Two of America’s most celebrated humor writers combine their forces to tell the tale of Lunatics – and many other stories. Excerpt from the talk on January 19, 2012.

DAVE BARRY, Humor Columnist; Co-author, Lunatics

ALAN ZWEIBEL, Former Writer, “Saturday Night Live”; Co-author, Lunatics

DOUG SOVERN, KCBS Radio/CBS 5 TV Correspondent – Moderator

 

DAVE BARRY: I live in Miami. I moved there in 1986 from the United States. I always feel I should defend my city, because it has a bad reputation. Every year, the Zogby Organization [asks] people what they think of major cities, and every year Miami does very poorly in that poll. At the last one, 67 percent of the respondents said they thought Miami “is a dangerous, violent place.” That hurts. When we see that, we want to track those people down and kill them, because it’s a wonderful city. It really is. It’s just a question of learning to adapt to the local culture. For example, you would never say out loud in Miami, “I don’t know; I think you have to admit Castro has done some good for Cuba.”

Whatever you’ve heard, disregard. It’s a great town. We have a new attitude down there, a new tourism promotion slogan: “Come back to Miami; we weren’t shooting at you.”

I’m going to tell you quickly about my career, because it’s going to lead up to Alan. I’ve been a humor writer most of my life. I started out as a real reporter – a regular reporter. I worked at a little paper in Pennsylvania called The Daily Local News, in West Chester, Pennsylvania – a very small-town paper. I was not great at the reporting. I was an English major, and I really went into journalism because I wanted to write, but I quickly learned that writing is not the key skill in journalism. Talking to people is the key skill in journalism, and sometimes you have to talk to people who are intimidating or hostile. I was not good at that part.

In 1992, I was in New Hampshire writing columns about the New Hampshire presidential primary. I spent a day following then-First Lady Barbara Bush around – not as a stalker, but as a member of the press corps with the first lady. It was a big press corps: lots of people, and a whole motorcade of us going around with all these dignitaries to the various events. At the end of the day, Mrs. Bush had a press conference. When I thought it was all over, the photographer brought the press corps that had been with Mrs. Bush – maybe two dozen of us – onto the stage, and formed us in a semi-circle, and put me right next to Barbara Bush for this picture.

This is a situation where I know to say nothing. I know that in my mind. But, you know, your brain does not always tell the rest of your body what the plan is. So we’re standing there – this quiet moment, with all these high-powered journalists, in this room full of people – and I planned to say nothing, but for some reason my mouth came open and I said to Barbara Bush, first lady of the United States, whom I’ve never met, I said, “I shop at the same supermarket as your son, Jeb.” I don’t think the first lady was dying to know that, but I inform her of that fascinating fact, and she goes, “Well, who gives a s--t?”

Not with her mouth, but with her eyes. With her mouth, she said, “Oh! We just celebrated Jeb’s 39th birthday.”

Now, if you analyze these two statements, you’ll say, “They have nothing to do with each other.” She was being gracious. She’s probably seen this happen a million times: the person in front of her has been reduced to a blithering idiot because she’s Barbara Bush, and, rather than point out what an inane statement I had made, she was pretending we were having a conversation about her son. We really weren’t, but she was bailing me out. It was very thoughtful of her to do that. I’m thinking, “Aw, I can’t believe I said that; thank you, Mrs. Bush.”

That’s what I’m thinking with my mind. Then I look down, and I see to my horror that my mouth is thinking, “Whoa! We are really hitting it off here.” And I hear myself say to Barbara Bush, the first lady of the United States, following up on the fascinating fact that I shopped at the same supermarket as her son Jeb, “He’s very tall.” It’s true – Jeb Bush is a tall individual – but I’m sure that the first lady was already aware of that fact. Now she’s looking around for the guy with the tranquilizer dart gun, and she said, “Well, he didn’t just grow this year!”

That, really, is how I became a humor writer. I was really not good at the journalism thing.

I’m just going to tell you really quick about Alan, because I don’t know if you realize how major he has been in the comedy world. How many of you remember the great ’75 to ’80 “Saturday Night Live”? A lot of that was this man here. How many of you have seen 700 Sundays? Fantastic; won a Tony. Alan Zweibel co-wrote that with Billy Crystal. How many of you have heard the song “Mr. Bojangles?” OK, he had nothing to do with that. He’s not really good at music at all, but you can’t have everything, can you?

ALAN ZWEIBEL: It’s really amazing to me that I actually know Dave Barry and wrote a book with him. I remember as a five- or six-year-old kid, my grandfather used to read a lot of Dave’s stories to me, and here I am now.

It was not my idea to become a comedy writer. This was a decision that was made for me about 35 years ago by every law school in the United States. I went to college. My grade point average was really good, but you had to take the law boards, which was graded from 200 to 800. If you can write your name, you got a 200; if you were Einstein, you got an 800; if you were Alan Zweibel, you got a 390, which reclassified me as “mineral.” I told my Long Island Jewish parents that I got a 390 on the law boards, and about a week later – this is after they uncovered the mirrors – my father gave me $1,000, which I took and gave to a man named Stanley Kaplan. Stanley Kaplan’s got these schools all over the country where they teach you how to take standardized tests. For six months I studied. I retook the test, and my score catapulted up to a 401.

I figured at that rate, I’d be about 90 before I got into an English-speaking law school, so I started writing jokes for old comedians who played in the Borscht Belt, the Catskills section of New York. They paid me $7 a joke. I’m 21; they’re 45. It was like writing for my parents’ friends, but I tried my best. They’d say to me, “Alan, sperm banks are in the news. Write me sperm bank jokes.” So I’d write a joke: “They have this new thing now called sperm banks, which is just like an ordinary bank, except here, if you make a deposit, you lose interest.” Hey – $7; what do you want?

The Catskills were dying, and I’m going, “OK, I’m going to live with my parents forever.” So I took all the jokes these old guys wouldn’t buy from me, and I made it into a stand-up routine for myself. This was my plan: Deliver the jokes, and maybe a manager, or an agent would like my material and give me a job.

The first week that I’m working there, I met a guy who was also starting out. His name was Billy Crystal. He lived about three towns over from where my parents lived. He used to pick me up every single night; we’d drive into the city; we’d get onstage; we’d do our jokes; he’d drive me home; and we would critique each other’s jokes and our acts. I’m about four months into this nightmare experiment; it’s about one o’clock in the morning, and I’m having the hardest time making these four drunks from Des Moines laugh. I get off the stage. I go to the bar, waiting for Billy to come off, to give me a ride home, and a guy comes up to me. He sits down next to me, and he just starts staring at me and staring at me. Finally I go, “What? What do you want?” He goes, “You know, you’re the worst comedian I’ve ever seen in my life.” I said, “Thank you. I really need to hear this right now. Thank you very much.” He said, “But your material’s good. Did you write it?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Can I see more of it?” I went, “You bet.” I didn’t even ask his name; I would’ve shown it to, like, a gardener at this point.

Ends up, this guy is Lorne Michaels, and he’s going from club to club in New York looking for writers and actors for this new show to be called “Saturday Night Live” that was going to premiere in the fall. I go back to my parents’ house and type up what I believe were 1,100 of my best jokes.

Two days later, I have to go back for my meeting with Lorne. I was so nervous. I call Billy Crystal, who had been talking to Lorne about the possibility of Billy being on this new show. I said, “Listen, I got a meeting with Lorne. Any hints you can give me, so I can have a leg up in this meeting?” [Billy] says, “He used to write for Woody Allen. He’s produced Monty Python specials. Oh, and he hates mimes. Lorne hates mimes.” I’m like, “Gotcha.”

I go [to the meeting with Michaels], and I give him this tome with 1,100 jokes in it. He opens it, and he reads the first joke, and he goes, “Uh-huh. Good.” Then he closes the book. He said, “Good. Tell me a little bit more about yourself.” So I said, “Well, Woody Allen’s my idol, I love Monty Python, but if there’s one f---ing mime on this show, I am outta here,” and he gave me a job.

DOUG SOVERN: How did you guys decide to write this book, Lunatics, together? Did one of you owe the other money?

BARRY: We met in Washington, D.C., when Steve Martin won the Mark Twain Award in 2005. We were both involved. I was one of the presenters; Alan helped Larry David write his speech. Anyway, we became friends, and we saw each other off and on over the next few years, at writers’ conferences and stuff like that. Alan kept saying –

ZWEIBEL: “We should do something together.”

BARRY: I didn’t know what he meant. He was very vague. He’s kind of in the film/TV world, where people are always saying they want to do something, and I go, “Sure, let’s do something together,” but I didn’t think we would. Then he had this idea.

ZWEIBEL: His daughter Sophie plays soccer. She’s 11 years old. I have three children, all of whom play organized sports – soccer, Little League and whatever – so I figure, “OK, this is a common denominator.” We had to figure it out, ’cause he lives 1,500 miles away from me. I’m in New Jersey; he’s down in Coral Gables, Florida. I can give you his home number later if you wish.

I said, “Listen, why don’t we make it work for us? Let’s have a situation.” We came up with this situation where there’s a championship game – girls 12 and under. The ref calls a 10-year-old girl offside when she kicks what would be the winning goal in the championship game. Her father goes ballistic. Let’s have a feud between the ref and the father. I’ll be the ref, you’ll be the voice of the father, and we’ll alternate chapters. That’s exactly what we did. My guy is the ref. His name is Philip Horkman. I wrote the first chapter and I sent it to Dave, having no idea what he was going to send back to me.

BARRY: Tell him what your guy, Philip Horkman, does for a living, ’cause it’s key in the plot.

ZWEIBEL: He owns a pet store.

BARRY: Called – ?

ZWEIBEL: The Wine Shop.Because he needed money to open it a few years ago. He asked his in-laws, whose last name was Wine, and they said, “Sure, we’ll give you the money, as long as our name is in the title of the store.” So people stop into the store thinking they can get Merlot or Burgundy or whatever, and they’re a little surprised to see salamanders, iguanas and birds.

BARRY: Lemurs.

ZWEIBEL: Lemurs!

BARRY: My guy’s named Jeffrey Peckerman, and he’s a horrible human being. He’s a racist, homophobic, just disgusting coward. Nothing like me. There was a lot of work involved in creating this character. He’s the dad of the girl that [Alan’s] character calls offsides on. They have a confrontation, which his guy thinks is nothing. To my guy, it’s not nothing, it’s horrible. They don’t like each other; there’s a little confrontation, but they don’t expect to ever see each other again. The next day, my guy is driving home from his job. He’s a forensic plumber, which is a real job. Google this job, if you don’t believe me. If a crime is committed involving, let’s say, a toilet, you would call a forensic plumber, who would testify that the victim could not – with his head in the bowl – have reached the lever on that particular model of commode, so it couldn’t have been a suicide.

Anyway, he is coming home from his job as a forensic plumber, and his wife tells him that she needs him to pick up some wine for her women’s book group, so he pulls into this store he’s never seen before called The Wine Shop. So they come back together, and that sets off this chain of events where they hate each other – they don’t want to see each other again – but they keep getting pushed together randomly so that within a matter of days, without intending to, they have hijacked a clothing-optional cruise ship.

SOVERN: Somebody would like to know, “What are your limits of acceptability?” Certainly, some of the things in the book push the boundaries a little bit. Perhaps you couldn’t have printed them in The Miami Herald, for example.

BARRY: Yeah. My character is just a horrible human being. He speaks horribly profanely, and has no sensibilities whatsoever. I guess when you write that, you’re thinking, “People will get that we think this guy is a joke.” We hope that.

ZWEIBEL: Yeah, I mean, my character is a Barney Fife – he’s a good citizen; he does everything to perfection; he plays by the rules. So when I created that character and sent it to Dave, it was only natural for him to send back somebody who was the polar opposite, and if you read the book, there’s a consistency to [his character]. He’s very, very committed to who this guy is. So if anyone says, “Wait a second; there’s too much profanity,” that’s who the character is.

I made sure that my character had some human traits.