f - it's possible stabn also meant "sick for the benefit of the 2p2 community" - think it's fair to say it's the most popular sitcom on these boards.

(Basically I think you would've been deluged with requests to have Chevy Chase's character killed off and an "Annie in a bikini" themed episode.)

Those titles are for the most part arbitrary. Usually in TV you only use "written by" and sometimes "story by." I've never seen "teleplay by" or "screenplay by." "Screenplay by" refers to movies and "teleplay by" refers to television scripts but "written by" suffices for either one. One might say that "written by" means the person who actually wrote the first draft of the script and "story by" meant the person who broke the story pre-writing but usually they are just used as ways to divide up the script payment.

Check with the WGA but I believe there are various percentages of the script payment allotted to each title. So, you can play around with assigning various people various credits (and/or portions of credits) to adjust the various payments to whatever you think is most fair.

You can call up the WGA and they can probably explain this to you better and answer any questions. They are very helpful.

Off the top of my head - 30 Rock. I'm sure there are others though. Nurse Jackie is based there. I've never seen it. It's kind of a comedy right?

Yeah I got that. I'm sure I would have been obligated to work a lathe reference in there somehow.

plus Daily Show, Colbert, SNL...slim pickens

Would've been great to find out that Pearce has written a twice awarded screenplay, and to see what direction you guys would take that in! Sigh, oh well.

But sounds like Man Up is very funny with alot of buzz and I think a good time slot! Woo!

Thanks for the info. I've only seen "teleplay by..." for Sorkin in some TWW eps, but I've never looked for it anywhere else. We've only touched on the topic, but I want to be prepared when we really dive into it.


I actually did that for the 2nd episode in my show

Sesame Street and some other PBS shows are based in NYC if you want to write for a kids show.

I am legitimately surprised by the Harmon info. Shocked, actually.

There's also SNL. Don't they have a crazy turnover rate of writers on that show?

Harmon talks about the long work hours and stuff in the Community season review on the AV club.

Yeah, I knew about the hours, but everything I've ever heard about Dan has been extraordinarily positive.

I'd go into the Wilde.

The person I'm guessing you heard this from may have a very different take from the writers.

edit: He was perfectly nice in our meeting. For the first half of it he just sat there not saying anything staring at the floor while the two other head writers asked and answered all the questions. Finally I asked him something directly and then he talked for about 15 min straight without stopping. Then he basically did that for the rest of the interview. It was hard to get a word in edgewise. I'd also been told that that's what it would be like before we went in and it was.

Can you pull some strings with Mitch Hurwitz and get 2p2 an advance look at the Arrested Development screenplay? I'll chip in $5 toward a bribe.

RE: your first point, yes, he wouldn't say anything bad about Dan even if he thought it (although nobody on "Community" is shy about talking openly about Chevy being a cockbiter). But we have a bunch of other friends in common. Of course none of these people are likely to know what working as a writer on "Community" is like, or to tell me if they did, but just based on the character of the mutual friends I'm surprised.

A random lathe in the background in one episode would have been so great.

I looks like it would be pretty easy to work in an apartment and a roomate with a lathe in Man Up.

Favorite fiction writer (books)?

Favorite books (novels and/or short story collections)?

Math is idiotic.

High brow - Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow, probably my fave all time)
Low brow - Dan Simmons (The Hyperion Cantos are awesome scifi and The Terror is an amazing historical horror fiction about a (real) polar expedition in the 1800's that (for real) disappeared but in Simmons' version it's bc they are trapped in the ice and stalked by this crazy snow beast.)

I just read Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell and it kind of blew my mind. I highly recommend it. It's a series of nested narratives. So, it starts with an explorer in the S. Pacific in the 1800s, then jumps forward through time with different stories into the far, far future, then in the second half of the book moves back in time through the same stories where you read the second half of each story, ending with the explorer again. They are all interconnected of course.

Don't really read any short stories. I started Brief Interviews With Hideous Men and didn't make past the first few pages of the first story. I also didn't finish Broom of the System. Although I am telling myself to make a concerted effort to get into DFW in the near future.

I have a friend who's written for a bunch of shows and also has a writing partner. With her the two of them get paid as one person. Is it that way with you and your partner?

Nice. I used to do standup comedy and have a whole drawer full of stuff like this. I doubt it would mean anything to anyone but me. I'm still trying to work "wiping my ass with Bounce" into some kind of an actual joke. It's my white whale.

But I dunno I can relate to some of these. Love "hugging from behind". A perfect 10 could do that to any average guy and it would still creep them out. I'm curious if that's what you meant with that or something else.

Love love love Workaholics. Funnies show on TV right now. Bro-comedy is a big untapped resource imo.

I was thinking dude on dude. My buddy once hugged me from behind and I felt incredibly violated. I was like "You just hugged me doggy style WTF."