Writing Comedy

The Gist

Mike Pesca

News, Politics, Arts, Daily News

4.4 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 August 2024

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today on the show, we are talking about comedic writing with Simon Rich. He has, after all, written for Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, and The New Yorker, so he knows a bit about trying to be funny on the page. And he's out with a new book, Glory Days: Stories, in which he makes light of entering middle age. Produced by Joel Patterson and Corey Wara Email us at [email protected] To advertise on the show, visit: https://advertisecast.com/TheGist Subscribe to The Gist Subscribe: https://subscribe.mikepesca.com/ Follow Mikes Substack at: Pesca Profundities | Mike Pesca | Substack Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's Tuesday, August 27th, 2024 from Peach Fish Productions.
0:08.4	It's the gist.
0:09.7	I'm Mike Paska.
0:11.6	I have a son.
0:12.4	She says to the waiter, hi, he wants to. I have a son. I have a son.
0:13.0	He wants two burgers, one medium and one medium rare with no onions.
0:19.0	Who loves comedy? He does comedy.
0:22.0	Who orders two of the same things with different specifications?
0:27.0	Like, that's like if I went to a cake shop and I said,
0:30.0	I got one cake says happy birthday Susan and one cake that says I know where you
0:36.1	live Susan I can come out. Like I would do that two separate times. He enjoys watching all forms of comedy, listening to comedy,
0:46.5	we've listened to many a comedy album. You know what it doesn't like? It doesn't like
0:50.8	reading comedy. And Emmettett let's call him he likes reading I mean he likes it fine he will read if some written word is put in front of him and if it's relevant to his life, you know, turn left, tiger on right,
1:05.5	that sort of thing. But even in class, he always reads the assignment. He's a fine reader. He's a, I don't know if he's
1:11.8	an eager reader, but he, I don't know if he's an eager reader, but he I don't know if he's an eager beaver I don't know if he's a beaver when it comes to reading I know that he will read accept comedy which is so weird he maintains that if it's on the page he just can't find it funny. Why
1:25.5	am it? Is it that you're working for the laugh? It just eludes him as being
1:29.7	funny. I think that there's something odd about that. I just think if it's funny it's funny it's funny it's like saying oh I only enjoy
1:36.3	watching comedy if someone speaks words I could never find them funny I think that's
1:41.0	a part of the human condition to not find certain ways of imbibing potentially
1:47.8	hilarious material if you're someone with a good radar for that. So what I did, what I did is I sat him down with Simon Rich's book called
1:56.0	Glory Days. Simon is one of the greatest comedy writers of our generation. He likes
2:02.0	Simon's work when it shows up in Saturday Night Live sketches or some of the TV shows that have been based around his work.
	...

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