NO POST TODAY


Sorry, fans, but I'm not up to it. Seems Mr. Aaron "Family Don't Mean Nothing" Sorkin did not see fit to hire Hecuba for his pile of dog-puke show "Studio 60 On The Sunset SHIT!" (Pun very much intended.)

I just don't know anymore. My spec Lou Grant was great!




It was great 25 years ago when I wrote it with my late partner! It had it all -- laughs (Great B-story with Animal and Rossi), drama (will Mrs. Pynchon pull a hard-hitting story on corruption at the Department of Streets?), and it had something not found anywhere within a hundred miles of SORE-KIN... HEART! The scene where Lou tells the girl, what's her name, that he'd rather have her in his newsroom than a boatful of Joseph Alsops. I'm crying all over again.

So okay, maybe this kid BORE-KIN, (who I once saw in diapers!!!) didn't "GET" my Lou Grant. I don't see how, but for the sake of argument we'll say okay. Not his cup of hack tea. Fine. But does loyalty to a man who served in the Marines with your father forty-five years ago mean nothing today? Like I said, I don't know. Well screw WHORE-KIN and his whole stupid, badly written, totally bullshit when it comes to the facts of how TV is produced show. I don't need his charity! I have you, my loyal readers to entertain. And if I get just one chuckle out of somebody sitting at their computer screen, then it'll be better than all the phony pats on the back I'd have got from FRAUD-KIN. I hope his show gets ball cancer! You read right... BALL CANCER! Let it die like Beverly Hills Buntz! (Another show run by a jerk who didn't "Get" my Lou Grant.




You hear me BOTCH-CO?!! You can all go to hell. I've had it with this business.

Well, that's it for now. Maybe I'll feel like being funny tomorrow, who knows. You all get off the computer and hug your kids, because that's what it's all about.

HAROLD'S COMEDY GLOSSARY LESSON #1: "THE CLAM"



A "CLAM" is a comedy writer's term for a joke or form of joke that is old hat, overused, played out. It's the worst sin a comedy writer can commit -- to put a clam in your script. (That's why I rate my reviews in CLAMS -- Five Clams being the worst (FAMILY GOY) and Zero Clams being the best (STUDIO 60). And the cockamamie thing is that the ground is always changing. A joke can be fresh one moment and a clam the next, such is comedy.

For instance, when I came up with it back in 19-never-you-mind-how-long-ago, "Too much information" was the hottest gag to hit the sitcom world since Lucy met Ricky.



When it was uttered by the late great Nell Carter on an episode of "Gimme A Break" I penned, it detonated in that studio like an Atomic freakin' bomb! They had to stop tape, the laugh went on for so long. It made Sammy Davis kissing Archie Bunker look like "Death Of A Salesman" was how new and fresh that was. Now, 20 or so years later, having a character respond to another by saying "Too much information" is hopelessly old hat. It is a CLAM. Do not use it. And certainly don't use it four times in one script. I learned that when I submitted my spec "According to Jim" to my agent's hot-shit young coffee-getting monkey who now for some reason says he's my agent. Here's another CLAM for you: "Don't call us, we'll call you." Sadly, that CLAM is still being used. Godddamn them all to Hell!!!

That last part I didn't want to be on this thing, but I can't figure out how to make my son's computer erase it, so there you have it. Look for more Glossary items in the future, though I don't know how many more, because once I start work on "Studio 60" I won't have time for this nonsense.

JACK ALBERTSON'S ESTATE CAN KISS MY TUCHIS!


Leave me alone, for the nine thousandth time. It's my Emmy. Sure it says Jack's name on it, but he gave it to me. You understand me, some grandniece from South Nowhere? Your granduncle gave it to me. Me, Hecuba. Why? Wouldn't you give it away if you were grateful to the writer of the episode of "Chico And The Man" that earned you the award? Grateful to the man who sat down and dreamed up that speech where Ed ("The Man" to you babies in diapers out there) tells his buddy the cop how much he misses Chico now that he's in that "big barrio in the sky"? Sure you would.




Maybe you wouldn't because you're not a class act like Jonathan "Jack" Albertson, you're just some distant heir without a funny bone in your body trying to get back what you think is rightfully yours. Well, you can take it out of my cold dead hands... and they will be cold because I'lll give that trophy up when hell freezes over! (BUT HOW DO YOU REALLY FEEL?) That IS how I really feel! I'm sorry, I just get so mad at ingrates who never did anything in show business. Forgive me. I'll make nice tomorrow.

ABOUT THAT TITLE....

Okay, I bet your wondering about the title of this cockamamie thing. Well, 'The Bad Pitch" is a sitcom writer's term. Basically, when a bunch of writers are in "THE ROOM" working on, or 'BREAKING" a story, we'll often use what's called "THE BAD PITCH" to proffer a story idea or "JOKE". It means, 'here's the obvious, not terribly original, probably not too funny version of what I'm thinking of and if you guys think it's a road we want to go down, then we'll come up with "THE GOOD VERSION".

A sample Bad Pitch: "So, what if Rerun says to the trampy girl, and here's the bad pitch, 'Hey, you're really trashy." And then she makes a fat joke about how he eats out of the trash." Which, after hours of work turns into this piece of comic dialogue:

RERUN: Girl, you're like a HIgh School on Sundays... no class.

SMART ALECK GIRL: Gee, Rerun that's so smart, they might accept you into Yale.

RERUN: Really? Yale in Connecticut?

SMART ALECK GIRL: No I mean Yale, in New Yersey.


That exchange took seven hours to perfect. But perfect it we did. And Fred Berry made that scene just sing. I miss him every day.