription that he wanted engraved on his tombstone:
I DID IT THEIR WAY
In other words: Hollywoods way. The executives way. The wrong way.
Belsons tombstone epitaph never made it beyond the first-draft stage, but regardless, one would think that Belson had done it his way. Plenty of credits. Plenty of money. Plenty of respect from those within the industry. And yet, if theres one motif evident in the lives of comedy writers, its the nagging feeling that one can never have it his or her own way. That a comedy writer must always genuflect to those with the power, with the moneythose who deem themselves arbiters of What Is Funny.
Whether through executive negligence or creative bartering on the part of the writers, the most beloved comedies of our time have avoided this trap. When Monty Python created their four-season television series, Flying Circus, they did so with minimal help from the BBC. In fact, as one of the Pythons, Terry Jones, explains in this book, BBC executives were disinterested in the resultuntil they saw the final product. Then they came terribly close to erasing the entirety of Monty Pythons first season for the grand purpose of reusing the tapes to record more serious entertainment.
The creators of The Simpsons made it clear from the shows inception that there would be no executive meddling. James L. Brooks, also interviewed in this book, declared, in essence, Stay away from our jokes, and we will produce a show for the ages
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