Category: Sketchy Tales - Dan Fiorella: Writer @ large

Dan Fiorella

Sketchy Tales: American Idol Edition - Mandisa

3/2/2019

Wow, this many posts in a week you'd think I'd have something to say! As we approach the start of AI '19, I wanted to show off and bring out my old ACN sketches written back in 2008. ACN had great production values and they were churning out this material constantly. They were always open to new ideas and playing around within the format. I was thrilled that I had come upon a new way to satirize a show without too much overhead; a few bars of the theme, an announcer talks and, boom, you're done. Wish I had some kind of trademark on the thing...

Dan Fiorella · Negative American Idol Ads-Mandisa

Sketchy Tales: American Idol Edition - Paris

3/1/2019

Sure, in March 2008, negative political ads were around long enough to be a comedy troupe, but then, the negativity was pretty much confined to the ad. People didn't feel the need to take it on the road. YET. Of course, applying that level of vitriol to a singing competition is so off-kilter that it made perfect comedy sense. I was very happy the way these things out. There was a good amount of re-writing on a couple of them, but once the template was set, I didn't feel as bad about the changes.

Sketchy Tales: American Idol Edition - Bucky

2/28/2019

Holy Dunkleman! Sometimes it's hard to come up with a decent sketch idea. People mock SNL or Mad-TV for relying on repeating characters and routines, but sometimes that's all you got. I was lucky American Comedy Network (RIP) let me run with these things. So, from the 2008 season of Idol, we proudly post:

Dan Fiorella · Negative American Idol Ads-Bucky

Sketchy Tales: American Idol Edition - Kelly

2/27/2019

When they cancelled American Idol, who'da thought I'd ever get to pull out these old bits again. Sure, sure, they are very much of the cast of the March 2008 season, but I think they are silly enough to avoid aging, now that the show is back on the air. The biggest problem to these bits was deciding which singer was going to go negative on which other singer. I wasn't following the show that closely, so many of my first drafts were vague, but the guys at ACN, who produced and distributed the sketches filled in a lot of blanks...

Dan Fiorella · Negative American Idol Ads-Kelly

Sketchy Tales: American Idol Edition - Ace

2/25/2019

Like 10 years ago, there was this big hit TV show that was all the rage. It was called "American Idol." It was a singing competition. I wonder what happened to it. Oh, right, it got rebooted last year and is on ABC now. Well, as the newest season approaches, I wanted to pull out some radio bits I wrote 10 years ago.

One of the great running gags I came up with for American Comedy Network was taking the negative political ads and applying it to other venues. I think it was the Iraqi elections that were held after our invasion that I did first, applying typical GOP dirty trick-style ads for an election that had nothing like that going on. Then it was the election for the Pope in 2005. Then Miss America and so on.

The radio producers at American Comedy Network saw the logic and repeat-ability of the premise and did a couple without my involvement. That hurt. Again, the life of a freelancer, nobody ever comes back to your and says, "Hey how about doing one of these for the Oscar campaigns or "Dancing with the Stars" voting? They would just do it. But, it was some acknowledgement that I had created a viable radio comedy format that just wasn't a straight up parody of the show itself.

Anyway, one of the biggest batches of material I did was these American Idol parodies. I wrote a slew of them. Some of them were re-worked by people who had been following the show more closely than I, but all in all, it was a nice healthy run for myself.

Here we attempt to swiftboat Ace back in 2/2008

Dan Fiorella · Negative American Idol Ads-Ace

Sketchy Tales: Valentine's Edition - Tourist Trap of Love

2/13/2019

Valentine's Day 2018 was the fourth production of "The Many Faces of Love" and my fourth appearance! I was ready for them this time! I actually started working on this toward the end of 2017, knowing the Hudson Warehouse would be doing the festival that year. This has a weird history. It started as a prose piece in 2011. It was a lot darker, about a disgruntled tour guide's last tour. It got posted on the now defunct Higgs-Wheldon site.

It was always tricky for me to come up with a comedic way to have a person do a monologue before an audience. But everyday, commuting to work, I would see the tour buses driving around the city with their stand-up comic tour guides. I even took a couple of these tours. And it's always fun to have someone over share. Now as the submission time approached, I decided to return to the tour bus bit, substitute love for kidnapping and rework it to under 3 minutes. It came out pretty well. Now I realize a better title would have been "The Tender Tourist Trap" but what can you do? Here's the video I took of it with my mini-iPad, which doesn't handle stage lighting well, featuring Jamie Flanagan and directed by Nicholas Martin-Smith...

This edition of Sketchy Tales is brought to you by "Love and Other Distractions" the anthology for charity! Fifteen Hollywood writers spin tales of romance and more! Including me! Cupid flies the coup and Nick Flebber has to find him in "Cupid is as Cupid Does." Get your copy today at Amazon!

Tourist Trap of Love

Sketchy Tales: Valentine's Edition - A Beautiful Friendship

2/10/2019

I once wrote a joke that went "I like my comedy the way I like my chocolate; bittersweet." And I wrote it about this sketch. It's an early sketch of mine and it was very close to my heart, it's almost a one act play. It's combines my love of Casablanca and my social awkwardness. And it certainly stems from my love of movies, to the point that I often, back then, would go to the movies by myself because no one else wanted to see them. I was curious if I could write a bittersweet thing and I was locked on the idea of two people who could not get out of their own way, who could not overcome their own introversion when face with a real connection.

The play did go up at a workshop and it did work. It was a bit that was always included in any packet I sent, as a way to show range ("That's correct, I wrote both "Pet Rock" and this..."}. Man, I even thought so much of it, that I made it the center piece of a play I wrote, the story of a writer whose growth we witness when he presents the first draft of this sketch as a slap-stick, pie-throwing bit and later rewrites it to reflect a more mature attitude. Which is probably a lot of pretense to lay on the shoulders of this little sketch.

This edition of Sketchy Tales is brought to you by "Love and Other Distractions" the anthology for charity! Fifteen Hollywood writers spin tales of romance and more! Including me! Cupid flies the coup and Nick Flebber has to find him in "Cupid is as Cupid Does." Get your copy today at Amazon!

A Beautiful Friendship

Sketchy Tales - Valentine's Day Edition - Blind Date

2/9/2019

This is an early sketch of mine, a real hybrid. It's Python-esque in it's premise; a woman shows up for a date with a bag on her head. It's full of terrible puns (and by "terrible puns" I mean "puns"). But it kinda makes a point. That's something I like about some of my sketches, they start out silly but I actually can hang something on them, or they have a true beginning, middle and end. And a satisfying ending, not just a black-out. I remember working on the ridiculous premise and trying to ground it in some sort of reality as well as an internal logic that holds.

It's a longer form sketch, which I was more in the habit of writing when I started out. I brought it with me to Style Without Substance and they performed it a number of times with different cast members. This is from a show in NYC, which I picked because the video camera was closer to the actors than it was when they performed it at the Whole Theater. I brought it with me years later to the Staten Island comedy troupe Generation Sketch and they used it as well. It's probably one of the few bits I didn't pitch to Prairie Home Companion because it was such a visual bit. I hope you'll agree....wait, what...?

This edition of Sketchy Tales is brought to you by "Love and Other Distractions" the anthology for charity! Fifteen Hollywood writers spin tales of romance and more! Including me! Cupid flies the coup and Nick Flebber has to find him in "Cupid is as Cupid Does." Get your copy today at Amazon!

Blind Date

Sketchy Tales: Valentine's Edition - A Guy's Tale

2/8/2019

This is one of those sketches that that gets tricky for me. Writers get thoughts, all kind of thoughts. Some thoughts are creative, some are nice, some are dark and some aren't family friendly. Sometimes a sketch forms at the intersection of frustration and fantasy. A guy cheats on his wife. It's told via a narrator, reading it as if it was a storybook and we go to the actors doing their recreation of the moments. It's sweet and unassuming. It's callous. It's ironic. And a little bit misogynous. I turned it into a short story to submit to a collection of short stories being published at Amazon, Something to Read on the Ride. And it sat there for awhile. But I got some nice feedback on it.

When the "Many Faces of Love" festival rolled around again and I wanted to see if I could turn it into a monologue, one that ran 2-3 minutes. The artistic director of the festival accepted the piece, but asked it I could change the point of view to a First Person narrative, make it into a monologue from the guy in the story. I discovered I couldn't. Or as I responded;

As for point-of-view…I’d been over that when I first wrote the original. It was written like a fairy tale. There needs to be a buffer between the audience and this guy’s actions. There’s betrayal and disloyalty here. I think watching him try to explain it away or “justify” his actions would lose any sympathy for the story teller, IMO.

After making my defense of the POV, I realized the title of the piece, which I did change on a whim for submission from "A Guy's Tale" to "A Guy’s Monologue" didn’t properly frame the monologue. "A Guy’s Monologue" did make it sound like it was going to be a 1st person narrative. So the fix was to revert back to the original title.

As for the recording...my cell phone froze up near the end of the piece. It's the only recording I have of the event, so sorry about that. But it played very well, and I was very happy with it, even as it comes from my less-nurturing side.

Okay, now the technical issues; this was the year I first attended the performances. I was determined to record it with my new iPhone. My new iPhone had other ideas. It cut off toward the end. A dedicated author would have gone back to the second night's show to try it again. I, however, didn't. So, this is the only record I have of that night...

This edition of Sketchy Tales is brought to you by "Love and Other Distractions" the anthology for charity! Fifteen Hollywood writers spin tales of romance and more! Including me! Cupid flies the coup and Nick Flebber has to find him in "Cupid is as Cupid Does." Get your copy today at Amazon!

A Guy's Story

Sketchy Tales: Valentine's Day Edition - Mel's Dinner

2/7/2019

A goofy tale of one man who loved too much and not too well. I did a number of "restaurant sketches" which are always fun to do. A couple at a table, some hired help, some weird twist and you got a 5-minute sketch. If it's just a "couple sketch" it's nice to try and mix up the location, but a restaurant sketch has a wonderful air of possibilities, it's a tremendous jumping off point.

The sketch was done by Style Without Substance a number of times and always played well. This is from the 1988 show in NYC. The title is just a weird reference to Mel's Diner, featured in the TV show "Alice" and has no bearing on anything, except the guy's name is Mel.

This edition of Sketchy Tales is brought to you by "Love and Other Distractions" the anthology for charity! Fifteen Hollywood writers spin tales of romance and more! Including me! Cupid flies the coup and Nick Flebber has to find him in "Cupid is as Cupid Does." Get your copy today at Amazon!

Mel's Dinner

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