Category: writing

John On Jon: On Writing The Daily Show

How the hell did The Onion AV Club manage to score an interview with John Hodgman??

AVC: What is the process like on The Daily Show? How do ideas get developed and refined into a bit?
JH: I can only speak to my own experience, which is not unique but specific to the contributors, such as me and Larry Wilmore and Kristen Schaal. We’re not there every day. We come in twice a month and do our bits. The most common iteration is they provide me a topic and I’ll think about that topic for awhile and write up a first draft a couple days before. Then I’ll come in and work with David Javerbaum, the former Onion writer and now executive producer of the show, as well as Jon and some of the other executive producers of the show, to refine the idea. It will often change dramatically and we’ll often all write it from scratch together, basically to fit Jon’s vision of what he wants to do with the piece. And then we’ll go down and rehearse it that day, and then more often than not we’ll all get together in a room right after rehearsal, about an hour or two before the show, and rewrite it again, along with the rest of the show. Jon takes a very active role in shaping every word. We project the script on a wall and he goes through it line by line, makes adjustments, and makes every script sing as a result. It’s really kind of an astonishing process to watch. But for someone who had been primarily used to sitting in his underwear, working on a 2000-word magazine article for a month before anyone else ever read it, that seat-of-pants writing is very nerve-wracking. Very exciting, but I did want to vomit quite a bit.

Oh.
Interviews | John Hodgman [avclub]

October Surprise

I was talking with an artist friend yesterday, and he made a reference to “Krauss’s ‘Sculpture and the Expanded Field’,” and I was all, “huh?” And he was all, “WHAT?” And so I was like, “Don’t know it,” and he was all, “Dude, it’s canon. First handout they give you when you get into art school.” And I was like, “And who reads October unless they’re being graded on it?”
Still, once he explained her postmodernist proposition for sculpture, I was like, “Expanded Field? We’re soaking in it!”
So I read it, and yeah, I knew that; it’s basically the idea that in the late 1960’s, artists challenged and expanded the definition of sculpture, or to flip it around, the logical structure of artists’ practice expanded beyond the finite, inherited modernist definition of sculpture. There’s even a fancy diagram to explain why what Robert Smithson, Richard Serra, Robert Morris, and others of the era were doing is not modernism, but is sculpture.
Anyway, here’s a PDF version of Rosalind Krauss’s “Sculpture and the Expanded Field”. Get an education so you don’t embarrass yourself like I did. [sic and/or heh]

Just Do The Line.

From the i-banking obit the NYT has waiting on the shelf for just such emergencies:

“I hate to use the phrase ‘masters of the universe,’ but they’re not in investment banking anymore, they’re in hedge funds,” Mr. [Tom] Wolfe [who, excuse me, owns that damn phrase and should have it hung around his neck every time the market tanks] said. And “hedge funds don’t need glass office towers. They can run $15 billion with 25 people” in the leafy suburban sanctuaries where their directors live.
“The new Wall Street,” he said, “is Greenwich, Conn.”

Next he’ll say he hates wearing white suits.
Yes, they went there: Dim LIghts, Big City [nyt]

A School Called Hope

sforza_west_wing.jpg
“This is the place that matters.” And this just gets better and better. Walter Reed Middle School served as the backdrop for the presidential candidacy of Democratic congressman Matt Santos–as played by Jimmy Smits on West Wing.
West Wing producer-writer Eli Attie told the Guardian in February that the Santos character was based on Barack Obama:

“I drew inspiration from him in drawing this character,” West Wing writer and producer Eli Attie told the Guardian. “When I had to write, Obama was just appearing on the national scene. He had done a great speech at the convention [which nominated John Kerry] and people were beginning to talk about him.”
Attie, who served as chief speechwriter to Al Gore during the ill-fated 2000 campaign and who wrote many of the key Santos episodes of the West Wing, put in a call to Obama aide David Axelrod.
“I said, ‘Tell me about this guy Barack Obama.'”

Axelrod is, of course, Obama’s chief strategist for the campaign.
Watch Santos’ hope-themed speech [youtube via tpm]

From West Wing to the real thing | Scriptwriters modelled TV’s ethnic minority candidate on young Barack Obama
 [guardian.co.uk]

The Politico Does Not Permit The Expensing Of Unapproved Hostess Gifts


“The guys from The Politico brought her [my mom, Cindy McCain] flowers, which I still think is the most adorable thing ever, so thank you. I thought it was so cute that they decided to bring my mom flowers, because it’s rare; they are journalists. [laughs]”
That’s my favorite line from Meghan McCain’s video of the Memorial Day weekend BBQ her parents hosted for the DC press corps at their ranch in Sedona. The first time I heard it, I thought Meghan was being a snob about how poor journalists’ manners are.
But after seeing how she’s so kind towards the help–the family’s chef is a “longtime friend” and the caretaker couple at the ranch are “our other really good friend[s]”–I realized she wasn’t being snobby or mean, just the opposite.
The wheels of Washington journalism are greased by a vast supply of hostess gifts, but many news outlets refuse to reimburse reporters who buy their hostess gifts instead of using something from the company’s official hostess gift closet.
Of course, it would have been equally adorable and cute if they had made Cindy something themselves; a loaf of banana bread, perhaps, or a mosaicked flower pot in the colors of the Southwestern desert?

Steve Guttenberg Writes Three Hours Each Day

-From the otherwise excellent Observer profile of recent NYC returnee Steve Guttenberg, which inexplicably leaves out one of his best New York projects, the Village People vehicle Can’t Stop The Music:

“I am a seducer, I’m a salesman,” [The Goot] said. “I’m trying to get people to buy my message. I do have a message. I’m as corny as Kansas in August. I’m as high as a kite on the Fourth of July. That’s from South Pacific, but yeah, I do have a message …”

After Hours, Frankly

Interesting. The script for one of my favorite Scorsese films, his dark, odd 1985 After Hours, appears to have been heavily lifted from a 1982 performance by Joe Frank, one of my favorite dark, odd radio dramatists. Andrew Hearst has connected the dots, apparently for the first time in print.
Joseph Minion’s script for After Hours began as a screenwriting class project at Columbia. His original title was reportedly Lies, which is the same name as Joe Frank’s piece. The film’s story, the arc, and a whole host of details significant and minor are identical to Frank’s play. According to Hearst and a Salon article on Frank, the writer received a large settlement from the producers, which is certainly the least they could do.
Even more intriguing, though, are Frank’s own references to the plagiarism scandal in a 1986 show titled, “No Show,” which has been performed, aired, or released in 2-hr, 90-min, and 1-hr versions. [There’s mention of a torrent version of the show, but I haven’t been able to find it online.]
In “No Show,” Frank apparently performs phone conversations with Minion, wherein the young screenwriter begs for leniency and help saving his career. Hearst thinks that Minion’s IMDB profile after After Hours is thin, a consequence of being frozen out by the industry. But he still made films with Nicolas Cage and Kathleen Turner, and his current project has Lisa Kudrow attached and producing, so he hasn’t been too blackballed.
Though I’d like it to be true because it’s a perfect, Frank-ian twist, I don’t believe the speculation on the Joe Frank mailing lists that Minion is actually Frank. Though frankly [sic], does Frank-as-Minion actually writing After Hours seem any more implausible today than a SoHo populated by artists and weirdos, yet without cars or ATM’s or more than one place to go at night?

Janet Jackson, Paula Abdul. Herbert Muschamp Is What The World Trade Center Is All About!

showgirls_audition_ice.jpg
Choire’s interview with Elizabeth Berkley reminded me of some unfinished Showgirls business here on greg.org.
Back in 2002, right after Beyer Blinder Belle released the first, banal master plans for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, a parody critique circulated in the style of Herbert Muschamp, then the architecture critic for the NY Times. Finally, here it is:

A Critical Appraisal
Special to The New York Times
Striding down the row of design proposals for the World Trade Center site, balefully eyeing each inert mien and artificially enhanced plan, I was reminded of the scene in Showgirls where the choreographer grimly surveys his topless charges. Flicking a feather across their assembled nipples, he scolds, “Girls, if you are not erect, I’m not erect.”
Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve seen the master plan proposals from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, and, to put it mildly, I’m not erect.
My heart sank as I watched John Beyer of the architectural firm Beyer Blinder Belle attempt to describe these hapless proposals. I was painfully reminded of another much more casual presentation one glorious autumn on Capri. The visionary Rem Koolhaas was holding forth on urban planning, shopping, life, and the smell of fresh basil. Wearing beautifully tailored trousers and a tight, cropped black top (need I add it was by Prada?) he gestured energetically as he spoke. With each gesture, his shirt rode up ever so slightly, revealing a tantalizing sliver of tan, taut tummy.
It is this kind of energetic gesture that those of us who care about contemporary architecture hunger for so desperately. Beyer Blinder Belle’s work is occasionally competent: certainly their by-the-numbers renovation of Grand Central Terminal pleases the hordes of moronic commuters who stream through it each day, but it will come as no surprise that this recidivist pile of marble is of little interest to the infinitely more important audience of attractive young European architectural students who make pilgrimages to our city each year and can barely choke back their tears of disappointment. John Beyer, whose exposed torso would be unpleasant for even the more adventuresome New Yorker to contemplate, must shoulder the blame for this catastrophic failure.
It is now time to list these names: Frank Gehry, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Elizabeth Diller and Ric Scofidio, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, Steven Holl, and, of course, Rem Koolhaas. There.
Is a little daring, a little excitement, a little sexiness too much to ask for on this sacred site? Lower Manhattan Development Corporation chairman John Whitehead and New York governor George Pataki would do well to rent a videotape of “All About Eve” and examine Bette Davis’s behavior before the big party scene. Her character Margo Channing reaches into a candy dish and hesitates again and again before finally popping a candy into her mouth. This tantalizing motif “impulse, surrender, gratification” is the central one of the twenty-first century. It alone must provide the ideological blueprint for all architectural work being done anywhere in the world, including lower Manhattan. If this fails to make sense to the theme-park obsessed corporate apologists for big business, so be it.
In the interest of full disclosure, my proposal for the site will be revealed at a time and place of my choosing. Fasten your seatbelts, New York.

Ignore, if you can, the glaring error that Muschamp would never have made: the choreographer used ice cubes, not a feather. The irony is that not only did Muschamp’s writing the last few years before his too-early death seem to cut loose, as if to meet his parodists in the sky, the fake WTC critique turned out too true by half: thanks to a sycophantic 1776 minstrel show from Daniel Libeskind and a chorus line of starchitects flashing their tits, the Port Authority’s original proposal is right on track.
[via mouthfulsfood]
Previously: Surely, Hordes of Showgirls-Googling Architects Can’t Be Wrong?

Charlton Heston’s Rifle Now Presumably Free For The Taking


Shotgun! Does anyone know who wrote about visiting a gun show and the NRA convention for Spy? The caption under the photo of Charlton Heston was “Guns ‘n Moses.” The title of the magazine got everyone they talked to to open right up. To a guy whose idea of humorous magazine writing had been limited to Mad, it was a life-changing article.
[update: I guess it really is a joke that writes itself. ]

First, Shill For All The Writers

This is funny:
Not The Daily Show, With Some Writer

But this is funnier:
From the Colbert Report writers: hungvp158: “Very successful entertainment executive, who is also quite young for his position, on why scribes’ strike is asinine. Not tooting own horn or anything but he is very connected– squash, Iger– has inside dope. And ‘hung’ not an exaggeration.”

Round 1 goes to The Colbert Report writers. Back to you, John.

Magic: Teller Like It Is

At a recent conference talk on magic given in Las Vegas, Teller [the quiet one] gave the most amazing definition of magic I wish I’d heard before writing about Scott Sforza for Cabinet Magazine’s magic issue:

[Magic is] the theatrical linking of a cause with an effect that has no basis in physical reality, but that — in our hearts — ought to.”

I wish he’d have piped up sooner.
Sleights of Mind [NYT]
previously: Cabinet 26: “Perspective Correction

Comrades, Join Me In A Relentless Exposure Of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Despicable Tricks!

antonioni_china_cover.jpg

I only discovered the Chinese government’s published evisceration of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1972 documentary Chung Kuo – Cina after I thought I’d finished my Cabinet article on Scott Sforza. Jonathan wondered if Susan Sontag’s On Photography might have a relevant idea or two in it, so I broke out the old copy–and found Sontag’s discussion of Antonioni’s “extremely reactionary and despicable”…camera angles [!]. It made for a sweet, surprisingly symmetrical ending to the piece.
Intrigued, I searched around for the full text of the 1974 Renmin Ribao Commentator pamphlet she quoted from, but it wasn’t online. So I ended up buying a copy, and scanning it in. It’s a fascinating read, and it should have been online long ago.
While the North Korean government is known for bombastic turns of phrase, the Chinese under Madame Mao had a really rousing, articulate, no-holds-barred style of denouncing its enemies and whipping up its populace. Not that the internal political motives of the pamphlet are at all unclear; but it’s entertaining. Antonioni’s criminal techniques weren’t limited to camera placement; his cinematography, use of color and light, editing, and sound editing were all reactionary imperalist tools as well. I don’t know if this is where the Dogme folks got it, but the Gang of Four’s condemnation of non-diagetic sound is easily as vicious as anything Lars von Trier could come up with, and twice as funny.
Anyway, the entire text is after the jump. The numbers in brackets are the page number/page breaks. If there are any typos or formatting errors, please let me know. Enjoy, comrades!

Continue reading “Comrades, Join Me In A Relentless Exposure Of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Despicable Tricks!”

Cabinet 26: “Perspective Correction”

Can I just say, I’ve reached a point in my life where I don’t know what’s left to accomplish? I mean, how can I top the thrill of getting to write for Cabinet Magazine? I just don’t know.
I’ve had a puppydog crush on Cabinet since Issue 3, where they interviewed John Cliett about the implications of his definitive/exclusive photos of Walter deMaria’s Lightning Field. Then there was the magazine’s plan in 2003 to lease the ten tiny, lost slivers of surveying-mistake-generated land that Gordon Matta-Clark once bought from the New York City government for his unrealized project, Reality Properties: Fake Estates. What began as an offhand bemusement grew into an exhibition at the Queens Museum and a book–and an important contribution to the resurgence of Matta-Clark’s influence on the art world. It can be self-conscious and super-nerdy, but the magazine consistently finds overlooked and convincing perspectives on the culture and art taking shape around us.
Whenever I read it, I was never able to imagine how to write one of those Cabinet essays. What offbeat subject did I have a slightly too obsessive familiarity with that a dozen art history phd’s didn’t already turn into 300-page dissertations? Then guest editor Jonathan Allen and Sina Najafi emailed me out of the blue, asking if I’d like to interview Scott Sforza about stagecraft for the special issue on Magic. Uh, YEAH.
Sforza never came to the phone, though, so instead, I ended up with an attempt to put a bit of political and visual context around the exercise of control of the vantage point. I also threw in some discussion of the impact of the switch from binocular [eyes] to monocular [camera/lens] vision and the construction and interpretation of media images. For good measure, I connected some dots from Sforza to Andrea del Pozzo to the spiritualist photographers of the 19th century to Jan Dibbets to Michelangelo Antonioni. Susan Sontag and Gilles Deleuze provided much of the theoretical seasoning, along with a rather candid Karl Rove, circa early 2001. To top it off, there are the incredible anti-Sforzian photographs of GWB’s visit to Monolia shot by Iwan Baan.
I tell you this now because the article isn’t online, so you should all go re-up your subscriptions pronto so you can read it. I still can’t believe it’s there.
Cabinet 26: Perspective Correction: The beguiling stagecraft of American politics [cabinetmagazine.org]