Just the Funny Parts

by Nell Scovell

  (At top of speech, POTUS points) Ohmigod, there’s Paul Rudd!

  There are now three women on the Supreme Court. You know what that means? For the first time in American history, the Supreme Court can field a double-dutch jump rope team.

  I don’t want to scare off any challengers, but anyone running for president should know the White House is haunted. Late at night, roaming the halls, you bump into former inhabitants, souls who are not at peace. Mary Todd Lincoln . . . Rahm Emanuel . . . One of them mutters the most foul things . . . and it’s not the one you’d expect.

  I know some of my advisors are concerned about my current approval rating. But here’s the thing—I live with two daughters, a wife and my mother-in-law so having ANY approval rating seems pretty good to me.

  None of these jokes made it in and I admit, the Mary Todd one was a stretch. But I’m sharing them because they illustrate why a female perspective can lead to joke areas that male writers might overlook. Again, I don’t believe only men can write for men and only women can write for women. Still, the Paul Rudd joke is something that a teenage girl (or I) would scream, which is why it seemed funny to put it in the president’s mouth. Double Dutch was popular among the girls in my elementary school so when I was brainstorming about what three women on the Supreme Court could do, that popped into my head. More perspectives lead to more opportunities for finding comedy.

  The 2011 WHCD turned out to be notable for two reasons. The next day, the world would learn that President Obama had ordered the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan before heading to the dinner. His coolness and good humor didn’t give away the greater mission. That WHCD also included a joke run that mocked the decision-making ability of reality TV star Donald J. Trump who was sitting in the audience. Judd Apatow and Jon Lovett cooked up the hilarious takedown and the entire room laughed loudly at the ridiculous host of The Apprentice. As someone who’d been making fun of Trump since my SPY magazine days, I couldn’t believe this “Queens-born, failed casino operator” was still in the public eye. Surely after this humiliation, the brass-loving steak peddler would go away for good. Instead, many have pointed to that night as causing the “narcissistic injury,” which prompted his decision to seek revenge and run for office.

  After the 2011 dinner, Jon Favreau invited me to the White House to meet the other speechwriters. Jon Lovett kindly procured a photo that President Obama inscribed for me. The president thanked me for the jokes and added, “Glad I was able to provide the material.”

  Sweet, self-deprecating, and funny.

  Each year, I looked forward to contributing to that April evening so much that, starting in early March, I’d check my email nervously every morning hoping for a note from the White House. Each year I sweated it out, and each year the email would arrive. In 2013, I attended the dinner as the guest of Josh Marshall, founder and editor of my favorite news site, Talking Points Memo.

  The dinner includes a weekend of parties leading up to the main event. Beltway dwellers love the chance to mingle with Hollywood stars. Since I get to do that in my day job, I was more excited to meet politicians. At one party, I watched fans flock to the magnificent Kerry Washington, while I kept my eye on a woman who was chatting with just one other person. When that conversation seemed to be wrapping up, I sidled over.

  “I wanted to meet you. I’m Nell Scovell.”

  “Tammy Baldwin,” she said, offering her hand.

  “Yes, I know, Senator,” I said, shaking the hand of the recently elected, first openly gay member of the Senate. “I’m so glad you won.”

  Still, the best sighting came right before the dinner. I was milling around outside the ballroom when I saw the crowd start to part. Suddenly, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia swept by me like a Roman Emperor, flanked by bodyguards. He was smiling broadly and seemed almost animated, like a cartoon fireplug come to life with sparks flying all around.

  Lovely and talented writers Michael Chabon, Ayelet Waldman, and my host Josh Marshall at the White House Correspondents Dinner, 2013.

  Courtesy of the author

  My old Wilton North Report pal Conan O’Brien delivered the comedy address that night, and I got to congratulate him at the Vanity Fair after-party at the French Ambassador’s residence. The backyard trees were strewn with blue lights creating a magical setting. It’s always a treat to see Graydon Carter and I hugged my editor Mike Hogan. Toward the end, I ran into the delightful Scott Berg by the fireplace. Scott and I had collaborated on a screenplay about a woman’s college back in 1988. All my worlds were colliding in the loveliest way.

  After President Obama’s final WHCD, I figured my presidential joke writing days were over. Then, in October 2016, speechwriter extraordinaire Jeff Nussbaum reached out to me about contributing to Hillary Clinton’s upcoming Al Smith dinner address. I’d never written for the former Secretary of State/Senator/First Lady and leapt at the chance. Her opponent Trump would also take part in this white-tie fund-raiser for Catholic charities.

  Like President Obama, Secretary Clinton is a good sport and willing to wring comedy from self-deprecation. As with Letterman at the Kennedy Center Honors, I began by brainstorming an opening line. At the time, one of Trump’s unfair criticisms was that Secretary Clinton lacked “stamina.”

  “She’ll go home, she’ll take a nap for four or five hours then come back,” candidate Trump once said at a rally. “No naps for Trump! No naps. I don’t take naps.”

  First, this statement convinces me that Trump takes naps. Second, it struck me as a good jumping-off point. I played around in this area and landed on a line for Clinton: “This is such a special event that I took a break from my rigorous nap schedule to be here.”

  Five Jokes Secretary Clinton Didn’t Use at the Al Smith Dinner

  Donald defines nontraditional marriage as between a man and a brunette.

  You know we used to be friends. Donald even invited us to his wedding. And believe me I’m sorry now that we didn’t spring for the 10-speed blender.

  On Dr. Oz, Donald said that he gets his exercise from moving his arms while he speaks. When I heard that, my eyebrows got a great workout.

  Mike Pence keeps saying the country needs broad-shouldered leadership. Hey, maybe it’s time for some child-bearing-hips leadership.

  Whoever wins, I think it’s fair to say that the quality of basketball in the White House will drop.

  Amazingly, the way I heard it in my head was exactly the way she delivered it a couple of weeks later.

  Clinton came across as relaxed, funny, and in control. Trump’s performance communicated the opposite. During his speech, he delivered one solid joke, which came at the expense of his wife. Then Trump dropped all pretense that he was interested in participating in good-natured fun. He started punching below the belt.

  “Here she is tonight, in public, pretending not to hate Catholics,” Trump said, viciously. It wasn’t a joke. It was a deceitful attack. I will never understand why Cardinal Timothy Dolan didn’t stand up and say, “Hey, that’s not funny.”

  Humor can unite people of all faiths and political leanings, but Trump didn’t want to be part of that. Or maybe he was incapable. Comedy requires empathy. A joke works because it builds off a shared feeling or perspective. Since Trump can’t connect with the thoughts and emotions of anyone not named Donald J. Trump that limits what he can find funny. People have said that Trump has no sense of humor. I disagree. He clearly finds humor in the misfortune of others. He once retweeted a doctored video of him hitting a golf ball and knocking Clinton over. It’s schadenfreude with a laugh track.

  Despite Trump’s nasty comments at the Al Smith dinner, Clinton enjoyed the highest poll numbers of her campaign that week. She was on a roll. Exactly one week later, James Comey released the infamous letter saying some of her emails had surfaced on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. None of the emails turned out to contain classified information, but her poll numbers plummeted.

  Colin and I were
in New York City on Election Day, aka November 8, 2016, aka my fifty-sixth birthday. Ed Solomon, one of Hollywood’s funniest writers, invited us to his apartment to watch the returns and eat chili. As polls were closing, I passed the hotel on Sixth Avenue where Trump was holding his post-election party. The white men in their red MAGA hats looked apprehensive, and I briefly allowed myself to think that Clinton was going to win. My spirits soared. Her administration would battle climate change. It would protect those who need protection. A female would finally lead this country. I knew that wouldn’t end sexism, but it would signal progress.

  The rest of the night was a long slide from jubilation to despair. The most qualified, experienced public servant ever to run for president lost to a racist, draft-dodging, greedy, sexual assaulting, pathological lying, short-fingered vulgarian. I excused myself from Ed’s chili party early and walked the four miles from SoHo to the Upper West Side. The very air felt different, polluted by the nation’s choice.

  The next morning, I called my eighty-eight-year-old father and broke down.

  “How could they have voted for him?” I asked, sobbing like a child.

  “It’ll be okay,” Mel said.

  I hoped he was right, but it now occurs to me, this may be the only time in my life that my father ever lied to me.

  Unused Jokes I Submitted for President Obama’s Final WHCD

  Welcome. I know many of you came tonight to see the charismatic leader of North America, but Justin Trudeau couldn’t make it.

  I turned fifty while in office which meant I had to have my first colonoscopy and guess what they found? Mitch McConnell. That guy can obstruct anything.

  The Republicans are working hard to change the Constitution. They want to shorten the First Amendment to “Congress shall make no law.” (beat) That’s it.

  If Trump wins, he gets the nuclear code. I’ll give him a hint now: it’s the same number that’s on my Kenyan birth certificate.

  People ask me who I’d like to see as our next president which is touchy—it’s a little like asking who I want to see as Michelle’s next husband. I mean, c’mon, man, I’m still doing the job.

  After all these years, I’m getting really used to living where I work so post-presidency, Michelle and I are starting to think we may open a bed and breakfast. We’re not sure where but we’ve already got the name: [show slide]

  Photoshop work by Dode Levenson

  Chapter 19

  Stage Five of a Hollywood Writer’s Career

  Don’t die. It interferes with everything.

  —Irving Brecher, 1914–2008

  IRV BRECHER AND I MET IN 2005 AND BECAME INSTANT friends. We had no choice. Irv was ninety-two and there really wasn’t time to let a relationship “unfold.”

  We crossed paths at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica where I was sitting in the audience for a showing of a 1939 Marx Brothers film. At the Circus is not as well-known as Duck Soup or Horsefeathers, but it holds its own thanks to the catchy “Lydia, the Tattooed Lady” and Irv Brecher’s absurdist script. Remarkably, sixty-five years after Irv thought up the gags, people were still laughing at them. The screening ended and Irv was helped to the stage by an old SPY colleague, Hank Rosenfeld. Tall and commanding, Irv opened strong.

  “My eyesight’s not so good,” he said, “but my wife tells me the theater marquee reads, ‘Irving Brecher Live.’ ” He paused. “That’ll be a surprise to my doctors.”

  I fell in love.

  Irv’s credits are legendary. He received sole writing credit on two Marx Brothers movies. He turned his radio show “Life of Riley” into a sitcom, which launched Jackie Gleason’s career and won the very first Emmy for “Best Film Made for and Shown on Television.” (Clearly, the industry was still confused about how to label the new medium.) Irv directed Ernie Kovacs’s final movie and cowrote the screenplays for Meet Me in St. Louis, Bye Bye Birdie, and Shadow of the Thin Man. He even punched up The Wizard of Oz. Groucho Marx and S. J. Perelman once set out to name the three quickest wits in America and landed on George S. Kaufman, Oscar Levant, and Irv Brecher. Since the other two were unavailable, I befriended Irv.

  Irving Brecher, aka the Wicked Wit of the West

  Courtesy of Colin Summers

  Irv and his wife, Norma, lived in a high-rise condo on Wilshire Boulevard and I’d visit them on Sunday mornings. Irv would tell me stories about fishing with Groucho and golfing with Jack Benny. His close friends included Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, songwriters of “Lydia” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” We’d talk about subjects we both loved, like old Hollywood, Jewish food, and Broadway shows. One summer, I came back from a trip to New York City.

  “I saw a wonderful revival of South Pacific at Lincoln Center with Kelli O’Hara,” I gushed to Irv.

  “I was there for opening night in 1949,” he replied. “Al Jolson couldn’t use his tickets so he gave them to me. Mary [Martin] was great but I loved Myron McCormick.”

  It was impossible to one-up Irv.

  Often, we discussed politics. Irv was a lifelong Democrat but the world was changing fast and sometimes it was hard to keep up.

  “Irv, I’ve never asked you,” I once said. “What’s your opinion on gay marriage?”

  “I’m fine with it,” he said. “I just haven’t found the right guy.”

  Mostly, we talked about show business. Irv’s agent had been dead for over twenty-five years, but that didn’t stop Irv from complaining about him. Irv even held on to his anger at studio executives for miscasting the female lead in At the Circus. “I could have had Kitty Carlisle Hart,” he said, shaking his head.

  But Irv wasn’t living in the past. Six decades after he helped invent the sitcom, his fertile mind was still hatching new premises.

  “What if . . .” he would begin. “What if there’s a divorced couple and the wife remarries a guy who lives in a luxury apartment so the ex-husband takes a job as the building’s concierge in order to be closer to his son.”

  A solid pitch. And like most writers, Irv had already started casting the series in his mind.

  “Louis C.K. would be terrific for the concierge,” he said. “And for the wife, I’d cast that young, blond girl. You know, whatshername . . .”

  “Amy Poehler?”

  “Bette Midler!”

  Bette was sixty-five but to Irv, she was still an ingenue.

  Irv asked me if I’d be interested in writing the pilot with him.

  “I’d be honored,” I said.

  “Good,” he said. He paused and then added, “I just want one more shot.”

  Those six words pierced my heart. Irv’s fervent desire was either the most inspiring or the most depressing comment I’d ever heard. At ninety-three, Irv still felt the pull of Hollywood.

  We are all seduced by the softly whispered come-ons of success, even when we know the odds of creating a hit movie or TV show are ridiculously low. Success in Hollywood requires the right concept, the right execution, the right casting, the right production team, the right outlet, the right marketing, and it all needs to come together at the right cultural moment. There are so many variables and writers don’t fully control any of them.

  In his seminal 1983 book, Adventures in the Screen Trade, William Goldman leveled Hollywood in three words: “Nobody knows anything.” Specifically, Goldman meant that nobody knows anything about how a movie will perform at the box office. His book offers examples, including Universal turning down George Lucas’s proposed space opera called—what was it?—oh yeah, Star Wars.

  Rejection and failure are the bread and butter of this gluten-free, nondairy town. Over a decade ago, I bumped into a talented comedy writer who had recently turned forty. Work was not coming as easily, and his agent was no longer responding quickly to his calls. My friend was shifting into the “Get me a younger, cheaper” phase of his career. I was struggling too. We commiserated.

  “I need a new paradigm for success,” he sighed.

  I knew exactly what he meant. In the
previous decade, I had spun through a dozen “paradigms” desperate to duplicate the success of Sabrina. I tried high-concept shows. I tried low-concept shows. I teamed up with talent. I ran with the studio’s idea. I ran with the network’s idea. I ran with my passion project. I developed TV shows based on books . . . movies . . . and even a sales video. (One year, CBS digitally inserted Leslie Moonves into old TV shows for the annual advertising upfronts, and the video was so well received that the network hired me to write a pilot about a modern-day sheriff who gets advice from a rotoscoped Andy Griffith.)

  I was trying—and failing—to crack the Hollywood code. Then in 2008, I gained some clarity. At the height of Desperate Housewives, I got a call to meet with Teri Hatcher who had a development deal at ABC. The actress had sold a concept to the network about a woman who discovers that her daily horoscope is remarkably accurate. I thought it was a clever device and a terrific way to create internal conflict. For example, what if one morning the woman’s horoscope tells her, “Avoid major decisions today” and then at dinner, her boyfriend proposes?

  Teri gave me the thumbs-up to develop her premise. I made the lead a lawyer who loves rules and resists the notion that the stars affect her life. The network approved our pitch and I went off to write. Two months and many drafts later, all signs were positive as the script landed on the desk of the network president. He read it that night and passed the next morning.

  According to my agent, the network president liked the characters. He liked the setup. He just didn’t care for the horoscope concept.

  “You’re kidding me?” I said.

  The rejection didn’t stun me, but the reason given did. It meant the exact thing that sold the project in the first place led to its downfall in the end. If you’re confused, imagine how I felt after two solid months of work.

  I called my friend Rob Bragin to vent. Rob is wise and judicious—his nickname at Murphy Brown was “the Professor”—and I trusted him to make sense of what had happened. He pondered my story for a moment.