Category: From The Slushpile - Dan Fiorella: Writer @ large

Dan Fiorella

Barely Home Companion - Silents is Golden (May 2002)

5/28/2021

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 must have been battling quite the writer's block back then, because this bit is a lazily re-worked essay from my college days. I was going through a severe Woody Allen phase back in college and wrote a number of essays mimicking his style. It was a diary-style article, that was inspired by a class where we discussed the transition in film from silent movies to sound. My memories are vague on this, but I seem to recall the opening paragraph referencing "Singing in the Rain" so it must have been a film class.

And it's not even like PHC was in Hollywood, so I don't even know what prompted me to submit this sketch. I guess the lack of effort show because it wasn't used.

Silents is Golden

Leave it to the Prose- PandemicWorld

4/16/2020

Here's something I was bicycling around to the few sites I have a relationship with....

DisneyWorld Announces New Post-Virus Attractions

Yes, a lot of vacation plans went awry when the Disney theme parks closed in the face of the Coronavirus. It was the right decision to make, but disappointed us. But, like everyone else, Disney is making plans for its reopening. To that end, they’ve just release a list of the new attractions that the Disney Imagineers are re-theming for their post-quarantine openings:

Small World So Wear a Mask

Personal Space Mountain

Spinning Quarantea Cups

SARS Tours

Transmission to Mars

Hot Zone Tower of Terror

Infected Mansion

Peter Pandemic

River Hospital Boats

EPCOUGH

The Hall of Pestilence

Ventilators of the Caribbean

Country Bear Quarantinee

Shelter-In-Happy Place

The Carousel of Virus

Team Trump Online Video Updates

1/9/2020

Here's a topical piece and I lost my site that took topical pieces. Maybe I'll turn it into a sketch, but these days with the news cycles, no one will remember...

To: @Trump2020

Cc: @POTUS, @RudyColludy, @LevParnas, @ThatIgorFruman

RE: Online Video Pitches

We’re looking at the numbers on the recent video we shared on Twitter and they are insane! The video blew up big time. The people love seeing the President portrayed in a copyrighted clip as Thanos as he’s about to disintegrate the entire universe! When combined with the number of views of our tremendous “Game of Thrones” build-the-wall meme, you can see we have this election in the bag! So, with that in mind, we’ve been going through Wikipedia (not Wikileaks; LOL) to find more iconic and trademarked pop-culture characters we can infringe on. It’s quite a list!

Auric Goldfinger: this was a no brainer! Who loves gold more than Mr. Trump? Picture the scene where James Bond is tied to a table with a laser working its way up toward his groinal regions. Only, in the clip, we’ll put Nancy Pelosi’s face on Bond. So when she says, “Do you expect me to talk?” and Goldfinger/Trump replies “No, I expect you to die” our supporters will go nuts. Many clinically.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter: Style, wit, grace, intellect-who better displays these Trumpian characteristics than Dr. Lecter from “Silence of the Lambs”? We all agree that we should use the scene where Lecter silences all the lambs, i.e., the braying Democrats.

Zombie from “Return of the Living Dead”: We can have Zombie Trump trying to eat the brains of the Democratic leadership, but he keeps saying “These Democrats have no brains!” (If he hasn’t said it already, maybe work the phrase into his next rally) and “I’m still hungry!” (which we’re very sure is on file somewhere).

Jack Torrance: This is Jack Nicholson in “The Shining.” Just imagine having Mr. Trump come busting through the door saying “Here’s MAGA!” while Hillary (or Nancy or Barrack or James Comey or whoever’s on Mr. Trump’s Most Wanted list that week) screams in terror? That’s Trumpism in a nutshell, baby!

The Emperor from “Star Wars”: Lifetime ruler alert! Picture the scene where Emperor Palpatine (now Mr. Trump) tells Luke (now Adam Schiff) “It is of no concern. Soon the rebellion will be crushed.” Or something like that. If that doesn’t make people want to join the Trump Empire, then nothing will!

Lord Voldemort: What could be more dramatic and uplifting for the Republicans then the scene where Lord Donald finally strikes down his mortal enemy, Hillary Potter, with the forbidden spell of “Avada Kedavra” which, we believe, is Latin for “Lock her up!”

Godzilla: Hey, when you think about destroying a corrupt town like Washington D.C., what comes to mind quicker than Godzilla? Imagine Mr. Trump’s head over Godzilla’s as he stomps through town screaming “Drain the swamp” or “Lock her up” (depending on focus group feedback) and we can turn the fleeing populous as members of the Demon-cratic Party (pretty good, right? I just made that up now). In fact, we can lift a whole clip of fleeing Democrats from the Daily Show and their “World War D” footage. I’m sure they won’t mind, either.

Gollum: Okay, he’s another gold-phile, but we can have the scene were Frodo is trying to throw the ring (say, the Constitution) into the flaming fires of Mount Doom and Gollum/Trump leaps out and rescues the ring, yelling: “My precious! My precious,” which would totally be in character for Mr. Trump and his love of the Constitution.

Get back to me on any of these ideas. Me and Lester are ready to put any one of them together! And wait until you see the amazing fake Time covers we’re prepping! And we’ll make sure we don’t send out this text as a tweet again!

Skit Happens: Halloween Edition- Sing-a-long

10/28/2018

Here's a two-fer for today, a couple of song parodies. I'm not even sure when or for whom I wrote these. Cracked Magazine certainly did song parody lyrics, I night have submitted them there. Prairie Home Companion occassionally would to pop song parodies and I'm pretty certain I sent them out to them. The file I found these in was dated 2006, so I must have pitched them to ACN and All Star Radio to boot. I might have included them in an early draft of my script, "Halloweenies." It's all very fuzzy, like a lollipop at the bottom of a trick-or-treat bag. The song titles are easy to see, but the songs themselves were trickier to scan.

So, to remind people that Halloween is coming and I have a Halloween book to sell, here is...

Sing-Along

Skit Happens: Halloween Edition - Halloween Horrors

10/19/2018

October 2004. This was a weird bit. It was a prose bit, the kind I was churning out for no particular reason-a "listicle" as they are called now. An amusing or punny title with a brief gag to follow. I'd done them for the Staten Island Advance, the NY Post, Cracked; come up with a parody theme (movies, TV shows, candy) and riff on them until I had 9-12 items to type up. Even my sketch "Abbott & Othello" begat a list of "Lesser-Known" Shakespeare plays. Anyway, I got it into my head to extract some and turn them into a radio bit for Prairie Home Companion. They passed, but the bit never died. Some titles went off to become actual sketches, some were just folded into other bits, just comic Flotsam and jetsam washing up on humor's shore.

Anyway, all in good fun and here to remind you to get a copy of Halloweenies today!

Halloween Horrors

Skit Happens: Halloween Edition-Young Vlad

10/17/2018

Oct 2017; CBS was pushing prequels to Star Trek and Big Bang Theory, and with Young Sheldon and the Star Trek: Discovery being hits, what else could they try? How about a sit-com about a young, nerdy vampire?
The mash-ups of genres is fun because it lets you play one against the other and putting a horror tale as a family comedy allows you to follow the rhythms and beats of the show while still goofing on it.

11So, to remind people that Halloween is coming and I have a Halloween book to sell, here is...

Young Dracula

Skit Happens: Halloween Edition - Ghost Punkers

10/10/2018

October 2014, with a comedy troupe in sight, I did start trying to turn out season-specific sketches when the whole "Hollywood Current Events" premise didn't interest me. They did do an annual Halloween show, and I know I over-submitted the first year I dealt with him, writing new and resurrecting old bits. This was one of the new bits, a mash-up of two popular reality show tropes; paranormal shows and practical joke shows. As well as goofing on the idea that the SYFY channel was drifting away from its Sci-Fi roots. It's a commercial parody, which means I was still writing sketches that were too brief and needed to work on that. So, to remind people that Halloween is coming and I have a Halloween book to sell, here is...

Ghost Punkers

Skit Happens: Halloween Edition-Aberzombie & Finch

10/9/2018

QUnlike topical sketches, holiday sketches have a shot at being utilized the next year. Or the one after that. Or maybe...
You get the idea, a holiday could have a longer shelf life, but, like most sketches in the world, it'll never see the light of day. And, as you may have guess, I'm kinda a nut about Halloween. So, if I had a venue, I would inevitably start churning out new Halloween skits or recycle some off the hard drive. To mixed results. As I stated with the TMI: Hollywood group, I was still feeling my way, still churning out the shorter skits, but come September, I would begin handing in Halloween bits. Like this one from 2014. Somehow the name popped into my head; of course zombies were all the rage, so eventually a skit followed. The formatting is off for a stage piece. Did I think they would do it as a video? Or did I just automatically fall into a movie template. Who knows? Anyway, I present it here as part of my Halloween themed promo for my book, Halloweenies.

Aberzombie & Finch

Skit Happens 21

9/25/2018

Is there anything that has a shorter shelf life than a topical sketch that isn't selected? Besides 1-ply toilet paper? It's rough. You pull together a decent take on today's pop culture news only to learn they didn't pick your sketch to be in this week's show. Then what? Submit it around to the hundreds of comedy troupes that are looking for sketches from strangers? Save them for that reboot of "Fridays"? Or, do you just start posting on your own blog because you never know (actually you do, but you do it anyway)? Remember when Russia was trying to influence us via social media and the NRA? I decided to ramp it up to the next, logical level:

NyetFlix

Skit Happens 19

9/18/2018

Is there anything that has a shorter shelf life than a topical sketch that isn't selected? Besides fruit from Top Tomato? It's rough. You pull together a decent take on today's pop culture news only to learn they didn't pick your sketch to be in this week's show. Then what? Submit it around to the hundreds of comedy troupes that are looking for sketches from strangers? Submit them as Craig List samples? Or, do you just start posting on your own blog because you never know (actually you do, but you do it anyway)? Remember that awful season of "The Walking Dead" when Negan arrived? No character development, no classic build-up, just the appearance of a crazy man who projected all his bad behavior on Rick. It was rough enough dealing with the election of 2016, but to have to watch snide Negan in action really sucked the fun out of the show. And had me rooting for the zombies. Anyway, I needed to vent, so I wrote up a TWD parody that undermined that maddening episode. Then there was that weird thing they did by having Negan beat the camera, so we didn't know who got beat for the summer. So that gets a nod, too. I have no idea how that would have played on stage. Maybe attack the guy filming the stage show.

Negan At the Bat

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