September 14, 2011
“ If there were a late-night comedy show completely run by comedy writers, without any interference from a host, producer, or network, that show would probably be called The Darkest and Most Impossibly Horrible Things You Can Imagine, Presented as Comedy. Every sketch would end with a gunshot or an infant’s stroller engulfed in flames, and the show would be canceled halfway through its opening titles. That’s because most comedy writers are so inured by humor that only the most shockingly toxic ideas can achieve the proper velocity to penetrate their indifference.

Conan writer Todd Levin, for GOOD Magazine “Just Like That but Funny” (vialonelysandwich)

Two true things at work here:

1. There is definitely an essential problem that starts developing when you write and are surrounded by comedy every day, and that’s that certain choices/jokes/concepts start to feel bland and expected to you, while they might be perfectly fresh to the rest of the world. The key is trying to entertain yourself while also appealing to people that are likely to see things differently because they’re not constantly swimming in comedy building blocks. This can be tricky. For example I would like to write things like this all the time but the world doesn’t necessarily agree.

2. Being given boundaries and limitations often forces you to create better work. My favorite example of this is an interview I once read with Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who said that their original idea for the episode where Tom Cruise is trapped in a closet was to have Tom Cruise just outright being gay. Comedy Central’s legal department shot down various versions of this idea, until they came up with something that wasn’t potentially slander: Tom Cruise being literally trapped in an actual closet. Which of course ended up being far more clever.

(via erockappel)

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