AUTOMATIC PILOT (old comedy sketch)

by Kevin on

Here’s an early script that was performed in the stage show “Children with Hands”, directed by Oliver Butler at the wonderful UNDER St. Mark’s.  Will Carlough played Pete and Paul Thureen played Felix.  Each actor did excellent work and it was delightful for me to see someone else play parts that I would’ve messed up.  (Spoiler: Paul did an amazing job at making the crying very real and laugh-out-loud funny; whereas I would’ve probably played it for laughs or made it too pathetic.)

“AUTOMATIC PILOT”
(PETE and FELIX sit side by side, holding the controls of a commercial airplane)
PETE: Confirm cabin pressure to altitude.
FELIX: Check.
PETE: Then we can kick back ‘til Fort Worth.
(PETE visibly relaxes and seems much more comfortable.  FELIX begins to sob, gently.)
PETE: (unnerved) Something wrong Felix?
FELIX: (sniffles) N-n-no.
PETE: Good.
(PETE seizes the moment to leave the cockpit)
FELIX: Wait!
(PETE stops, not yet out of his chair)
FELIX: Maybe there is something wrong.
PETE: Oh.  Huh.  So…Maybe you should talk about it.
FELIX: I’d like that.
PETE: I’ll get one of the girls –
FELIX: No!  Forget it.  I don’t want to trouble them.
(FELIX weeps quietly at first, then louder.  PETE won’t leave, but he can’t bring himself to talk either.  He checks the altitude, turns a few meaningless knobs.  He smacks his lips and looks out at the sky.)
PETE: Are you sad?
FELIX: (nods)
(pause)
PETE: Why?
FELIX: Well I…I’ve been on this diet for six weeks and I’ve only lost two pounds.
(pause)
PETE: Wow. 
(FELIX falls apart)
PETE: Is that the real problem?
FELIX: I guess not.
PETE: So…?
FELIX: Most days I just do the job and go home and play golf or rent a movie.  But through it all, it’s like I’m on automatic pilot.  I don’t really enjoy anything and every now and then I just want to cry and cry and I feel like it’s never gonna stop.
(pause)
PETE: What’s the name of the diet?
FELIX: It’s not that.  I just get so depressed, and then I snap out of it.  But for a while it hurts, and it hurts so bad.
PETE: Like your insides are rotten?  The air tastes bad.  You want to pull out your eyes and squeeze all the pain out of your head.
FELIX: You feel it too?
PETE: No, but I’ve read your diary. 
FELIX: (speechless)
PETE: You shouldn’t leave it out in the cockpit.
FELIX: (drops his head in his hands)
PETE: Sorry.  I mean, yeah, I can see something’s wrong.  But I don’t know.  Maybe it’s just that guys like you and me, we feel too much.  I guess that’s why we become pilots.
FELIX: What does that mean?
PETE: I don’t know, it sounded good.
FELIX: Maybe I do feel too much.  How about you Pete…are you happy?
PETE: That question is a little too self-effacing for me. I prefer to ask myself, “What’s for dinner?  Where’s the bong? What’s got two thumbs and likes blow-jobs.” 
FELIX: Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out, huh?
PETE: My uncle used to say, getting in touch with your feelings is like rubbing your dick in velcro – as soon as it starts to hurt, you should stop. Immediately.
FELIX: (exhales) He sounds like a smart guy.
PETE: He was.  I just wish he’d followed his own advice about the velcro.  But, aside from crying about his scraped, raw penis, he seemed to feel pretty good about not feeling anything at all.
FELIX: I’ll drink to that.
(They hold up tiny bottles of gin and make a little toast)
FELIX: Pete, is it okay if we never talk about this again.  And we never, ever mention our true feelings aloud?
PETE: Hey, that’s what male friends are for.
FELIX: Thanks. 
(They assume their original positions and fly towards the setting sun.)

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THE FORTUNE TELLER sketch (old comedy sketch I wrote)

by Kevin on

So I’m starting to post old comedy sketches.  It’s an attempt to catalog early writings, as I’ve discovered that a lot of my early stuff isn’t saved anywhere.  As I continue to post my old work, I’ll present pieces as they were written.

Here’s “THE FORTUNE TELLER”

(Stage is set with 2 chairs; one is occupied by MADAME KRISTA, an old gypsy woman. Next to her is a small sign that reads “PALM READINGS, $5”) 
(DAN walks through the curtain and sits down.  He hands the woman a five-dollar bill.) 
MADAME KRISTA: Yes, yes, let Madame Krista look into your future and see your fate.  Give me your hand…
(She turns his hand over to reveal thick black hair growing from his palm.)
MADAME KRISTA: Well…uhm…eh…it says you really like to whack-off. 
PAUSE. 
DAN: Does it say anything about my painting career?  Or where I’ll meet the love of my life?  Or if I’ll win the pie-eating contest?
MADAME KRISTA: No. Just a lot of whacking-off. 
DAN: Huh. 
(MADAME KRISTA squints.) 
MADAME KRISA: Also…you were born in a test-tube…conceived from the frozen seed of Adolph Hitler. 
DAN: No kiddin’ lady.  Why’da’ya think I pump the baloney so much? 
SFX: Wont-waaaant. 
The End.

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KEVIN GEEKS OUT ABOUT GENRE BUSTERS – recap and bonus material

by Kevin on

Thanks everybody who came to last week’s show, KEVIN GEEKS OUT ABOUT GENRE BUSTERS.  The 92Y Tribeca hosted us in “the big room” and we got a wonderful audience on a cold, wet Wednesday night.


We had a delightful evening with some authors who bring the A-game to disrespected genres.

First up, Ben H. Winters talked about being recruited to write Quirk book’s follow-up to someone else’s mash-up novel PRIDE & PREJUDICE & ZOMBIES, explaining how he was chosen for the job and what it took to make SENSE & SENSIBILITY & SEA MONSTERS.  When faced with the task of writing a second mash-up novel, Ben realized it wouldn’t work if he was revisiting authors who are already funny (say, Charles Dickens), so he chose a man with no sense of humor at all: Tolstoy.  And that led to the science-fiction, robot and UFO masterpiece ANDROID KARENENA  Ben came all the way in from Boston and he did not disappoint!  Follow him online here.


Next up, first-time novelist Emmy Laybourne did her first-ever public reading — and it couldn’t have gone better.  Emmy read from the opening chapter of MONUMENT FOURTEEN. It’s the first part of a series, the story follows a small group of teens and tweens that survive the end of the civilization.  Emmy is a double-header of Genre-Busters, as she’s writing a post-apocalyptic novel for a YA audience.  But the best part is, she never writes down to her audience.  The reading made that very clear.  Then Emmy talked about the experience of killing off so many people in a book, and what compels authors to write about the end of the world as we know it.  She compared various works, including The Road, The Stand, and even the Mad Max movie.  Emmy’s debut novel hits bookstores in the autumn of 2011.  (note: I was lucky enough to get to read the manuscript — it’s excellent.)


Cartoonist Michael Kupperman was, sadly, not able to attend.  But he was kind enough to share some of his oddball comic strips via email and I read some of his work from TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE.  

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Who owns “They Live”? : a half-assed essay

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Author Jonathan Lethem has a boner for the movie They Live (1988).  So much so that he’s just written a book about it.  And this week he’s hosting a screening of the film, followed by a conversation with John Hodgman. 

It’s curious that over 20 years after its release, this B-movie movie has gotten the attention of academic-types.  They Live is an excellent combination of form and content: if you want to make a message-movie for blue-collar audiences (about how they’re being systematically screwed) make a sci-fi action movie starring a professional wrestler.  But if you attend Lethem’s screening at the  Greenwich Village IFC theater, do you expect the audience to be made up of “haves” or “have-nots”?

John Carpenter’s They Live has something in common with George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978): both feature bit characters that reflect the bearded Lefty intellectuals (they’re not wearing leather-elbow patches, but they might as well be.)  In both cases, these talky apparitions appear mostly in TV screens (as if they exist inside the television and not in the same world as the characters, the same way some would criticize academics who live inside the Ivory Tower.) Their ideological ramblings are fragmented throughout each film.  In They Live, a character listed as “bearded man” hacks into network television signals and gives a direct-address about how “They” have created a repressive society that’s turning “us” into livestock  (watch a clip here, from 2:01 – 3:55)  Dawn of the Dead‘s nameless, bearded “TV Commentator” insists on the need for logical behavior, and then calls the studio audience “dummies!” (watch a clip here)

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The trouble with Superman II: The Richard Donner cut

by Kevin on

This past week I finally saw SUPERMAN II: The Richard Donner Cut.   Donner directed the first Superman (1978) as well as The Goonies and Lethal Weapon.  During the making of Superman II he was famously fired and replaced by Richard Lester.

I won’t list all the differences between the two films, but I will mention one thing that grabbed me. 
Okay, you remember the basic premise of Superman II is that Kal-El gives up his super-powers, so that he can be with Lois Lane.  
And shortly thereafter, Clark Kent and Lois Lane go to a truck stop where a mean sunuvabitch trucker whups Clark’s butt.   

Later, Superman gets his powers back, saves the world, erases Lois’ memory (keeping his identity a secret) and then he goes back and pounds the asshole trucker. 

In Richard Donner’s cut, we get all that, but the ending is very different.  Instead of kissing Lois and erasing her memory of the past week’s events, Superman flies into the sky and circles the Earth, making it turn in the opposite direction, causing time to move backwards.  Yes, the same trick he used in the first film — only here, instead of going one hour back in time, he goes several days back in time, essentially un-doing the events of the movie.  The whole thing is very Donnie Darko. (And by now I would’ve expected someone to upload the sequence to YouTube complete with the “Mad World” song) It would’ve been funny if instead of Superman un-doing all the events, it was Richard Lester (ha ha.)  
So by the end of Richard Donner’s cut, the three Kryptonian super-criminals never arrived on Earth, Lois  never learns that Clark Kent is Superman, and (presumably) the kid with the negligent parents plummets to his death in Niagra Falls. 
But here’s the kicker:  Clark goes back to the truck stop and beats the hell out of the truck driver.  
Even though, by the film’s logic, the truck driver never messed with Clark Kent.  Superman hurls that trucker down the countertop and smashes his head into a pinball machine.  
The truckers and wait-staff must have wondered what the hell promoted this Bernard Goetz-looking mo-fo to come in and assault a patron for NO GOOD REASON.  
As the website says, Superman is a jerk.

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Leslie Nielsen (1926 – 2010)

by Kevin on

I just heard that Leslie Nielsen died of pneumonia.

On a personal note: I was hired on a basic-cable show, the money was terrible but I’d get to write for Leslie Nielsen.  I wrote a script for his humor and delivery, but then they couldn’t get him.  So instead they hired Chris Wilde.

On a broader note: my favorite Leslie Nielsen performance is in the rarely-seen teleplay THE VELVET ALLEY (1959).  Nielsen played Edward Kirkley, the alcoholic TV producer.  Watch as he downs multiple “special” bloody marys and delivers a great monologue (written by Rod Serling.)  I challenge you to find a more expressive strand of bobbing hair than the one in this clip:

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Something Old, Something New

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ABOVE: The latest video I made for Comedy Central/Atom.com, the first in a webseries called OLD PEOPLE NEWS: THE TECH REPORT  (Note: this is a follow-up to the video Old People News)

BELOW: One of the earliest films I made, just added to YouTube.  “Family Dinner Party” was part of the sketch show TV Head Goes Nutzoid (1999)

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Kevin Geeks Out About Genre Busters

by Kevin on

Kevin Geeks Out About…. 
GENRE BUSTERS!
Wednesday, December 1st @ 8:00pm
92Y Tribeca, 200 Hudson Street, NYC

What’s Kevin Geeks Out? 
A live variety show where we dive deep into an obsession-worthy topic. 

But what’s a GENRE BUSTER? 
Genre Busters are those brave artists who bring their A-game to a disrespected genre. 
The December 1st show brings together 5 authors doing amazing work in Comic Strips, Young Adult novels, Romance Books, Wrestling magazines and “mash-up” literature.  The multi-media variety show will include mini-lectures, music, readings, video clips, trivia prizes, audience Q&A and more. Here’s what you can expect from the 90-minute show:  
“A MASH UP MASTERCLASS
Ben H. Winters (author of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and Android Karenina) defines and defends the hybrid genre known as the “mash-up novel,” and explains why adding robots to Anna Karenina is more like adding smooth chocolate to creamy peanut butter than putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa.   The reading will include prizes to those who can correctly identify which passages are his, and which from the original, un-mashed-up books. 


“TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE”
Michael Kupperman demonstrates how he is making a transition from cartoons to the written word, presenting two pieces: first a comic book story about the adventures of Mark Twain and Albert Einstein fighting crime, followed by Kupperman (in white wig and mustache) reading an excerpt from his fictional book “The Autobiography of Mark Twain II.”

“THE FIVE RULES I BROKE WHEN I WROTE MY ROMANCE NOVEL”
Rebecca Rogers Maher discusses melodrama, fantasy, escapism and the romance novel as a call to action.  She looks at her own book (I’ll Become the Sea) as a case study of a Romance novel with family violence, urban school decay, Jungian psychology and heavy metal.

“WHY WE KILL EVERYONE OFF”

Emmy Laybourne reads from her post-apocalyptic YA Novel Monument Fourteen, chronicling the fall of civilization, with a discussion of why the post-apocalyptic genre is engaging to people, peppered by quotes from online fans.

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