You were one of Rodney’s writers? Holy you know what! That is so cool. So, tell us, was he a nice guy, or was he funny on stage but a jerk in private? Was he generous or cheap?
Can you tell us one or two of your favorite jokes? That you wrote? How does one write jokes? Do you spar back and forth with someone or can you sit in a room by yourself and think them up? Are you funny in real life? Was your family funny? Do you still write for comedians?
Oh, one more question, can one make a good living writing jokes? Do you get something like residuals?
So many questions, but I love to laugh and think it’s quite an art.
Gee. You ask a lot of questions. It was a long time ago, and I gave up comedy writing to stick with medicine. So I don’t know any jokes, other than the ones about his wife and his not getting respect. Wrote some screenplays as well, but we never found anyone intelligent enough to bankroll them. Plus Rodney had health problems for quite some time, so he slowed down. Spent a lot of time puttering around at home. Still found time for the Tonight Show. I think he still holds the record for number of appearances.
He was always nice to me and his wife was super nice too. His lawyers - eh, not so much. LOL. If you crossed the line by stealing material, you would hear from his lawyers. But if you respected him, he would go out of his way to help you. He liked helping me, so I figure he was the same for others.
I would write jokes to make myself laugh. I could never tell jokes, but writing came easy when I was younger. Always carried around a notepad and kept notes of ideas all day, then use that for inspiration. Eventually something would click. You write 20 in a week and throw away 19. At least I would throw away a lot that I felt weren’t so good.
I noticed that FR is used by some writers to get jokes for talk radio. So if you read something funny here, it will probably be used by a writer or comedian the following day. All my writing was before FR ever existed, but if I were writing now, I would use it for material. Some funny stuff here.