Paley Center event: The Truthiness Behind the Lines: An In-Depth Look Behind the Scenes with The Colbert Report Writers

Thanks to Margaret E. I. (i.e. Spoon at a Spork Fight) for this excellent write up of the Paley Center writer panel.

The panel started with a montage of recent clips from the Colbert Report, including some Words and headline pieces on healthcare reform. The panel itself was moderated by Zachary Kanin from the New Yorker and former editor of the Harvard Lampoon. He started with two Lightning Round questions, going down the line of writers with each of them giving one- or two-word responses (usually). The first question was who the writer thought the hunkiest guy was (not an audience question, perhaps surprisingly). Head writer Barry Julien was immediately to the moderator’s right and went first, saying, “Stephen Colbert!” One of the other writer’s informed him that that was two words and so “Colbert” was automatically his answer to whatever the next question was. The rest of the answers ran the gamut from “George Clooney” to “Jon Stewart” to “my dad” (said by Michael Brumm) to “Michael Brumm’s dad” (said by the writer sitting next to Michael). The next question from the host was what they would title their autobiography, which garnered puzzled looks but funny quips. Barry Julien’s title was, “Why Are You Reading This?”

When asked if the writing staff at The Daily Show and The Colbert Report communicated to make sure their topics didn’t overlap, Julien said they didn’t talk about that and that the shows each had a different enough voice that they naturally focused on different topics. What little overlap did occur seemed natural and didn’t bother him. When asked if they ever pranked The Daily Show writing staff, one of the writers explained that the studios are four blocks apart which is “just long enough a walk to make it not worth it.” Another writer pointed it that The Daily Show writing staff punked them by winning Emmys. Julien did mention “sending the TDS staff a cake and one hundred dollars-worth of Nerf Guns” after their last Emmy win and receiving a note back saying that every single Nerf gun worked. No mention of the shape of said cake… Meredith Scardino said that even though the staffs didn’t see each other often because they had the same work schedules, but she had heard that the interns were quite competitive about their baseball games and that Jon Stewart supposedly brings in ringers leading the TCR team to get pounded at their last game 19-0.

Julien mentioned that one of his favorite things about Drysdale’s apartment was that when you walk in the door there’s a small table (”smaller than these,” gesturing to the tiny podiums holding the water glasses) holding all of his Emmys and Peabodys. Then Meredith asked, “Didn’t you put them away in a box because they were too much pressure or something?” Eric replied that he did because they were blocking his laundry hamper and that one of the Emmys fell and the wings broke. The audience made a surprised sound causing one of the writers exclaim, “Did you hear that gasp?!”

When someone asked how to become a writer on the show, Scardino (who was hired at TCR in 2008) said that she watched the show and then wrote a Threatdown and two Words. If, after doing that, you hear there’s an opening or you have an agent (or even without an agent if you can get your packet into the right hands) then you can submit your work. She also said if you want to be a writer to be ready to be unemployed; Opus Moreschi helpfully pointed out that “unemployed” currently described 10% of the US population. The writers stressed how important it was to keep writing. Julien said he wrote for anything they would let him write for in Canada, where he’s from. In the lobby after the panel I actually saw an audience member talking to a writer and giving him a manilla folder of papers: good luck!

Another audience member asked how the Colbert Report compared to working at other television shows and it became clear that most of the writers hadn’t worked at other television show staffs before Colbert (e.g., Julien came from a stand-up background, one writer worked in “unpublished written work, like diaries and journals”). Peter Gwinn said his current job was a lot like when he worked at Starbucks. Moreschi agreed saying there were “a lot of rewrites” especially if you didn’t spell customer’s name on the side of the cup correctly.

During the Q&A with the audience someone asked whether the writers specifically set out to plan and coordinate interaction with the fans, citing specifically the Green Screen Challenge, naming things after Stephen and the Twitter feed. The writers responded that while they all write for the Twitter feed, most of the audience interaction was started by the audience bringing things to their attention (like the Hungarian bridge). They did laugh about doing web searches for naming things after the ball had gotten rolling and finding the Canadian junior hockey team. Then Frank Lesser, who I believe had said he’d started out at the website, said the original Colbert Report website was set up as a joke; as in, “What if we had fans?” Then a fan website came up that was better and faster with content than the official website (I believe Peter Gwinn piped up with “The No Fact Zone!”) and they realized they had to make the official website better in order to keep up with NFZ.

My favorite question came from a younger member of the audience who asked how the staff managed tough topics from the news that didn’t automatically seem like a good set-up for humor, specifically mentioning torture and the KBR-built electrified showers. Julien said they borrowed a rule from The Daily Show, which was “no human tragedy.” With the example of the KBR story (which he briefly summarized), there was enough legitimate anger at the company to work with without putting any focus on the victims, which they would never do. It also helped that the company was a large entity. Apparently a story that there was some dispute over was one about balding bears, because the balding was cause by a disease (though Meredith Scaradino passionately and hilariously defended the balding bear story since the disease didn’t hurt the bears, it just made them bald. An audience member who agreed with her mentioned it again in the lobby after the panel and she continued to defend the story, which was awesome).

After the inevitable “people get their news from you” question, Julien pointed out that they could do a much better job of the satire they were known for and were good at when the audience came to the show informed from a wide variety of news souces. Peter Gwinn talked about how some subjects were harder to setup than others. While Donald Trump needed no setup (”Hair! Crazy! Tie! You’re Fired!”), when writing jokes about the Afghanistan elections he would have to first setup who Abdullah Abdullah was and that his brother was an opium trader before even getting to the joke.

After the panel was over and the writers were photographed in front of a Paley Center backdrop, Meredith Scaradino generously approached me (I get shy sometimes) and signed my sketchbook (after exclaiming, “I don’t know why you want this!”) and even called over Eric Drysdale to sign it too. Tip of the hat and one million points for Scardino.

All the writers were funny and informative, the audience members were appreciative and engaged, and the Paley Center looks great since it’s update after changing its name from The Museum of Television and Radio. It was a pleasure to attend and get some insights into the work the writers do. Thanks everyone!

• Stephen Colbert in the Zeitgeist – September 27, 2009
• Belated welcome to new ‘Colbert Report’ writer Max Werner