DANNY

Danny Chun is a TV writer from Pennsylvania. He spent 6 years at The Simpsons, then moved to The Office in 2009. He can be found on Twitter, mostly making jokes about poop or bragging. We asked Danny to discuss the ins and outs of TV comedy writing and give advice to those gunning to usurp his throne.

BREAKING INTO THE BIZ
In college, I wrote a lot of comedy for the comedy magazine. Junior year, my friend put together a variety show and got Bob Saget to come host it. I was a writer on the variety show. Bob was so happy about it that he kept in touch with my friend and helped him find a manager in Los Angeles. When it came time for me to graduate, I sent some material to the same manager, and he took me on. I moved to LA and started writing spec scripts. Those specs helped me get an agent, and then the agents started sending stuff around town. The Simpsons was the first show that hired me.

HOW STUDYING BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AT HARVARD (I.E. TRYING TO BAIT MONKEYS INTO CAGES WITH GRAPES) LED TO A CAREER IN COMEDY
I knew that professional writing is not a “resumé” profession. In other words, my grades and my major didn’t matter. So I switched out of English, which I found super boring, and studied biological anthropology because that gave you access to the monkey lab. I don’t recommend this specific path, because it would rob my individual story of potency. But the general principle is sound — lots of people here study English or Film in college, and then go to film school, and while that probably teaches them a lot of technical things that I’m super dumb about, it also makes them seem like they’ve had no experience in life. Hollywood is a total sucker for a person with a good story.

A TYPICAL DAY ON THE OFFICE
There are basically three types of days for a writer on The Office. Type 1 is a story day — that’s when we all sit around and brainstorm ideas for episodes. If one of the ideas has traction, we’ll try to “break” the story — figure out the beginning, middle, and end, along with funny moments. There’s a lot to think about here — is the story cliché, was it done on another sitcom, is it too similar to a past episode, does it involve our most important characters, is it funny?

Day type number 2 comes after someone has taken a story and written the script and turned it in. Then we work on the script to ready it for shooting. In the ideal case, the story works great and we just tweak it, and replace jokes with funnier jokes. In the shittier cases, the script doesn’t work and we rethink the story and basically group-write a new script in a couple days. Those are the notorious TV writer days where you stay until 4am and people are in bad moods and everyone is eating gross snacks and getting fat and pissed because they’re missing their kids’ childhoods.

Day type number 3 is when a script you wrote is being shot. Then you’re on the set, basically watching as an advocate of the script. You work with the director to make sure the scenes are being shot correctly, and you sometimes think of replacement lines if there’s a problem. These are the days you work with actors, which can be challenging for anyone, much less people who probably got into writing to avoid social interaction.

COMPARED TO A TYPICAL DAY ON THE SIMPSONS
The vast majority of time spent on The Simpsons was day type number 2, from above. The animation schedule allows for a lot more re-writing, so scripts would get worked on 8-10 times before making it to air. We get to see the shows at various rudimentary stages of animation, so that helps us figure out what’s working and what sucks. The fear with that is that you’ll fall out of love with a joke simply because it’s too familiar to you, and you’ll replace it with something newer but worse. That happened sometimes.

WHAT IT’S LIKE WORKING IN THE WRITERS’ ROOM OF A TV COMEDY
At its best, it’s like shooting the shit with a bunch of hilarious, intelligent friends. The majority of the time you’re off on some digression, or trying to out-outrageous each other with filthy jokes. Plus, you’re getting paid a lot and you’re making a TV show. It’s a really awesome feeling. At its worst, you’re tired and frustrated and annoyed about the fact that you think the show is being totally fucked up. But it’s still pretty good. I’ve never worked on a truly terrible show, so I’m sure I’ve been spared the worst writers’ room experiences.

A huge part of being a professional TV writer is being in a writers’ room. Most shows do their writing this way. So you have to learn to write in this environment — by which I mean, pitch ideas out loud and watch them succeed or fail. And it’s also why a really important part of getting a job is seeming like someone the staff would want to hang out with for 10-16 hours a day.

THE QUALITIES THAT MAKE A GOOD TV COMEDY WRITER
Aside from an amazing sense of humor, there’s no one quality that will bring you success by itself. If you’re insanely funny, you’ll get work even if you’re a total dick. But aside from that, I’d say every good comedy writer I’ve worked with has had a combination of keen observational skill, good work ethic and low tolerance for cliché.

ON FIGHTING FOR YOUR IDEAS
People pitch jokes all day, and nobody’s success rate is that high. Maybe 20-40% of your pitches will go over well. But obviously, you wouldn’t have pitched it if you didn’t think it was funny. So you learn pretty quickly that nobody has a rock-solid grasp on what everyone’s gonna like. Anybody who nevertheless fights for all their pitches gets annoying pretty quickly. That said, people will fight for certain things they really believe in. It’s just a matter of wisely picking your battles.

The other thing is, when you’re a writer on staff, but it’s not your show, it’s not really your place to tell the showrunner “you’re making a mistake by not putting in that pitch.” Some showrunners welcome that, and that’s great, but your main job is simply to generate like hell. So you pitch a joke you think is great. If they don’t like it, just shrug and pitch something else.

HOW TV WRITERS WORK WITH ACTORS ON SET
The writer is there to advocate for the script. Sometimes actors don’t get the scenes in order, so they’ll ad lib a line that’s actually very important. So the writer will tell the director and the director will tell the actor. Other times the intent of a line or joke won’t be clear to the actor. But since the writer was there when it was written or pitched, they can help explain the moment. What I like about being on set is the opportunity to make things as funny as possible — to really watch the actors and see if there is anything I can say to help maximize the impact of a specific joke. But in general, they’ve really got it down pat. Actors like Steve (Carell) and Rainn (Wilson) and Ed Helms — and almost everyone at The Office, really — are extremely gifted and funny, and in most cases they will not only get the joke right, they’ll add something to it that I never predicted.

SO LET’S GET TO IT ALREADY…HOW DOES ONE BREAK INTO COMEDY WRITING?
1. Write a lot. I don’t know anybody who’s reached a high level of writing success without working really hard.
2. Move to LA (or maybe New York.)
3. Start gaining experience or contacts, however you can. Take classes at Groundlings or Second City. Try stand-up. Get a job delivering scripts to people. Get hired as a personal assistant to a producer. Anything. Be creative and tireless. But not annoying.
4. That’s pretty much it. The formula is simple: talent + ambition = success. Most people who are bitter about their level of success are fooling themselves and are either not as good as they think, or lazier than they’d like to admit. Granted, it’s really hard to get someone in this town to read your stuff. But speaking as someone who is now in a position to hire others, it’s also really hard to find very funny young writers, so we jump at the chance to get to know them. We’re not going out of our way to close doors on people.

THE PERKS OF BEING A COMEDY WRITER
I wouldn’t even say that fame is one of the perks. Being a writer for a popular show is like being Cyrano de Bergerac — you think you deserve all the credit but nobody wants to believe it, because you’re probably weird and ugly. But I’m not even sure fame would be a perk. It seems like fame has a pretty close to 100% success rate of fucking people up. I would only want to be famous if I knew I’d always be famous, like Jack Nicholson.

BUT WHAT ABOUT GROUPIES?
There are comedy groupies, but they usually look like writers. So I think the main perks are the joy of getting to make jokes for a living and the food at craft services. And the excitement of knowing your job might vanish at any moment.

Working hard in the office of "The Office"