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

Dan Fiorella

Dispatches from my DVR: Stooge Done Huge

7/19/2021

I stumbled across another movie channel on cable recently, HDNET, and they were doing a Three Stooges marathon, three of their features and the TV-biopic produced by Mel Gibson in 2000. They went right onto the DVR where they joined The Three Stooges movie (2012) I had previously recorded from HBO. So now I was about to do a mega-marathon.

I grew up with the Stooges. They were on every afternoon here in NYC, after school on WPIX, Channel 11, hosted by Officer Joe Bolton. They did 190 shorts for Columbia pictures. Even though it felt like I saw them all, I know I hadn't. I got to go to some midnight matinees in the 1970s where they showed the "banned" Stooge wartime shorts. I got to see some more when home video came out and then more when IFC made a point of showing them, uncut, on cable. What I never saw as much was the features they did.

The Amazing Maskoroni: His Big Shot!

7/17/2021

Some final plague prestidigitation

Dispatches from my DVR: SNL, season 7

7/12/2021

Okay, a follow up to my last SNL post about season 6. I started watching season 7 of the heavily re-launched SNL. It was now officially Dick Ebersol's show. Hold overs from the season 6 finale, Denny Dillion and Gail Matthius, were gone. New hires, Robin Duke, Tim Kazurinsky, and Tony Rosato made the leap. Christine Ebersole and Mary Gross joined the cast. And, of course, Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy would stay and rule the roost. Old man background
actor, Andy Murphy, made it too.

After a brief cold open, the new intro began, calling NYC the most dangerous city with a video reel showing a less-appealing side of New York (this has newly-rehired head writer Michael O'Donoghue written all over it). And the stage looks like they’re doing it from a abandoned warehouse instead of some iconic NY location.

There was no host. The cast just ran out, took a bow and ran off into the first sketch.

The first sketch was a strange two-hander with Gross and Duke as vacationing nuns. It took a while for the audience to warn up to it, but there was a solid laugh at the end. It reminded me of Will Ferrell's first sketch about telling the kid's to get off the shed. Obviously, they were committed to it, but it didn't rock the audience.

They did a sketch about a one night stand, went to a commercial, then came back to a funeral sketch that WAS A CONTINUATION OF THE PREVIOUS SKETCH! Weekend Update became SNL Newsbreak. Oh, and Brian Doyle Murray was still around and now the Newsbreak co-anchor (with Gross). It seemed to be renamed so they could do a clever sight gag the first night that they would be stuck with to diminishing effect for the rest of the season. And the cast had the lines memorized. Not much use of cue cards that I could see.

2021 Marion Thauer Brown Audio Drama Scriptwriting Competition

7/9/2021

It's been announced that my radio script, "Cupid is As Cupid Does" was the winner in this year's MTB Audio Drama Scriptwriting Competition, which celebrates exciting aural storytelling!

The script is an adaptation of my short story that was published in "Love and Other Distractions: An Anthology by 14 Hollywood Writers." You can pick up a copy today. All proceeds go to charity!

The story is a sequel of sorts to my film script "Lost Claus." I've been working on several episodes of a project I call "The Nick Files," where the detective character, Nick Flebber, is called in to solved other odd-ball cases. I started adapting them to radio, getting the idea from the time I took the film script and knocked it down to a 15-minute sketch for Prairie Home Companion. They didn't produce it, but I sent it around to various radio groups and it's been produced. I followed that up with an adaptation of my book "Author in the First" and then found a home with the Lakes Area Radio Theater. They have produced "Never Say Never Neverland Again," "The Leprechaun Job" and "Spoiler Alert" but I'm still waiting for them to post the shows online.

Wow, this post went off in a lot of directions at once.

Barely Home Companion - Radio Sight Gags (July 2002)

7/9/2021

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home 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...

PHC was winding down for the 2001-02 season with their big Season Finale. I always would try to put something together that was bigger and broader to make a year-end splash. The show announced it would begin live-streaming the show on the internet and that triggered this idea, a sketch about radio sight gags.

It's something I've alluded to before, with things like "radio magicians" and such but the idea of online video made this a skit that had to be submitted. I checked my journals from this time and I was pretty distraught, trying to finish up a screenplay, trying to get a paying gig as I watched Cracked magazine start to implode. The day job was a nightmare and the family kept me busy. I noted in my notebook how I had an idea, then forgot it, then remembered it as I was writing I forgot it. I was upbeat about the idea and thought it was funny and how I had to add a mime to the end to punch it up. Again, a brief bit of silliness and sound effects that I would have bet PHC would love! I would have lost that bet. The show aired for the last time that season without me. And again, a very specific sketch that couldn't be submitted elsewhere

Radio Sight Gags

TMI: Daily-Week of June 29, 2021

7/7/2021

These are my final jokes from the final week of TMI: Daily. The group is taking the summer off and then plans to relaunch the show under a different title and/or format, adjusting for post-pandemic life. And hopefully the group will be back onstage in their sketch-comedy format, too.

I am glad to be a part of it, in the background. Writing for this day after day kept the pandemic at bay and let my vent a lot of my fears, anger and frustration. I was one of the lucky ones, I was able to work from home the whole time and didn't have money woes or eviction fears. But many of the cast members did. They got to share and vent and make the pandemic person for us. And hopefully brought some laughter with the insights.

It was a short week, 3 shows. I missed the first show because I was away. Nothing got in the Wednesday show, but then I managed to score 2 jokes in the season finale, which underwent the usual re-wording. So, take it away, TMI: Daily...

Dispatches from my DVR: SNL: The Lost Season

7/5/2021

(Okay, technically, this is a dispatch from my Roku, but isn't streaming basically America's DVR?)

Thanks to Peacock, NBC's streaming service, you can now watch all the episodes of SNL. Not all of each episode, but all of the episodes.

A few years back, I had gathered, through gifts, prize awards and purchase, the DVD box sets of the first 5 seasons of NBC's Saturday Night (aka Saturday Night Live). These boxed sets were a massive undertaking for Broadway Video due to all the music and film rights they had to secure to present the shows as they were originally (practically) broadcast (At the time an SNL BBS was complaining that they didn't use the various host portraits where the commercial breaks would have been). The task had been so exhausting and expensive, the powers that be decided not to bother doing it for any other show after the fifth season.

Watching these DVDs made me curious about the remarkable and disastrous 6th season of SNL. I poked around online at the time and there were bootleg copies of the shows available, but I couldn't bring myself to buy a set.

Barely Home Companion - Wall $treet Week With Martha Stewart (July 2002)

7/2/2021

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home 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...

I was finally getting back into a groove, creating new "comedy content" (as it is now called) for PHC. The road trip cleared away some of the cobwebs. Then the Martha Steward insider scandal starting heating up in addition to all the other shady Wall Street nonsense that had been going on during the course of the year. I am not a fan of Wall Street (having worked there for decades) and Martha Stewart was definitely singled out for something a lot of actual brokers and Congresspeople get away with all the time. It's a short bit, but it holds a lot of my contempt. I thought I did a clever job of combining the idea of home crafts with the idea of a financial show. And the show had done a Martha Stewart impression in the past. Seemed like a decent thing to pitch but it was a swing and a miss. So, we're pulling this sketch out of mothballs for the blog...

Wall $treet Week With Martha Stewart

Getting "Steamed!", Part 9

6/28/2021

The horror/comedy film, STEAMED!, co-written by Beverly Bonner and Dan Fiorella, is making the rounds on the film festival circuit. How did it come together?

Beverly selected what she felt was the perfect night for the premiere of the horror/comedy short, "Steamed": October 31, 2019, Halloween night! Which, of course, would be. I was a little upset (as I usually am). I'm a Halloween geek. I decorate my house. I write sketches about it. I wrote a screenplay and book about it. So, if I wasn't going to be home Halloween, what was even the point of decorating? I mean, you put up decorations to lure children to your home to give candy, right? It was going to be a lackluster homefront for All Hallow's Eve. And, I kinda pulled my punches about inviting people. I wasn't sure how the movie turned out, so I didn't really put the word out amongst friends and families. However, I did invite my writer friends for the show and they came to support me! I did remind them about the whole Beverly Sketch Show thing years ago and they came anyway!

Another thing; I finally got around to watching "Basket Case." I knew she had been in contact with the director, Frank Henenlotter, who was still a friend. I knew she got him to do a cameo in the film. And he might be at the premiere. I figured I would finally have to bite the bullet and see the movie. I told her I saw it. I told I was glad I didn't see it before we did the movie because I would have been too influenced by it. It's a weird little film and I get why it's a cult classic. And watching a younger Beverly was a revelation. She had chops.

Barely Home Companion - Kettering, Ohio (June 2002)

6/25/2021

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home 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 is one of those pieces I had totally forgotten about. PHC was on one of its road trips and was doing a show from Kettering, Ohio, which usually meant they liked to do some bits about the town they're in and it's history. I had become fond of these times because they forced me out of my box. As noted, I was running on creative fumes, submitting old material to the show. So, I did some internetting about Kettering, Ohio and wrote up a lecture about the town.

I have to say, rereading it now, it's actually pretty good. I present the facts in a goofy fashion and had fun with the topic and the man the town is named after. Naturally, I was disappointed it wasn't used, more so because there was absolutely nowhere else to send it. That was the thing with PHC, you wanted to write in its voice but that made it harder to submit rejected material elsewhere. It was something I always did with the more neutral or generic comedy sketches, but these type of things were dead in the water. Well, here it is for the first time anywhere; a celebration of Kettering, Ohio on its 50th anniversary:

Kettering, Ohio

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