Seth MacFarlane

For those of you who complain that I’m too negative, I say, “Buckle up for a wild ride!” Today is opposite day, and I’ve just become “bizarro” Jerry, the columnist who gushes with giddy delight. Trouble is, my sycophantic praise is only slightly less annoying than my default whininess, but, what can you do? Rome wasn’t built in a day, you’ve got to walk before you run, yada yada, you get the gist.

Anyway, on to the good!

Have you ever stumbled upon something outstanding? In particular, have you ever experienced a piece of art (a song, a book, a TV show, a movie) that was so pleasurable, it made you angry at other, lesser, pieces of art?

Like, if you’re a fan of Pearl Jam, and some guy says, “Oh yeah, I like music too. I like The Wiggles.” You just want to punch him. Yeah, technically they’re both music groups, but there’s a reason we hate anything that qualifies on a “technicality.” Truth is, most people can’t even say the word “technicality” without frowning. Don’t believe me? Try it in a mirror. Not now, after you finish this article.

Aaaannnnnyyyywwwhhhhooooo…

A perfect example for me would be J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. When I finished reading Catcher in the Rye, I was angry at the whole school system – not because Catcher exposes the phoniness of authority figures and institutions – but because the book was so moving and truthful and fun that I was angry that the schools had withheld it from me up ‘til then.

No offense to Shakespeare, but when I was 14, Romeo and Juliet was not exactly the most accessible or relevant story that a kid could read. I mean, if the purpose of language is to communicate, maybe the best use of that language is not to choose words that nobody uses anymore to deliver a message that everybody already knows. Guess what, curriculum czars, kids today learn that prejudice and discrimination are wrong from Sesame Street. They don’t need Bill Shakespeare harping on it in iambic pentameter.

“Um, hold on a second. Did Somers just diss William Shakespeare?”

Slow down, I’m not saying Billy S. couldn’t spin a nice yarn. I mean, I was an English major at UCLA for crying out loud, I worship Shakespeare. But the truth is, given the antiquity of the language and the sophistication of the stories, Shakespeare should probably be relegated to college, or at least appear in high school after Salinger and Stephen King. Maybe the reason nobody reads anymore is because they get turned off as freshmen in high school. And maybe the reason they get turned off is they get force fed the literary equivalent of calculus before they’ve been allowed to master their times tables.

Catcher in the Rye entertained me to the point where I realized I loved reading. And it wasn’t just that I related to the material, it was also that the material was presented palatably, with believable, familiar, and conversational dialogue. The story was articulated with empathy and humor. It wasn’t boring or silly. It wasn’t filled with stereotypes who spoke as if they didn’t have a brain in their heads. It had stories that didn’t feel contrived. Let’s face it, if Catcher in the Rye was a TV show, it would be the opposite of 30 Rock.

Wait, what did I say earlier? Oh yeah, no negativity. I was headed somewhere good. Let’s keep moving.

Comedian Mitch Hedberg once made one of the most insightful observations I’ve ever heard, and I’ll paraphrase him to the best of my ability. What he said was: when he got to Hollywood, network executives were very impressed with his stand up act. So, naturally, they tried to move him out of stand up comedy and into something else (hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic and so common).

“They said, ‘Mitch, you’re a good comedian. Can you act? Can you write?’ They wanted me to do things associated with comedy but not comedy. That’s not fair. That’s like telling a chef, ‘you’re a great cook, can you farm?’”

Oh my God.

Hello!!!!

In the form of an anecdote, Mitch Hedberg just explained EXACTLY what’s wrong with Hollywood.

Funny isn’t necessarily funny! Just because you’re funny at one type of comedy, doesn’t mean you possess the skills to be funny at another.

Doubt me? Then how do you explain the following?

“Hey, Tina Fey — You’re terrific at sarcastically delivering fake news and writing three minute sketches in which all of the characters are thinly drawn exaggerations. Do you want to run a sitcom?”

“Hey, Chris Rock, you’re a hilarious comedian. Any chance you’d like to overact in every sketch you ever do on Saturday Night Live?”

“Hey, Richard Jeni and Howard Stern, you are two of the funniest and most intelligent men who’ve ever done comedy. How’d you like to take a stab at acting so we can also think of you as stiff and uncomfortable?”

You get my point. If the Peter Principle states that you rise to a position just above your level of competency (converting you from a productive employee into a drain on the company), then The Hollywood Principle is that if you are competent at anything, they’ll let you ruin everything.

“Ok, bizarro Jerry, you’re making some fine points, but what does this have to do with the picture of Seth MacFarlane that’s sitting next to your column?”

Aw, man. I was just getting to that. So I’d appreciate it if you didn’t accuse me of bait and switch. I mean, who do you think I am? Your front row tickets to a Van Halen concert (tonight featuring lead singer Gary Cherone)?

Do I digress or what?

Ok, so… Seth MacFarlane… let’s talk about him. He’s the creator of Family Guy, which is a TV show that a lot of people love and a lot of other people hate (‘cause it’s edgy and occasionally raunchy and a lot of people can’t handle that). Though I am firmly entrenched in the “I love Family Guy” camp, that is not why Mr. MacFarlane has his picture next to my column. For my purposes, all you need to know about Family Guy is that it is an animated sitcom where the actors record their dialogue in a recording booth.

The reason Seth MacFarlane has his picture next to my column is because of his appearance on Inside The Actors Studio – where he uttered my most favorite-est sentence I’ve heard in years. It was my Catcher in the Rye of sentences. It was true and it was important and it was something that decision makers in Hollywood don’t seem to grasp. Here’s a clue. I didn’t bring up Mitch Hedberg for no good reason.

But, before I get to the sentence, I’d like to take a moment to say: God bless James Lipton. Wouldn’t you know it, that Mr. Lipton, the butt of so many skits and sketches on so many shows, would finally have an important question asked on his show, and he wouldn’t even be the one to ask it? Alas, it occurred at the end of the program, when the inquisitor opened up the floor to the students. It was then that a young lady took the mike and asked the following:

“How much of the dialogue on Family Guy is improvised in the booth?”

Now, before we get to the answer, I’d like to note that if you don’t appreciate how dumb this question is, you are, almost certainly, either already a network executive or well on your way to becoming one.

Anyway, before Seth MacFarlane could utter “the sentence,” fellow panelists Seth Green and Alex Borstein instantaneously jumped in to defend this assault on the writing staff. “Almost all of it is on the page,” they said, with flabbergasted looks on their faces.

Of course it is. Of Course It Is. OF COURSE IT IS!!!

A good sitcom is a 22 minute STORY. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Yes, the dialogue is peppered with jokes, and yes, jokes can occasionally be improvised, but just because something is funny, that doesn’t mean it can be included in the show. The jokes in the show help to tell the story. The jokes not only have to move the story along, but they have to be appropriate to the highly defined characters that tell them. It’s a god damn science, people… and a well written script leaves almost no room for improvising.

“But wait, Eric. Curb Your Enthusiasm and all of those Waiting for Guffman/A Mighty Wind movies are terrifically funny and highly intelligent and they’re filled with improv.”

Grrrr. Yeah, I know. Did you really have to bring those up?

The truth is that I love Curb and those Christopher Guest movies, but they are just as deliberate as scripted shows. It’s just that they are a different discipline and… wait, don’t suck me into this now! We’ll have to address this in another column. Let’s just suffice it to say that there is a fundamental difference between Curb Your Enthusiasm and a meticulously scripted show, and any perceptive viewer should be able to tell the difference.

So, after Green and Borstein answered the question. Mr. MacFarlane dropped his pearl.

“Generally,” said MacFarlane, ”what MAKES IMPROV FUNNY is that you know it was made up right there on the spot. 99% of IMPROV WOULDN’T WORK on a show.”

Did you hear that?

99% of improv – are you hearing me, you network big wigs who love to give shows to people from the Groundlings or UCB or Second City or Acme – 99% of improv is not good enough. It’s like the guy at the sales meeting who opens with a joke about the boss, funny in context, but probably not funny enough to build a set around for a Comedy Central Presents.

Sitcoms are about storytelling, parodies and satire, roller coaster rides of heightening and subsiding suspense with payoffs that make perfect, yet not predictable, sense. They are about characters you like, who like each other, with whom the viewer builds a relationship that he tunes in week after week to continue. That takes crafting, my friend, not off-the-cuff wisecracks.

Do any of you really think that Seinfeld was a show about nothing, where characters simply did wacky things and spoke funny dialogue?

“Duh, yeah. I was wondering, how much of the dialogue was ad-libbed by Jason Alexander and Michael Richards?”

None of it, Jackass. Have you seen Michael Richards ad-lib?

Seinfeld was the most complicated sitcom ever. Forget an A story and a B story. Seinfeld had four, count ‘em, four, intersecting storylines every episode. Go back and watch. “A” story for Jerry. “B” story for George. “C” story for Elaine. “D” story for Kramer. And none of it ever felt contrived or crowbarred in. And there was still room for dozens of ancillary characters. Laughs sprung organically from consistent characters who reframed every life event from their unique points of view. It was as mathematical as it was artistic, and there wasn’t any room for improv!

Sigh. Deep breath. Attempt to regain composure.

Well, I guess this column devolved into another one of my rants. Bizarro Jerry gave way to Whiny Eric. But… you have to admit, I was happy for a moment there. In fact, I was practically ecstatic… all because Seth MacFarlane acknowledged that there’s a difference between storytelling and a guy who can pretend he’s working at a 7-11… um, in the middle of the night, that’s good, where is he, did I hear Toledo, he’s in Toledo, and what’s the weather like, a hurricane, fantastic, he’s in a hurricane – now go! Go to hell.