Here is J.K. Simmons (and of course many others- Nathan Lane, Peter Gallagher…) back in the day, as Benny Southstreet in the 1992 revival of Guys and Dolls. I was there, but didn’t know til recently he was in it. Amazing.
There are no small parts, only small actors.
And here’s the big number J.K. Simmons had in that show, albeit from the movie, not the revival (and featuring the immortal Stubby Kaye as Nicely Nicely Johnson). Simmons plays short dark suit. Don’t miss the sauntering women .
I’ve worked in a bunch of writers’ rooms, on a lot of unsuccessful shows (by which I mean shows that lasted one season and were then cancelled), and some failed pilots. By the way, most shows are unsuccessful, and most pilots fail ( in TV, luckily, not airplanes). I’ve also been fortunate enough to work on a couple of really successful shows. Now let’s say you’re successful too. You get hired to work on a TV show. You’re going into a writers’ room for the first time, getting paid to be a writer. Dream job! You are not asking me for advice before you start, but if you did I would tell you stuff like the following:
I took a writing class over 20 years ago from I guy I love and admire, who has worked on a lot of stuff and is really smart. On the last day of class, somebody asked him about the one thing he would say to people going into a writers’ room for the first time, and that was his response. I’m not paraphrasing.
This is Tad.
Here’s the thing. You got the job because you’re smart, and probably funny, and maybe extremely verbal (maybe not, but that’s okay!). Oh, and let’s not forget you went to Blickmell with Tad Fuffton, but leave out the “who you know” part, because maybe that got you there but now it’s on you. But you have all these things going for you. And you’re coming into a new situation and you feel the urge to show off your funny or your interesting.
Don’t. Just wait. Your skills will come out. You’ll get your opportunity to shine. But much better if you first figure out stuff like whose opinion matters (obviously the showrunner, but there’s always a pecking order in the room- sometimes it’s people with more experience, sometimes it’s people who are funnier, sometimes it’s people who just have that thing that Ripley had where people are gonna listen to them no matter what), what plays and what doesn’t in the room, what’s already been suggested, how people pitch in this particular room, and how everybody in the room works together.
Because the room is an organism, and you’re a liver transplant. You’re gonna help the organism, but it will take a while for the organism to adapt to you and allow you to help. Let the process happen.
And obviously it’s different when everybody in the room is brand new to the room, but not by much. Shut the fuck up.
A room full of funny people making each other laugh is a blast. It’s what I love about coming to work every day. At any moment anybody can come up with a great piece of comedy, a great joke, a bit, that will make me laugh as hard as anything ever has. But sometimes people fall into the trap of just following the bit, instead of focusing on what needs to be done in that moment. Yes, it’s fun to have fun. But there’s also a budget, and a schedule, and lots of things have to get done by certain times. Nothing is more frustrating to me when I’m running a room than having people around who won’t stop doing bits and riffs and make-a da funny to focus specifically on helping me fix whatever the problem is at the moment. And yes, part of that is probably jealousy because I too wanna just fuck around but I can’t. The job is about making the funny, but it’s also about solving problems. And sometimes the second is more important than the first. Get good at knowing when to focus (and still being funny!).
Learn how to pitch your ideas, and your jokes. Like medicine, it’s an art and a science.. You can have good answers, but you also have to know HOW to put them out there. I’ve seen people with terrible ideas get their stuff into a script just because they were so fun to watch while they were pitching, and people with brilliant stuff die as the words were coming out of their mouths. Figure out what works for you. The best analogy I can think of for pitching is... well, it’s pitching. Pat Neshek and Max Scherzer are totally different stylistically, but they both get people out. And don’t even get me started on the late Mark “The Bird” Fidrych.
Bonus advice, given to me before my first day in a writers’ room in the early part of the 21st century by my good friend Andrew Secunda (not sure who gave it to him): when you are pitching a joke in dialogue, always repeat the line or two before the punchline, so people get the set-up and the punchline. It also gives people a moment to focus on your voice, where you are in the script, the context, all the stuff they need to really hear the punchline. One time after I did a TV spot (yes, I’ve been on TV) I complained to a much better comic than myself about how my first joke didn’t go over to the studio audience as well as it usually did in the clubs. He said, “That’s because they spend the first 30 seconds trying to figure out why you’re wearing THOSE shoes.” Let everybody figure out why you’re wearing those shoes before you hit the punchline.
When you do start pitching, don’t just say stuff just to say stuff. Put some thought into it. Any solution to a problem is not necessarily a good solution, and if you’re throwing out whatever you can possibly think of you’re taking up bandwidth in everybody’s thought process. I’ve known people who feel like part of the ROOM’S brainstorming process is to share THEIR INDIVIDUAL brainstorming process with the room. Where could the two main characters hold their secret meeting about murdering the Chancellor of the Exchequer? “They meet in the throne room, in the scullery, out by the battlements, in the stables, on a hunt, by the princess’s mattress, in the library...” Not only is this not helping me or anyone, it is making me unable to go through my own ideas. See number 1, above! Those are all halfway decent possibilities for where to plan an assassination (if it’s a Chancellor of the Exchequer it’s not mere murder), but what are the pros and cons of each? I can literally name places all day. Think a little. Earn your check. Show us why you’re here.
Of course, the flip side of this (there’s always a flip side) is don’t not say anything. Sometimes people shut the fuck up long enough to know what’s going on, they know when to focus on the work and they do, they know what their individual pitching style is (what’s gonna work for them, and of course that’s something you only get better at if you do it a lot, like Crossfit, or the tuba, or sex, maybe), they’re not just saying stuff to say stuff, but they don’t say anything. Take a chance, even with an idea that might not be the right one- it might push the room in a different direction, open things up, or even make people realize that because that is a bad idea they need to go in a completely opposite direction. That’s all helping.
Some of these things might feel contradictory. They are. Tough shit. Life is messy.
Crunching is one thing, but crinkling? No.
Good luck, and happy writing!