The Times They Are a-Changin’
Late-night comedy and what you can do on it have changed. It’s still a constant battle. Sometimes there is a natural evolution and changing of standards as to what one can do on TV, sometimes there is the chilling effect of pressure groups. Fifty years ago Bill Dana could go on TV and do his “My name Jose Jimenez” routine; today if you use the words illegal immigrants in a joke instead of undocumented workers, people are outraged. The problem is that undocumented workers are great words for sociological studies, but not for a joke. They just don’t have the impact and shorthand of the words illegal immigrants.
And for a lot of hosts, it’s not worth the aggravation to get calls from the PC police and face the threat of lawsuits. On Leno we had a problem with jokes about Koreans and their fondness for eating dogs (over there, 101 Dalmatians is dinner theater, and their Olive Garden serves penne poochenesca). Korean activists in LA protested that we were making fun of their culture. The way around it was to make the joke about “North Koreans,” who are of course, not our friends.
The Sikh community was also upset at a bit we did in 2012. In that bit about the GOP presidential candidates’ homes we showed the real-life homes of Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich. For Mitt Romney’s home we showed a photo of the golden temple, which is the holiest site in the Sikh religion. To writers, this was a joke about Mitt’s millions; the Sikh community was, yes, here is the word again, outraged, and sent a petition to NBC.
Jimmy Kimmel got in trouble in 2013 for a taped bit in which he asked a group of kids how to deal with the debt the United States owes China. One little boy said, “Kill everyone in China,” and Kimmel said, “That’s an interesting idea.”
This blew up big-time with calls for ABC to fire Kimmel, numerous apologies, and demands from 1.3 billion outraged Chinese that if we didn’t surrender Jimmy to their authorities, they would stop funding our national debt. If you want to know how seriously people take jokes, even the White House responded. We have a $17 trillion debt, troops overseas, and a crashing infrastructure, and somehow in the middle of the Obamacare website debacle, the White House took the time to say:
The parties involved have already apologized independently. Jimmy Kimmel has apologized on air and issued a written apology. ABC has removed the skit from future broadcasts, taken the clip down from online platforms, and detailed several changes in its programming review process in response to this incident.
The president then noted that the First Amendment prevents the government from forcing Kimmel from the airwaves. The Chinese wanted to know why the government just couldn’t run over Kimmel with a tank. Which is ridiculous. The Obama White House would have used drones. Or served him tainted North Korean dog.
And then Stephen Colbert got in trouble when he made a very smart and funny comment that was clearly meant to be anti-racist, and was accused of being racist. Colbert made fun of Redskins owner Daniel Snyder after he refused to change the name of his football team (he’d be better off changing the players) by saying that he would fund a group to support Native Americans. Colbert went on Twitter to say, “I am willing to show the Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever.”
Again China wanted to send in the tanks, and as “punishment,” Colbert was given The Late Show to host and a $5 million raise.
So comedy has evolved from the days of Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. As Americans have become more PC, so have monologues, and everyone knows it is wrong to make fun of anyone because of where they are from. Unless they are French. Or Canadian. Or even better, French Canadian. Or are from a country that harbored, let’s just say hypothetically, fifteen out of nineteen hijackers.
Thus, this joke by Jay caused no protests: “Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council says allowing women to drive will end virginity. How bumpy are the roads in Saudi Arabia?”
Luckily there was no outrage from the Saudis or they may have secretly funded armed terrorists who would then attack us . . . Wait, they already did that.
The problem is that, despite our stated beliefs that all topics are fair game, the PC police have taken over. They are, on a daily basis, outraged. We are all outraged and offended at a joke. Everyone gets upset that someone’s feelings were hurt. Peyton Manning fans are upset that Terry Bradshaw said this: “Peyton Manning, considered the best quarterback to play the game today. Nobody would argue with that—if you like winning good during the season and losing Super Bowls, that’s your guy.”
Every joke has a target. Get over it, Manning fans.
LATE NIGHT VERSUS SOCIAL MEDIA
What do late-night writers think of social media? We hate it. We hate it the way Vladimir Putin hates wearing a shirt. We hate it because we used to be the source of jokes. Now everyone is a comic. Even worse, most are bad comics. There are now seven billion people who feel they can write a joke and 99 percent are not funny, or are racist, misogynist, anti-Semitic, or dumb, or just repeat something they heard from someone else. The other 1 percent—really funny.
And social media allows Joe Doakes to call and claim that Jay/Dave/Craig/the Jimmys/Whoever stole a joke. “Hello, late-night receptionist? Last night your host told a joke about Justin Bieber, and the day before I tweeted his name to my three followers, so one of your writers must have seen it and stolen it.”
Here is my answer to Mr. Doakes. No, we didn’t. No one reads your tweets and no one checks out your Facebook page. What you did wasn’t even a joke, and even if it was, there are obvious and identical jokes every pro writer is bound to do. They’re the easy ones before we get to the ones we get paid way too much money for. Go back to your parents’ basement.
Okay, now that I’ve vented again, let me say that deep down comedy writers love social media, because without it we never would have been able to know about Anthony Weiner’s penis.
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
The landscape has changed for late night. I’m not bemoaning the change, I’m acknowledging it. Individual jokes that are quoted matter less; videos and bits that go viral on Fallon matter more. I’m still not convinced those translate to a larger viewership, which is the reason advertisers buy commercial ad time but make the shows hot, current, and trendy, and do influence TV audiences at home. You see Barack Obama slow-jam the news with Jimmy Fallon and you think he’s cool. Or, as is more likely the case in 2015, you wonder why he’s not working at his job. Either way, each and every late-night show matters in its own big or small way.
You have to know your audience. Jay’s and Dave’s audiences are and were older people who are the offspring of those who watched Johnny. Jimmy Fallon’s and Jimmy Kimmel’s are younger viewers who get social media, the Internet, and going viral. Bill Maher’s and Jon Stewart’s are more political and ideological. I don’t have any studies as a backup. It just seems true and logical. So those who write for those shows have to know their host and their audience.
And it’s true not just of shows on at eleven p.m. I’ve been lucky enough to write for more than late night. Specifically, I’ve written for a number of awards shows and political speeches where people need to be funny: the Gridiron, the Inner Circle, the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner, the Alfalfa Club dinner, the Al Smith Dinner, the South Boston St. Patrick’s Day Breakfast Roast, the Congressional Correspondents Dinner.
The jokes may differ for those speeches but the principles remain the same:
Know your audience.
Don’t try to sell them something they won’t believe.
Get them to like you up top . . . which for a politician means being self-deprecating.
Don’t be needlessly mean.
Be funny.
Thanks to being a Tonight Show writer I got to work with JFK Jr. In September 1996 I got a call from Paul Begala about writing for John. Paul was involved with George magazine, John had a big speech to do before a group from Nike, and Paul told him about his friend (me) at The Tonight Show. John had just gotten married and didn’t know whether to address the group, and Paul suggested he talk to me. John called and we hit it off on the phone. My advice was to address the elephant in the room. So I gave him two lines, one referring to the fact that the day before Dennis Rodman had worn a wedding dress in public, and that the photo was everywhere on the news; the other had to do with Nike’s slogan.
John opened his speech by saying that the night before his wedding he was worried about taking this big step. And it was Nike that came through. For as he looked out the window of his hotel room he saw a sign that said JUST DO IT. Big laughs. Remember, they are Nike officials. He then followed it by saying that he knew many in the audience had seen his wedding photos. And that his wife’s wedding gown was one of only two like it in the world. The other was worn by Dennis Rodman.
Not brilliant jokes. We knew the audience, and although they were not killer jokes, they did in fact kill. Knowing the audience took a joke that was a five and made it into an eight. The next day there was a HUGE gift basket at the house; John called and hired me to write for George magazine. What an extraordinarily nice and fascinating person.
I also got to write for Santa Claus. I was writing a show for a televised Los Angeles Christmas tree lighting (yes, my motto is: no show too small, no fee too large) and the big finale had a surprise appearance of Santa Claus. The highlight came when Santa came to me and demanded that I put his lines on teleprompter to make sure he didn’t forget them. So I wrote out these original and brilliant words for Santa and put them on the prompter: “Merry Christmas, Ho Ho Ho.”
And they wonder why they have a reputation for being drunks.