Sid Caesar

 The State of Sketch Comedy
May 2, 2002 Scr(i)pt Magazine/Author: Steve Young

THE STATE OF SKETCH TV: FUNNY? SAD?
(Depends Which Season Of SNL You Watch)
by Steve Young

For as long as there's been television there's been sketch comedy. It's not sketch alone, always an important part of most any comedy-variety show. From Uncle Miltie to Saturday Night Live, from Your Show Of Shows to In Living Color, from That Was The Week That Was to Not Necessarily The News, from Ernie Kovacs to Monty Python, from ... oh, hell, you get the idea. British radio spawned Spike Milligan's Goon Show. American radio brought us the glorious, unnerving Credibility Gap and CP alumni, Harry Shearer‚ Sunday morning respite from FOX News with his regularly wicked Le Show. The rest of the record album (ask your parents) sketch world was dwarfed by the immortal Firesi Theater. Lately, the Internet has given it a shot but let's try to stick with what might have a chance to get you paid. Raise your hand if you've ever thought, after seeing a Saturday Night Live bit, "I can write better than that?" Then again, how many times did you think, after seeing a SCTV bit, "I better stick with accounting"? Well, you're both right. You CAN do better AND you should stick with accounting. Who needs the competition? I don't know of one comedian or comedy writer who goes one day without thinking of something that would make a great SNL sketch. While sketch-writing may seem to be fairly easy, only about three to seven pages of double-spaced material, pulling it off well is a lot more than just having a pretty funny idea.

BUT, YO, STEVE. EXACTLY WHAT IS SKETCH COMEDY?
I'll try to do this without skewering many of the shows that attempt to make funny and don't. A sketch comedy piece involves one or more actors in a short play. It has a beginning middle and end, its resolution accomplished and its audience satisfied. Yeah, right. At least the audience is satisfied most of the time. Tee-hee. Sketch can be used as one segment of a show as Johnny Carson (The Mighty Carson Players) did or it can be the entire show, such as MadTV or SCTV. (For the rest of the article go to: http://www.scriptmag.com/articles/view_article.php?id=82)

Swimming With the Dolphins
WIll children's books replace the pitch?

Written By Steve Young
(From the Dec. 2000/Jan. 2001 issue of "Written By")

"The Wooboo hurled his concepts
To the Yettle on the run,
But no matter how the Wooboo danced,
The Yettle greenlit none."

                                                    --Anonymous children's TV writer-producer

Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, Illustrated by Clement Hurd

So, I'm pitching at Fox Kids or WB Kids or Kids 'R' Us. I don't know. One of those kid-friendly networks that still lets me plead my case for script or pilot. Anyway, I have the development people jazzed. The 130 Tales of Winchell Mink. A kid who becomes a turtle in order to find himself. Great characters. Plenty of life for a series. Merchandising for sure. I wait the prerequisite six or seven months for them to bounce it off the head of programming, and it's not exactly what he's looking for, but he'll put a pin in it . . . one of the 1,001 ways to say no without saying no.

How to hear them say a single "yes"?

Harvey Entertainment president and COO Rick Michel has been known to counsel television writers to turn a good TV/film concept into a book. "It gives you something tangible to work with. Something to show to coproducers and financiers." It certainly doesn't hurt if it also becomes a popular book, like the Minerva Louise series by Jane Morgan Stoeke, currently being developed at Harvey. Minerva sold three quarters of a million copies and was an international hit. Their Chet Gecko series from author Bruce Hale, though yet to be published when optioned, had a publisher attached, and there was already the all-important buzz. (For the rest of the article click here: http://www.wga.org/1200/swimming.html