Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers (12 page)

Writer,
Parks and Recreation
; Author,
Science . . . for Her!

Even though comedy writing is inherently goofing around with really funny people for ten to seventeen hours a day, it’s also very disciplined. And I am only just starting to figure out how to do it. It’s something you need to exercise. Try to write material—try to write
good
material—as often as you can. You also need to consume a lot of comedy so that you can figure out what makes something good.

What’s also important is to make sure that you actually
like
writing. I’ve always wanted to grow up and move to Hollywood—since I was a kid I’ve always had a vague idea that that’s what I wanted to do. But I didn’t know until a few years ago that I actually
enjoyed
the art of writing. There are a lot of people my age who are trying to get their foot in the door, who want to be famous, or who want a cool job. But if you don’t enjoy the act of actually sitting down and writing for hours a day, it’s probably not the correct choice for you.

I started Twitter because one of my friends did it. I thought, Okay, if I tweet one joke a day to myself and my college friends, this will make me better at writing, and I will have some jokes saved for a pilot or whatever I want to do. I didn’t know anyone who worked in the industry, but as it happens, there are some people who are really into trolling Twitter for new talent. I think some of the assistants at
Family Guy
saw me first. That could be patient zero of my Twitter spread. Assistants to assistants. Basically, kids right out of college who were helping out the writers and producers. A lot of them have gone on to other jobs now, and I’m still friends with them. So the contagion started that way. They started following and retweeting me, and I was getting some real comedy people as followers. And then [comedian and writer] Rob Delaney became a supporter, and he already had his huge following [more than 930,000]. Once Rob found me, a few months after I started tweeting, that’s when it really hit me: “Oh, my God, this guy is using this for a specific purpose that’s very exciting and new, and maybe I could get a piece of that pie, too.”

I kept tweeting for a few months. I was really working hard at the idea of writing jokes. And then, in maybe one of the greatest things that’s happened to me, I had this meeting with writer and comic Jordan Rubin, who had e-mailed me. He told me, “I have a thing that I’m working on. I might want you as a writer.” He was head writer for the Oscars. He said, “Do you want to write for
The Academy Awards
?” That was my first job. Just an insane amount of luck, which I am forever grateful for.

Then I was hired on
Parks and Rec.
I had never written for a sitcom like this. I was hired as a staff writer, so I was brought on as a funny person who knew how to write and someone who had potential to be a good TV writer. Mike [Schur], the head of
Parks and Rec
, was a fan of mine from Twitter and from my blog. So it was pretty incredible. I still can’t really believe that they hired an Internet weirdo. [Laughs] I think Mike felt, Well, we can always teach her how to write for
this
show.

I started writing with the single goal to make myself a better writer and then, later, to get a job. And I did; I got my dream job. I still love Twitter because it really is a fun way to connect with people, and it feels amazing to have a ton of people [more than 370,000] follow me just by virtue of them thinking I’m funny. That’s the most pure, wonderful validation of one’s career, basically. But that being said, if I’m at work sitting in a writers’ room, I’m definitely not thinking about Twitter. I’m trying to think about my show and trying to do the best job that I can. So I don’t tweet an insane amount, and I tweet less than I used to. My number-one responsibility is my job, and my number-two responsibility is my Twitter.

If I had to give any closing piece of advice, it would be to make sure you like what you’re doing, to put yourself out there, in terms of your work. Also, just be a human being. Be nice to people and don’t be crazy, which sounds very general, but that’s appreciated professionally. You can be a nice, energetic, funny person, but still not alienate anyone.

Sampling of Tweets from Megan Amram

I’m giving up spell check for Lant

This is a pretty shitty flash mob. It’s in my living room, only my family showed up, and they’re just telling me to stop drinking

Such a double standard that when a guy sleeps with a ton of people he’s “cool,” but when I do I’m “lying”

Face down, ass up, that’s the way I want my open casket funeral

They call me the
Titanic
because I once went down on a bunch of Irish peasants

After my ex and I broke up, I was in a really bad place (Florida)

“The big events in one’s life occur only now and then, but there are smaller events that are familiar to every family. It’s these daily incidents that make up the private lives of Ethel and Albert.” So began every episode of
Ethel and Albert
, a hugely popular radio (and then television) series that ran for most of the 1940s and 1950s, on multiple stations both small and national.

Almost half a century before Jerry Seinfeld became famous for his “show about nothing,” Margaret Frances “Peg” Lynch was already exploring the comedic possibilities of life’s minutiae.
Ethel and Albert
followed the everyday lives of a young married couple, the Arbuckles, living in the fictional small town of Sandy Harbor—no state was ever mentioned. Only the two lead characters were ever heard—at least until 1946, when their baby Suzy was “born”—and they mostly stayed in their house, discussing the most trivial of subjects. In one episode, Ethel challenges Albert’s assertion that he could go the entire day by just using his peripheral vision. In another, Albert misses a dinner party because of a six-cent shortage in the company’s books, and Ethel asks, rather logically, why Albert couldn’t have just paid the six cents out of his own pocket to make it home in time.

Many shows were inspired by Lynch’s own experiences, both as a single woman and, later, as a wife. As she told the
Miami News
in 1955, she “once lost a beau because we argued over which side of the street a Chicago department store was on.” This simple premise was later the inspiration for an entire episode of
Ethel and Albert
.

“What I loved about her humor was that she dealt in the realm of real domestic life, not the goofier stuff you found on similar shows like
My Favorite Husband
and
Burns and Allen
,” says Gerald Nachman, radio historian and writer. Lynch’s work “was a very different, more mature kind of comedy writing that didn’t depend on jokes but on character and situation, before
situation comedy
was even a term.”

After graduating from the University of Minnesota in 1937, with a major in English and acting, Lynch was hired as a copywriter by local radio station KATE in Albert Lea, Minnesota. For a monthly salary of sixty-five dollars she penned scripts for commercials, radio plays, and a weekly farm news program. She soon came up with the Ethel and Albert characters and convinced the station to produce three-minute episodes as fillers between regular programming. As the show grew in popularity, first in Minnesota and then for another station in Maryland, it was expanded to fifteen minutes.

In 1944, Lynch moved to New York City, where she began writing regular episodes of
Ethel and Albert
for the Blue Network, which would later become the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). Not only did the national network hire her to write all the shows—a rare vote of confidence for a relatively unknown writer—they also asked Lynch to play the lead. In the fifties,
Ethel and Albert
moved to TV, first as a ten-minute segment on
The Kate Smith Hour
in 1952, and then in 1953 as its own half-hour program on the NBC network. Over the next several years, it moved between all three major television networks, from NBC (1953–1954) to CBS (summer 1955) to ABC (1955–1956).

Ethel and Albert
officially ended its TV run on July 6, 1956. But in 1957, Lynch revisited the Arbuckles for a CBS radio show called
The Couple Next Door
. Lynch reprised her now classic role, but because CBS wanted new character names (and because Peg refused), Ethel and Albert were never named for this series, and they only referred to each other as “dear.” Margaret Hamilton (better known as the Wicked Witch of the West from 1939’s
The
Wizard of Oz
) was the third adult to join the
Ethel and Albert
cast, as Aunt Eva. The series lasted for three years.

Peg lives with her husband of sixty-five years, Odd Knut Rønning, in Becket, Massachusetts. At the age of ninety-six, she continues to write comedy.

Let’s start with where you were born.

I’m originally from a little town called Kasson, near Rochester, Minnesota. It was only a town of about fifteen thousand people, located very close to the Mayo Clinic. I was without a father. My dad died during the [1918] flu pandemic, when I was only two. My mother worked full-time as head orthopedic nurse at the Mayo Clinic. Her boss was Dr. Charlie Mayo, who had cofounded the Mayo Clinic [in 1889].

Dr. Charlie—that’s what we called him. He sort of brought me up; he kept an eye on me. My mother once brought me to see him because I wasn’t eating. And he made a joke: “Maybe she doesn’t like the food.” My mother ignored it, and she said, “But look at her! She’s mad all the time! Look at her fists! They’re always clenched.” So Dr. Charlie said, “Margaret”—which is what they called me then—“Margaret, doors are going to open for you when you grow up. Be sure that you walk through them.” And that was a good lesson. I’d like to think that I have.

How did you first get involved with radio?

In school, I had a classmate who told me that his father just bought the First National Bank Building in Rochester. Located in the same building was a radio station that had the call letters KROC. I perked right up. “Oh, really?” I asked. This was in 1931; I was fourteen. I had wanted to write ever since I was eight years old. I said, “Gee, can I work at the station?” And my friend said, “Sure, ask my dad.”

I went down to the building, all by myself, and I asked my friend’s father, “Can I work at your radio station?” You have to remember that when radio first started, stations were built by the wealthiest merchants in town. These merchants had money, but they didn’t know a damn thing about radio. I said, “You gotta get some sponsors.” And he said, “Well, what’s that? We don’t sell things over here at the network.”

So I said, “I’ll show you. Let’s try the shoe store first.” I knew the owner was a good friend of his. I walked on over to the store and I said to the owner, “Listen. You’re going to sell shoes on the radio. And you’re going to need a slogan.” I said, “I’ll be back tomorrow with a slogan for you.” Overnight, I made one up: “Don’t spend your life two feet away from happiness.” He loved it.

I then went to the fancy grocery store in town—it was called the Vegetable Man. The doctors’ wives bought all their groceries there. I told the manager of the grocery that he needed to advertise on the radio. He loved the idea, and he wanted to be a sponsor, too. But we couldn’t decide what the slogan should be. He said, “You work at the hospital sometimes with your mother, right? Why don’t you introduce celebrities on the air, and we can sponsor the interviews?” I said, “That’s a marvelous idea!” The town was small, but we had a thousand new people a day going through the clinic, and there were oftentimes celebrities. It didn’t bother me to talk to them. I never experienced that awestruck feeling that I think has sort of ruined the country. Celebrities aren’t really celebrities, you know; they’re just people. One of the first interviews I got was with [movie actor] Bill Powell. Do you remember [his 1934 film]
The Thin Man
? No, you’re too young to remember
The Thin Man
.

Well, Bill Powell was a patient at the Mayo Clinic, and he was adorable. He was so sweet. Beforehand, I talked to Dr. Charlie, and he said, “Don’t discuss their ailments. You don’t want to get into that. It’s their private thing; don’t do that. Always be nice and make sure a patient has his dignity. His backside is always waving in the breeze, so make sure he has his dignity.”

I disagreed with him. When people are sick, they’ll discuss anything. You see them sitting in the lobby, and you know damn well they don’t know each other, yet they’re talking about each other’s bowel habits. So I told Dr. Charlie that the patients would be willing to talk about
anything
—and I was right. The interviews for the radio were great.

Another person I interviewed—who was the baseball player who retired before his time? Gary Cooper played him in a movie.

Lou Gehrig?!

Yes, I interviewed Lou Gehrig on the morning he received his results [for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis]. I think he already knew what it was, though.

Do you remember what he said to you?

I don’t. I do remember him being very sweet and nice. Most of the time the patients would want to talk about where they lived and about their family. They were sentimental, you know.

That’s incredible. You perhaps conducted one of the final interviews with Lou Gehrig.

I never even thought about such a thing. I expect I did. But it didn’t mean much at the time. I wasn’t interested in baseball.

There were others. Have you heard of Knute Rockne [the Notre Dame football coach from 1918 to 1930]? Well, my very first interview was him. He was at the clinic, and he was staying at a hotel in town. I can remember ringing the doorbell at his hotel on the seventh floor. And he came to the door and I was terrified. He looked down at me and he said, “Well, look what we have here! You come right in, honey.” And what I remember is not the interview, but the very fact that he lifted me up to him and asked, “What would you like for breakfast, Margaret?” And I said, “Well, sir, I’ve already had breakfast.” And he said, “How about a waffle? Maybe you could eat a waffle?” And I said, “Well, maybe I could.” I spent the morning there. I was just numb, but thrilled that he picked up a telephone and ordered breakfast. I’d never heard of such a thing as ordering breakfast. And then the table came up with food on it! I was more impressed with that than with Knute Rockne and football!

Ernest Hemingway was also there, but I never interviewed him. He was there for erectile dysfunction. I’m just joking.

But it was very, very hard, too, because I worked in the hospital to earn some extra money. I was in tears every night that I worked at the clinic. A writer should never be around sick people, because you only end up getting all of their diseases, as you well know. And I told mother, “I simply can’t stay here, Mother. I’ve got to get out.” I cried all the time. It was so terrible to hear patients say, “I’m going to visit my daughter in New Mexico” and “I’m going to visit my son,” and you knew damn well they were going to be dead before then because you had just seen their tests that read “Inoperable Cancer of the Stomach” or something like that. I just couldn’t take it any longer.

Where did you work after your first radio job at KROC?

I landed a job at KATE, in Albert Lea, Minnesota, about sixty miles southwest of Rochester. This was in 1937, just after I graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in English and acting. I did everything. I wrote commercials. I worked on a thirty-minute woman’s show—it was a daily—and a show about theater that was on once a week for thirty minutes. I’d also write plays and sketches, and I’d give the news, a lot of it about farming. I worked there for a number of years, earning sixty-five dollars a month.

Did you find your university degrees helpful after you graduated?

Literally, I learned nothing at university.
Nothing.
I always taught myself. I was a big reader when I was young. I completed
War and Peace
when I was ten. I can remember a neighbor saying, “Margaret, why are you always going out to the hammock? What do you do there?” Reading was my favorite thing to do. Whenever I could get away with it, I would go out and lie in the hammock with my dog, eating a green apple, and I would read. I
still
read. I would hate to die for a lot of reasons. But mostly because of all the books I haven’t yet read.

When did you create
Ethel and Albert
?

I began
Ethel and Albert
in the late thirties. It started as three- or four-minute filler. Actually, the show was first called
He and She
. I thought it was something I’d only be doing that week. The show eventually ran every day, for fifteen minutes. And then the station asked for a second show per day, different from the first. Two new shows a day. But I loved it. I was just bored writing copy for the station. It was a great way to sell products, to have a husband and wife in a domestic setting each week. You know, something happens every day to couples that might not seem funny as it’s happening. Later, though, at dinner, it can be hilarious.