| Dan Fiorella: Writer @ large |
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 This month marks the 9th birthday of my blog. Happy blog-iversary to me! Still not sure if anyone's reading it, but it keeps me off the street at night. It's been a good place to recollect and reminisce about my writing career (such as it is) and pull out some material from the hard drive that never got a shot.
I hope you're enjoying it.
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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...  Well, here's another sketch I had long forgotten about. PHC went to broadcast the show from Germany. I knew they often liked to gear their material toward their hosts, so I came up with this bit. I bet you didn't think I could squeeze this many wall jokes into one sketch but I did! Again, the material is so specific, when they rejected it, I was walled in (I did it again!) and couldn't conceive of any secondary markets to submit it to. After that, they went on hiatus for a couple of weeks. Berlin Wall-NutsFrom 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...  Here's one of those bits I totally forgot about. As I noted in my writer's journal, PHC was headed to Europe for some shows in March. I figured that was as good a premise as any, so, apparently, I wrote this. I can't even begin to imagine where I came up with this. It starts as an auction featuring various cast members' organs that segues into a parody of the Seqway inventors news announcement of "IT," the next big thing, using one of PHC's more obscure regular characters, Larry of Larry Dotcom.com. The jokes are solid. The pacing is good. And I always enjoy trying to take cast members and create a "character" for them. It's just a pile of silliness firing on all cylinders, that was just too unique to try and re-work to submit elsewhere. Then there were all the typos. Maybe that put them off. Fundraising for Europe
Well, we did preview the short back on Halloween 2019. They've put together a trailer and we're now in the process of drumming up business. So, if anyone has a drum, let us know!
STEAMED! Trailer from Jacob Maximillian Baron on Vimeo. 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...  Another sketch from the slush pile. I had written this earlier for a workshop and enjoyed it. I noted in my journal that I was prepping it and two European-theme sketches for PHC, as they were going to to a couple of shows from Germany. The sketch was a Siskel & Ebert set-up, but I was really mocking Rex Reed, a NYC film critic of the time. I didn't care for him. He spend entirely too much time and effort denouncing Blake Edwards' films every time a Pink Panther movie came up. I loved the Pink Panther movies so I always wondered what bug was sticking up Reed's rear-end. I re-worked the to be audio (of course, but it was very dialogue heavy to begin with). I recast the roles to allow the PHC players to each take a part and then I had the set-up simply be, as GK often did, a segment on the show. "Titanic Panic" is a title from a prose piece I did pitching new Titanic sequels. In retrospect, this has WAY too many pop culture references in it, in addition to being a parody of a TV show, to really be considered for the show. And I was too lazy to keep updating it to submit elsewhere. But I always loved the ending. I felt like I put my BFA in Cinema Studies to good use. SNAP PREVIEWSFrom 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...  As I noted way back when, the first bit that got on PHC was my skit "Abbott & Othello." And as I stated elsewhere, Abbott & Othello became kind of a cottage industry for me. Now, my journal for February 2001 doesn't record much about this time. It says I was skipping a week (the grind must have been getting to me) and prepping a movie review sketch for the next show and a couple of bits for their shows that were going to be done in Europe. And I have those sketches in the queue. No mention of me pulling a sketch out of the draw and re-working it for PHC. But, that's what I did. I took one of my Shakespeare bits and adapted it into a radio sketch and send it. The sketch was "The Road to Hamlet." I have to say, I love this sketch, I always have. I got to do snappy dialogue and song parodies all in a genre I created. It's an epic sketch and has yet to be put on its feet. I thought it was perfect for the stage, but converting it to radio worked; I changed some sight gags into audio gags (what was originally a stage manager handing out props as needed now becomes the sound effects guy), and where I couldn't convert the gag, I put a hat on it to acknowledge it. I have to say, despite the strong nostalgia factor and its relationship to Abbott & Othello, I really couldn't imagine GK using it, even adding mouth trumpets to mimic what they did in their version of A&O. And, by gum, he didn't. So, I present the radio version of it here: The Road to Hamlet |
Dan FiorellaFreelance writer, still hacking away. 
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