Just the Funny Parts Read online

  As SPY became more popular, it also became harder to get interviews on the record. In the early days, people would pick up their phones and speak freely. After a year, potential targets had become more guarded. I was growing frustrated when my home phone rang in March 1987.

  “Please hold for Tina Brown,” a voice said.

  The British editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair jumped on the line. She said hello, then got straight to the point.

  “I’ve seen your work in SPY. Come work for me.”

  Tina made a great pitch, dangling an enticing offer of forty grand a year, which was more money than I ever thought I’d make. SPY had started me on a salary of a hundred dollars a week and to make extra cash, I babysat for Graydon’s kids. (Actually, the babysitting was cool. I had no social life at the time and his kids were terrific.)

  For many reasons, the decision to leap to Vanity Fair was easy although telling Graydon that I was leaving SPY was hard. At least, he was gracious.

  “You’re making the biggest mistake of your life,” he warned me.

  About five years later, Graydon became Vanity Fair’s editor-in-chief. We had a good laugh about that in his swanky new office.

  My early contributions for Tina were short, quirky pieces that she dubbed, “Nell things.” Slowly, I was starting to develop my own style, mostly high-concept with a visual component. The Vanity Fair issue featuring a nude, pregnant Demi Moore on the cover included a “Nell thing,” entitled “Tropical Art.” That piece asked noted art collectors, “If you were stuck on a desert island, what three paintings would you bring along?” Madonna, Jackie Mason, Brooke Astor, David Salle, Mort Janklow, and Robertson Davies all played along, which is the eighties in a nutshell.

  At twenty-seven, I no longer felt like an aimless failure. I had built a nice career. I had built a bit of confidence. I had built a happy life. Then one Sunday while running errands, I bumped into SPY copyeditor Joanne Gruber. It was great to see her and catch up. Then at the end of our conversation, she paused to weigh her words.

  “Nell,” she said, hesitantly. “I don’t mean this an insult, but I think you could write for TV.”

  An airhorn went off in my head.

  Chapter 3

  The Setup

  RUTH

  I thought you might need an extra pair of hands.

  GARRY

  (to camera) That would double my sex life.

  Dialogue from my spec script for

  It’s Garry Shandling’s Show

  TRYING SOMETHING NEW SHOULD BE THE EASIEST thing in the world. If you succeed, great. And if you fail, you have the perfect excuse: “Hey, I’ve never done this before.” I decided to take Joanne’s advice and give TV writing a shot.

  All my knowledge of TV writers came from watching The Dick Van Dyke Show. Rob Petrie, Buddy Sorrell, and Sally Rogers had a lot of fun writing for character Alan Brady (played by Carl Reiner). Still, their workplace seemed about as realistic as the astronaut program on I Dream of Jeannie. Nothing in my upbringing pointed toward a career in TV. Geographically, Boston and Hollywood are about as far apart as you can get in the continental United States. Philosophically, they’re even further. Several local boys managed to make the leap. Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Mark Wahlberg have become three of our biggest movie stars and two of our finest actors. But growing up in Newton, it was hard to find even a tenuous connection to show business. Leonard Nimoy’s parents lived in the same elderly Jewish housing complex as my maternal grandparents. Granny (Frances) said the Star Trek star visited one day and I almost lost my mind. The next time I was in the building’s lobby, I inhaled deeply, thrilled to be breathing the same air as Mr. Spock.

  Forty years later, I met Leonard at a book party for Lynn Povich’s memoir The Good Girls Revolt. We bonded over our ancestors shared address and then chatted about art. When I mentioned I was Co-Executive Producer of Warehouse 13 on the Syfy Channel, Leonard cocked an eyebrow.

  “Really? And how did you become interested in science fiction?”

  “I was drawn to it at an early age,” I said. “You don’t choose it; it chooses you.”

  “That’s a good point,” he said. “It certainly chose me.”

  Then Leonard roared with laughter.

  While I voraciously consumed movies, TV, and plays growing up, I had a limited view of the entertainment industry. Performing seemed like the only way in and by the age of twelve, I’d peaked. During the summers in the late sixties, I was cast in three musicals at The Barn Playhouse in New London, New Hampshire. My roles included Tevye’s youngest daughter, Bielke, Snow child #3 in Carousel, and Princess Ying Yaowalak in The King and I. (Yeah, I was a white kid playing an Asian girl long before Emma Stone was even born.) The actress playing Anna in The King and I was married to the Barn’s musical director, Stephen Schwartz. He went on to become the award-winning composer/lyricist of Godspell, Pippin, and Wicked. I went on to sit in the audience of Godspell, Pippin, and Wicked.

  Me, lower right. My sister Claire sits behind me. My brother Ted sits in the lower left. My sister Alice is in the top left.

  Courtesy of New London Barn Playhouse

  Writing as a way into TV had never occurred to me. When my SPY editor raised the possibility, she pointed out a door that I’d been walking by every day but had never thought to try the handle.

  If real estate’s mantra is “location, location, location,” show biz’s mantra is “talent, talent, talent.” No, wait. That’s what it should be. Instead, it’s “connections, connections, connections.” While I’d been too scared to comp for The Lampoon in college, I knew a former editor who had moved to LA to work on HBO’s Not Necessarily the News. The Old Boy Network came through for me. Rob LaZebnik offered to send some of my SPY pieces to his very young, very aggressive agent, Gavin Polone. Rob’s kindness paid off when I introduced him to my younger, novel-writing sister Claire. At first, she made fun of Rob’s funny last name, and then two years later took it as her own in front of friends, family, and a judge. Rob found me my first agent and I found him his first wife. I’ve since switched agents many, many times. Rob and Claire are still going strong.

  Gavin signed me based on my magazine work. He explained that the standard way to break in to television was to write a “spec”—short for speculative—script for an existing series. He would pass along my writing sample to studio executives and showrunners to try to get me placed on a staff. Around this same time, I ran into SNL writers Tom Gammill and Max Pross who had been friendly with my sister, Alice, in college. Tom offered me a tip: “Hey, you should go see Albert Brooks’s movie Real Life. It’s playing in the Village this weekend. I think you’d really like it.”

  Real Life changed my life. This 1979 fake documentary follows a family on camera in a parody of the first reality show, “An American Family.” Albert Brooks plays “Albert Brooks,” the filmmaker, who keeps inserting himself into the story. He breaks into song. He frets about gaining weight. He manages to be simultaneously insecure and smug.

  While Groucho, Woody Allen, and Mel Brooks winked at the camera, Albert played his part straight. He said hilarious things but never acknowledged them. I became a complete convert after this two-line exchange in Real Life where Mrs. Yeager, the mom, becomes rattled after the cameras follow her into the gynecologist’s office.

  “I want to be alone,” Mrs. Yeager says.

  “Okay,” responds Albert. “Can we come with you?”

  I walked out of the film tingling. Albert’s tone was both absurd and grounded. His sense of humor inspired me. I wanted to write that way, too.

  For my spec script, I should have turned to one of the popular shows of the time: The Cosby Show, Family Ties, The Golden Girls, Cheers. Instead, I decided to write an episode of the sitcom that made me laugh the hardest: It’s Garry Shandling’s Show. Like Real Life, its premise was absurdly self-referential. Garry played “Garry” who lived in a condo with three walls, facing an audience whom he addressed directly (which is why it’
s called “breaking the fourth wall”). This cult classic is not as well known or well-regarded as Garry’s second series, The Larry Sanders Show, but I’m one of the weirdos who enjoyed it more.

  My agent Gavin represented a writing team at Shandling—Al Jean and Mike Reiss—and they forwarded some produced scripts for me to analyze. Once I understood the structure, I worked out a story, bouncing ideas off Alex Isley who I knew from SPY. Alex pitched jokes back and showed me early on that a friend who provides vocal encouragement is great, but a friend who provides actual help is even better.

  When you’re writing a spec, the rules are unclear: Do you have to think of every plot point yourself? Write every line? Is it fair for friends to give you feedback? Add jokes? With rare exceptions, comedy writers get help. In Steve Martin’s memoir Born Standing Up, he tells a story about his first joke that ever aired on TV: “It has been proven that more Americans watch television than any other appliance.” Hilarious, right? And sooo Steve Martin. Except Martin admits that he didn’t write it. The joke sprang from the mind of his then-roommate, comedian Gary Mule Deer. With Mule Deer’s permission, Martin pitched the line at The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and people loved it. Martin further admits that two colleagues pointedly asked him if he’d written the joke and Martin said he took full credit, adding that if he’d been hooked up to a lie-detecting machine, “It would have spewed smoke.”

  It’s wonderful that Martin included this confession because no one would ever question his comedy chops, but even he got help from a friend. Obviously, the majority of a spec script had better come from your brain because if hired, you’ll have to deliver. Still, TV is a collaborative medium and learning how to receive input from others and separate good ideas from bad is a big part of the job.

  In a couple of weeks, I’d pounded out a complete spec script. It’s Garry Shandling’s Show often featured cameos of stars and I copied that format. I wrote a scene set in the kitchen, where Garry and his pudgy friend Leonard are exchanging diet tips.

  LEONARD

  I have a photo of Dom DeLuise on my refrigerator door. It discourages me from digging into the chocolate, chocolate chip too often.

  GARRY SHANDLING

  That old trick. I’ve got something even better.

  (GARRY OPENS THE REFRIGERATOR DOOR TO REVEAL DOM DELUISE SITTING IN THE REFRIGERATOR, READING A BOOK AND EATING A PIECE OF PIZZA. DOM EXTENDS THE SLICE TOWARD GARRY.)

  DOM DELUISE

  You hungry?

  GARRY SHANDLING

  No. I just lost my appetite.

  I even added a callback. During a party scene, Garry returns to the kitchen and opens the refrigerator. The rotund actor is still there as Garry grabs a bottle of champagne.

  DOM DELUISE

  What’s that?

  GARRY

  It’s Perignon, Dom.

  My agent sent my spec to his clients Al and Mike and asked for feedback. A couple of days later Gavin called and I heard my first “happy agent” hello. Al and Mike had liked the script enough that they gave it to Shandling showrunner and cocreator Alan Zweibel. Alan had called Gavin to say that the show wanted to buy my script. They’d even fly me to LA so that Alan and Garry could give me notes for a rewrite.

  I started jumping up and down like a rookie who’d hit a home run in his first at-bat. Literally and figuratively, I was on my way to Hollywood. A week later, I nervously walked into the Shandling offices at Sunset Gower Studios. I stopped by Al and Mike’s office to thank them for their help. We talked about the business and they offered me three invaluable pieces of advice.

  Never be afraid to write on spec.

  Don’t ask friends for work.

  Take any job that comes your way. You never know where it might lead.

  The first piece of advice is pure gold. There are so many reasons to write on spec. Sometimes you get an idea that’s weird and you know it won’t sell on a pitch so you have no choice but to write it on spec. Sometimes you get an idea that you love but don’t want to endure the painfully slow pitch process so you write it on spec. And sometimes you want to try a new genre and the best way to experiment is to write on spec. I become a better writer every time I finish a script so it never feels like a waste of time. Over the years, I’ve completed seven full-length movies on spec, sold two, one was produced, and I’m still holding out hope for the rest.

  Al and Mike put me at ease before Alan’s assistant summoned me to his office. We made small talk while we waited for Garry. I’d seen all of Garry’s standup specials, which gave me a sense of what to expect: a brilliant, perceptive, and neurotic star. Ten minutes later, Garry hustled by the room, wearing sunglasses. He doubled back and regarded me quizzically. Alan introduced us and reminded him that I’d written the script they bought. Garry nodded approvingly.

  “You write like a guy,” he said.

  I beamed. One of my favorite comics had just paid me a compliment. It was only in the rental car later that his warm words gave me a slight chill. I knew Garry meant the comment as praise, but by bringing up my gender, it also carried a hint of negation. Had I sold out other women by smiling when he said that I “wrote like a guy”? I tried to think of what would have been a better response. I replayed the moment in my head and came up with these mots d’escalier:

  “You write like a guy,” Garry says in the do-over.

  “Oh,” I say with a dismissive wave. “That’s just something I did in the snow once.”

  Etching your name into a snowbank with pee seemed like the only writing where men truly do have a clear advantage over women. I wasn’t fast enough to think of this retort at the time. And I still cherished Garry’s praise. For many years after, if I was struggling at a job, I’d remind myself, “Garry Shandling thinks I’m funny” and it boosted my spirits.

  Garry joined us in Alan’s office and sat on the couch just long enough to declare that he wasn’t in the mood to give notes. He apologized and asked if it would be okay if we discussed the script some other time. I was returning to NY the next day so I glanced at Alan who came to the rescue. He said they could give me notes over the phone. Garry approved the plan, then said he was heading to the set.

  “You want a tour?” he asked.

  It was my first time ever on a sitcom set. My brain tried to make sense of what I’d seen on TV and now stood inside. Everything looked smaller thanks to the sky-high stage ceilings. I was mesmerized by “Garry’s” living room, his couch, his Mercedes golf cart! I noticed a Ping-Pong table off to the side. Garry explained that they were shooting an episode that parodied the Robert Redford movie, The Natural, substituting baseball with Ping-Pong. I laughed. As we passed the table, I lingered.

  “Do you play?” Garry asked.

  “We had a table in our garage growing up and my brother and I used to play after dinner most nights,” I answered.

  “Want to hit?”

  “Sure,” I said, picking up a paddle.

  “You know I’m good,” Garry said as he moved to the other side of the table. It was a statement of fact, not a brag. He was simply letting me know what to expect.

  We started to volley. I kept up. When I slammed a forehand past Garry, he cocked his head.

  “Let’s play a game.”

  We did, and I surprised him. Oh, I didn’t win. But I did make it into double digits. We placed our paddles down. Garry shook my hand and thanked me for coming in.

  I returned to New York. When I walked into my studio apartment, there was already a message from Alan on my answering machine. He and Garry had talked some more and decided not to move forward with my spec script. Instead, they had a new story idea for me to write. If I called him tomorrow, he’d fill me in.

  This was disappointing. What I thought was a home run had turned out to be a long foul fly. But I was still at the plate. The next day, I called Alan who pitched me my new assignment in two words: “Haunted Condo.”

  I laughed out loud. The premise was bare bones: an old tenant in the complex
named Lydia Cavanaugh dies and her ghost won’t vacate her apartment, which upsets the condo association. I expanded the story and wrote a new script in a week. It went faster than the first and at least one joke has withstood the test of time:

  GRANT

  There are some who say Lydia Cavanaugh was a witch.

  GARRY

  There are some who say Geraldo is a journalist.

  To get a script from NY to LA in the eighties required military precision. Gavin would arrange for someone in the agency’s NYC mailroom to pick up a manila envelope left outside my apartment door. The envelope would be “pouched” across the country overnight, and then someone in the agency’s LA mailroom would drive it to the studio the next day. Hitting Send is so much easier.

  A couple of days after I turned in the new draft, Gavin called and I heard my first “sad agent” hello. It’s the oldest story in the book: girl gets script, girl loses script, girl gets another script, girl loses that one, too. Alan told Gavin that although they weren’t going to shoot the Haunted Condo episode, they would pay me a full script fee of $11,000. That took some of the sting away. In two weeks, I’d made the same as three months of journalism.

  I hung up the phone and tried to sort out my feelings. I’d been so excited, then so disappointed and now those feelings were cancelling each other out. This left me feeling numb. Over the past thirty years, I’ve felt numb a lot. I learned not to get too happy about good news or too distraught about bad. It’s not just me. I once called my friend Chris Keyser after his pilot script got picked up to production.

  “Congratulations!” I said.

  “Thanks!” he replied, cheerfully. “Just another step on the path to inevitable disappointment.”

  Being realistic about the odds doesn’t mean you don’t care about a project; it means you acknowledge that others control what happens to that project. One friend who has a shelf of Emmys summed it up: “Be as happy as you can be for as long as it lasts, but sustained joy is not part of the deal.”