And up & down week for a number of reasons. The Ellen joke I thought was just odd and a little surreal, and that got in. Go figure. The Mitch McConnell got a 180 on my punchline. I said "And worse, Biden wouldn’t even pick Mitch's wife for a cabinet position!" and it got flipped to how mad he'll be IF Biden picks her, which I'm starting to wonder was simply Tonya misreading the line. And the insurrection joke was just a much wordier take on my original "Well, Sure, undocumented immigrants haven’t tried to overthrow the elected government." I put in the NY Theater joke because the set up was mine, verbatim but the punchline was rejiggered for another version using "shot." Now, while I submitted "but instead of getting two shots, you'll get one shot and an encore," "It'll be the same shot everyone else gets, but with jazz hands," and "Actors are requesting the Moderna vaccine, because they get a shot and a call-back" we both missed the obvious "And these actors aren't throwing away their shot." Silly, right? The show of the 25th was the first anniversary show and the troupe took a well-deserved victory lap for their efforts. It was a fun show, I got a shout-out and they talked a lot about how they put the show together, which is something I've been remarkably lax about learning. I send the jokes and that's it. You can check out that episode here. 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 a quirky bit that I stole from myself. There's a scene in a screenplay I wrote, "The Importance of being Ernie" (or "I was a Teenage Screenplay writer"), that had this scene it it. It was a brazen attempt to update Abbott & Costello wordplay into the newer slang...well, the newer slang, circ. 2000s, which is really 1990s when I originally wrote the scene. It was a set piece which I could easily copy and paste elsewhere. Which is what I did, essentially. I don't recall where the premise set-up came from, if that was based on some real-life rumors that were floating around at the time or not. But it's a simple bit of silliness that didn't stand a chance at PHC. So, here it is, as seen in "The Importance of being Ernie," Translating Youth: Translating Youth It was a pretty solid week for me on TMI. I got many jokes in. Of course there was some re-working of punchlines; the term "recorded" got changed to "TiVo" (because it's hipper?). My phrase, "We finally find voter fraud and this is it????" became a long winded explanation defining the GOP's actions about the fraud. I was surprised to find "duh" got left as-is. My line, "So he hasn’t even bothered to come up with new material during his down time?" which insinuates that Trump is on the level of a comedian got altered to actually using the term "comedian." But the 18th was an odd day where a lot of my set-ups were used, but the punchlines were flipped around. I am absolutely including them, as my structure and logic are there. For instance, my line about the Texas electric bills being forgiven so that people didn't have to pay was "But, make sure you don't forgive the politicians and businesses who allowed it all to happen in the first place" jumping off the term forgiven. It got rewritten to "the business men who caused it won't pay either" playing off the word "pay" instead and inverting my warning to not forgive them to assuming they won't pay. Different sides of the same coin, right? The "Biden won the election" was reworded for some reason, but the exact same intent. And the Brad Pit joke took my "HBO docu-series" punchline and made it a long, winding sentence to get to the same place and beat you over the head with it. As for the 19th, they took one of my earlier joke punchlines ("another broken campaign promised" and recycled on a joke that very closely resembles a submission from 2 weeks ago. The CDC set up was mine, verbatim, and the cow/seaweed joke. The punchlines were totally different though. The CDC went from "how kids away from school too long think 3 feet is twice as far as six" and the cow joke was simply silly, about getting the cows to the beach instead of some weird knock on LA lifestyles. Is seaweed diets a thing in L.A.? Anyway, you'll have to go to the TMI: Hollywood FB page to hear those, as I didn't include them. Then there was the talk radio joke. I used the word "business" first and changed it to "racket" in the actual submission. Then they changed it back to "business" and added the word recently. Why? It's fascinating to see these changes, big and small, happen. All this time and I really don't think we've created a "voice" for Tonya, although once in a while I try to through in something off speed to see what she does with it. But since I'm not in any writing rooms, I'm totally in the dark as to why it occurs. Anyway, just to remind everyone, TMI: Daily is on the TMI: Hollywood Facebook Page weeknights at 6pm on (Hollywood time). And here's my contributions for last week:
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...
As March approaches, we were deep into award season. You had the Emmys, the Tonys, the Grammys, so why not the Noisys? It seemed like the perfect set-up to do one of PHC's patented SFX bits; an off-beat excuse to allow Tom Keith to run through his assortment of sound-making toys. It's a short bit with a lot of silly pun-like sound cues and I thought it worked quite well. I don't recall trying to foist it on to the other radio outlets I was dealing with, they were all dealing with pop music outlets and probably wouldn't consider a sound-effects heavy bit, even if we could tie it to awards season. Needless to say, PHC took a pass on it.
The Noisy Awards
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 a heavily recycled bit. I had come up with a couple of sketches and pitched them as a series of black-outs for an ABC comedy pilot called "Where's the Party," a sketch-comedy-music-talk show. I honestly don't remember how the idea came about, but there were a series of sketches about a news team that was so desperate to be the first on the air that they caused the problems. It got produced in 1991. The bits got scaled back a bit (as you'll see in the video below) for budget reasons. But the radio version went all out again, as originally written. So I pulled them out and submitted it to PHC. They didn't go for it. Years later (I think 2010) I submitted to the All Star production Network and they did do two of the full sketches. I'm including them below, as well. So, again, first rule of comedy writing, Never Throw Anything Out.
NPR NewsSo, the gang took the first week of March off, which was a much needed break for all. The day job was going nuts the last few weeks and squeezing in time to write up the jokes before the deadline has been getting tough. But I managed. Got at least one joke in everyday, except Wednesday. And I really thought I had some solid ones, too. Hey, if you want to see what they didn't use, you can check out my Twitter feed, @danfiorella, because that's where I road test my humor. It was busy week for the troupe as well, they had to use 3 hosts this week, our main host, Tonya Harris, the usual fill-in, Cameron Weir and the newbie, Emma Lieberman. Again, some rewording, some context added, some sentences grafted on, but it's my stuff. Once again, just to remind everyone, TMI: Daily is on the TMI: Hollywood Facebook Page weeknights at 6pm on (Hollywood time). And here's my contributions for last week: 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... 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 sketch I was really proud of. I went through a phrase of song parodies, writing for ACN and such, but when the Enron sandal hit, I just saw it as the exact plot of The Producers-a company that could make more money (for the owners) failing than succeeding. Power companies were selling off their power plants and only wanted to deliver the electricity without have to concern themselves about producing the power, maintaining the plants or keeping the infrastructure intact. And this sketch just came out of all of that. None of the songs are from the Producers musical. The play opening in April 2001 and ran until 2007. I didn't see until the final years, so I didn't know those songs. Actually, all these years later, I still don't, really. I peddled this skit around to everyone. It was a writing sample for a while because it was too long for my radio outlets and I didn't have a real stage outlet then. I finally just adapted it for PHC. I knew this was a long shot going in and I was right. But, in light of the recent events in Texas (home of Enron), the sketch still seems relevant. Enron: The Musical! |
Dan FiorellaFreelance writer, still hacking away. Archives
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