Your Room of Rooms
The Greatest Fictional Sketch Comedy Writer’s Rooms That I Can Recall In The Order I Recall Them.
I’ve long held a deep fascination with screen portrayals of comedy writer’s rooms. To me they were as fascinating and as far away as any alien vista, and they had that tantalizing quality of being created by those who’d been there! Surely they are accurate! These guys wouldn’t exaggerate.
The Comedy Cavalcade
Appeared: My Favourite Year (1983)
Likely based on: Your Show of Shows (1950–54).
Mel Brooks produced this movie (not wrote mind you; the writer has since become a psychotherapist), and it feels very reminiscent of the stories he’s told of working for Sid Caesar. The main character Benjy Stone is a short, high energy writer who has taken an anglicized name but wears his Jewishness on his sleeve. He works for the cigar-chomping star Stan ‘King’ Kaiser, whose clearly Caesar not just in name but in his unusual toughness
Throughout the film King physically takes on a corrupt union gangster and his goons.
Other writers include the soft-spoken Herb Lee, a fill in Neil Simon, head writer Leo Silver (Mel Tolkin it seems) and sassy female writer Alice Miller (likely Lucille Kallen, although possibly Selma Diamond who has a cameo).
The writer’s room is: Furious, and snippy. Writers are insulting each other as fast as they pitch jokes, and they pitch jokes hard. The writers room is basically a tiny thing with a projector (they watch movies of the guest there), so must of the writing seems to be on legal pads in the halls or the studio stage ducking and weaving between camera and leggy dames in cigarette boxes
This seems to be de rigueur when showing showbiz of the 40’s and 50’s (when this film is set): that comedy is fast, violent, jobs are being handed out if you got enough moxie, and writers are portrayed as no-nonsense blue collar workers identical to the carpenters or the trolley operator.
The Max Prince Show
Appeared: Laughter on the 23rd Floor (1993)
Likely based on: Your Show of Shows (1950–54), and Caeser’s Hour (1954-57). I say both, because there is an analogy to Larry Gelbart who didn’t come on to the follow-up Caeser’s hour.
The play’s writer Neil Simon was also a young sketch writer like protagonist Lucas Brickman. He works for cigar-chomping Max Prince (Sid Caesar, obviously, Prince even plays Emperor Caesar in the sketch), along with a slew of other equivalents of real life writers (there’s a Mel Brooks’ character who is perpetually late called Ira Stone, bizarrely close to Benjy Stone from My Favourite Year).
The writer’s room is: A tense atmosphere, although this might be as much about the plot to weed out communists in the ranks. Here again jokes are currency to each other, to the point that inerior ones sneaking into the show are seen as nefarious as those communists.
The Alan Brady Show
Appeared: The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966)
Likely based on: Your Show of Shows. That’s right, we have another ex-writer, this time Carl Reiner, talking about their life on the show. That’s pretty crazy really isn’t it? Carl Reiner is Alan Brady, the substitute for Sid Caesar, although the main character is writer Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke).
The writer’s room is: So supportive! There is just three writers, and they literally do bits…improv scenes really… on the chairs in the middle of the room for each other till they get something. Its really quite a small part of the show, which is today more famous for having a loving couple in it as well (such a happy show), but notably because this could be perhaps the only portrayal of comedy writers as having full loving home lives. It has been depicted as a job as opposed to a calling before and since, but this might also be the only where its a job you can just leave at the office (even if Dick often uses one to support the other).
The Jesters
Appeared: The Jesters (2009–2011)
Likely based on: More generic, but there are purposeful parallels between uni revue turned TV deal troupes like D-Generation, The Eleventh Hour and specifically The Chaser. Mick Molly is playing himself in all but name as a has-been around the tracks sketch star mentoring a fresh faced comedy team, and there are in-name cameos from Steve Vizard etc.
The writer’s room is: Surprisingly supportive, and useful. The problems they face we’ve seen plenty in other behind the scenes fare (Moving Wallpaper) of meddling studios, egotistical literary elite writers, and scum of the earth stars. But certain scenes almost feel like real word-in-the-ear advice, such as Mick’s reused patter to radio interviews, or ‘Bert Newton’s Laws of Show Biz’.
The Girlie Show (TGS)
Appeared: 30 Rock (2006–2013)
Likely based on: Saturday Night Live, surely. 30 Rock is the real address of the iconic New York show, Tina was head writer like her character Liz, and the (live) sketches have similar rhythms and theme tunes to SNL sketches. However the name and the fact there appears to be only three cast members, one of whom along with Liz founded the show only a few years ago, suggests this is closer to a quiet star-based shows like Frank TV or something. Bizarrely the writers themselves seem very realistic (John Lutz was a still a bonafide SNL writer when he started on the show), to the point that they even follow Fey’s own rule (via Lorne Micheals) of mixing in the Harvard’s such as Twofer with the low-rent Chicago pie-slingers like Frank.
The writer’s room is: The writers appear happy, but they’re lazy, the premises are weak, and they seem to have a little interest in writing comedy as it can be. They suffer no qualms for their art or ability. The head writer seems to carry the show, and even then she’s more interested in lunch or not getting the place burnt down.
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
Appeared: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
Likely based on: Saturday Night Live, it even gets compared as its east coast rival (interestingly, despite being portrayed as THE institution, they made the show younger than SNL). There is a large, diverse cast taken from sketch, improv and stand up backgrounds, shlubby writers of similar pedigree, we see the audience and the announcer and music guests and rotating hosts and the live nature, and we actually see the sketch’s centered around impressions, talk shows, news desks and societal observations.
However the roots of the fictional sketch show go deeper than that, its almost a homage to The Colgate Hour level of show. The writers influences aren’t Eddie Murphy or Adam Sandler or even Monty Python: they are (literally) Judy Holliday, Abbott and Costello, and Gilbert and Sullivan. They even go as far as Comedia Del’Arte. Now, at this point in an essay about fictional comedy writer’s rooms you can assume I’m a classicist, but what the hell? Rudy Vallee?
The writer’s room is: Actually the writers room is almost non-existent. New head writer Matt Albie is determined to write the whole show on his own (they contribute one 90 second stream of jokes, not even a sketch, over three shows), and eventually they all jump ship to sitcom Peripheral Vison Man which at least is meant to be as terrible as it sounds. I’d say it’s an unrealistic plot device (like 30 Rock) to make us feel for the main character, if show creator Aaron Sorkin totally does that.
There are some flashbacks to when Matt first started on the show which actually seem pretty realistic (legal pads, read-throughs and last minute rewrites abound), but in the present day there is a real thread that comedy should be more than funny: a magna-carta to the establishment, it should be profound and scathing and … not funny apparently.
The Itchy and Scratchy Show/ The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie show
Appeared: The Simpsons (1989–2812)
Likely based on: The Simpsons it looks like. They have lookalikes (so they claim) of all the writers; neurotic, lazy, too educated and too childish as they are.
The writer’s room is: Miserable. Or at least boring, in the way the cracker factory is not. They are bored, abused physically and emotionally. Compare this to the Simpson’s depiction of the Mad magazine office as a literal surreal circus.
Interestingly the other mainstay comedy tv show of the Simpsons universe (apart from Bumblebee Man) is Krusty the Klown who despite blaming the writers seems to be a largely one man production of hack and shtick. Give the guy credit though: considering he appears to be mostly a Cartoon Connection level magazine show, the guy gets fired out of canons into flaming piranhas a lot.
Well there you go, consider those fictional comedy writers rooms well an troly listed. Some look fun, most look terrible, but I guess that’s true to life: some days the SNL offices are full of jars of pee, other days Taran Killiam dances for you.
