Tuesday, July 30, 2019

He's OK,  but a second tourist was hit by a bison, this time a teenager in North Dakota. Asked to comment, the boy said,

"Wow, this version of Pokémon GO is insane."



Comedy Writing Is Easy

Take the writers of “The Dana Carvey Show” as seen on “Too Funny to Fail” on Hulu.

Dana Carvey was probably the most talented performers to quit “Saturday Night Live.” He had the huge hit “Wayne’s World,” both one and two under his belt with his world famous character Garth. Not to mention his George H.W. Bush impression, and the iconic characters the Church Lady and Hans and Franz and many more. 

In 1996, ABC gave him a show in prime time at 9:30 PM following the biggest hit on TV, Tim Allen’s “Home Improvement.” That show brought in six million viewers. That is a slam dunk winning formula.

The next part of the winning show formula? Get the best comedy writers/comedians available. And that is what Dana Carvey did. He hired future comedy greats:

Stephen Colbert
Louis C.K. (Head writer)
Steve Carell
Robert Smigel
Bob Odinkirk
Charlie Kaufman 

And more. 

If the wildly talented Carvey just started out with his impressions woven into skits, it would have been a slam dunk. But the writers, especially Louis C.K., wanted to make it "Cutting edge." When I hear about music or art or especially comedy being cutting edge, it makes my butt pucker.

The opening sketch was Carvey doing a spot-on Bill Clinton showing his empathy for all creatures by taking estrogen, growing eight working nipples and breast feeding a fake baby and real puppies and kittens. 

It was hard to watch.

The show lost almost all six million of “Home Improvement’s” audience and was gone after eight episodes. ABC is partly at fault because the show started to find its footing toward the end, but ABC was too quick to pull the plug. 

Albeit briefly, Stephen Colbert, Louis C.K. ,(Head writer) Steve Carell, Robert Smigel, Bob Odinkirk, Charlie Kaufman, arguably some of the best minds in comedy, were all out of work.

Their cutting edge almost cut them out of show bidness.

“Be a comedy writer,” they said. “It will be fun and lucrative,” they said.