George Meyer

(Excerpt from George Meyer interview)

Did you always intend to write for television?

When I was young, I wanted to be a priest, then a ballplayer, then a Bond villain. I wanted a lair that was equal parts comfy and death-dealing. I didn’t even think about writing for television until long after college. It was like saying, “I’m going to be a professional sweepstakes winner.” It just didn’t seem like a real career.

I watched a lot of television, but it wasn’t that thrilling for me. It was like a piece of gum that you’d been chewing for a while but were too lazy to spit out. For me, television was something to fill the hours, and if I could go back I’d spend more time at the library—or looking for treasure with a metal detector.

Even when I started writing for TV, I knew very little about show business or its history. I was naïve enough to believe that all who came before me were clueless stumblebums whose stale shtick was best swept out of the way. The only shows that made me laugh as a kid were Batman and Get Smart. I liked their insane premises and lurid showboating. They had bizarre gadgets and secret hideouts and sprawling fight scenes—very appealing to a boy. Then, almost as a bonus, you got this loopy, irreverent humor.

I remember a scene from Get Smart where the character of Siegfried, a vice president of KAOS, kept ordering a carrier pigeon to take off—only it was dead. And he repeatedly tossed it in the air and told it to “Flyyyy uupp!” It kept landing with a thump. Other shows, like My Three Sons, didn’t do jokes about death.

Years later, I got to meet my girlfriend’s dad, Lorenzo Semple Jr., who wrote for the Batman TV show and created the tone of the series.

Lorenzo wrote the first four scripts, which established the campy sensibility of the show. For instance, he insisted that the actors take even the looniest developments seriously and avoid “winking” at the audience. His approach to a superhero show was both ingenious and massively influential.

Lorenzo also wrote and co-wrote some classic films, including The Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor, and one of my favorite cult films, Pretty Poison. He’s both a serious Yalie intellectual and a high-octane satirist.

You’ve mentioned that television wasn’t too important to you when you were young, but how important was humor?

It kept me alive.

Why do you think it was that important to you?

It showed me an alternative to the grim worldview of thwarted adults.

Would Catholicism fall under this “grim worldview”? In past interviews, you’ve talked about your dislike for religion in general and Catholicism in particular.

Catholicism was much too frightening for a sensitive kid. A small bloody man presided over each classroom and there was way too much talk about mortal sin and eternal damnation. When they weren’t scaring you, they were boring you with tiresome doctrine. The word “liturgy” still makes me sick with boredom.

You can see that sensibility in many episodes of The Simpsons. As opposed to most shows, The Simpsons is never afraid to mock religion and the religious.

I think what we’re really satirizing is moral certainty—the myopia of the pious. The religious ferociously defend their own beliefs, but if a Sioux wants to keep a Target store off his sacred land they’ll laugh in his face.

Was writing for David Letterman your first professional humor-writing job?

Yes. My friends from The Harvard Lampoon, Max Pross and Tom Gammill told me in late 1981 that Dave and Merrill Markoe were doing a late-night show, and I should submit material. Dave and Merrill took a chance on me, and it radically re-routed my life.

Were you familiar with Letterman’s work before you got the Late Night job? Had you seen his morning show, or his appearances on The Tonight Show in the late seventies and early eighties?

I hadn’t seen Dave’s morning show at the time, because I was working at a research lab. I didn’t really know who he was, in fact.

What were you researching? This was after college?

Right. We were studying glycoproteins, in the hope that they would prove the key to cell-cell recognition—a basic process that goes awry in cancer cells. I learned later that our entire line of inquiry was a dead end.

I graduated with a degree in biochemistry and was accepted into medical school, but, ultimately, I did not want to be a doctor. The pre-med students I studied with in college were an unimpressive bunch of grinds. They would sabotage each other’s experiments—so lame. And now they don’t even make any money, at least not compared to a big-time comedy writer. Enjoy your free notepads, losers!

Did you have any idea when you were writing for Late Night of the impact the show was having on pop culture? When I interviewed Merrill Markoe, she claimed she was too inside to notice.

We knew the show was making a splash, but the real impact on pop culture took years. It wasn’t like a blockbuster movie, when you know how you’re doing immediately. Some of our best jokes would air at 1:25 A.M., so it took a while.

Did you find that the show was an easy fit for you as a writer, sensibility-wise?

In retrospect, it was an ideal place for me to hone my skills, but I was a bit of a malcontent back then. I had grandiose aims. I didn’t want Dave to repeat things, even if the audience loved them. I wanted to challenge the audience every night, stagger them with brilliance, blast them into a higher plane of existence. In other words, I didn’t understand late-night television…