Just the Funny Parts Read online

  Jesse is an experienced director so I expected him to give me some practical advice: Line the actors up in a row. Go tight on their faces. Instead, he uttered three words that changed everything.

  “Go down fighting.”

  It was exactly what I needed to hear. I picked myself off the floor and headed back to the set to do the best I could with the situation I had.

  I think about Jesse’s advice often. In Hollywood, you rise up fighting or you go down fighting. Either way, you’re fighting.

  Now back to the funny parts.

  Stage One

  Who Is Nell Scovell?

  Chapter 1

  Every Character Needs a Backstory

  Q: What was the smartest dinosaur?

  A: Roget Thesaurus

  The first joke I recall writing, circa fifth grade.

  I WAS BORN AT BOSTON LYING-IN HOSPITAL ON TUESDAY, November 8, 1960. On Wednesday, the entire state of Massachusetts celebrated. Those two events were not connected. On my birthday, Boston-bred John F. Kennedy defeated sweaty Richard M. Nixon at the voting booths. Kennedy became the youngest president ever elected and that day marked a cultural shift that led to the youth movement, the civil rights movement, the feminist revolution, the sexual revolution, and the rise of pop culture. But I’m sure you have a cool birthday too.

  Three out of my four grandparents immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s. My paternal grandfather Louis Scovell fled Smorgon, Belarus, as a teenager, and came in through Ellis Island. Louis used to tell stories about his teenage years in “the old country” and having to bring the cows back to the barn while German bullets whizzed by his head. I will tell my own grandchildren about being forced to play dodge ball in middle school while wearing a horizontal-striped spandex uniform. I’ve suffered, too.

  Middle school PE uniform aka The Comedy Writer Maker

  Courtesy of the author

  Louis had minimal education but plenty of smarts. He married Rhoda Orentlicher, of the Tarnopol Orentlichers, who came to America at the age of four. Over the centuries, Tarnopol flipped between Poland and Austria and since Rhoda was drawn to books and music, she preferred to self-identify as Austrian. My father, Mel, used to joke that each year his mother’s birthplace moved closer to Vienna until eventually it was within the city limits. Rhoda kept a kosher home but Louis loved bacon so much, he convinced a doctor to write a note saying bacon was necessary for his health. Told you he had smarts.

  My maternal grandfather Rubin Cohn was born in London, which sounds posh until you learn that his Polish mother gave birth while waiting to board a ship to New York. Buddy (as we called him) grew up in Greenwich Village and took any available job: rolling cigars, selling shoes. Eventually, he became a hat manufacturer. Buddy’s wife, Frances Cohen, was born in Brooklyn although she never knew the exact date, so we celebrated her birthday on Thanksgiving. Her parents put her to work as a child, sewing appliques on dresses, which makes her one of Brooklyn’s original “artisanal lifestyle enhancers.” Frances loved science and dreamed of studying medicine. The closest she could get was to become a podiatrist who filed callouses and treated ingrown toenails on Park Avenue.

  Louis went into the retail shoe business and he and Rhoda settled in the working-class town of Brockton, Massachusetts, where my father was born and raised. Brockton produced two world-class boxers, Rocky Marciano and Marvelous Marvin Hagler, proving that people would rather get punched in the face than stay in Brockton. My mother, Cynthia, nicknamed Sooky, was born in the equally badass factory town of Fall River, Massachusetts. Like many first-generation Americans, my parents discovered that the key to upward mobility was (1) not living in Europe during Hitler’s reign; and (2) focusing on education. By 1951, Mel had graduated from Yale and was stationed at Fort Eustis near the College of William & Mary where Sooky was majoring in math. Mel says they were introduced because they “were the only two Jews in Virginia.”

  Sooky fell in love with Mel because he made her laugh. Sooky made Mel feel loved. Less than a year later, they married and moved to the Boston area. In eight years, they made five kids: Julie, Alice, me, Ted, and Claire. You may have noticed that I’m right in the middle. Yeah, I noticed that, too.

  The five of us were tight-knit, bookish, and only slightly less neurotic than J.D. Salinger’s Glass family. We loved one another and the way we expressed this was by constant and merciless teasing. We made fun of one sister for having a small head (she doesn’t) and another for having allergies (I do—leave me alone). We made up songs like the “I’m always right” song which was sung to the tune of Chopin’s “Grande valse brillante” and featured lyrics that looped, “I’m always right. You’re always wrong.” While building snow forts in the backyard, my brother Ted enjoyed blocking the path of his sisters who desperately needed to go inside and pee. Then he’d make us laugh until it was too late. We were relentlessly cruel and yet completely devoted to one another. This was the best possible training for a career in a TV writers room.

  My parents provided us with a comfortable and stable childhood. We moved once—a full five miles from Belmont to Newton. Sometimes I feel like my uneventful upbringing puts me at a disadvantage in my chosen profession. I’m a little jealous of writers who come from Southern Gothic families filled with alcoholics and vampires. The first time I met comedy legend Merrill Markoe, she asked me to contribute to a side project where she compiled stories from women with narcissistic mothers.

  “Why do you think I have something to offer?” I asked.

  “Well, you’re funny,” Merrill said. “And a lot of my funny female friends had mothers who just focused on themselves.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you,” I said. “But I had the warmest, nicest mom.”

  Sooky was cheerful and helpful and my staunchest defender. At my third-grade parent-teacher conference, the teacher complained that I made too many jokes during class. She asked my mother to talk to me about toning it down. My mother said she’d pass the message along. And she did. . . .

  On my fortieth birthday.

  My mother waited thirty-two years until I was an established comedy writer to tell me that my third-grade teacher had notes on my personality. Sooky found a way to protect without smothering. Her unconditional love is one of the reasons that I could withstand so much criticism and rejection over the years. It’s my Harry Potter scar.

  Sooky died in 2004 at seventy-two from pancreatic cancer. At her funeral, I spoke about how I never saw my mother embarrassed. That’s because to feel embarrassed you have to want to be seen in a particular light . . . and then fail. My mom never pretended to be something she wasn’t. There was nothing phony about her. Basically, she was the antithesis of Hollywood.

  While my mom offered support, my dad offered challenge. Mel liked it when his kids got good grades. And when we didn’t? We were all too scared to find out. His philosophy on life was clear: be logical, be ethical, be honest. No lies were tolerated in my family, not even white lies. Here’s an actual conversation I had with my dad after emailing him a caricature of me that appeared in Vanity Fair.

  © Tim Sheaffer

  ME: Hey, did you get the caricature I sent you?

  DAD: Yes, I saw it. (long pause) It’s not flattering but it looks like you.

  Complete honesty is a truly admirable way to raise your children until one decides to go work in the TV and movie business. Then she will feel blindsided. The constant barrage of lies in the entertainment industry confused and dismayed me, especially in the beginning. Eventually, I cracked the code: if something seems like good news, it’s probably a lie.

  Eight Lies Writers Hear All the Time

  I’ll read your script this weekend.

  This is brilliant! We just have a couple of notes.

  If we hire anyone, it’ll be you.

  Hey, your show . . . your vision.

  We can’t pay you, but it’s good exposure.

  Nothing is happening in town right now.

 
We’re looking for someone who can think outside the box.

  We want the lead to be a strong woman.

  My tendency to tell the truth has definitely hurt my career. In the early nineties, I had a meeting with a producer who had the rights to make a movie version of an old TV series. The producer mentioned that he wanted Jim Belushi for the lead. My lousy poker face gave me away.

  “What, don’t you like him?” the producer asked.

  “Not really,” I said, bluntly. “I just never thought he had half the talent of his brother.”

  The producer opened his arms in disbelief.

  “Look who’s shitting on Jim Belushi?!”

  I didn’t get that job, but my dad would’ve been proud of me.

  As a kid, I often sat on the arm of Mel’s reclining chair and helped him solve British crossword puzzles, deciphering anagrams and puns. My dad loved wordplay. Driving along the highway in the early seventies, Mel suddenly called to the backseat: “Kids, who does Sonny love and how much?” We had no idea what he was talking about. Then he pointed at a hotel sign in the distance: Sheraton. (“Cher, a ton.”)

  My dad also passed along his love of science fiction to me. During the summers, my sisters devoured Charlotte Brontë and Jane Austen while I sat in a turquoise butterfly chair reading Ray Bradbury and Philip K. Dick. In college, I took an independent study in fantasy novels with Thomas Shippey, a visiting professor from the UK who was dubbed, “Tolkien’s last protégé.” Professor Shippey was actually friends with Harry Harrison, who wrote “Make Room, Make Room,” the novella that became the movie Soylent Green. I thought that was the coolest thing. What was less cool was when Prof. Shippey mentioned that he wrote fiction under a pseudonym.

  “What name?” I said. “I want to read it.”

  “I can’t tell you,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because the books are rather misogynistic,” he answered.

  My love for science fiction extended to TV shows, including the original Star Trek and The Twilight Zone, which both ran in syndication during my high school years. I also memorized The Prisoner’s defiant Number Six declaration, “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.” That made my little teenage heart beat faster. Actually, it makes my fiftysomething heart beat faster, too.

  On the weekends, my siblings and I watched black-and-white screwball comedies from the 1930s and 1940s. The Thin Man series and the Marx Brothers delighted us. Groucho, Harpo, and Chico were agents of chaos, apt to break into song, and siblings who got on each other’s nerves. No wonder we loved them. We were also lucky to come of age when Woody Allen was dating Diane Keaton and not a family member. Mel took us to the theater to see Sleeper and my favorite, Love and Death. Still for sheer giddiness, you couldn’t beat Young Frankenstein. Gene Wilder’s gentle oddness complemented Mel Brooks’s irreverent broadness. Young Frankenstein also featured Teri Garr and Madeline Kahn who were adorable and hysterical. Years later, I got to hang out with Teri and watched as some friends offered her a joint.

  “No, thanks,” she said. “I get high on life.”

  Most Hollywood memoirs dish about celebs doing drugs. I’m going in a different direction.

  In my early teens, two new sketch comedy shows started airing on TV and I knew they were special because my parents thought they were weird. Monty Python’s Flying Circus smashed highbrow into lowbrow and I memorized sketches about drunken philosophers, ex-parrots, and arguments about arguments. Only a handful of friends got the humor and it bonded us. At school, we’d greet each other:

  “’Ello, Mrs. Premise.”

  “’Ello, Mrs. Conclusion.”

  Saturday Night Live was far more popular, premiering in October of my high school freshman year. In the days before YouTube, if you wanted to understand why kids were talking about “land sharks” on Monday, you had to keep your sleepy ass up late on Saturday. The sensibility of Monty Python appealed to me more, but SNL had something the British troupe didn’t have: funny women. The first SNL cast featured three women and four men—groundbreaking for its time. I admired Gilda Radner, the original manic pixie dream girl, but I adored the tougher, more strait-laced Jane Curtin. She held her own against Dan Aykroyd and, even as a conehead, Curtin came across as strangely real.

  Closer to home, my aunts Jane and Pinky—Mel’s sisters—would regularly crack up any room they were in. Aunt Jane liked opera, ballet, and fart jokes. And she wasn’t afraid to “work blue” as the Borscht Belt comics would say. At a family gathering, she once sidled over to me.

  “Hey, I’ve got one for you,” she said. “Mabel and Molly are rocking on the porch of a retirement home.” Jane switched to a wistful old lady voice: “Mabel, do you remember the minuet?” Then in a coarser voice, “Molly, I don’t even remember the men I fucked.”

  It took me fifteen years to get that joke.

  Aunt Pinky’s humor was darker. Once, my sister Alice was sprawled on the couch reading Little Women when Pinky walked by, tapped her on the shoulder, and said, “Don’t get too attached to Beth.”

  Jane and Pinky were early role models and a reason why I’ve always known that women are as funny as men. Throughout my childhood, I never saw any evidence to the contrary. Who’s funnier than Jean Hagan in Singin’ in the Rain? Or droller than Myrna Loy lining up martinis in The Thin Man? I cheered when Johnny Carson went on vacation and Joan Rivers guest hosted The Tonight Show. And sure, Bob Newhart was the star of The Bob Newhart Show, but costars Suzanne Pleshette and Marcia Wallace topped him all the time.

  The ability to make people laugh is not tied to any physical characteristic including skin color, hair color, nose size, penis size or lack thereof. People of every religion can be funny especially when they’re making fun of their own religion. Gay people do seem to be a little funnier than straight people, but maybe straight people go into closets and tell jokes. For me, Kurt Vonnegut settled the matter in seven words: “Some people are funny. Some are not.”

  I was fortunate to be surrounded by funny people from birth. Still, wisecracking was viewed as a hobby, not a profession. My dad is hilarious . . . and ran not-for-profit healthcare centers in low-income communities. Aunt Pinky was the most sarcastic person I knew . . . and conducted research at Columbia University. My own career path pointed in two directions: doctor or lawyer. Since my grandmother wanted to study medicine but couldn’t pursue that dream, I went to college planning to achieve it for her. A Teaching Assistant in my Intro Biology class said, “No, you won’t.” A C+ in the easiest science class freshman year destroyed any hope of becoming a surgeon. Now I always advise high school students, “Don’t follow your dreams; follow your talents.” Writing came far more easily to me than science. I turned to that instead, although I still play surgeon once a year. Every Thanksgiving, I insist on carving the turkey. Haven’t saved a patient yet.

  Chapter 2

  Sports and SPY

  Writing is the hardest thing to do and the easiest thing to piss on.

  —Irving Brecher, Oscar-nominated screenwriter

  AT EVERY PANEL ABOUT TV WRITING THAT I’VE SAT on, an audience member will invariably ask, “How did you break in?”

  Invariably, I will answer, “That’s a terrible question.”

  This usually gets an uncomfortable laugh because no one’s expecting the nice panel lady to be so rude. I answer bluntly to make an impression, then I explain that if you ask a thousand different writers “How did you break in?” you’ll get a thousand different answers. But if you ask a thousand different writers “Why did you break in?” you’ll get the same answer: we wrote.

  A writer’s career begins long before securing that first job or agent. Arranging words in entertaining ways can take many forms: essays, plays, standup, sketches, poetry, magazine articles, songs, and tweets. There’s an old saying that “a writer writes” but that’s just the start. A writer writes . . . a lot . . . and then shares that work with others.<
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  My friend Amy Hohn described the process perfectly. One day, during a long walk through Central Park, she said, “The only way to move forward creatively is to allow yourself to be judged.” I stopped in my tracks and dug out a pen so I could jot down her observation. I’ve even thought about having it tattooed on my body, maybe in Chinese characters if that’s shorter.

  Writing is not what you start. It’s not even what you finish. It’s what you start, finish, and put out there for the world to see. Sometimes we’re afraid to share our work because we know those twin jerks—criticism and rejection—are out there waiting to beat us up. Once the assault begins, there are three possible responses: (1) run away from the jerks; (2) defend yourself against the jerks; (3) assume the position and say, “Thank you, sir, may I have another.” The third choice hurts like hell, but the jerks often have useful feedback.

  Some writers fear the blank page. To me, that’s like fearing an empty dog dish—the page is just something you fill every day. Other writers insist, “I hate writing . . . but I love having written.” I’m the freak who enjoys the process of writing, especially those moments when I fall into a flow and become totally absorbed by a project. As a middle child, it was hard getting my voice heard so being able to express myself without interruption feels like a luxury.

  Age 11, working at the kitchen table on a paper about marsupials. Did you know an opossum’s penis is bifurcated like a barbecue fork?

  Courtesy of the author

  John Irving observed, “Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.” This may explain why I initially gravitated to journalism. Reporting is all about noticing. In high school, I became News Editor of Denebola, the oddly named Newton South High School newspaper. When I got to college, I was eager to continue down the path of serious news journalism.