Dan Fiorella: Writer @ large - Easy as Falling off a Blog

Dan Fiorella

Skit Happens: DOA: Hollywood - Baby Hitler Hosts the Oscars

2/19/2019

I've a bit of a "staff writer" on the LA-based comedy show TMI: Hollywood for the past couple of years, and I've had a pretty decent track record for someone on the wrong coast. They're gearing up for their 2019 season with a special taped version of the live show dedicated to the Oscars. Oddly, since they gave themselves so much lead time for this particular show, they decided to list the skits they didn't use on their Facebook page. And since I've been blogging about my skits that didn't get used here, I figured this was a natural to post now.

The Oscar show is something the group does every year, and it's tough to come up with some new take on it. They leave the parameters pretty open; sketches about the show itself, nominated movies, red carpet, etc. As I was pondering this, there were two hot topics online that week; the announcement that Kevin Hart had dropped out as host and that some podcaster making a speech to an anti-abortion rally that he wouldn't kill baby Hitler if he had the chance.

Now, at first glance, these two things wouldn't seem to come together. At second or third glance, too. But, when you're hard up for a concept, you take what you can get, which is goofy comedy and a hot topic. Pity it wasn't used, but I appreciate the online shout-out about the submission. So, for the curious, here's my sketch,

Baby Hitler Hosts the Oscars

Barely Home Companion - Minnesota Rap 10/7/00

2/18/2019

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...

One of the problems with being a freelance writer, far from the production people & having spent a year not knowing what exactly the people in charge are looking for, is that you tend to "try stuff" just to stand out. Now, I knew Garrison Keillor had no real connection with pop culture. I even found a quote stating that in the 6/14, 1998 issue of the Washington Post:

Producer Christine Tschida's instructions to freelance writers who hope to get their material on the show: "Garrison does almost everything himself. If he uses a couple of your ideas, you probably won't recognize them. Don't give us anything to do with pop culture because Garrison won't know who you're talking about. The man does not watch TV."

So, what would be more logical than to submit a rap song? Hey, I had tried a whole bunch of things, writing to established bits and characters, sequels and follow-ups to sketches of mine that had been produced as well pseudo-intellectual gibberish disguised as monologues. None of it worked. So, coming up to the first show of the 2000-2001 season, I wrote a rap. My entire knowledge of rap comes from the opening credits of "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." But the idea of Minnesotans rapping was just too goofy to resist. For me, not the people at PHC. They resisted the bit easily. I just submitted it as a rap, no set-up, no announcement of having a new theme song, just like a cold opening, which the show didn't do.

And this is one of those pieces that in no way could be recycled or re-worked for any other venue. This piece has not seen the light of day since it was submitted oh-so-long ago. Probably with good reason...

Minnesota Rap

Barely Home Companion: Valentine's Edition - Valentine's

2/14/2019

As it turns out, I didn't write much in the way of Valentine skits for Prairie Home Companion during my time. Looking at the timetables, they were on hiatus a lot during February and I don't recall any requests for Valentine's Day material. But in February of 2004, right after what would turn out to be the last skit of mine to be used by them, I wrote this bit. It's not a remarkable skit, but I think it's cute and it sounds like a PHC bit. It was rejected anyway. I don't recall pulling it out for any other venue either. I just seemed to have forgotten about it. To rectify that situation, I'm posting it here. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

This edition of Barely Home Companion is brought to you by "Love and Other Distractions" the anthology for charity! Fifteen Hollywood writers spin tales of romance and more! And it includes the Nick Flebber short story, "Cupid is as Cupid Does." Get your copy today at Amazon!

Valentine's Guy

Sketchy Tales: Valentine's Edition - Tourist Trap of Love

2/13/2019

Valentine's Day 2018 was the fourth production of "The Many Faces of Love" and my fourth appearance! I was ready for them this time! I actually started working on this toward the end of 2017, knowing the Hudson Warehouse would be doing the festival that year. This has a weird history. It started as a prose piece in 2011. It was a lot darker, about a disgruntled tour guide's last tour. It got posted on the now defunct Higgs-Wheldon site.

It was always tricky for me to come up with a comedic way to have a person do a monologue before an audience. But everyday, commuting to work, I would see the tour buses driving around the city with their stand-up comic tour guides. I even took a couple of these tours. And it's always fun to have someone over share. Now as the submission time approached, I decided to return to the tour bus bit, substitute love for kidnapping and rework it to under 3 minutes. It came out pretty well. Now I realize a better title would have been "The Tender Tourist Trap" but what can you do? Here's the video I took of it with my mini-iPad, which doesn't handle stage lighting well, featuring Jamie Flanagan and directed by Nicholas Martin-Smith...

This edition of Sketchy Tales is brought to you by "Love and Other Distractions" the anthology for charity! Fifteen Hollywood writers spin tales of romance and more! Including me! Cupid flies the coup and Nick Flebber has to find him in "Cupid is as Cupid Does." Get your copy today at Amazon!

Tourist Trap of Love

Skit Happens: Valentine's Day Edition - The CPHCCVDMF

2/12/2019

Looking back, it turns out I didn't do a whole bunch of Valentine's Day sketches. The groups I got involved in would do Christmas, or Oscars or even Halloween, but Valentine's Day? Not so much. Even SNL makes a bigger deal about Mother's Day than it does about Valentine's Day. But I've done a couple. For instance:

Coming off a barrage of Hallmark movies, I was getting punchy and it came out as a Hallmark Christmas parody. I did a Hallmark St. Patrick's Day parody and then I did this. I've posted it elsewhere on the blog, along with a hope that it would be resurrected in a future format, but, alas, that theater group isn't doing it's annual Valentine Day show this year. So, let's toss the original sketch back into the mix in this year's celebration of St. Valentine!

This edition of Skit Happens is brought to you by "Love and Other Distractions" the anthology for charity! Fifteen Hollywood writers spin tales of romance and more! Get your copy today at Amazon!

The CPHCCVDMF
(or Countdown to Valentine's)

Sketchy Tales: Valentine's Edition: A Modest Proposal

2/11/2019

I had a nice run with the annual "Many Faces of Love" evening of monologues over the years Yes, often I was guilted into submitting but it forced me out of my comfort zone a little bit. Naturally, they would be comedies, they always come out as comedies. But I like to think that they had some heart to them. I don't wear my heart on my sleeve and wear short sleeves to really keep it from happening. I'm not really that in touch with my feelings, so to write about love is not my strength. Fortunately, the festival was always open to other outlooks on love. This piece kinda grew from the title, which is an obscure enough reference to a Jonathon Swift essay. And, to kinda reaffirm my reasons for getting married. Love is a rock and time and elements can wear down a rock. Writing lets me go back and relive the moments that time can erase, and rediscover a certain period of time, both the joys and the willies. So, here is a recording of my entry performed at the 2017 festival.

2017
This edition of Sketchy Tales is brought to you by "Love and Other Distractions" the anthology for charity! Fifteen Hollywood writers spin tales of romance and more! Including me! Cupid flies the coup and Nick Flebber has to find him in "Cupid is as Cupid Does." Get your copy today at Amazon!

A Modest Proposal

Sketchy Tales: Valentine's Edition - A Beautiful Friendship

2/10/2019

I once wrote a joke that went "I like my comedy the way I like my chocolate; bittersweet." And I wrote it about this sketch. It's an early sketch of mine and it was very close to my heart, it's almost a one act play. It's combines my love of Casablanca and my social awkwardness. And it certainly stems from my love of movies, to the point that I often, back then, would go to the movies by myself because no one else wanted to see them. I was curious if I could write a bittersweet thing and I was locked on the idea of two people who could not get out of their own way, who could not overcome their own introversion when face with a real connection.

The play did go up at a workshop and it did work. It was a bit that was always included in any packet I sent, as a way to show range ("That's correct, I wrote both "Pet Rock" and this..."}. Man, I even thought so much of it, that I made it the center piece of a play I wrote, the story of a writer whose growth we witness when he presents the first draft of this sketch as a slap-stick, pie-throwing bit and later rewrites it to reflect a more mature attitude. Which is probably a lot of pretense to lay on the shoulders of this little sketch.

This edition of Sketchy Tales is brought to you by "Love and Other Distractions" the anthology for charity! Fifteen Hollywood writers spin tales of romance and more! Including me! Cupid flies the coup and Nick Flebber has to find him in "Cupid is as Cupid Does." Get your copy today at Amazon!

A Beautiful Friendship

Sketchy Tales - Valentine's Day Edition - Blind Date

2/9/2019

This is an early sketch of mine, a real hybrid. It's Python-esque in it's premise; a woman shows up for a date with a bag on her head. It's full of terrible puns (and by "terrible puns" I mean "puns"). But it kinda makes a point. That's something I like about some of my sketches, they start out silly but I actually can hang something on them, or they have a true beginning, middle and end. And a satisfying ending, not just a black-out. I remember working on the ridiculous premise and trying to ground it in some sort of reality as well as an internal logic that holds.

It's a longer form sketch, which I was more in the habit of writing when I started out. I brought it with me to Style Without Substance and they performed it a number of times with different cast members. This is from a show in NYC, which I picked because the video camera was closer to the actors than it was when they performed it at the Whole Theater. I brought it with me years later to the Staten Island comedy troupe Generation Sketch and they used it as well. It's probably one of the few bits I didn't pitch to Prairie Home Companion because it was such a visual bit. I hope you'll agree....wait, what...?

This edition of Sketchy Tales is brought to you by "Love and Other Distractions" the anthology for charity! Fifteen Hollywood writers spin tales of romance and more! Including me! Cupid flies the coup and Nick Flebber has to find him in "Cupid is as Cupid Does." Get your copy today at Amazon!

Blind Date

Sketchy Tales: Valentine's Edition - A Guy's Tale

2/8/2019

This is one of those sketches that that gets tricky for me. Writers get thoughts, all kind of thoughts. Some thoughts are creative, some are nice, some are dark and some aren't family friendly. Sometimes a sketch forms at the intersection of frustration and fantasy. A guy cheats on his wife. It's told via a narrator, reading it as if it was a storybook and we go to the actors doing their recreation of the moments. It's sweet and unassuming. It's callous. It's ironic. And a little bit misogynous. I turned it into a short story to submit to a collection of short stories being published at Amazon, Something to Read on the Ride. And it sat there for awhile. But I got some nice feedback on it.

When the "Many Faces of Love" festival rolled around again and I wanted to see if I could turn it into a monologue, one that ran 2-3 minutes. The artistic director of the festival accepted the piece, but asked it I could change the point of view to a First Person narrative, make it into a monologue from the guy in the story. I discovered I couldn't. Or as I responded;

As for point-of-view…I’d been over that when I first wrote the original. It was written like a fairy tale. There needs to be a buffer between the audience and this guy’s actions. There’s betrayal and disloyalty here. I think watching him try to explain it away or “justify” his actions would lose any sympathy for the story teller, IMO.

After making my defense of the POV, I realized the title of the piece, which I did change on a whim for submission from "A Guy's Tale" to "A Guy’s Monologue" didn’t properly frame the monologue. "A Guy’s Monologue" did make it sound like it was going to be a 1st person narrative. So the fix was to revert back to the original title.

As for the recording...my cell phone froze up near the end of the piece. It's the only recording I have of the event, so sorry about that. But it played very well, and I was very happy with it, even as it comes from my less-nurturing side.

Okay, now the technical issues; this was the year I first attended the performances. I was determined to record it with my new iPhone. My new iPhone had other ideas. It cut off toward the end. A dedicated author would have gone back to the second night's show to try it again. I, however, didn't. So, this is the only record I have of that night...

This edition of Sketchy Tales is brought to you by "Love and Other Distractions" the anthology for charity! Fifteen Hollywood writers spin tales of romance and more! Including me! Cupid flies the coup and Nick Flebber has to find him in "Cupid is as Cupid Does." Get your copy today at Amazon!

A Guy's Story

Sketchy Tales: Valentine's Day Edition - Mel's Dinner

2/7/2019

A goofy tale of one man who loved too much and not too well. I did a number of "restaurant sketches" which are always fun to do. A couple at a table, some hired help, some weird twist and you got a 5-minute sketch. If it's just a "couple sketch" it's nice to try and mix up the location, but a restaurant sketch has a wonderful air of possibilities, it's a tremendous jumping off point.

The sketch was done by Style Without Substance a number of times and always played well. This is from the 1988 show in NYC. The title is just a weird reference to Mel's Diner, featured in the TV show "Alice" and has no bearing on anything, except the guy's name is Mel.

This edition of Sketchy Tales is brought to you by "Love and Other Distractions" the anthology for charity! Fifteen Hollywood writers spin tales of romance and more! Including me! Cupid flies the coup and Nick Flebber has to find him in "Cupid is as Cupid Does." Get your copy today at Amazon!

Mel's Dinner

comedy, writer, Dan Fiorella, Daniel fiorella, screenplay, sketches,radio,computer games, television writer