Romantic comedy, p.6
Romantic Comedy, page 6
Elliot, the head writer, called the meeting to order by sticking two fingers in each corner of his mouth and whistling, and we got down to it. Cast members who’d turned in sketches always gave themselves the leading role, which they’d read, whereas writers assigned roles to various cast members, and these assignments sometimes stuck and sometimes didn’t. If Nigel decided a cast member, especially a favored one, had a “light week,” he might unilaterally make reassignments as a sketch advanced.
We started with a sketch about the porn actress alleging that Trump had paid her to keep quiet about their affair, then there was a sketch where Noah was performing the national anthem before an NFL game as a duet with a famous diva played by Henrietta, and they were competing over the high notes. The first sketch to make me really laugh was the one now titled Blue-Eyed Soul, by Tony, in which Noah was the white politician preaching to a Black congregation.
Even after nine years, I found table reads fascinating because they represented the intersection of multiple creative and psychological forces. In a room filled with the people who mattered in my life, but with no outside audience, I was always desperate with curiosity to find out how my sketches would be received and what the other sketches were like; I was often shocked by the brilliance of some sketches and the crumminess of others; and it was unsettlingly easy to infer social dynamics by the laughter and warmth, or lack of, with which a sketch was received. More than once, it had been at a table read that I’d first suspected two people were romantically involved, or that someone was going to be let go at the end of the season.
An hour and five minutes in, we got to The Danny Horst Rule. After what I’d thought of as my best line, there was only half-hearted laughter, while, to my chagrin, the loudest laugh lines were the ones Danny had written for himself. Still, I could feel that the sketch’s catchily self-referential premise meant it was likely to make it to the next stage.
Formal feedback didn’t happen during a table read—whether your sketch ended up in the lineup for the show was the feedback. But before we went on to the following sketch, the writer Jeremiah, who was sitting behind Nigel, said, “What I really respect is Sally’s fearlessness in the face of offending half the staff here.”
From my chair against the window, I said, “I’ll take that as confirmation that it strikes a chord.”
A writer named Jenna said, “And they lived heteronormatively ever after,” and Bailey leaned back from the table to fist-bump Jenna.
By coincidence, my Blabbermouth sketch came right after The Danny Horst Rule, and Blabbermouth also got respectable if not inordinate laughs. Writers often sought out the cast members, including the host, who’d be reading their sketches to make suggestions about what tone to use. Though I hadn’t sought out Noah—I’d arrived at the read-through just before it started, and also, for some reason, I would have felt weird instructing him—he did a good job. The conceit was that the male judges of the singing competition were speaking over him, too, in addition to speaking over the female judge, and he and the female judge began doing other things, like filing their nails, playing checkers, and pulling out yoga mats and sitting in the lotus pose. The alchemy happened that I’d described to Noah the previous night, when a sketch went from words on a page to a much funnier live enactment.
After Blabbermouth, though, there was a string of duds, including one by a first-year writer named Douglas whom Henrietta, Viv, and I referred to behind his back as Catchphrase because his primary goal at TNO seemed to be to send a catchphrase into the zeitgeist. This week, the catchphrase that Catchphrase was trying to coin was “Ridin’ toward ya, ridin’ from ya”—the sketch featured Catchphrase himself on a unicycle—and I felt a flare-up of loathing. How and why had Catchphrase been hired? How and why was he so confident? In his second week, I’d suggested during rewrites for someone else’s sketch that a woman get on all fours to force a fart out before her date arrived. Referring to a viral sketch from seven years earlier, Catchphrase had said in a casual yet knowing tone, “That’s too derivative of My Girlfriend Never Farts.” I’d replied, “Hmm, I wonder if that’s because I’m the person who wrote My Girlfriend Never Farts.” Appearing not at all chastened, Catchphrase said, “Ah, so you’re a self-cannibalizer.”
Noah’s sketch—Choreographer—was after Ridin’. It got laughs right away, when Nigel read the Madison Square Garden, May 2001 title card, and though the laughter dwindled rather than building as the sketch continued, it still seemed funny enough to make the cut on its own merit and not just because it had been written by the host. At the conclusion of the sketch, Noah made eye contact with me and nodded once. I nodded back.
The Cheesemonger was the very last sketch of the table read, by which point there was a palpable restlessness in the air. People were constantly getting up to use the bathroom or stretch their legs; even the midpoint break had been ninety minutes before. The earlier in the table read your sketch came up, the likelier it was, regardless of quality, to be well received. For this reason, and because I hadn’t been feeling all that inspired when I wrote the Cheesemonger, my expectations were low.
I was wrong, though; the sketch was met with lots of laughter. And most of it could be attributed to Noah. In the stage directions, I’d called for him to sing the lines that introduced the cheeses—“This is a Swissss,” or “Here we have a delectable Camembert”—and he really went for it, in an operatic way. I’d given the roles of the three customers, who approached the cheese stand one after the other, to Henrietta, Viv, and Bailey, and they all had great chemistry with Noah. Or perhaps it was just that everyone was relieved to have reached the end of the meeting.
As we all finally stood and people threw away their paper plates and chatted, I pulled my phone from my jeans pocket. Sometimes, of course, I had the impulse to check my phone during meetings, before remembering that there was an infinitesimal chance that any message from outside could matter to me as much as what was happening in this room.
I’d heard back from my college roommate Denise: Your friend can definitely try to ask out the doctor but most doctors would be like, “Oh thank you. You are too sweet.” And then move on with the visit. Basically not even acknowledging the asking.
I screenshotted the text, sent it to Viv—who was standing fifteen feet away, talking to Nigel and Autumn—and added, Obviously my roommate doesn’t know the friend here is you and the law of gravity doesn’t apply
Wednesday, 9:13 p.m.
After the table read, Nigel, Elliot, Bob O’Leary, and another producer named Rick Klemm would go to Nigel’s seventeenth-floor office and close the door. An hour or two later, you’d find out if your sketch had been picked for the Saturday show—or more accurately, if it hadn’t yet been eliminated—when an intern appeared in the conference room and posted a copy of the list of sketches from the read-through with the picks highlighted, then unceremoniously left additional highlighted lists on the table. Meanwhile, in Nigel’s office, brightly colored index cards featuring sketch titles were pinned on a corkboard in order of their tentative appearance. All this information could have been sent out via email, sparing the mingling of people receiving good and bad news, but this was another TNO tradition that Nigel apparently had no desire to change. Typically, a handful of people were waiting in the conference room to see the list, and those who weren’t waiting quickly filtered in as word spread that picks were out.
The interval between when the table read ended and the lineup got revealed was always kind of tense and weird—some people deliberately left the building, including a bunch of the male writers and cast members who played basketball—but I stuck around. It wasn’t that long to wait, and I wanted to know as soon as possible whether I’d be working frantically, exhilaratingly, between this moment and Saturday night, or if I’d have nothing much to do besides attend Thursday rewrites. More often than not, one of my sketches made it past the table read, and I was particularly optimistic for this week, but it still was far from a given.
In Viv and Henrietta’s shared office, Viv had us assess her eye injury, which was fading from a red dot to a yellow one, from various distances. She was trying to determine the exact number of inches away from which it was visible.
“It’s really not obvious,” I said. “I’d have forgotten about it by now if you didn’t keep reminding me.”
“You’re not watching me in high-def.”
The next way we killed time was that Henrietta and I tried to convince Viv that emailing the eye doctor and offering him a ticket to the show wouldn’t violate her policy of not making the first move. Or that, if it did, perhaps that was fine, too?
Viv was lying on the floor stretching, bending and turning her left leg sideways and pressing her right elbow against her knee, and Henrietta and I were both slumped on the couch. Looking at Henrietta, Viv said, “You better not use this.” She was referring to Henrietta’s recurring Are Straight People Okay segment on News Desk, in which Henrietta offered faux earnest updates about the ridiculousness and outright toxicity of prominent heterosexual couples. Supposedly for material, Henrietta, whose wife was an art history professor named Lisa, followed celebrity gossip more avidly than anyone else I knew. The irony of Henrietta being a celebrity herself, albeit an extremely private one who, also ironically, wasn’t on social media, was lost on none of us. Though I tended to be solidly conversant in such gossip, Henrietta always heard every morsel first. It had been in a text from her, accompanied by a link, that I’d originally learned Danny and Annabel were dating.
“How about this?” I said and read aloud the email I’d been composing on my phone. “ ‘Dr. Elman, it was nice to meet you yesterday, and I’m feeling good today. As a thank-you, I’m wondering if I can give you a ticket to The Night Owls, where I’m a cast member. Let me know if you’re interested and we can figure out a date. Either way, thanks again for your help. Viv.’ ”
“ ‘Let me know if you’re interested in removing all my clothes and boning me, and we can figure out a date,’ ” Henrietta said. “But, Viv, do you even have his email?”
“He gave it to me in case I had follow-up questions about my eye.”
“Right.” Henrietta made air quotes. “ ‘About your eye.’ ”
“No offense, Sally, but that email is boring and not at all funny,” Viv said.
“Granted, but it’s open-ended and doesn’t hit the medical stuff too hard. I purposely didn’t include the word eye, but it does have the words feeling good, interested, and date to subliminally lure him in.”
“Seriously?” Viv said.
“No,” I said. “Well, maybe. I think it gives you both the cover you need at this point. Are you asking him out or expressing appreciation for treatment? Who can say? And you seem modest for not assuming he knows you’re on TNO, right? Even though I bet he does.”
Viv wrinkled her nose. “Calling him Dr. Elman is so formal.”
“Do you know what he goes by? Ted? Teddy?”
“I may or may not have done some reconnaissance and found an alumni update he sent to the Penn class of ’88. He’s fifty-two, and he goes by Theo.”
“Holy shit, he’s fifty-two? Not holy shit like that’s so old—I mean, it’s kind of old—but holy shit like I’d have guessed ten years younger.”
“Have I taught you guys nothing?” Viv looked both amused and impatient. “Black don’t crack.”
“Sorry,” I said. “But still.”
“Have you ever dated someone that much older than you?” Henrietta asked.
“Like five years ago, this Italian guy hit on me when I was flying back from Paris, and we went on a few dates.” She grinned. “You think Dr. Theo had one of those starter marriages like you, Sally?”
I said, “If he did, his would have been back in the early nineties. When you were, what, in kindergarten? But I actually like the sound of him. Professionally successful but not in the entertainment industry, so he won’t be threatened by your career. Most doctors—” And then all three of our phones exploded with texts from other cast members and writers telling us the sketches had been picked.
It also would have been easy, of course, for someone to send around a photo of the picks, but no one ever did. We stood and hurried to the conference room, and, as we rounded the corner, a cast member named Duncan said to me, “Not bad, Milz.” Danny was standing in front of the posted list, and he raised his eyebrows and said, “You got a hat trick, Chuckles.” He held up a hand for a high five, and I slapped it.
Included on the list, in addition to The Danny Horst Rule, the Cheesemonger, and Blabbermouth, were Noah’s Choreography sketch; a digital short written by Tony and Lianna that juxtaposed shots of a dismayed Black grandpa who’d be played by Jay watching social media videos of white women showing the ways they “improved” various recipes, like by adding raisins to mac and cheese or marshmallows to fried okra; the James Comey sketch; Sister & Father, a recurring sketch where Henrietta played a nun in love with a priest played by Hakeem, which this week featured Noah as the Pope; a sketch by a writer named Tess about talking medications in a bathroom cabinet; a Three Tenors sketch by Joseph; and Catchphrase’s terrible Ridin’ Toward Ya sketch. Neither the dogs’ Google searches sketch I’d co-written with Viv and Henrietta nor my favorite sketch from the table read, the one by Tony about the white politician at the Black church, had made the cut. And the likelihood was that two or three more would be eliminated. There were no guarantees at TNO, but still: I’d never in nine years had three sketches in the same episode.
One of the writers, Patrick, said warmly, “Is it sexual harassment to say that I hate you right now?”
I and the other writers whose sketches had been picked wandered into a room next to Nigel’s office to speak to the heads of all the departments who would make our words three-dimensional: wardrobe and hair and makeup and production design and special effects. The sets would be built at a warehouse in Brooklyn then transported back to 66, ideally on Friday, to be painted. While talking to a set designer named Buddy, I said, “Yeah, a mix of triangular hunks of cheese and wheels but both are way bigger than life-sized,” and then I said to a woman in wardrobe named Christa, “For Blabbermouth, I’m picturing Noah in something like animal print leggings and a jean jacket so I guess a hair metal vibe?”
The rest of the week would be challenging and exhausting and consuming and magnificent, and I thought, as I met with Bob O’Leary to confirm which cast members were in each of my sketches so he could coordinate the whole crazy chessboard of TNO, that what I’d told Noah the night before, what I’d thought a thousand times, was true: Without question, I had the best job in the world.
Thursday, 1:08 a.m.
I was walking toward the elevators to leave when I heard someone say, “Hey, Sally.” When I turned, Elliot—the head writer, who was married to the multi-platinum-album-selling singer named Nicola—was leaning out of his office.
I paused.
He said, “Nice lineup on the corkboard.”
Because he’d been part of the meeting where the first round of sketches had been selected, I said, “If you’re offering me the opportunity to thank you, I’ll hold off ’til the live show.” I didn’t point out that I’d never know if he’d argued for or against any of mine.
“I’ll be shocked if at least one doesn’t make it to air,” Elliot said, which didn’t seem particularly encouraging. He added, “I just wanted to say—not to touch the third rail—I hope—” He paused, and I was reminded that, although he had over time remade himself into a well-groomed, successful cultural arbiter married to a pop star, he was still, fundamentally, an awkward writer.
And though I myself was no stranger to awkwardness, I wasn’t going to help him out. “You hope—?” I repeated.
“That someday you’ll be able to let bygones be bygones.”
If I’d had any acting skills, I’d have said, “Meaning what?” But of course I knew what he was alluding to; even though he was wrong, I knew. Elliot had started at TNO the year before I had and was legendary for landing what became a wildly popular sketch on his first episode ever. By the time I joined, he seemed like a beloved veteran. In contrast, my first year had been bumpy and confusing, I’d often been too intimidated to even speak, only two of my sketches had made it on air in the whole season, and I hadn’t known if I would be invited back. The week in August after my contract had been renewed, a few months before the next season started in October, I’d run into Elliot at the Strand, next to a table of novels in translation, and we’d ended up getting coffee and having a surprisingly frank conversation. I had confided all the insecurities I’d been wracked with—my total lack of experience in stand-up or improv, the fact that I hadn’t attended Harvard—and he’d matter-of-factly said that was all normal, almost everyone felt insecure, even people who had lots of experience with stand-up or improv and people who had gone to Harvard, and his trajectory was more anomalous than mine. TNO liked raw talent, he said. Nigel preferred hiring people for their first TV job because then the show could mold them. Elliot pointed out that I didn’t always submit a sketch for the table read and asked if I was writing them and not submitting or not even writing them. The former, I said. He said that I should never be the one to preemptively reject my ideas; I should force other people to. In fact, I should submit a minimum of two sketches each week, even if I didn’t think they were in perfect shape. There were so many variables affecting a sketch’s outcome—the host, the national moment, Nigel’s mood—plus an idea could always be drastically improved in rewrites. Also, Elliot said, I should seek out cast members who’d started around my year, who were as green and hungry as I was, and we should pool our talents and climb the ranks together. Our time might not be now, but if we persisted, it would come. The only way to learn, he said, was by doing it. He didn’t put it in these terms, and I’m not even sure if he knew this was what he was saying, but his message was: Act like a guy. It was a message that turned out to be invaluable.
