And Here's the Kicker

I fancied myself fairly well-informed about the art of comedy and the folks who practice it. But then I started reading some of Mike Sacks‘ And Here’s The Kicker: Conversations with Top Humor Writers About Their Craft, and soon realized I was not as informed as I thought. Sacks, who is presently on the Vanity Fair magazine editorial staff, interviewed 21 humor writers as well as a variety of editors and entertainment executives for the book. I was really impressed with the variety of writer he was able to interview–and I consider myself fortunate to get to interview him about the book. Please be sure to visit the book’s website as Sacks provides excerpts from each of the book’s interviews. With that in mind, I linked to each interview excerpt (and/or their respective website) when they come up in the discussion.

Tim O’Shea: Before your book, I had never even heard of Irv Brecher, and I considered myself a fan of the Marx Brothers (clearly not a well-informed one). Why do you think his name is not more widely known in comedy circles?

Mike Sacks: Well, I do think he was known within comedy circles, but only among  those in a certain age demographic–or those who were very knowledgeable about Hollywood’s past. I guess it’s similar to younger baseball players not knowing much about the great players from the 30s and 40s.

Also, Brecher worked on two Marx Brothers movies (“Out West” and “At the Circus”_ that are lesser known than “A Night at the Opera” or “Duck Soup.” But I think anyone who is a professional humor writer (or  even just interested in comedy) should acquaint themselves with Irv. He was an amazing man with an incredible career: from writing for Milton Berle to writing for the Marx Brothers to punching up the script to “Wizard of Oz.” He was also very bawdy and incredibly honest. It was great talking with him and I’m really happy I got the  chance to before he became very sick.

O’Shea: At least one of your interviews for this book lasted 15 hours, at some point did you worry that maybe you were gathering too much information–or is there no such thing as too much information from your perspective?

Sacks: I don’t really think there’s any such thing as gathering too much information. I think problems exist when the author is unwilling to get rid of all that information. The trick, if there is one, is to b willing to excise anything extraneous, and anything that might not be of much interest to the reader. A 15-page interview might be interesting, whereas a 25-page interview might be overkill (except for the hardcore fans). But if you have more material to work with, it’ll make the editing process much easier (much like it does for film editors; the more, the better).

O’Shea: With Larry Gelbart‘s recent passing, that makes for two interview subjects who have died from the book. How important was it to you to interview older comedians for the book, to get their history?

Sacks: It really wasn’t my goal to interview writers who were elderly and about to pass away. I really just chose those authors whose work I admired, and who were willing to sit down and talk with me for hour upon hour. With that said, I feel incredibly lucky to have spoken to Larry Gelbart and Irv Brecher. They were a bridge to another time, and now that bridge is gone (or, at the very least, quickly disappearing).

O’Shea: I did not realize that Larry Wilmore, current Daily Show correspondent, created the Bernie Mac Show. Why do you think some writers toil in relative obscurity and others are able to elevate their profile?

Sacks: A lot of writers might be unknown outside of Hollywood or the publishing industry, but they’re known among other writers. Someone like Larry Wilmore is very respected among his peers, even though a wider audience might not have been familiar with him before he appeared as an actor on “The Daily Show” and “The Office.” And, like others in his field, he was making a great living doing what he was doing, even though he wasn’t famous. I don’t think this would bother most writers, really. Certainly not me.

O’Shea: In the interview with the Austin Chronicle, you conceded that several women declined to be interviewed for the book. Why do you think that is?

Sacks: I think it had to do with one of two things:

#1. There are so few women writers at the top of their occupation that they are constantly being asked to be interviewed and might be tired of it.

#2. A female writer might have less of an ego than a male writer, which you really do need in order to talk about yourself for 15 hours.

O’Shea: One of your chapters deals with how to get your humor piece published in The New Yorker. Do you think the status of getting published in the New Yorker is as important a status as it once was, given the increased influence of the Internet?

Sacks: I think it is, yes. You will certainly get name recognition. Whether this leads to anything, like a book deal, is another question–at least for humor. I think fiction writers might get more attention from publishers than the humor writers do, only because humor is a tougher sell. With that said, I think there are other outlets that might have just as big, if not a bigger, influence on the internet: McSweeney’s, The Onion, College Humor, and others.

O’Shea: I was hoping that David Letterman was one of the book’s subjects, but given his long-established reluctance to in-depth interviews I understand why he was not. That being said, I would think someone as vital to the start of the show as Merrill Markoe was to the NBC Letterman show, you might have gained greater insight from her than from Letterman. For example, I doubt Dave would want to discuss Leave It to Dave, a 1978 pilot for Dave’s own talk show (but she does discuss with you). Would you agree Markoe was able to give a great deal of insight into Dave?

Sacks: Yes, and I think that’s true across the board. Someone like David Letterman has given a million interviews and might not be willing to talk about subjects he’s already talked about. At the very least, he’s not going to have much time for an in-depth interview. Another example of this is Marshall Brickman, who co-wrote “Annie Hall,” “Manhattan,” and “Sleeper” with Woody Allen. There are entire books devoted to Woody Allen, in which he discusses his career in minutiae, whereas I don’t think Marshall Brickman has been interviewed nearly as often. And someone like Brickman, or Merrill Markoe, might have insights that their writing partners might not have. In the case of Merrill, she’s absolutely brilliant and a great writer, so just to pick her brain about the early days of Late Night, as well as her own writing, was a true joy.

O’Shea: The book’s website offers interviews with Bruce Jay Friedman, Daniel Handler, Daniel Clowes and Roz Chast. Why were none of them included in the book?

Sacks: The publisher was too cheap to publish these interviews. They wanted the book’s length to be shorter. There really is no other reason, and to say otherwise would be a lie. I was very upset, and still am, truthfully.

O’Shea: You were clearly surprised when you asked Dick Cavett “Do you think your mother’s death affected your comic sensibility?” and he said he had never even thought about that. Did that question have a chilling effect on the interview for a bit or did it move on without a hiccup?

Sacks: No, not at all. I suppose that’s one of the problems with interviews on the page; certain inflections can’t be picked up like they could on the radio or TV. He was sort of taken aback by the question, but for no other reason than he had never been asked it before. He was genuinely puzzled by it and took a moment to think . But he could not have been more forthcoming and honest; there really wasn’t one question that upset him or put him off his game.

O’Shea: Is there anything you’d like to tell folks about the book that I did not ask you about?

Sacks: If you’re not familiar with Al Jaffee‘s work from MAD magazine, buy his books and try to find some older issues. Actually, you can even find new issues, as he’s still contributing to MAD. The man is a genius, and also the nicest guy you could imagine.