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

Dan Fiorella

Barely Home Companion - 12 Days of Christmas 12/18/99

1/17/2019

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...

This bit I've posted before, as part of my usual countdown to Christmas (and beyond) but it's a very special bit. This would be the second week in a row that I got something on the air, so I was feeling pret-ty cocky. The show was still in New York and still open to Christmas bits so, I sent in "12 Days," which I nicked from my script "Christmas Carol," where some kids to a parody of the song during a pageant.

I was just floored when I heard it produced for the first time. Yes, GK rewrote some of it. And he certainly reworked the song performance, starting from 5 and working up from there. It saved some of the comedy surprises and, more impressively, got the whole audience to sing "Five Onion Rings" just the right number of times; not so many as to get bored, but enough that it grew and got louder as they reached the end. And the audience really sounded like they were having fun. Just wished I could have been there.

Another special thing about this one skit is that the online credit reads "(c) 1999 Dan Fiorella" I have full credit on it, even though he re-wrote some of it (mine was a lot more food oriented). The on air credit is ...fake names..."with some help from Dan Fiorella, Laura Levine and Laura Peterson..." which is nice, yet still demeaning. We helped some fake guys who everyone assumes is GK because he's too modest to take credit. Oh, well...

The thing of it is, the computer disc where I saved the first season of submissions to PHC got corrupted. I can't access it and I don't remember what else I submitted. And back then I was so paranoid about using up memory on my desktop, I always saved things to disc. So, that kinda backfired on me. Two PCs later, the emails didn't survive the transfers, so I don't have them to refer to either. And frankly, my record keeping was a bit spotty at the time. I thought I had the links to all the bits posted, but I can't find them. Even then, it would only be a research tool, as none of the original links are still up, but they would have given me dates on the shows. I just happened to find an old email with the old links to the first 4 bits but on that email, the next bit isn't until May, 2001. Though that long a gap seems possible, it seems long. But for now, on Dec. 18, 1999, Prairie Home Companion preformed my version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas."

Barely Home Companion - Yikes, Virginia 12/11/99

1/14/2019

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...

There's one thing I do recall about my time at PHC, I wasn't writing for GK, I was writing around him. I would use him as the introduction announcer of a bit or as the straight man of any interactions. I treated the the on-air persona of Garrison Keillor as the bemused onlooker. GK didn't hog the laughs. In fact, it never struck me that Keillor was after the big laughs on the show for himself. It certainly played it that way (although one could argue nothing on the show was played for big laughs). Keillor was forever low key, so you never felt he was hogging the spotlight, despite the fact he was omnipresent for the entire show.

But, again, these are all assumptions on my part. It's not like I ever got to meet the guy. It was Christmas 1999 when some of these realizations started to sink in. PHC made it a point to come to New York City for a series of shows at Christmas time. Now, here's the thing...I LIVE in New York City. So one would think I'd get invited to attend, right? Afraid not. I started dropping hints around Thanksgiving about "maybe coming by to see if any of my skits were used." No response. Nothing. As it turned out, I was on a bit of a streak that December, getting two skits on that month. As I have mentioned elsewhere, Christmas is kind of my thing, so I had a TON of material to draw upon.

This skit I called "Yikes, Virginia." It's a riff off the "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" editorial that resulted from the correspondence between a young Virginia O'Hanlon and the editor of the NY Sun asking about Santa's existence.

This skit actually started as a prose piece, which was published by the Staten Island Advance and posted at TheBigJewel.com. I though it would work as a radio bit, especially on PHC; two people reading their letters and answers with GK, as narrator, bridging the divide. And it did work. However, once in GK's hands, it kinda went off into a mockery of GOP policies, so I'm certainly glad my original version is out there.

I'm guessing it's due to all that re-writing that my name doesn't appear on the credits of the sketch performed in my home town on Dec. 11, 1999...

On-air credits were his 10 usual fake names. Online credit reads:

(c) 1999 by Garrison Keillor

Barely Home Companion - Mt. Rushmore 11/20/99

1/11/2019

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...

Let's face it, Garrison Keillor was Prairie Home Companion. People loved him or hated him, I've discovered (of course, more tilting to the latter nowadays). He was considered either a small town rapscallion or a liberal menace. But he was an institution. A radio institution, but still. The show ran for a long time (and in a sense, still runs). It premiered the same year as Saturday Night Live. It was done live. They would broadcast from different locations around the country in the course of a season. He was doing side-hustle shows, to boot, before each broadcast. And when he wasn't broadcasting, it was because he was on a book tour.

My opinion of him is more limited. To be honest, I had never listened to PHC prior to my involvement. I was aware of it, but I didn't know much about it. But a comedy writer should be able to handle anything, so I signed on.

Now we get to Garrison Keillor, show producer. Mr. "Tax & Spend Liberal" was actually the type of boss that necessitated the creation of an organization like the Writers Guild of America. Keillor, or GK as he was referred to on the website, had a habit of arbitrarily altering or changing bits as it suited him. He would extract material from one bit and place it in his own. Hey, maybe it wasn't his own, maybe he had a bunch of other writers submitting material; how would I know? There were never any real writer credits (see below). Once, I submitted an entire sketch, a Charlie Brown Christmas parody, and he took ONE line from it and stuck it at the end of one of his bits.

Oh, and once a skit was submitted, if it wasn't used, it was dead. No re-writing, no updating. It was done.

Let's talk about salary, now, shall we? His pay schedule was unique, to say the least. No weekly staff writer salary here. No per-page per diem. Nope. He based pay on how well he thought the bit went over with the audience. So, basically, my income was hooked to an applause meter, like a game show. It was very arbitrary. Like that Charlie Brown bit? I got paid as if it were a full sketch. Pay checks from PHC were like snowflakes, no two were ever alike.

His credit policy was very lackadaisical. He never failed to mention show writers "Bob Wire" or "Sandy Beach" at the end of each show but I often went unmentioned, and I'm for real! I have no idea to this day who else was unmentioned. He encouraged the belief that he wrote the entire show each week. In fact, before I started writing for him, I called the Writers Guild of America, East (of which I was a new member) to see if I was permitted to write for him, was he a guild signatory? The staff member on the phone said it never came up because they all thought he wrote the whole show. In the end, National Public Radio was not a guild covered venue, so I could freely submit.

Credits were more forthcoming on the website that PHC kept, but not much more. Once GK's behavior issues went public, those web pages were closed down. I have only just discovered that NPR has reopened the pages and archives, so credits (or lack thereof) are back on display.

I got my second sketch, Mt. Rushmore, on the Nov. 20, 1999 show. Same deal, rewritten a bit (they added a "rearranger" joke that just bombed) but not slashed. In fact it was expanded a little, adding a swipe at the local city council and then-Governor Jesse Ventura. Interestingly, this was one of the few times I got a "heads up" going into a show. PHC was on the road that week, preforming in Rapid City, South Dakota and the week before the producer put out word that they wanted site-specific material. I came up with a couple of South Dakota bits and one got on-air. It's actually a character I created for a film script of mine, Forest Ranger Forest Ranger, an obtuse guy who doesn't realize how goofy his name is. I just had to adapt him to become a Park Ranger. Not as funny, I know. But it worked and got a solid reaction and it gave me the confidence to continue submitting after a 4 week dry spell.

No on-air writer credits (fake or otherwise). Online credit reads:

From an idea submitted by Dan Fiorella
(c) 1999 by Garrison Keillor

Barely Home Companion - Abbott & Othello 10/2/99

1/9/2019

One of the most high profile but frustrating writing jobs I had was my time with The Prairie Home Companion. I was a stringer there from 1999 to 2004-ish. It was a solid, but niche credit on my resume, one that had nobody stopping me on the street about it.

Us freelance writers work in a bubble; we write stuff and send it out. Maybe we get feedback, maybe we don't. Replies are typically form letter rejection notes. At PHC, I got material produced, so I assumed they liked it . I assumed they liked me. But I was kept at arm's length. It's more frustrating than the usual freelance gig because now you think you "broke in" but you're really still in your bubble. One would think it would change, even just enough to give you a head's up that they were going to use a skit. But no; you submit the material and then you have to listen for that week's show to hear if it got on or not. Hence the title for his new series, it was like I was barely there.

I generated a lot of material, often submitting 2 skits a week. I would generally re-work an older piece for radio and then write something new. PHC was timely yet timeless. They avoided being too topic, keeping pop culture at bay but they absolutely followed current events. That's just how it was in Lake Woebegon.

Sometimes my material hit and sometimes it missed. Sometimes I really felt I nailed it but most times I didn't. It wasn't from lack of trying. But I certainly did hit the ground running:

In 1999, I responded to an online ad for a radio show looking for comedy writers. I submitted my usual packet of material, which included my go-to bit "Abbott & Othello," a mash-up of Shakespeare and "Who's on First." They bought it. They bought the first skit I submitted. On October 2, 1999, their season premiere, the cast performed "Abbott & Othello."

OK, so they chopped it down from 5 minutes to 45 seconds, but still, it got on air. It got a lot of laughs and kicked off a productive autumn and winter, where I got several more items on, giving me a sense that I had a steady gig. The producer at the time, the one who "hired" me, Christine Tschida, was a fan of my writing (and my only source of feedback when I requested it). However, if you go to the site, note the credits: (c) 1999 by Garrison Keillor (idea contributed by Dan Fiorella). I did get my first on-air mention here, buried in a list of 11 fake writer names he says "with material by Dan Fiorella, Laura Levine," and more fake names. I'm assuming Laura Levine is real. But that was a heady moment, nonetheless.

Thus was my entry into the Minnesota Mafia...

Sketchy Tales: 12th Day of Christmas Edition

1/6/2019

Well, time and Yuletide wait for no man (that's a line from my book). This is Little Christmas, Three Kings Day, The Epiphany, the Twelfth day of Christmas. Screw it, I'm going to wind up the holiday season by repeating myself. Here' s the Prairie Home Companion production of my song parody, the 12 Days of Christmas!

If you liked this bit of holiday fun, you'll love my book, Lost Claus, the story of a tough PI and an elf who have to save Christmas. It's over at Amazon. Buy a copy today! Yule be glad you did!

On the 11th Day of Christmas...

1/5/2019

Technically, this is a real version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas." Technically. But the Muppets put their own spin on it. I remember watching the special when it was on. Back in the days when networks did new Christmas TV specials. It's a lot of fun. And here's the thing; it's a record. You can't see the Muppets but it totally works, like Charlie McCarthy on the radio (google it).

If you liked this bit of holiday fun, you'll love my book, Lost Claus, the story of a tough PI and an elf who have to save Christmas. It's over at Amazon. Buy a copy today! Yule be glad you did!

On the 10th Day of Christmas...

1/4/2019

There once was a show called Second City TV. Then it became SCTV. And then a couple of characters created on the show took off (inside joke) big time! For a while Bob & Doug McKenze were everywhere; TV, SNL, movies, music charts and the radio! They had a hit "song" off their hit album, "The Great White North." Lesser known was this bit that was on the record as well, to be played only for the holidays. It instantly went on my Christmas mixtape! The Great White North version of 12 days.

If you liked this bit of post-holiday fun, you'll love my book, Lost Claus, the story of a tough PI and an elf who have to save Christmas. It's over at Amazon. Buy a copy today! Yule be glad you did!

On the 9th Day of Christmas...

1/3/2019

This was a goofy bit I remember hearing on the radio years ago. So naturally I had to seek it out on the web. And there it was. This is some groups lip-synch of it, but the song works as it starts as pure parody and then veers off into outright comedy but remaining in the perimeters of the song.

If you liked this holiday bit, you'll love my book, Lost Claus, the story of a tough PI and an elf who have to save Christmas. It's over at Amazon. Buy a copy today! I'll be glad you did!

On the 8th Day of Christmas...

1/2/2019

This may be the first time I heard a parody of 12 Day of Christmas. I recongnzied the voice, it was that "Hello Mudder, Hello Fadder" guy. I listened to this and started to realize that it was possible to play around with standards and such and have fun with them. I mean, this is a rough song to parody, you're either going to go the distance or not. It's like deciding to do a parody of "A 100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall." A some point, people are just going to lose interest. But Sherman committed, he cheated when he could and he plowed right through! Good for him!

This bit of Holly-Jolliness is brought to you by "Lost Claus" the snappy Christmas comedy mystery! It's a Christmas-tery! Leaping Yule Logs, Santa's missing! And only one man can find him, Nick Flebber, PI. Get your copy today at Amazon! It's more fun than a barrel of elves!

Sketchy Tales: New Year's Edition - Our Easy-to-keep New Year's Resolutions!

1/1/2019

Never throw anything out; that's one resolution I've kept! I wrote and re-wrote this bit quite a bit. It bounced back and forth between venues, radio and prose; as a skit and a Reader's Digest submission. Finally The Big Jewel used it. I had to expand it out somewhat to reach the word count, but it holds up and transferred well, since it was barely a radio skit to begin with. I guess I figured it would be done as a series of "black out" sketches, with the big intro, then recite one resolution then do it again later with another resolution. Oh, well...

We present this comedy to remind you that my Christmas Comedy Caper, Lost Claus is available over at Amazon. So buy your copy today and avoid the holiday rush!

Our Easy-To-Keep New Years Resolutions!

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