Cavett On Writing Comedy

Since my husband is retired from the university here and retains a university email address, we have free access to the New York Times "TimesSelect", since they have opened the site to educators - a smart move on their part. I was not going to pay for the privilege of reading the material there, but I like having access to Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert and other features like a series of diaries written by troops who have served in Iraq.

In addition, Dick Cavett writes an online blog for "TimesSelect". Cavett's show was a must-see for me back in the day. He recently wrote a post titled "No Gagging The Gags". I can't give those of you who have access to "TimesSelect" a link for the post, because the link is operative for only a limited period, and the time has expired. I wish everyone could read the whole post.

Besides being a "three-time Emmy winner", Cavett wants us to know that he was a "gold-medal pommel horse state gymnastics champion in Nebraska." The feat that won the medal for him was his "triple-rear dismount". He says that was "the hardest thing I've ever done in my life."

On comedy writing:

Talking about comedy writing last time, I omitted an interesting phenomenon thereto: the fact that the gag-writer’s brain often works independently of his conscious mind. (Bolding mine) Sometimes alarmingly so. Because the topical joke-writer’s livelihood depends on his ability to crank out — if the show is on daily — good, current stuff, fast and for immediate use. And after a great deal of this, there’s something that develops and takes on a life of its own.

The late Steve Allen noted that the more comedy you write, the more you can write. It happened to me. Thrown instantly into the front lines, as I was, of daily writing for Jack Paar on “The Tonight Show” — a task nothing at Yale prepares you for — it seemed that each day of the week got a bit easier. Monday hardest, Friday a breeze. Friday’s jokes seemed to write themselves. Rust set in on the weekend and again, Monday wasn’t easy.

With respect to Cavett's statement about the joke writer's brain functioning outside of the conscious mind, I think it's true. I've made a funny or two in my time that seemed to come from nowhere. I'm intrigued by the workings of the brain with respect to the business of making jokes.

I think some are born with a greater capacity to come with original wit, but, according to Cavett, practice of the skill counts. The humor flows easily, when you keep your skills honed.

The weirdness that I’m getting at is most likely to happen to the experienced, professional comedy writer who, thanks to punishing practice, is in splendid condition. It’s a bit scary and it strikes on those unfortunate occasions that arch Chinese proverb calls “interesting times.”

If there’s a catastrophe — plane crash, miners trapped, kidnapping, ghastly murder — writer-brain kicks in by itself and makes jokes about it. The machinery starts without you; you hear it in your head and you feel ashamed.

....

On Memorial Day we were treated to the sight of what will surely be looked back on at some future time as the absolute, irreducible, symbolic zenith of hypocrisy: George Bush at Arlington. Whatever remains of my own joke-writing muscles produced, all on its own, a reporter asking, “Which do you prefer, Mr. President? Honoring our dead soldiers, or causing them?”


I miss his shows, but the good news is that they are collected on DVD now. You might want to look at an earlier post that I wrote about Cavett's blog.