"Lessons from Late Night"

This week, I took a break from watching comedy television and decided to check out some comedy articles (did you know comedy writing involves writing it? Like on paper? Insanity).  Anyway, I read a fantastic article from The New Yorker called “Lessons from Late Night” by the glorious Tina Fey.  Now, let me start by saying that I have been a fan of hers since she was a virtually unknown writer behind the scenes on Saturday Night Live, and my appreciation for her has grown in accordance with her fame.  I had to get that out there, I am no bandwagon fan, I am one of the true ones.  With that being said, my review of her writing is going to be incredibly biased in her favor since I think she’s pretty flawless.  Luckily my whole “I think the sun shines out her ass” mentality about Ms. Fey is easily justifiable- the chick’s got the chops to back up my wildly positive view of her work.  Not only was she the head writer for Saturday Night Live, but she now writes her own hilarious show “30 Rock” and has a best-selling book called “Bossypants.”  Anyway, I could probably ramble on and on about how great this woman is, but that’s not the point.  The point is that she wrote an article about comedy writing, I read it, and now I’m going to share some of her gems with you.
 

Her article centers around the most important things she learned from Lorne Michaels during her time at SNL.  To give a bit of background information, Fey’s rise to fame and success was all the more surprising due to the fact that she’s a woman.  She even explains that she got lucky because SNL was trying to diversify its writers when she applied there, adding, “Only in comedy, by the way, does an obedient white girl from the suburbs count as diversity.”  Often, the strong woman getting ahead in her field is quickly branded with the “bitch” stamp and ignored, which leads to a harder push and more negativity- it’s a bitch of a vicious cycle, but Fey managed to handle it.
 
She had many pieces of advice to give, but I will only dive into a few (I encourage reading the article yourself, even if that involves reading a magazine and the thought of reading something on paper makes you sad).  One of her tidbits is “When hiring, mix Harvard nerds with Chicago improvisers and stir.”  The fact of the matter is that these people are all funny, but for vastly different reasons.  While the Harvard nerds can make jokes about the latest political debates, the Chicago improvisers can make silly pop culture-centered sketches that are funny in a different way.  The audience of SNL includes so many different people that there is no way to please everyone at once.  But diversifying the writer’s room is a start.  Another piece of advice she had was that “the show doesn't go on because it's ready; it goes on because it's eleven-thirty.”  Whether the show is ready or not, it must happen.  That means that ditching your favorite joke or a piece that just isn’t quite finished yet may be the sacrifice necessary to get the show on the road.  While people can get emotionally connected to their best skits, sometimes it is necessary to forget about it and avoid harming the integrity of the show by forcing it into something that it doesn’t fit into.
 
Overall, the article helped me learn a little bit about the industry and the ways to make the best comedy.  Now that it’s over, I guess it’s back to watching it all happen on TV.