Just the Funny Parts

by Nell Scovell

  Special sauce now used for original purpose of killing bugs

  Customers instructed to remove cardboard from hot apple pie before eating

  Employees encouraged to use Kleenex instead of hamburger buns

  “I just miss LA,” I shrugged.

  “You’re welcome back any time,” Dave said.

  I glowed. Like everyone else, I wanted the approval of the king.

  And I don’t even hold the record for that show’s fastest-quitting writer. Another writer got so frustrated that he left before his first cycle was up. Unlike me, he supposedly didn’t hold back and told Dave off before he left. Later, he and Dave patched things up and Louis C.K. returned to the show.

  The Late Night culture fit me about as well as that too-big, scratchy baseball shirt they handed me on day one. I once brought the shirt into a tailor to see if it could be hemmed. The tailor shook his head and informed me that “the thick fabric did not lend itself to alteration.” Now it hangs in my closet, a perfect metaphor.

  On my last day at Late Night, I wrote my final top ten jokes and packed my entire office in a small box. There was just one last matter to bring everything full circle: As I was saying goodbye to some writers, a tampon fell out of my pocket. The writer who’d predicted this would happen on my first day was there to see it happen on my last. We looked at each other in amazement. Yep, he called it. And we laughed.

  Maybe because I was already out the door, I didn’t feel embarrassed. There was no denying that I was a woman. And if anything, being a woman meant I had to work harder and be tougher. As the saying goes: Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, backwards and in heels . . . and while bleeding from her vagina five days each month.

  Chapter 8

  The Meet Cute

  Sometimes I go into my own little world. It’s okay, they know me there.

  —Joel Hodgson

  MOST ROMANTIC COMEDIES BEGIN WITH A MEET cute. At a coffee shop, a man and woman both reach for a latte marked “Alex” . . . and their eyes meet. In a vet’s waiting room, a dog barks at a cat, forcing the owners to break up the fight . . . and their eyes meet. Meet cutes are cheesy, but sometimes life imitates cheesy art.

  After quitting Late Night, I returned to LA for good. Gavin thought it might take a while to get back into sitcoms, but comedic genius Robin Schiff (who later scripted Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion) galloped in like a knight in shining armor. Robin had read my Simpsons script and brought me onboard for punch up during the January 1991 shooting of Princesses, a pilot she cowrote with Barry Kemp and Mark Ganzel. Three weeks of work turned into over two years after Barry offered me a co-producer job on the hit sitcom Coach, which he created solo and starred Craig T. Nelson as a beleaguered college football coach. The series followed Roseanne in the lineup and consistently finished in the top ten. Married People, the series I’d been working on before moving back east, lasted only eighteen episodes. Unintentionally, my detour into late night had landed me on a more successful track.

  Coach star Craig T. Nelson, circa 1991

  Courtesy of the author

  During my second year at Coach, my friend Pat Whitney invited me to a “fun party.” Now to me, a “fun party” is an oxymoron. I know many share my fear of social interaction, but the difference is when others say, “I’m terrible at parties,” their friends respond, “What? No! You’re great.” When I say, “I’m terrible at parties,” my friends respond, “So, what TV shows are you watching these days?”

  I fail at fun. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I don’t like small talk. I also don’t like loud music that drowns out small talk. I worry about forgetting names or committing a faux pas. When I do, it fills me with regret for days. So I keep to myself at parties and eat a lot of chips, which also fills me with regret for days. Still, I really wanted to see Pat, and he really wanted to go to this party, so I tagged along.

  As soon as we entered the Hollywood loft, I knew this gathering was well above my play-grade. I recognized a bunch of cool, funny actors including Janeane Garofalo and our host Mark Fite. Pat was instantly engaged while I stood off to the side, eating chips. After consuming a regretful amount, I went looking for something to drink.

  The tiny kitchen was empty. The fridge was filled with beer and I rummaged around for a soda. I found one in back and was just about to close the door when—

  “Hey, do you see any beer in there?” a male voice drawled behind me.

  “It’s pretty much all beer in here,” I said.

  I moved aside and the guy maneuvered around me. He grabbed a beer, closed the fridge, turned around . . . and our eyes met. I felt a jolt. Ohmigod, I was having a meet cute! It wasn’t dramatic like Sandra Bullock saving Peter Gallagher from being run over by a train in While You Were Sleeping. But on the bright side, the guy wasn’t in a coma.

  We stood in the kitchen making small talk, which I suddenly didn’t mind so much. His Midwest drawl sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him.

  “Hey, I’m Joel,” he said, sticking out his hand.

  It clicked. I was talking to Joel Hodgson, the creator and star of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a hilarious, Peabody Award–winning show. The premise of MST3K is two mad scientists kidnap a regular Joe (in a red jumpsuit) and send him into space where they force him to watch B-movies. To ease his loneliness, Joel builds a bunch of chatty robots from spare parts. The bulk of an episode featured Joel and two robots in silhouette watching bad movies while sliding in wisecracks. The result was an original, inexpensive show that had the highest joke-per-minute ratio on TV.

  I expected Joel to return quickly to the cool kids in the living room, but instead he lingered and sipped his beer. He said he’d recently moved from Minneapolis. I frantically searched my brain for any personal connection to the Midwest and chimed in that I was working on a TV series set in Minnesota. Lame. But Joel turned out to be a Coach fan. Before he returned to the party, we exchanged numbers.

  The next day, Joel called. Before noon. I already loved this guy for not making me sweat it out. We met for coffee at Du-par’s later that day. We both lived in Studio City, and since geography is the greatest determinant of whether a friendship will last in Los Angeles, we sailed over our first hurdle.

  Spending time with Joel was light and easy. Although our backgrounds were very different, we had similar interests. We’d sit side by side on his couch, flipping through his sketchbooks and talking about ideas for shows and movies. We’d go to The Magic Castle, the members-only Academy of Magical Arts’ club where Joel sometimes performed. (I don’t know what attracts me to magicians, but I admit it: I’m a “mag hag.”) We’d go to the Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax and then grab a late-night dinner at Canter’s Deli. Our evenings seemed date-like, but nothing was developing between us physically, not even a tingly brush of the hand while reaching into a tub of popcorn. Joel never mentioned a girlfriend, but a few times, he did bring up an ex-girlfriend. I can’t remember what he said because my brain was too busy shouting, “He’s straight! He’s straight!”

  I tried to play it cool. I didn’t want to press the matter because maybe Joel wanted to take it slow. Finally, late one night after a comedy show, Joel drove me home. I was renting a little house at the end of a dead-end street so he offered to walk me to my door. We climbed the stairs and then chatted on the doorstep as the tension built. Something was going to happen. Something physical. We both felt this was the moment.

  “Well, good night,” Joel said. Then he thrust his hand out for me to shake.

  I was stunned. I didn’t know what else to do so I shook his hand.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said.

  My limited cool deserted me. I started babbling about how I was hoping this would be more than a friendship, but it didn’t seem to be headed in that direction and was that even a possibility because I really thought he was amazing. In a romantic comedy, this would have been Joel’s cue to stop my babbling with a kiss.

  Instead,
he said, “I need to talk to you about that.”

  Nothing good ever follows those words. It’s never “I need to talk to you about that . . . because I want to spend the rest of my life with you!”

  That night was no exception. Joel explained that he was dating a British comedian/actress and, for several reasons, they were keeping their relationship quiet. Given the long distance, he wasn’t sure that things would work out, but they were both committed to trying.

  “I want you to meet her,” he said. “I think you two would like each other a lot.”

  I nodded. Since we’d already shaken hands, I offered a quick goodbye and slipped inside the house. It hurt to be rejected. I flashed back to my teenage self, sobbing to my best friend Lisa Cetlin, “But I really liked him.” I also worried that my unabashed declaration of desire might ruin our friendship. Would spending time together now be awkward? I went to bed feeling alone and unhappy.

  The next morning, the phone rang and I heard a familiar Midwestern lilt.

  “Hey, Nell. It’s Joel.”

  I was so happy to hear his voice. He asked if he could come by. I said, of course. A little later, Joel walked through my door and handed me a manila envelope.

  “Here,” he said. “I made this for you.”

  I opened the envelope and pulled out a piece of art.

  Art by Joel Hodgson

  Artwork by Joel Hodgson. Used with permission

  My heart melted. The colors have bled over the past twenty-five years, but Joel’s sweet and colorful gesture of friendship still hangs framed in my office.

  Joel asked if I wanted to grab some lunch. It was early but sure. (Joel was born in Wisconsin and still insists on eating lunch at noon like a dairy farmer.) Within twelve hours of my feeling rejected, we were back to normal. I quickly converted my crush into a sisterly devotion and shifted my sights to a different kind of partnership. From the start, it seemed like Joel would be fun to collaborate with. We have similar senses of humor, but different skill sets. Joel’s a visual thinker—as much an artist as a writer—and his years of performing magic and standup gave him an incredible sense of timing.

  In late 1991, Disney hired me to do a last-second punch up for the Emilio Estevez classic The Mighty Ducks. (Yes, The Mighty Ducks was punched up.)

  When Disney approached me about another job, I pulled Joel in. Our first collaboration was Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, the third installment of the franchise. A first draft had been written by the supremely talented Karey Kirkpatrick, but the studio wanted revisions and Karey was already committed to a new project. Joel and I got the nod.

  Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves was perfectly suited to Joel’s visual sense of humor and to my love of tiny, shrunken people. We bought model train HO scale figurines and placed them all over my living room furniture to generate ideas. I had two wicker chairs and we realized that wicker could be climbed like a ladder. We used this device to get Wayne (played by Rick Moranis), his wife, and their friends Patti and Gordon to a windowsill where they find themselves knee-deep in dust. From our script:

  INT. WINDOWSILL — DAY

  THEY START KICKING AND PLAYING IN THE DUST. IT’S A WINTER WONDERLAND AS GORDON SCOOPS UP AN ARMFUL AND THROWS IT AT PATTY.

  PATTI

  (laughing; re: dust) What is this stuff anyway?

  WAYNE

  Things decomposing—skin, hair, bug parts.

  PATTI SHUDDERS AND QUICKLY SHAKES THE DUST OUT OF HER HAIR.

  Storyboard artist’s drawing of the scene of the shrunken adults playing in the dust. The curled bridge in the foreground is a broken piece of wicker from the chair.

  Courtesy of Joel Hodgson and the author

  The wicker chair excursion made it into the movie but the playing-in-the-dust scene was nixed by the producer. He said the dust would have required extensive hair and makeup clean-up between takes. Directed by Dean Cundey, Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves was released direct-to-video in 1997 and became Disney’s third-highest grossing movie of that year.

  After Honey, Joel and I were asked to do a pass on the live-action George of the Jungle. Our additions included the opening animated sequence and fighting to make the character “Ape” (an ape) talk. At first, the studio balked at the talking animal conceit, but Joel and I convinced them it was essential to fans of the cartoon. We wrote the first pass of Ape’s dialogue which Monty Python’s John Cleese voiced to perfection.

  Joel’s rendering of Ape Mountain

  Courtesy of Joel Hodgson and the author

  George of the Jungle became a massive hit thanks in large part to the sparkling Leslie Mann in her first starring role. The writing credit on the movie went into arbitration, which meant a jury of Writers Guild members read each version of the script and determined who contributed what percentage of the material. First and last writers—Josh Olsen and Audrey Wells—were awarded onscreen credit. Joel and I fell short.

  Next, Joel and I decided to write a movie on spec. He had an idea about garbage bags that come to life and smother people, which worked brilliantly as an allegory for how we’re all drowning in our own packaging. Joel called the project “The Bags” and we wrote it quickly. The tone tried to capture the heightened dialogue of the B-movies that Joel had lampooned on MST3K. In the climax, a twenty-foot garbage bag designed by sculptor Claes Oldenburg comes “alive” and terrorizes the town. We even gave Claes a speaking part.

  Joel drew an awesome cover and we sent the spec script to our agents. I was convinced there’d be a bidding war.

  Script cover by Joel Hodgson

  It never sold. Much like trash, Hollywood didn’t care.

  Joel and I had better luck when we pursued writing an episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast, an animated TBS talk show hosted by intergalactic crime fighter Space Ghost and his bandleader-slash-nemesis Zorak. We pitched a story to the producers that parodied “Amok Time,” the Star Trek episode where Mr. Spock is drawn back to his home planet Vulcan to mate. In our version, Zorak (a praying mantis) also feels the urge to return to his home planet and mate. A complication arises when Zorak learns that after mating, a female praying mantis devours the male’s head.

  “Afraid of commitment!” exclaims Space Ghost.

  The producers approved our plot and sent us off to write. It was the most insane script Joel and I ever wrote . . . and we wrote a movie that featured a huge, homicidal garbage bag designed by Claes Oldenburg.

  Space Ghost producer Matt Hannigan had given us a Thursday deadline. On Wednesday evening, we stuffed our pages in a FedEx envelope and sent them to Atlanta. Things were a little rushed at the end, but we figured we’d make fixes after we got notes.

  We didn’t hear anything from the producers on Thursday. We didn’t hear anything from the producers on Friday. I started to worry. There are no insecurities like writers’ insecurities.

  Monday came and still no phone call. On Tuesday, I was at Joel’s house and, with his permission, I called to “check in” with Matt Harrigan.

  “Hey, Matt. I just wanted to make sure you got the script,” I said, using that old ruse.

  “Yeah, we got it,” Matt responded.

  “Good, so Joel and I were wondering when you’ll be giving us notes.”

  Dead silence on the other end. Oh, no. They must have hated the script.

  “Actually,” said Matt, “we recorded it Friday afternoon. It’s all done.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, and it read great. Thanks so much.”

  I hung up the phone, and turned to Joel.

  “We should quit right now,” I said. “We will never have a better experience than this.”

  Over the next few years, Joel and I supported each other’s TV projects. He was Sabrina’s magic supervisor and I wrote on The TV Wheel, his sketch-comedy pilot for HBO. Eventually, we got pulled in different creative directions. We stayed friends but didn’t work together again until 2017 when Joel revived MST3K and invited me to write on a couple of episodes. It was like getting
a chance to play for the ’75 Red Sox.

  Writing with Joel was mostly a clever excuse to spend time with him. I think a lot of successful collaborations boil down to people who just enjoy being together. That’s true for everyone I’ve teamed up with. Walking into a room and seeing A. Scott Berg, Doug Coupland, Ian Stokes, Rob Bragin, Tim Carvell, or my sister Claire makes me instantly happy.

  Shifting between a duo and solo career has helped me appreciate both. It’s great to have a brilliant partner who shares the burden of generating ideas and dialogue. And it’s great to write without a partner and not have to litigate every fucking line.

  With Last Week Tonight EP Tim Carvell in Vegas where Tim was reporting a story about Wayne Newton, 2003

  Courtesy of the author

  Collaboration is like canoeing: both paddlers need to row at the same speed and in the same direction. In some collaborations, one paddler steers and sets the pace. In others, the paddlers are perfectly synchronized. If the partnership works, the canoe glides through the water. If it doesn’t, the canoe goes in circles.

  I get why so many writers are drawn to collaboration, especially at the start of their careers. When you’re insecure, it helps to have a partner say, “That’s funny. Put it in the script.” The downside of a partnership is splitting a paycheck; the upside is easing the loneliness of writing, and imposing some discipline. Writers struggle to motivate themselves. If you don’t believe me, I have three half-written feature scripts to show you. Having a partner who depends on you raises the stakes and forces you to deliver. No writer wants to let down someone they love and respect. But letting yourself down? That’s just Tuesday.

  Joel’s and my meet cute turned out to be less “rom” and more “com.” Still, those early days when I was falling in love made me realize that after years of focusing on my career, I craved having someone to come home to. Pickings were slim in LA. Director Mike Nichols used to say that every relationship needed “a gardener and a flower.” I definitely wanted to be the flower. But how would I find a gardener in the desert?