This is Rob Long with Martini Shot for The Ankler.
There’s a version of the television comedy writers’ room that gets described in articles and Hollywood memoirs and old episodes of the Dick Van Dyke Show as a kind of creative paradise — funny people sitting around a table, pitching jokes, laughing, ordering lunch. And that version isn’t wrong, exactly. It just leaves out the part where everyone is also being systematically destroyed.
In a productive way of course. In a funny way.
Comedy writers, when they’ve known each other long enough, will say things to each other’s faces that would end careers if they appeared in a text message. And I don’t mean jokes about forbidden topics with dark humor — yes, we do those a lot, too. There is probably not one world historical cultural hero, not one undisputed saint, who has not been used as a punchline or set-up in some room run. I can remember someone on a writing staff — and really, honestly, not me, I promise — who created a whole scenario about Anne Frank (poor Anne Frank is a foundational part of a lot of really reprehensible writers room runs). Anyway, the premise was that Anne Frank somehow has a cappuccino maker in the the attic and she keeps using it, despite being told not to, and it’s the noise of the milk steamer that draws the calamitous attention of the Gestapo, but look, maybe you had to be there with a long rewrite night ahead of you and a willingness to be distracted by that kind of thing. Again, not defending it. But, you know, it was kind of funny when the guy did the WHHHHHHOOOOOAAAA sound of the streamer and someone with a Dutch accent whisper shouting Annika! Stop it met de melk dinge.
And that’s when we’re making fun of people who aren’t there. But we also zero in on each other — our fears and vulnerabilities, the things we sometimes share with co-workers over take-out lunch. We discover those things about each other, register them for later use and, when the time comes, we tear into them with a claw-like hook.
But look: The room works because the people in it trust each other enough to go further than is strictly advisable, and because going further than is strictly advisable is where the funny stuff is. A room with everyone laughing, even if it’s about something appalling or cruel, is a much better room to write comedy in. It’s easier to write a joke when everyone is laughing anyway than write a joke from silence.
I mention this because the writers’ room, as an institution, is in serious trouble.