Blog Posts - Dan Fiorella: Writer @ large

Dan Fiorella

Barely Home Companion - The Noisy Awards (March 2002)

3/19/2021

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...

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

Barely Home Companion - NPR News (March 2002)

3/15/2021

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 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 News

TMI: Daily-Week of March 8, 2021

3/14/2021

So, 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:

Barely Home Companion - Enron: the Musical! Mar. '02

3/5/2021

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...
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!

TMI: Daily-Week of Feb. 22, 2021

2/28/2021

Writing is such a weird life. I thought it was going to be a lean week. I had one joke in Monday. Then nothing on Tuesday or Wednesday. I have to admit that my jokes were pretty weak those days, and the creative juices felt dried up. Then I got 4 jokes in Thursday, and another 2 on Friday, so, all in all, a very respectable week for my material. The I liked the cocaine joke, or the performance of it. As a joke it's okay and pretty obvious, but I ginning it up by taking the obvious line "They're great" and going overboard with the repetition, which Tonya sold BIG TIME. I like how the Ted Cruz joke played out as well.

Anyway, 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:

Barely Home Companion - CREDIT SHORTAGE (2/02)

2/25/2021

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...

I had forgotten about this sketch, kinda. It was sequel to another sketch I submitted earlier in the season (The Digital Shortage) which wasn't used. But while I was looking something else up in my journal, I actually mentioned this sketch a couple of times before I submitted it. I have vague recollections about being annoyed by the lack of on air credit and recognition I was receiving on the show, and a phrase or two must have popped into my head and I wrote it up as another crisis where there wasn't enough credit to go around. It's not exactly hard hitting but between PHC and other credit problems I was having, I was me venting in a round about way. As a sequel to a sketch they rejected. In the end, they passed, so no credit for me!

CREDIT SHORTAGE

Barely Home Companion - GOSSIP (2/02)

2/22/2021

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...

Man, I have had no idea what generated this sketch idea. I mean, I reference something called "Words Can Heal" but where would have I heard about that? It sounds like it was some kind of "Be Best" thing of the 'naughts. Reading the sketch, most of it is still applicable. Oh, the hunter/gather bit? I had been working that gag into everything for a while. Finally got it into Cracked as a "Prehistoric Web Page" gag. I still use it ("Oh, he's a hunter, but he identifies as a gatherer." See, still works.) It didn't get picked, though. It's not a bad little bit, but it is very much of the PHC template, so there was never an attempt to re-purpose it elsewhere.

GOSSIP

TMI: Daily-Week of Feb. 15, 2021

2/20/2021

It was a solid week for me and my jokes. But again, things that could have been reworked better weren't ("They secede" should have been "Texas secedes.") and punchlines that were fine were extended (adding "Deutsche Bank" or "for no reason." Or reworking the donut gag from "I'm starting to understand why they think Trump won" to "who wants to bet she thinks 74 million votes beats 81 million." It's the same internal joke logic, but repainted. The Atlantic City punchline is a line I've been using constantly has the news reported over the last four years how different buildings were removing the Trump name. The Prince Phillip line had "Script changes" added for something I thought was implied my my version. As for the FEMA joke, I'm expecting to here the topper, "2021, am I right?" be pushed into catchphrase territory for any "Biden is doing the actual job" related jokes. And using the actual Spanish pronunciation of "nada" kinda screws up the whole Wanda/Nada wordplay I'm so fonda. But, as I said, a pretty solid week of jokes.

Anyway, 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:

TMI: Daily-Week of Feb. 8, 2021

2/15/2021

No two ways about it, it was a tough week for me on TMI. Only two jokes last week. Maybe they used a couple of my topics, but the punchlines weren't even close to my take, so I'm not going to include them. I've been devoting a hour a day to this (from my day job), so I can't be all prescious about it and I really am just pounding out items. I will admit that I'm adding in my tweets, but, frankly, I've been using Twitter as a joke-creation system, using the topics that come up there as a spark for something. I do now write many of my tweets with an eye toward recycling them on TMI...so if you want to get a sneak preview, go check out @DanFiorella on Twitter. Couldn't hurt.

Anyway, 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:

Barely Home Companion - PIT STOP (2/02)

2/15/2021

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 here is pure silliness. I have a habit of occasionally dropping all pretense of sophisticated comedy and will write absolute goofball stuff. Things like Us Guys , Comic Con and this sketch. It was President's weekend coming which meant the Dayton 500 was happening. Now, is there an overlap between NPR listeners and NASCAR fans? I dunno. But once the idea of a goofy trio stepping in for a missing pit crew, it was a classic comedy premise along with topical humor, political jabs, silly names and, as mentioned earlier, goofiness. Unsurprisingly, it didn't make the cut. Maybe because of the goofiness. This is one of those bits I should be able to recycle somewhere. Maybe next year when sketch comedy makes a comeback post-COVID.

PIT STOP

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