Jill Twiss: I think he’s funny, but I don’t think he laughs. I don’t think he’s ever enjoyed anyone else’s humor.
Zhubin Parang: Oh, no.
Jenny Hagel: To laugh at someone else’s joke, you have to lower your status for a moment and he would never.
Jill Twiss: And you’d have to listen.
Jenny Hagel: Both things, yes.
Jon Glaser: I don’t think he’s funny at all. I really don’t. I think there’s nothing … Anytime he’s doing anything like that, to me, it’s just the worst version. It’s like watching some shitty fucking hack, who thinks he’s funny because there’s so much confidence in it and there’s so much confidence in that delivery. And it’s like, “What a fucking asshole.” I don’t mean that just beyond that I think he is. I just feel like that confidence is so unearned when it comes to him trying to be funny and it’s so … Besides enraging, I just … That’s the thing. It’d be one thing …
Let me use this as an example and maybe it’s not a good one. So someone like Gavin McInnes, the guy from Vice who started Proud Boys, I remember when he took that turn. And I say this … I was friends with him, very good friends, and I really liked him a lot. And then when all that shit happened and people were like, “He’s just this wannabe comedian.” And Blah, blah, blah.” I disagreed with that completely. I thought he was extremely funny, a really smart guy, a really funny dude, and then everything else was terribly unfortunate.
Trump, I just don’t even think there’s … It’s nothing. I’m sorry, I just wanted to say it. I just really don’t think it’s funny. I think it’s terrible comedy. I’m not even looking for the applause. I appreciate it. It could’ve been louder. Thank you. And it could’ve lasted. Anyway. I just really don’t find anything … And I would say, “Yeah, it can be funny.” I just don’t. And that’s the other thing that makes me so mad about it is that … It’s that kind of comedy that I personally love. The overconfident smug asshole can be such a funny archetype, but God, I just don’t.
Zhubin Parang: I will say one thing I love about Trump is when he’s being very petty, but takes it one beat further than he should. He was on a plane with these two women, these reporters he was talking to, and one of them asked him a question about some event he was going to, and he was very mad about the question. And so he turns to that one woman and goes like, “Well, I’m going to go to a ballroom, where it’s going to be very classy, something you would know nothing about. All right. Goodbye, everybody.” Then realized there was another woman there. And so he goes, “Goodbye, everybody. You too.”
And then leaves because he to like … He had to make sure she was part of that. Like, “Something you know nothing about.” And it was so petty and so like, “I’m trying to shoot everybody here.” It was a kind of glimpse into that pettiness, that bottomless world of pettiness that I find very revealing and also in a very real way endearing. I know that’s a charged word, but there is an element of wounded-ness when he says things like that. That’s like, “Oh, I see. I see where this all comes from. I get it.”
Liz Hynes: It is satisfying to know that he has never known a moment’s piece and probably never will.
Zhubin Parang: We’ll see. That ballroom looks pretty good. We’ll see when he’s dancing in that ballroom, I think he’ll find it then.
Kathryn VanArendonk: Yeah. I wanted to ask the question in part because it is something I am perpetually trying to wonder for myself. Do I find this funny? Am I allowed to find this funny? How do I feel about this caricature that we’re just all living with? But I do think coming at him from the framing of this is or is not funny must change the way that you then write or try to think about how to actually grapple with the clips that you’re showing or how to talk about what audiences want to think about in terms of Trump.
Jenny Hagel: At least for me, the way I approach it is I care less about whether or not it’s funny and more about like, “Well, what’s happening in context?” Maybe he made a joke, but maybe the joke was about immigration and we want to talk about what is happening this week in immigration. So I think I’m not thinking about is he funny or not? I’m thinking, “What’s my way into the story that’s happening this week?”
Zhubin Parang: Yeah. I don’t know if it’s all that relevant, usually we’re not trying to talk about whether he made a funny joke or not. The issue we’re trying to talk about is unrelated to that. It doesn’t really dominate our thinking when it comes to what he’s doing.
Kathryn VanArendonk: Sure. But I mean, in terms of what audiences want from how to think about the news. I have felt like there’s a very different sense of how audiences are responding to Trump jokes this term versus the first term, where people want to find humor in him and the first term seems to have gone, but maybe it is somewhere else, maybe it has just been dislocated or … I’m just curious whether it feels like in your rooms, your conversations about how to do political material are taking him into context in a different way or your audiences are exhausted with him and we talk about the issues instead.
Jenny Hagel: I’m sorry, and I know I just spoke, so this is-
Kathryn VanArendonk: No, no, no. Go.
Jenny Hagel: This is greedy. I think an important thing to remember is that when you’re talking about like, “What are you doing for audience?” We are all living in the same political moment. So I don’t think the audiences are feeling a thing that we’re not all feeling. We are the audience. The audience is us. We are the world. A term I just came up with and coined. Whatever political exhaustion and fatigue everyone else is feeling, we are feeling. If there is a week where something really good happens unexpectedly, we are all on that high.
And so I think it’s more about, for me at least, looking into my heart, but checking my gut and being like, “How do I feel about this story?” Then probably other people are feeling that way too. I think we’re all living … We’re all on this ride for better or for worse. It’s worse. And so I think it’s about writing for the moment that we are all in collectively.
Jill Twiss: Just to answer the specific thing about last term versus this term is I think that a lot of the things people treated as jokes the first time turned out to be reality. And so I do think we’re all writing with the acknowledgement that we can’t just write things off as jokes because they sound insane. That’s different than … Literally in the craft of writing. If he is on purpose telling a joke, usually we’re not writing jokes about it because it’s not that fun to write jokes about someone else’s jokes. So yes, that matters. But I do think, at least the feeling I have is you don’t get to have a single second where you go, “Oh, he doesn’t mean that because we’re living in the consequences of his jokes.”
Jenny Hagel: Ooh, I’m going to be thinking about that sentence for a minute. Yeah.
Jill Twiss: Yeah.
Kathryn VanArendonk: How do you know when something that seems to be pervasive is a fun thing to do comedy about and when it is over? I ask specifically about-
Jill Twiss: Labubus? Do you mean Labubus?
Kathryn VanArendonk: No. Honestly, we could do Labubus. I was going to … 6-7, Heated Rivalry and KPop Demon Hunters.
Liz Hynes: So that one’s still fair game.
Jill Twiss: If my dad knows about it, we can’t joke about it anymore. That’s kind of my rule.
Jenny Hagel: 6-7 was over six months before any of us heard about it.
Jill Twiss: 6-7 was never in for us.
Kathryn VanArendonk: Those conversations come up in the room. Does somebody say, “Can we still do Labubu jokes?” How do you actually talk out when something is gone?
Alison Gates: I think we actively end it when we have it on our shows. I think-
Kathryn VanArendonk: Alison, get out the knife.
Alison Gates: Yes.
Jenny Hagel: SNL is where I learned about Chopped.
Alison Gates: Thank you.
Jenny Hagel: Thank you.
Alison Gates: And me too.
Jenny Hagel: Thank you.
Jill Twiss: We do talk about it. Often we’ll just stay at a … I thought of Labubus immediately because I do remember … Maybe it was me. I don’t know who said like, “I think we’re done with Labubus.” And we have been until they come back.
Liz Hynes: I think it’s usually asking whichever person in the room is the most online and/or does anyone have a cool nephew that can answer this question genuinely.
Jenny Hagel: Yeah.
Alison Gates: We have a pretty big range in age of writers, so it’s a lot of asking younger writers like, “What are you talking about?” And then older writers explaining news events from the past, and we all come together as one.
Jenny Hagel: I had a weird experience where I lapped the other writers because I’m one of the older writers, but I have a child and now that child is in middle school. So I went from knowing the least to being like, “You guys don’t know what rizz is? Fucking Skibidi, Ohio up in here.” I was like, “Let me tell you.” It was a real cool re-entry into the culture.
Zhubin Parang: One of our senior writers, Daniel Radosh has a … Now they’re in college. He had high school kids who were so on top of memes that we did a Damn Daniel joke the day before it blew up. The audience did not react to it at all. And then two days later, I started hearing about it. I was like, “Wow, you can be too early.” And that’s almost as bad as being too late. People were like, “What are you talking about, Damn Daniel?”
Liz Hynes: Daniel was a PSYOP based on The Daily Show. That’s crazy.
Zhubin Parang: Possibly. We might’ve blown it up, but it was definitely like … Again, it’s a double-edged sword. You don’t want to be writing … I think the thing we do with it is that we try to make … And I usually am the one who reads the writer’s pitches for jokes and headlines. When something like Heated Rivalry comes, we get a wall of pitches. And so it’s become very easy quickly to say like, “Oh, this is going to be way too overexposed.” And I think the thing you want to do with that is you want to make sure that it’s not just the joke being like, “Hey, I watched Heated Rivalry.” You want to make the joke have something else that’s not just a reference to it.
We did one thing where we had a … It was a conversation that Jordan was having with Troy, where Jordan was trying to understand some element of the Trump administration. It was two weeks ago, so of course, I’ve forgotten it completely. But we use Heated Rivalry as a runner, where every time Jordan was saying something like, “Just drink milk meat.” And at one point Jordan was like, “What is milk meat?” And Troy’s like, “Again, Jordan, you really have to watch Heated Rivalry.” It was that kind of thing that’s like … If that comes at the end of a heightening, then you can use that as its own kind of runner, but it’s got to be independent of just … Isn’t that the thing we all know? That’s the death of a joke.
Liz Hynes: I think leveraging the age of the host to helps it land like that.
Kathryn VanArendonk: Yeah, sure. Because you can take an older host who is then going to position, that would be very different if they say 6-7 than if it was a-
Liz Hynes: Right. It’s either, I know nothing about this, or you go so deep into it that it is then funny that they know too much about it.
Kathryn VanArendonk: I want to end just by asking you all to talk about what happens when there is some big breaking news story that you then all have to grapple with from the night before. As a sort of case study, Venezuela. We invaded Venezuela, everyone woke up and then it was like, “Did we invade Venezuela? Do we use the word invade? What is happening?” How does that actually play out in a writer’s room? How do you talk about whether it’s going to be on the show, how it’s going to be on the show, whether a news item reaches that level, whether it doesn’t, what does the date look like?
Liz Hynes: We were off, so.
Zhubin Parang: With that specifically, we were … We are dependent as always on what the news is talking about for the video clips, for the conversation. So we go by that. A lot of people are always asking us, why don’t you talk about this obscure issue or this particular issue and do research on that? It’s like, “We are a commentary show. We just live off clips and we comment on those clips.”
So when something like that happens, we usually lean more into … If we don’t have a particular strong opinion or the event is so fresh that it’s hard to figure out exactly what’s going on, we do lean more into insights or thoughts about the coverage itself on it. And I think that kind of media criticism is something that we’re very good at and we are able to put more thought and insight into it than, “Is Maduro alive? Was it a good thing that he left? Was it a bad thing that he left? Is it a good thing that we did this?” That kind of thing, unless we have opinion on it, you don’t want to necessarily start making positions, unless you’re willing to defend them.
And I think that with respect to late breaking news, that’s almost never the case. There’s always more to learn about later, and I think it behooves you well to settle before you have an opinion on things that just happened. By the way, for the record, I do think Maduro should be living the rest of his life out in Brooklyn, not in jail. But I think he should be a tattoo artist in Brooklyn, somewhere in Bushwick. I think that would suit him well. I think that we should-
Liz Hynes: He’s got the tracksuit. He’s ready.
Zhubin Parang: I think he’s ready for it. I think it’d be a good fitting ending to his life.
Kathryn VanArendonk: Alison, what is it like at SNL when there’s a big breaking news moment and then you have to figure out how the show is going to respond or if it will respond?
Alison Gates: Totally. Yeah. In a dream world, the political stuff gets written with everything else early in the week, but now it’s kind of impossible. So Thursday, Friday, you’re just trying to figure out what the thing is of that week. And I feel like it’s either the cold open or sometimes a kind of late in the week, Weekend Update feature, like character. Those are the things that get put together late in the week based on what’s happening. It’ll be on Friday, just sort of conversations with the producers and Lauren and whoever about what the story feels like it is at that point, just wanting to know enough so they can start building a set and making costumes for just who could play who.
When it’s that late in the week, it’s kind of like an all hands on deck thing with the writers, where then like … The writers will get looped in on what kind of the general idea is and then everyone will start pitching jokes and character ideas. It’ll get kind of cobbled together with everyone’s feedback when it’s kind of a late breaking thing like that.
Jill Twiss: I can think of one segment. It was actually my first show there, so the first show of I guess this season, where we rewrote the show while the show was taping, which is not something I had experienced at another show, but we have sort of the advantage, I guess. We do a two-hour taping because our show gets edited and so we tape late Friday and generally if something happens, we sort of think of a lot of shows do their Thursday night show and then anything that happens after say 5:00 PM Thursday. We go, “Oh, that’s ours.” And if it’s really important, we have to bring it up. It wasn’t even that dramatic, it just happened to be something we were talking about, and I think it was something with Eric Adams. They were taping an earlier part of the show. The head writer was texting with … We have three writers with us, and then we were rewriting and then I was getting texts saying, “Can you fix this joke? He’s about to say it.” So sometimes that happens, but I don’t-
Liz Hynes: So it was straight to prompter?
Jill Twiss: It was straight to … Yeah, cards and prompter. He uses both.
Kathryn VanArendonk: Down to the wire. I am going to open up for audience questions. I know that all of you are thoughtful, responsible, socially conscious people, and I know that we all know what it feels like to be in a classroom or a panel where somebody clearly is working from some agenda that nobody else is really sure how they got here. And I know none of you are going to do anything like that, and I’m just thanking you in advance.
Jill Twiss: What happened? Who hurt you?
Kathryn VanArendonk: Oh, the stories I could tell. Okay. Do we have any questions?
Speaker 9: Hi. Thank you guys for a great panel, Liz. Great job.
Liz Hynes: That’s my neighbor, Sophie.
Speaker 9: Hi. I am a college professor. I’m a screenwriting professor at Hunter, as we’re talking about the youth, they are consuming things that are very different and differently. And I’m curious how all of you guys are addressing, I guess the terrestrial versus streaming.
Liz Hynes: Had another person say-
Speaker 9: How to access them because they need to be accessed desperately. How do you access the youth?
Jill Twiss: I taught late night at NYU, and so those are all the youth I know. There were 12 of them. I find the younger generation to be at least incredibly engaged, at least the people that I’ve met, and also incredibly comedically savvy. I think all I think about with that is sort of aiming higher with the jokes because they’ve already had the chance to read them all somewhere else or if they want them on social media or whatever. I think sometimes I feel a little more pressure to up my game with younger people. In my experience, these were people who were super aware of politics and stuff like that. And so it was mostly just not talking down to them and also just accepting that they might hear 40 versions of the joke, whereas we would hear it for the first time on Conan that night.
Liz Hynes: Yeah. My little sister is 18, so sometimes I check in with her to be like, “What’s cool? Do I sound really old saying this or no?” And I think not talking down to people is a really important part of it because she’s … With no interference for me, she’s militantly anti-AI. She’s very critical and thoughtful about the world. She gives me a lot of hope for the future. And if you’re going to have a host who’s in their 40s or 50s saying something, addressing those kids, you have to acknowledge what is happening there and not try to dumb anything down or relate to them in a way that is palpably disingenuous.
Zhubin Parang: Yeah. I do think it’s worth following like the … To have the Zohran Mamdani kind of attitude towards it. I’m not just saying that because people say I look like an uglier, older version of him, but I think his idea of like, “You don’t talk down to the young people, you meet them where they are.” It’s much better than any kind of … In the political context, politicians who are trying to appeal to you by saying fuck a lot. I think this is a much better way of dealing with it.
Liz Hynes: Just to add, my students are the most brilliant people. They’re just literally not consuming long form in almost any manner.
Jenny Hagel: So the clips are important, it turns out.
Liz Hynes: The clips are important, like shockingly not consuming long form.
Kathryn VanArendonk: Another question. I know we have a question here.
Tata: Hello. Thank you all for your knowledge and the stories and the little funny jokes. You definitely are writers. you can’t help yourselves. Okay. I was like, “Look at them go.” Okay. I wrote my-
Jon Glaser: Yeah, those little funny jokes. I just heard someone else say that. Little funny jokes. Just up here doing our little funny jokes.
Jenny Hagel: I heard funny. I’ll take it.
Tata: I mean, I chuckled. I did chuckle, honey. I chuckled. My name is Tata. Nice to meet you all, and I do appreciate you guys doing this panel. A lot of today’s slang, humor and cultural trends originate in communities of color and then become mainstream. How do you approach authenticity in the writer’s room when you’re writing characters and dialogue rooted in cultures you may not personally come from? I write, and I don’t know whether to write in my Black girl voice or my white girl voice, write where I come from or write in my … You went to a predominantly white institution voice because I don’t really have any guidance in this career that I’m chasing because I’m first generation college student trying to figure this shit out.
So when I submit, I do not feel confident as a Black woman submitting. And I just want to know how do you guys approach that shit? I don’t mean to get all deep in shit, that’s why I started it off with laughs, but just wondering.
Jenny Hagel: I think everybody has a different place that they’re coming from with that. When I’m writing, I try to make sure that I stay in lanes that I feel like I can speak on with authority. I never want to feel like I’m trying to speak on an issue that predominantly affects another group of people that I don’t have firsthand knowledge of. That’s the number one place that I try to come from with it. I cannot answer your question with authority and I want to acknowledge that, but I feel like … I wonder if that is the space where it’s … Like what I was talking about before of finding the place, if you’re submitting to another show that has an established voice, finding the place where your voice and that show’s voice intersect.
Tata: Yeah.
Jenny Hagel: Yeah.
Tata: Got you.
Jon Glaser: Yeah, I think ultimately just do what you think is funny and trust that someone out there is going to respond to it, rather than write what you think they might want. Because usually that’s not going to work and not always, but I think it’s always best just to trust what you think is good and what you think is interesting and funny. And sometimes you just got to hope for the best, but there are people out there that will respond to it. It seems ultimately better to just trust what you want to do and what you think, rather than trying to please an audience, if that makes sense. So just trust it and it’s easier said than done. But then you can do two packets.
Tata: Okay.
Jon Glaser: Right?
Tata: Yeah.
Jon Glaser: Black girl packet. You got your white girl packet.
Tata: You are onto something, my guy.
Jon Glaser: [inaudible 01:01:08] submit, this sounds like a movie-
Tata: I’ll use my stage name and my government name. My government name is Russian, Natasha.
Jon Glaser: Perfect. Perfect.
Jill Twiss: [inaudible 01:01:17] you want to do the voice of the host that you’re writing for. I should say that just in case that is not clear to people who might be doing their first packet. Within that, you want to get some of your voice in there because that’s what they want.
Jenny Hagel: What you have … Your perspective is the thing you have that nobody else has.
Tata: But consider the host’s voice at the same time?
Jenny Hagel: Exactly that. How can your perspective live within the box of the voice of the show and the voice of the host?
Tata: Yes, thank you so much.
Liz Hynes: Because as much as you’re tailoring your voice to meet them, they are also renting your voice and perspective. And the better sense they have of what that voice is, the more likely they know like, “We’re going to be a really good fit.” And you’re already making all of us laugh in ways that none of the white guys on TV could do right now.
Jenny Hagel: To Jon’s point. I think Jon made a really excellent point is that you don’t … You want to write what you think is funny as opposed to imagining what somebody will think is funny. Because often I think when any of us do that … Or I’ll speak for myself. When I do that, when I try to think like, “What might someone find funny?” I end up imagining some made up person and then I end up writing something bland because I’m not really … I’m writing for a made up faceless entity.
So you can’t write stuff that is specific and interesting when you’re writing for a blank … But you know what I’m saying? But if you write something that you really think is funny, it’s going to land with somebody. And then to Jill’s earlier point, your voice won’t be for every show. But in a perfect world, if you can really get your voice out there, then hopefully it finds a home at a place that can appreciate it.
Alison Gates: Totally. And trying to write what you would want to watch on the show because whatever is already there, they already have. So what you wish you could see on the show is probably what the show doesn’t have and would want the most.
Tata: And will stand out. Yeah. All right. Thank you guys. I appreciate that.
Jenny Hagel: Thank you for that question.
Tata: No problem.
Kathryn VanArendonk: Okay. Qahir.
Jared Roman: Hello, panelists. Thank you so much for coming today and having this going on. Kathryn, you look bopped and dangerous today. Very lovely. My name’s Jared Roman. I’m a Hunter College student. I came here from my screenwriting class. The question I have for you guys today is, how do you get around the pressures of writing? When you feel that blockage, when you are getting in your own way, how do you get out of your own way? That’s something that I’m personally struggling with a lot in my class right now.
Jenny Hagel: The thing that really helps me is I had to early on divide the writing process from the editing process. So I think when I’m sitting down to write, the job is to write and I will worry later about whether it’s good. And that to me has really helped. I can’t worry about if it’s good and be assessing it while I’m writing it or it won’t come out. So I think having deadlines, whether they’re real or made up. If you could give yourself a deadline, if you’re trying to do your own writing and it’s not for a job, if you can find a friend to be accountable You guys both are like, “Hey, I’m going to send you X number of pages by Wednesday at 3:00.” So deadlines, and then just once you are in a place where you’re pushing stuff out, push it out and worry about whether it’s good later.
Zhubin Parang: I think to that point, collaborating with somebody else, not just even with holding accountable, but also if you are stuck on something to just go to somebody and talk about it and say, “I’m stuck on this part. I’m trying to figure out what this character is. I’ve got this idea. What do you think?” At the show at least, that kind of collaboration and making scripts tighter and funnier and better, talking with someone about that and getting their minds on it is invaluable. And I think if you are able to have somebody that you can bat ideas back and forth with when you’re stuck, especially they’ll provide you usually with an avenue or an idea or nuances you haven’t thought that you can really exploit.
Liz Hynes: Yeah. I think sometimes to get out of your own way, you have to get into somebody else’s and that can mean emerging from a room that you’ve been writing in for hours and being like, “Does this make sense? What do you think about this?” And trying to get any kind of outside perspective is really, really valuable. And go outside and take a walk and don’t bring your phone. A hot shower, those are things that usually get the sand out of the gears for me.
Jill Twiss: All good jokes are written on walks and in showers. That is my opinion. The other thing I do, and this is I set an alarm for seven minutes. I don’t know, I just made up that number, but it’s true. And I just write down everything I can think of. So if I have a setup and I need a joke, somewhere in that seven minutes, I will figure out where I’m going to. I feel like the worst thing I can have is too much free time to write something. And the least stressful time is actually when we’re writing during the show because you don’t have time to second guess yourself. So as much as you can get out of the second guessing yourself and separate and then later you can edit yourself, I think the more you will not feel paralyzed by your inability to write the perfect thing.
Jared Roman: Thank you guys so much. I appreciate it.
Speaker 12: Thank you all for your time today. It means a lot. My question kind of goes off other questions and things that you’d already discussed. As far as generationally, there’s certain generations that are offended and have tremendous boundaries on a lot of things, even labeling them as a specific generation. I come from a generation that doesn’t give a fuck about shit and we can talk in a language that we feel free to talk in.
So when it comes to writing comedically, do you write broadly in the I don’t give a fuck about shit method or do you lean toward being sensitive towards certain generations being offended by your use of words, your things that you’re discussing sexually, whatever? And do you lean towards more favoring that in order to keep the entire audience generally satisfied?
Kathryn VanArendonk: And remember, this is a safe space.
Zhubin Parang: I think when you’re writing … I understand what you’re saying. And I think considering that when you’re writing comedy can really kill the comedy. Your anticipation of what people might interpret, what they might maliciously interpret, what they might in bad faith take out of context and put in front of other people who have not seen the context of the rest of the piece. I think that is very dangerous both for your ability to write and for the show’s posture.
A show has to write with conviction and authenticity about what it believes. If it has thought it wants to say, but is nervous about being taken out of context or being attacked for the way it says things. That’s very dangerous. I do think that when you are writing, you are trying to write jokes that are provocative and that shake people and shock people. With respect to hitting nerves that you know are going to be sensitive, I think it’s a question of, is that sensitivity … Is hitting that worth the price of the joke? And I think that’s really the idea. We live in a society. There are things that you can joke about now that you can’t joke about a decade ago, 30 years ago and the opposite.
And I think a lot of being a comic is trying to maintain that kind of insight and disruption in a normal person’s thinking track, that’s where laughter comes from. And at the same time understanding there are certain things that trip that line so hard that you lose the whole point of the thing, which was to make people laugh. And I think that needs to be your guiding bell. I think that needs to be the … Not your guiding bell, that needs to be your guiding light. What is the bell one? What’s the bell that I’m thinking of?
Jon Glaser: I like bell.
Zhubin Parang: The bellwether?
Jenny Hagel: You’re think about, if a bell rings an angel gets its wings.
Zhubin Parang: That’s what I’m thinking of. If every time you tell a joke an angel gets his wings, I think you’re not telling-
Jenny Hagel: We found it. We found it. I also want to say though, you’re talking about generations and I do think it’s everyone’s job to keep an open mind. And I think that … I’m 49, not to brag, and I grew up in the ’80s and we said some wild shit in the ’80s that we’re not saying anymore with good reason. I am very open every day of my life to someone 20 years younger being like, “Hey, we’re not saying that anymore. And hey, that idiom you’ve been using, here’s where it comes from. You might want to think twice. Thank you. Please always correct me.”
I don’t see it as a generational thing. I see it as we are all learning and growing all the time. Society is advancing. So I’m always … To Zhubin’s point, trying to write from my point of view and write as honestly as possible. I don’t personally see it as generations against each other. If someone is sensitive to just some language and it feels hurtful to them, I am open to hearing why, and would like to know why. Especially if it’s language that does not apply to me. I think there’s a million different ways to say something. I’m drunk, sorry. I also think that I’m always happy to learn about the ways in which language is evolving.
Speaker 12: Right. But just to be clear, I’m not talking about using offensive words. I’m talking about the point of view of humor. I feel like my age bracket, 52, not to brag, we kind of think everything’s funny. We grew up in a time where we didn’t have phones. We have memories that nobody can prove. They can only discuss them and maybe it’s true. I think when we write, we kind of write freely because we lived freely, but now everything can be kind of like what you were saying, clipped down, taken out of context. So when you’re writing your pieces, are you writing with that intention and worry of, “Okay, this little part’s going to affect-
Jenny Hagel: Oh, I see. Am I worried that it’s going to be taken out of context?
Speaker 12: Exactly.
Jenny Hagel: For example, when Zhubin said, “One thing I love about Trump.”
Speaker 12: Yeah, like that.
Zhubin Parang: One of the many things I love about Trump. I want to be clear.
Jenny Hagel: Yeah, you did. And so for example, I recorded that on my phone. I will be posting it as soon as I leave here.
Liz Hynes: Ten more years, baby.
Speaker 12: But even words like women and female, people get offended if you’re using a certain one of those, and I don’t even know which one it is.
Jon Glaser: Just say chick, problem solved.
Jenny Hagel: I go with-
Jon Glaser: Problem solved. You’re overthinking it. You’re all overthinking it.
Jenny Hagel: Broads or dolls.
Jon Glaser: Come on.
Jenny Hagel: I like broads.
Liz Hynes: Dolls.
Jenny Hagel: Secretary is I think the preferred.
Jill Twiss: But sort of as Jenny said earlier, so eloquently, you write and then you edit. And sometimes you write freely and then you edit. And another thing I’m thinking about is, do I think this is a fine thing to say. It’s like, “Do I want Roy Wood Jr. to have to take the responsibility for this thing that I think?” There’s a difference between … I might think this is a wild and great provocative thing to say, but I need him to want to say that because I’m asking … I’m taking a very little risk by saying, “We should all think this word is funny.” He’s taking a much bigger risk by being the face of that on national television.
I try to be respectful of him, but also … We write that stuff all the time and there’s a reason something goes through more than one layer before we put it straight on television. And so we have people who are like, “Yes, that was so fun. Loved in the room. Everyone enjoyed it.” Roy is not saying that on television. And that’s, I think, a natural part of most writing rooms.
Kathryn VanArendonk: Yes. Okay. Let’s come over here.
Dejen: Awesome. Hi, I’m Dejen. I’m a writer performer. Nice to meet everybody. I’m a writer performer at UCB and UCB Theater doing character and sketch and improv stuff. What are these theaters … What’s missing? It didn’t translate from your work on stages in front of live audiences into writers’ rooms and on television. If you were to design a theater and throw all your money away, what class would you want to see taught to writer performers who have a dream of doing what you do?
Jenny Hagel: That’s such a thoughtful question. Thank you.
Dejen: I wrote it.
Zhubin Parang: I will say as someone … I owe my writing career to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and my improv training there. The thing I very much learned from that, that I do think the theater teaches and every writer needs to really internalize is the importance of collaborating and not being precious with your jokes. Being in a writer’s room requires a lot of jumping on someone’s joke, tagging it, bombing badly in front of people that you deeply respect, and then getting right back up and pitching another joke two minutes later and having the trust that they know you’re funny. That you are not a collection of jokes. You are a joke engine and that one joke doesn’t mean anything.
And I think that improv teaches very well. I think what improv does not teach that I would if I was teaching an improv class is a little bit more of the discipline of sitting and writing out a script on your own without needing feedback constantly from other people. There are some people who are very good improvisers at being straight men, and there are other people who are very good improvisers at being the big character. And being a writer requires having all of those simultaneously in your head. And I think that kind of discipline improv does not teach.
By the same token, standup, although it teaches incredibly how you can structure a joke and put a joke inside a larger thoughtful piece that layers it and adds to it does not teach you how to collaborate. I feel like standups can tend to be very precious about jokes and don’t like having their jokes tagged and added onto. And I think that’s very much terrible in a writer’s room to have that attitude. So those are the two, I think, weaknesses of either style.
Liz Hynes: There should be a class about discipline where you are sitting writing at a desk and if you get up, someone shoots you in the head. I still need that class.
Jenny Hagel: How much does that class cost?
Liz Hynes: Everything. Very few graduate.
Speaker 14: Hi, thank you so much for your time. My question is when working hand in hand with performers, hosts, actors or not actors, how do you make sure that your joke is going to land with their performance or acting? And how often does it get lost in translation almost? Do you rewrite it? Is it trial and error? I know you guys have years of experience, so I’m just curious.
Jenny Hagel: I think some of it is writing the cleanest joke possible, writing a very crisp, clear, clean joke that isn’t full of extra words. The cleaner it is, I think the more bulletproof it is. And the other I think is knowing the voice of the person who’s going to deliver it.
Jon Glaser: Yeah. And then once you get into that, then there might be some … You may work together with that person and craft it and they may say, “What if I say it like this?” And they’ll probably have thoughts and ideas about like, “Let’s lose this and say it like this.” And then it just becomes collaborative. You eventually get there. It’s starting where, what you think is great and then just going from there. No matter who it is, whether they’re inexperienced or experienced, that’s just going to be part of the process.
Speaker 14: Thank you so much.
Kathryn VanArendonk: Okay. One more question.
Trayvon: Hey, how you doing? My name is Trayvon. Thank you all for the information that you all gave today. It was helpful to a lot of people, especially getting started. The word packet can be a little daunting. My question is, how do you pitch or in the packet give to someone something that … You know that, “Hey, you may need this.” Like this philosopher. He was like, “If you see a problem, you create a problem and you create the solution, you give it to them.” So in this climate right now, a lot of things like in the political climate, and it’s a lot about foreign policy. So I’m a 12-year army veteran, and so a lot of the things that people speak about, I have an inside perspective on. And imagine like, “Oh, we’re going to invade this place.” And it comes across your desk and you like, “We invading who?” And you might disagree. And that’s an inside perspective.
So with a lot of shows and things where they’re talking about this thing and it’s like, “Hey, this can go further.” And it’s like, “Hey, you’re doing this, but I think you need this.” How do you give that to someone without even seeming pushy or audacious or anything of that nature?
Jill Twiss: I think you have to write it up and make it really funny. I mean, I think that they will hear it in your voice and you have to, I guess, be humble enough to understand that the thing you think they need might not be what they think they need. But if I were doing it, if I thought, “Oh, my gosh. Why doesn’t Seth Myers have this segment on his show?” A packet is a great place to show off your voice, do it, but also you have to give a little bit too and put it in his voice. You have to do it in such a way to show that like, “Hey, I think this thing that I believe would work really well for you in the show you currently have.”
Jon Glaser: Yeah. And it’s also not thinking of it as being pushy. I can’t remember if you said being pushy about it. Don’t think of it like that. Just think of it as contributing and giving your opinion, especially if you’re there and you have a job, you’re there for a reason, you got hired, your opinion is wanted. And especially if you think you have an insight, voice it, have that confidence, but also have that humble … If it’s said no or if the host doesn’t want to do it, that’s it.
But certainly feel like you should empower yourself to just put your opinions out there always, I think. It may not always get accepted or chosen or approved or whatever, but at least put it out there because that also might lead to something else. That could be like, “Well, I don’t know about that, but what if we did this and put this on it?” That gets to a different idea, which never would’ve happened if that first thing didn’t get introduced, if that makes sense.
Trayvon: Absolutely. Okay.
Liz Hynes: Yeah. I learned this lesson pretty early on when I was a writer’s assistant and I kind of gave a note in the room, which I almost never did, but I felt really strongly about something and I gave a note and they looked at me like, “So what’s the joke? Give us a joke then.” And I didn’t have one and never again was I going to give the suggestion without making it sure like, “I’m going to make this pot as sweet as possible. If I want you to go over here with this story, I’m going to give you a dozen options that I think are good. And if you don’t take it, you don’t take it.”
But I sold it to them in a way that they would be receptive to it. And like you said, you could start a whole domino effect of getting the story to a different place. You are part of the engine of the room. You’re not interjecting, you’re there to help, you’re there to be part of it. So trusting your instinct and selling it to them in the way they want.
Kathryn VanArendonk: Please join me in thanking this incredible panel. Thank you so much all for coming out. As always, it’s a joy to be here.
Outro: OnWriting is a production of the Writer’s Guild of America East. The series is produced by WGA East staff members, Jason Gordon, Tianna Timmerberg, and Molly Beer. Production editing and mix by Julia Yort. Original music by Taylor Bradshaw, artwork design by Molly Beer. To learn more about the Writer’s Guild of America East, visit us online at wgaeast.org or follow the guild on all social media platforms @wgaeast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe to the podcast and give us a five star rating. Thanks for listening. Until next time, write on.
