The similarities between Robert Smigel’s comic universe and Saturday-morning cartoons exist only in appearance. His “TV Funhouse”—which has featured the crime-fighting X Presidents and the Ambiguously Gay Duo—originally aired on Saturday Night Live and later became a series on Comedy Central. Smigel’s best-known character is probably Triumph the dog, the cigar-chomping insult comic who speaks with a vaguely Hungarian accent and follows his rude remarks with his favorite catchphrase, “I keed. I keed.”
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A few weeks later, during the summer of 1982, I left for Chicago and joined a Second City offshoot I’d heard about called the Players Workshop of Second City. I also joined an improv group called All You Can Eat. I didn’t name it, by the way. We put on a show that we produced ourselves called All You Can Eat and the Temple of Dooom, which grew to be very successful. We would split the profits each week, which came to around $300 for each of us. I lived with two friends in this group, in a filthy apartment, and our rent was $450. It was probably the happiest time of my life. Chicago is still a great place to start out in comedy; it’s cheaper than most cities, and there’s a huge community of people doing improv and sketch comedy. It’s not hard to find like-minded people.
What sort of sketches did you perform in the stage show?
Bob Odenkirk has told interviewers, including me, that before he joined SNL he didn’t know how to properly write a sketch. He said that it was you who taught him how.
SNL is its own entity, and Lorne Michaels tries to make the show a comedy gumbo. There are a lot of different tastes going on, and the audience isn’t going to necessarily be of one mind. There’s a lack of a safety net for a show like that. It’s a different beast than Mr. Show, where the audience is all of one mind and where everybody wants and expects one kind of comedy—and they’re going to get it. Mr. Show was outstanding, and I loved it. But there’s a reason why certain sketches that will kill in a closed format like Mr. Show might eat it on Saturday Night Live.
The problem with The Dana Carvey Show was that it just didn’t belong in the 9:30 time slot, which was during prime-time, after Home Improvement. We were trying to be the rebels with the sweaters, but following Home Improvement, even the sweaters were too much. We needed to wear Mickey ears.
How good of an education does one necessarily need to become a humor writer?
