Please try again. But some of the best hours of my life have been spent writing with friends at Colbert—I have actually laughed so hard while writing that I couldn’t even type. So that’s when the brute force comes into play, and just being a comedy draft horse. Inserting real-life stakes into these whimsical, magical worlds—that’s a pairing I like to riff on. If you’re pitching on topical stories, I would avoid the biggest story of the day—the show will have already picked over those bones and they’ll be more interested in reading your stuff if it’s not about the tentpole story they’ve already wrung dry. I do think there was a reason that that was the final story I turned in. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. See the 2021 Hollywood Portfolio— In Conversation: Roxane Gay and Monica Lewinsky on Trauma— Reply All’s Implosion Reveals the Limits of One-Sided Internet Relationships— Harry and Meghan Have “No Regrets” as Royal Exit Becomes Official— Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen on Their Friendship’s Origins— Proust Questionnaire: Watch Michael B. Jordan Answer Personality-Revealing Questions— Can This Photographer Save Beirut’s Architectural Treasures?— Seven Fashion Brands to Shop for a Fresh Start This Spring— From the Archive: How Tobacco Heiress Doris Duke Got Away With Murder— Not a subscriber? Then Stephen picks the stories he wants in the monologue, and those stories are assigned to writing teams. I mean, in high school, I had scoliosis, and I wore a back brace for about a year. But when you’re working on a book or a play—because it’s like this in theater too—you get the kid-glove treatment. Eric Farwell: You’ve had the experience of both being at the Onion, which is often a steppingstone to a late-night job, and The Late Show, which you left in 2019. You’ve got to cut that out, and you’ve got to get to the next joke faster.” And then I realized, “Oh, the jokes cancel each other out if they come at you too fast.”. I can’t tell you how much it was sucking, how it was not working, until the last minute. Michael Ian Black with Jen Spyra. Stories in the book range from the tale of a Hollywood 1940s starlet struggling to make her way in today’s post-woke Hollywood; a fiancée dangerously set on obtaining the perfect “bridal body”; and a child who has an adventure with a sentient snowman that is—let’s just say—the polar opposite of the adorable Frosty, including being endowed with a certain, very noticeable carrot appendage. The main headline here was I was shocked how little note giving there is. I remember one of the first articles I wrote was about some event in heaven, and I wrote “Heaven” instead of “The Heavens” in the dateline. We update links when possible, With “Big Time,” I told my editors a year before I wrote it that that was going to be the title story. There’s a bait and switch thing going on with most of these late-night shows: the writing staffs are generally comedy people who get hired based on their evergreen-comedy chops and are then called on to have hot takes on Janet Yellen. Interview edited for length and clarity . Everyone loves that assignment. ← Previous Post. Just a teeny mistake like that made me seem like a total rube. You want that money to keep piling up, but at the same time, growing and scaring myself artistically, that’s also really important to me. I wanted to give everything I had to that. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission. She’s not going to say no [to the joke].”. Jen Spyra Disobeys Bridger. 12, 2021 What was the editorial process like for Big Time, considering you’re coming from a world where you’re used to getting notes from comedy writers or editors, not book editors? I also see a lot of Doug Kenney, one of the earliest writers for National Lampoon, in the comedic sensibility of your stories: a traditional idea taken to extremes and into modern areas, such as in your piece about the young boy who meets a very odd flying snowman named Ken. Even though I loved writing for the Onion and Colbert, for someone like me with my, shall we say, particular tastes and my weird sensibility, there was a ceiling to what I could explore. adwait. Piece of advice: When you do end up having kids, you might not want to refer to them as “little fuckers.”. Chuck D from Public Enemy 1:16:59. Slate has relationships with various online retailers. It’s just about looking at a news story, isolating the data points in the story that are a little bit weird, a little bit off, and then writing hard jokes off those data points. The freedom you get when writing fiction is addictive. You took improv while at Barnard College, and then later in Chicago for Second City. Michael Ian Black with Jen Spyra 42:43 | Released March 18, 2021. A naive, plucky character who grinds up against the indignity of real life—I can’t stay away from that. I didn’t even know about short form comedy writing until my senior year of college. What type of sitcom takes place in a Swiss Chalet? You’re losing them.” I had to actually learn: “Oh, no, you’re letting the reader breathe right now. The impetus really was the freedom that I tasted in teeny little bites when I submitted stuff to the New Yorker. A late-night talk show with a different interview format, where guests appear on stage simultaneously and the host sits to the left and not behind a desk, and with original segments like 'Carpool Karaoke'. Stars: James Corden, Reggie Watts, Louis Waymouth, Harry Styles. I think just knowing how common that is—the resistance to doing the thing you desperately want to do, write—is comforting. But you’re being paid to do it. Curated Podcasts Recommended by media. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. My editor’s edits and suggestions were subtle, but they were really, really helpful. You’re your own boss. Even on banner days, you can still have small rejections that sting. Yeah, it’s not as analytical as “I have a story, and what would be the best vehicle?” First, I just have to be grabbed by something—maybe it’s an emotion that I’m feeling intensely at that time, like when I was getting ready for my wedding and I felt anxious about wasting so much time getting physically ready, i.e., getting hot—or it could be as simple as asking myself, “What’s a world I’d like to live in for a little while?”. Same with Hardy. I have never been in that position before. There’s almost no note giving. A late-night talk show with a different interview format, where guests appear on stage simultaneously and the host sits to the left and not behind a desk, and with original segments like 'Carpool Karaoke'. And 27 is when I get hired at the Onion, which was the huge break, because that was the first time that my fantasy-job life merged with my real-money 9-to-5 life. Now Spyra’s work can be seen in a new collection of humorous short stories from Random House, Big Time. How does one not lose their mind constantly writing jokes about an unsavory character? Making bold choices, identifying the game of a scene, heightening that game—interchangeable skills for improv and writing. What’s your preference: the written page or television? Jen Spyra Jen Spyra's short story collection is satirical, raunchy, clever and entertaining. Jen Spyra is no stranger to delivering comedy with a punch. All contents © 2021 The Slate Group LLC. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. New Digg Picks. I wasn’t always able to strike it. LEO, Inventor Extraordinaire is available now. I don’t often hear the Brontë sisters cited as a comedic influence. The idea behind the double meetings is to use the first one to separate the wheat from the chaff—if one of the jokes in your pitch bombs at 9:00, you drop it or retool it in the minutes you have before you have to say it to Stephen. In this debut collection, with a foreword by Colbert, Spyra parodies everything from Goosebumps to current online influencers inflamed with their own self-importance. — Why Kensington Palace Just Can’t Let Go of Meghan Markle— On With the Show! Though she has since left the show to pursue other writing, she hasn’t lost a step, comedically. At first, I felt a little wobbly not getting hard notes. Jen Spyra on Balancing the Zany with the Emotional On today's episode of The Literary Life, Mitchell Kaplan talks to Jen Spyra about her new book, Big Time, out now from Random House. Jen Spyra (left), who writes for 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' tweeted Tuesday after Barbara Bush's (right) death. That much is evident in her new, genre-hopping humor collection, Big Time, which tackles an extremely serious bridal body boot camp, a cringeworthy date with Sherlock Holmes, and an amnesiac enrolled in an elite boyfriend training program, to name a few. Subscribe to Tight Five, our free weekly newsletter with comedy tips , funny reads, and entertaining reccos. What do you do when you don’t really feel it? My parents both worked late, so I was able to get three to four hours in during afterschool care at The Jewish Community Center, and then I came home and watched more. Stars: James Corden, Reggie Watts, Louis Waymouth, Allison Janney. He has that glib, blithe darkness that really kills me, and he’s an adventurous performer. Jen Spyra is an actress and former staff writer for 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' and 'The Onion.' March 16, 2021. Votes: 6,319 The aha moment there came when I realized how conversational it wanted to be. Debut short story collection BIG TIME out now! I had the reputation of “Oh, don’t ask Jen if that’s too dark or too weird. “Big Time” is over a hundred, and I think I worked on it off and on for two years—I’d get frustrated and then write another story. Natasha Lyonne to Star in Rian Johnson’s New TV Series Poker Face ; How Demi Lovato’s ‘Dancing With the Devil’ Documentary Sheds an Unrealistic ‘Role Model’ Label It’s about the challenge of keeping an audience coming back for more. Of course, it never feels good when your ideas aren’t met with the ticker tape parades they deserve—but you learn that there’s only one strategy to deal with the pain: focus on the next pitch. The adults are bystanders. During this fellowship, are you learning how to write an Onion piece in terms of formatting and things like that? And then, because I’m an old now, I started identifying with the parents. I was an intern for the Spring 2018 semester at The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and, before that, an intern at Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Explorer Find similar podcasts. So then what were the signs for you that it was time to leave the show? In the beginning, I was messing up left and right. No matter what, even if performing scares you, or you just think it’s lame, the skills you learn in improv will help your writing. In terms of an engine—feeling passionately about what I’m writing about, which oftentimes can just mean being angry about something—that can give a piece an energy, a specificity, that helps distinguish it. It’s new to me, but that was something where I was like, “Oh, this is how a short story is different from a sketch.” At first my instinct was, “That’s just fat. Do you find that taking improv can be beneficial to a comedy writer, especially a young one? Do you start with a genre in mind, or do you have an idea and you’re like, “This kind of wrapping can work for the engine here in the story”? I think childhood innocence colliding with adult pain can be pretty funny. One commonality with your pieces is that many of them are parodies of children’s stories or teen novels or traditional holiday fables, and other genres from our past—which are then blown out into entirely new directions, all the while using the same dry voice. That was something that I didn’t do in writing at my other jobs. I did not love being an assistant. You write until go time, which is when the taping begins. But, of course, as a human being on Mother Earth and a woman, I have so many body things that I am personally obsessed with. Even when you have a banner day, and you land a pitch you’re really excited by, your favorite joke might get cut after rehearsal, and it hurts. And in “Monster Goo,” it’s just Goosebumps. Stories from Random House, BIG time by Jen Spyra: I hugely out... S tentpole stories my favorite part of the Persian classic from Arabian Nights back for more away from.., every day subscribe to Tight Five, our free weekly newsletter with comedy tips, reads! 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