From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Bob Carlson and this is Unfictional.

Unfictional is KCRW's program of peculiar and memorable stories and documentaries and

today on the program the story of a pair of unlikely collaborators.

Did you have a story about Groucho and some hooker? I can't tell that story on the radio. What's ridiculous.

NPR I'll throw you out of there. Take my advice. Is this, are you going to use this

shit? I don't just want to know,

it's driving me crazy.

People want to know.

This needs a rewrite.

When Hank Rosenfeld met Irving Brecker,

he was starstruck in the beginning.

Just excited to be in the presence of a comedy screenwriting legend.

After a while, though, their relationship turned into a friendship, and a collaboration,

and most of it happened on tape. That's coming up on unfictional.

Meanwhile, this episode's got me thinking about comedy writing,

which is something that's always seemed unfathomable to me.

I'm the kind of person who freezes up whenever someone says,

say something funny. So the idea of having to do just that to make a living seems really mysterious.

And there's this guy I know named Jonathan Robert. seems really

seems really mysterious. And there's this guy I know named Jonathan Roberts. He's a screenwriter.

And in fact, he's been doing it for years.

But even he doesn't really have much light to shed on the subject.

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