Thanks for your input, Hillary -- Saturday Night You Bull Sessions

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Date Posted: 07:04:59 06/13/06 Tue
Author: Jim Bevan
Subject: Thanks for your input, Hillary
In reply to: Hillary 's message, "Monologue (separate for a reason, rest of the episode to come)" on 23:19:01 06/12/06 Mon

You don't need to apologize for being critical, I like to hear a person's honest input on my work.

You hit the nail on the head when you saw that I used the monologue as a virtual soapbox. As I said in my review, this is one of the rare times I use a sketch to convey my own personal opinions. That's why I tried to make the dialogue as humorous as I could, so it wouldn't just be a standard opinion article. I tried to keep Stephen in semi-character for the piece, avoiding the right-wing pundit aspect while maintaining his ego and haughtiness; here he's not a defender of true American values, but a defender of comedic originality, going after those who would water down the world of wit. The bits about a decline in humor and people shunning comedy were aspects of this as well, since he frequently uses slippery slope and worst-case scenarios on the Report. Confidentially, I had a huge argument with my creative side over how to pull this off without going overboard ("I don't care, I'm not doing a Stephen hates bears joke! Everyone gets that already!") The end joke about giving his writers better pay and benefits was supposed to imply that the reason Stephen will keep providing original jokes is because he relies on his writers to provide them for him instead of coming up with them himself.

You do raise some good points as well. I'll admit, "borrowing" jokes is a time-honored tradition, and it's okay if done in moderation. The beef I have is when the jokes are pretty much interchangable versions of ones that have been done to excess (i.e. "Men and women have different meanings for things like 'I'm fine'" or "There are a lot of Starbucks franchises out there and their prices are really high." Bits like that) And yes, late night hosts like Letterman do have their own unique attributes, but they often go overboard in using predictable jokes. As for Conan, well, not sure if I'm going to make any enemies here but... I don't really think Conan's that funny. (runs and hides)

Again, thank you for your honest opinion Hillary. Any chance you could post your monologue here on the board? I'd like to see what you came up with for Stephen.

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Afraid not... -- Hillary, 01:39:50 06/14/06 Wed