The Lost Roast of Gary Hart
Malanowski, Jamie
The Lost Roast of Gary Hart A story that takes place at the highest level of comedy and government By Jamie Malanowski This is the story of the Lost Roast of Gary Hart, or, more accurately,...
...A 69-cent Party Joke Book by Joey Adams, “America’s Good Will Ambassador for Three Presidents...
...We decided jibing at media giants was impolitic...
...Caustic and morose, we nonetheless resisted seizing the stage...
...Wellll, it’s time to tell the joke...
...As written by Miller, Franken, Zweibel, Cerf, “Muppet” writer George Makrod, and me, here are some highlights: CALL YOUR MOTHERS Thanks, Hal...
...But tonight, to show you that I’ve loosened up a bit, I’m going to read this material like I thought of it myseg We chose these lines over some mild reproaches directed at the panel (“When Americans list their contributions to the country and say ‘I fought for freedom’ or ‘I marched for peace,’ you can say ‘I mocked Gary Hart .’ ” ) The virtue of the “right stiff’ is not only its elegance, but also that it took the heat off of Hart for anything that followed...
...The emissaries went off to meet the candidate...
...Fourth, this wasn’t a roast anymore...
...How’d you like to pick her up for a date...
...Wait, uh, I want to start a new paragraph...
...It sets up like this: Hollings would be making fun of the way Mondale gets all these endorsements, see...
...I wrote a companion joke to this, about how Mondale’s adviser for new ideas in New York was former Governor DeWitt Clinton, but no one knew who that was...
...At lunch, somebody poured half a shaker of salt into my milk...
...Just ask my children, Andrea and JohnJohn...
...He started out with the Right Stiff, worked in the Jack Gilford whistle joke, and changed Meese’s repayment joke to work in Argentina...
...I wrote a joke that asked when precision had ever been a qualification for the presidency...
...This originally was a silly joke about the president being a twice-married man, until we remembered that Reagan had switched parties...
...Surely I had something...
...Sorensen had it Friday afternoon...
...This group was responsible for three great leaps forward...
...I asked about patronage...
...And I’ve had experience, ever since I graduated from Yale Law School in 1964, when I was nine...
...I could only go on in that way so long before the gods intervened...
...Miller got her start writing for “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” right out of college and has been making America laugh for more than a decade...
...He said he’d read some magazine humor I’d written and liked it...
...A lot of JFK jokes tied in to the Roger Mudd interview...
...He actually said, “That’s pretty funny...
...Indeed, when the campaign started, my wife Lee told me that John Glenn had the right stuff Walter Mondale had the right staff and I was the right stiff...
...Now he was sniffing...
...It was an impressive group, one that included writers from “Saturday Night Live” (the old one), “The New Show,” “The Muppet Show,” and National Lampoon...
...Among those who were to receive the material were Press Secretary Kathy Bushkin and advisers Pat Caddell, Frank Mankiewicz, and Mark Hogan...
...I told him I’d talk to the Navy...
...Would I help out...
...He ignored that and described the first assignment...
...Finally, we decided that things weren’t so bad...
...The roast proved to be a successful fundraising event, which was its raison d’etre, but to quote The Washington Post’s review, it was “short on yucks...
...Mini Ha Has Miller, Cerf, and Franken were scheduled to meet with Hart before the roast to help him prepare his material...
...Alex Heard An A1 Franken special...
...Smerling spoke to Kathy Bushkin on the phone and reported that Bushkin was surprised that so many people were reviewing this script, that she thought it was fine, and that Gary was “looking forward to being funny...
...But there was no denying it...
...Franken was very upset, and kept saying things like “I hope my wife hasn’t already gotten us a babysitter, ‘cause we’re not going to any roast...
...Unsure about what to do, we decided to stand by our material...
...Now, that’s a nonissue...
...And of course, he and Gary are very close...
...He’s never murdered anyone, and has never committed any crime...
...Roasts are meant to show off the roastee’s easy charm and theatrical flair, qualities I’ve been accused of lacking...
...As we worked together, our blue-ribbon panel of comedy writers came to feel like a real team-in part because the Hart campaign staff viewed us as a “loose cannon...
...Evidently, Walter Mondale is not a chainsaw murderer...
...We included it Friday primarily as something to surrender to save the rest of our stuff...
...Just give the same speech you gave at the ‘76 Democratic Convention...
...About eight writers came up with this joke, so it clearly wasn’t that good...
...Irving assured us that Sorensen wasn’t the last word on the subject, however, and we scheduled a meeting for the next day to write material for Linden, the emcee...
...I’m still waiting to hear...
...Thinks it’s completely unpresidential...
...He’d written a “no” or an “x” next to all references to name, birthday, and signature changes...
...We spent a lot of time debating whether anyone would be offended by “Oy, the goyim, feh...
...You couldn’t bring any guns...
...We would become a runaway commission...
...Glenn obviously took the opportunity quite seriously...
...We went home, encouraged by the reactions of Monahan and Lynch, but worried about what reaction our script would get from the others...
...Several other jokes contended for this spot, all on the theme of Jack’s having been part of the “evolving” policy over where to put our embassy in Israel (“Jack sent Gary to three rabbis for advice, and he came away with ten opinions”), But Miller liked the Cracker Jack joke the best...
...Second, it established an outline for the reply-one age joke, one name joke, and so forth...
...So after reading his column, I turned to Bob Strauss for advice, and Bob said, “John, don’t worry...
...Here’s a man who thought Pershing 11 was a Spielberg sequel...
...President Reagan’s new idea is to nominate Ed Meese for secretary of the treasury...
...To say that I stuck my head in the bag-of-tricks of my soul and found that it stunk of nothingness is horribly overwrought, but accurate nonetheless, because I learned quickly and painfully that I had no talent whatever as a joke writer...
...We were confused, angered, and amazed by this reaction...
...We agreed that while Sorensen may have ghosted Profiles in Courage, Kennedy’s wit was certainly original...
...THE CHAINSAW JOKE Finally, on a serious nose, I’d like to talk about negative campaigning...
...They were waylaid by Mankiewicz, Hogan, and Monahan...
...Linden joined us, reviewed his material, and proved to be a congenial partner...
...Xike My Joke-Please What became a lonely, humiliating self-revelation about my deficiencies as a humor writer began innocently enough as an opportunity to work on the fringes of a major presidential campaign...
...Untrue...
...He’d then say that Hart had won the vote of every thoughtful person, and that he and the panel were there to prove that Hart’s support wasn’t confined to that one group...
...Denver looked like I was saying bad things about his mother when I told him how he was going to be introduced...
...With 15 minutes left before dinner, we took the leftover jokes to the members of the dais...
...Walter Mondale: Not a Murderer...
...A slide show Marlo was to have presented was axed, and she now needed material...
...Not surprisingly, the Mondale people did not acknowledge the joke’s receipt, use it, or ever call again...
...It was now a warm toast...
...That may not seem like much, but under our current administration, the Defense Department buys them for $200 apiece...
...Ronald Reagan used to be called Jane Wyman...
...Someone suggested that I just wing it...
...Okay, here it goes...
...After I finished, Kaus said something like, “Okay, but if you do come up with something just give us a call...
...Alex Heard is a writer living in Washington...
...And there shouldn’t be any mention of divorce...
...Jack and I split a box of Cracker Jacks before the roast tonight, and Jack let me keep the prize- [holds it up]-this little whistle...
...The closest thing to a gaffe came when Barry Fey said, “Judaism is to Gary Hart what surfing is to Kansas .” Mankiewicz dropped his head into his hands...
...Just before we went home, we received Sorensen’s reaction to my script...
...Two more Mondale staffers had called urging me to send something immediately...
...Nothing at all...
...At first we were mystified that there were no explanations why things were cut...
...I’ve never skied but [touching his nose] I have a personal feeling for it...
...We would take him our stuff...
...Finally, last December, I got a call from Robert M. Kaus, a contributing editor of this magazine, who was working as a speechwriter for Ernest Hollings...
...However, I have just learned something about Walter Mondale’s past that I think everyone should be aware oJ In 1978, while still vicepresident, Walter Mondale was involved in a series of chainsaw massacres...
...A GENERIC OPENING/THE RIGHT STIFF When my aides first suggested that we have this roast, I was very reluctant...
...Linden would explain that we were having a roast because it was the best way to honor a man who started his career by dropping his pence in public...
...All right...
...Did I have anything...
...He wanted to recruit me to work in a loose network of volunteer humorists who would write jokes for Mondale...
...Anything about Reagan...
...A: A fortune cookie...
...Since I was supporting Hart, and since it seemed like fun, I agreed...
...AGE AND SIGNATURE But rather than talk about the people on the dais, I thought I’d talk about myself and respond to some of the criticisms that have been leveled at me during the campaign...
...I told that one all morning...
...The intern was very polite...
...Generally, just reading the newspaper seemed like the best way to come up with ideas...
...By the time we left, Hart’s reply was just about finished...
...She meant a comedy writer, and presumably someone who’d been at that meeting...
...Hogan was mollifying, but didn’t want any of it to be used...
...At first I wisely said no...
...Who can blame her...
...It’s basically a cattle show...
...And as my maternal grandmother, Dolores Hartinez, once said, “Donde la biblioteca...
...All I had, I told him, was this one joke about Mondale’s endorsements...
...HOLLINGS I’d like to acknowledge some of the people on the dais, like Fritz Hollings, my colleague in the Senate...
...And crazy ideas can be valuable bargaining chips...
...Of course, as a man formerly named John Henry Deutschendorf, where were you going to go...
...One, they indicated that humor can be very effective in politics and, to me, made the whole idea of writing jokes for Mondale more interesting...
...Perhaps that’s because Ronald Reagan isn’t knowledgeable about defense...
...Bandleader Peter Duchin had been added to the dais, and now needed material...
...Apparently, I was the only one there who was funny on his own time...
...He did well...
...I guess that’s why I read a lot...
...The scripts for Hart and Linden went to the campaign brahmins for review...
...I was not invited, but among those who attended were “Saturday Night Live” veterans Marilyn Miller, AI Franken, and Alan Zweibel, and Chris Cerf, who wrote for “The Muppet Show” and was a prime mover behind the Not the New York Times parody...
...I’ve always known I can’t, ever since the day in third grade when I made up my first joke after reading a book of riddles by Bennett Cerf...
...DENVER John, thanks for coming, and standing behind me on the name question...
...Es, it seems while vacationing in northern Minnesota, Mondale and several of his aides, armed with Black and Decker chainsaws...
...Another Hart staffer, Jim Monahan, came up during the afternoon and read the material, and found it funny and inoffensive, except for the chainsaw joke: “That’s just the kind of thing that’ll upset people in the campaign...
...I thought, “What am I going to say...
...Before telling the joke, Mr...
...After living in Washington almost three years, about the closest 1 had come to being involved in politics was eating “Senate Bean” soup in the basement cafeteria of the Dirksen Office Building...
...Marilyn read her Hart’s reply, pausing to allow Franken to perform the chainsaw joke...
...I am not an extremely accomplished comedy writer, just a freelance magazine writer, but I do have a friend who happened to tell the roast’s director, David Irving, what a cut-up I am at Christmas parties...
...Clearly, things had gone poorly...
...The age issue had been so played out that I thought a straight numerical joke would have no pop...
...I used to Write jokes for him, you know, but it didn’t work out...
...For example, Kennedy introduced Gary Hart in Massachusetts with this line: “He’s young, attractive, vigorous, and charismatic-but I like him anyway...
...Of course, I am referring to Abraham Lincolnpence, and ‘Three-orfour-score and seven or eight years ago...
...Let’s hear it, he said...
...A stack of newspapers and magazines...
...As the first meeting was breaking up, Miller said to Irving, “Now what we need is a writer to pull this material together...
...I disagree...
...The roast was held on April 1 in the Sheraton Centre Hotel T in Manhattan, some 34 hours before the polls opened in what may prove to have been the pivotal primary of the season...
...right...
...Hollings proved very enigmatic...
...But seriously folks As we worked together that evening, we came to feel like a real team...
...I got a slow start, missing both the Massachusetts and Georgia “cattle shows” as 1 spent the rest of the month on tedious but necessary joke research...
...Thomas, for example, made no effort to be funny as she explained why she was behind Hart, while Stephen King had terrific material (“Senator Hart thought The Dead Zone was the space between Reagan’s ears”), but not very good delivery...
...Third, no name, age, signature, or hard-todeliver jokes...
...So I was ready-really ready-for my chance...
...1 had to either make, or break, my joke-writing image...
...A few of us brought material...
...At the 1983 dinner President Reagan came in at the end of a conga line, wearing a sombrero, and said, “I haven’t seen a crowd like this since we distributed surplus cheese...
...First, no John-John jokes...
...We’ve just gotten this name and age thing behind us, they said...
...Irving assumed that she meant a Man of Letters, and since I was the only “writer writer” (as he put it) that he had, he asked me to write the script...
...After the interview, I asked about his career...
...These were mostly Reagan broadsides or mild insults that were often self-directed...
...That was surprising, but the big surprise of the night was John Glenn-the Democratic speaker that year-who was (again, according to Style) “known as a less than energizing speaker and was being scrutinized by ‘Inside Washington...
...We spent a lot of time trying to develop a punchline out of the concept of Hart saying, “There but for the grace of 50,000 Iowans go I,” but nothing came of it...
...Q: What’s the richest cookie...
...Now if we could only get Nancy Reagan to say the same thing...
...MORRIS HARTBAUM Some critics have accused me of tailoring my message for the New York primary...
...That’s it, the time is now, now is the time some fresh coffee...
...They’re afraid we’ll look unpresidential, that somebody’ll say something insulting, that something awful’ll get into the papers the day before a big primary...
...I don’t think any of us seriously believed this would get in, but we all seriously hoped it would...
...And there were “generic” jokes-ones a candidate could use almost anytime, or ones suited to particular groups like farmers or union members...
...However, getting Franken to explain exactly what went on was nearly impossible, and Smerling, who had a hundred other things on her mind, lost herself in phone calls and was equally uninformative...
...We told him we were willing to take it out...
...We expected to be rewriting that the next day...
...The Lost Roast of Gary Hart A story that takes place at the highest level of comedy and government By Jamie Malanowski This is the story of the Lost Roast of Gary Hart, or, more accurately, the Lost Reply...
...His age...
...Duchin rejected the material we wrote for him...
...Mondale can best deflect such criticism by dealing with it humorously himself...
...This is the story of how that reply was written by a blue-ribbon panel of extremely accomplished comedy writers...
...the “endorsements” candidate...
...A lot of people thought the race would be over, the nomination wrapped up, and all eyes trained on November...
...Then I got the call...
...Gee, . . I’m sorry...
...Once we’d decided that, our work was still far from over...
...Finally the scripts were ready...
...We don’t want to remind people about the staff error...
...We were told again and again that Hart had no sense of timing, couldn’t tell a joke, and would laugh over his own punchlines...
...1 also read jokes being used at the March “cattle shows...
...Jack may be one of America’s great character actors, but he’s probably best known for his Cracker Jack commercials...
...YOU don’t have any idea just how many people are dead set against this roast...
...Lately, the mudslinging and character assassination has gotten completely out of hand, and I feel that’s got to stop...
...And don’t do the chainsaw joke...
...After all, we’d already cut a lot of what Sorensen had axed...
...By the end of the day, we had 70 or 80 jokes in nomination, scripts to write for Hart and Linden, and a strategic joke reserve to create for emergencies...
...A thick file of humor I’d written but failed to sell...
...Then he would say, “I have no idea what they’re talking about...
...And nothing too hard, or else Gary won’t be able to say it...
...At any rate, it was time to stop stalling and find out...
...While this hurt my feelings a little, it did bring Miller back to the table, where we worked until after midnight, cutting my script and splicing in Miller’s material...
...Glad we cleared that up...
...I say I found the Gridiron jokes “inspiring” for two reasons...
...On that slim recommendation, I was approached...
...Mondale would need to acknowledge the criticism he is getting for “endorsements...
...You’ll note that the joke is tied to an event that will increasingly be on the public mind next year...
...Linden’s script needed to be changed to reflect the advisors’ edicts...
...Sniff...
...The most inspiring material emerged from the annual Gridiron Dinner late in March...
...Anything about Kennedy is good-but keep it mild since this is his home state...
...On Tuesday, Hart was creamed in New York...
...I got one more call a couple of months later, this time from an intern at The New Republic who was polishing a speech that Morton Kondracke-one of the editors there-was scheduled to give in a few days...
...All references to Mondale were out...
...Linden offered to walk out...
...Kaus said he needed jokes for a fundraiser in South Carolina, where they’d heard most of his stuff already...
...Top honors for sportsmanship went to Franken, whose recognizable face attracted TV cameras throughout the night...
...Ron...
...GILFORD And Jack Gilford...
...The man at the other end of the line was a speechwriter for the Mondale-for-President organization...
...That sounded like an awful idea, until I realized that if the president can do that with foreign policy I can do that here...
...We had picked up messages through Irving and Smerling that there was an element in the campaign that was extremely suspicious of us, and viewed us, improbable though it may sound, as a loose cannon...
...It would remind people of the assassination...
...Linden’s introductions of the panelists were amusing, if a little uneven...
...That month Mondale and five other Democratic candidates were scheduled to speak at a state committee dinner in Massachusetts in advance of a “straw vote” in April...
...He gave me the material Wednesday, said I could add new jokes if I wanted to, and told me to come back with the script by Friday, so that it could be sent to campaign chairman Ted Sorensen for approval...
...And then suppressed...
...After an hour of pitiful tapping I came up with one measly joke, a sad, thin little thing-almost ill really, truly awful-and you no doubt want to hear it right now...
...And he would have stayed in the race, but he knew America would never elect a president named Fritz...
...No self-respecting commission will fail to come up with one token crazy idea: it redeems the blandness of the other findings...
...Kaus pressed me...
...But then Gary blew it in Georgia, so here we are...
...Nancy...
...Many of the jokes were tied to the news...
...You know...
...He said he’d still like to be an anchor...
...And a public-speaking guidebook for school administrators (“33 humorous ice-breakers,” “10 pre-written benedictions, both secular and religious...
...But I think what you have here is fine, and so does Dottie, so we’ll see!’ By the end of the day, we had the material for Linden...
...It’s just long sentences,” she said...
...Miller, who’d written for nonprofesssionals on “SNL,” was confident...
...No takers...
...I have no idea who wrote them, but some were stolen from the Gridiron Club roast of the previous week...
...Yeah, fine...
...He helped improve some of his intros, including Andrea’s (“The other day Andrea said she didn’t want to live in the White House...
...Glenn’s speech was written by a group of Washington joke-writing heavies, including “insiders” Art Buchwald and Mark Shields, and included corkers like this: “As many of you know, Scotty Reston thinks it was a mistake for me to accept this invitation because I can’t give a funny speech...
...Two days after that meeting, Irving gathered a smaller group to start putting together the script...
...I think of how one of our greatest presidents began one of his greatest speeches...
...Hey, you never know what will help...
...Over time, using basic revisionist memory techniques, I rewrote the whole joke-writing episode in my mind...
...Then he would say...
...In the end, he was philosophical...
...Then we felt insulted by this summary judgment...
...The Style section of The Washington Post has called it a “powerful arena for political image-making...
...It was March 1983...
...By Sunday, our group was working so smoothly that not even the tension of event day, nor even the tension of waiting for a verdict on our script, could keep us from producing...
...Second, no chainsaw joke...
...And some people say my campaign has an identity problem...
...Luckily, large political organizations do not administer such punishment...
...We reviewed everything we wrote for its ease of delivery...
...Two, I was sure I could do much better...
...The honoree did make a response to these people, but it wasn’t the reply that had been written for him...
...The writers’ group, now a force of six to eight, met Friday night...
...Eventually, Cerf and Miller and I realized how pathetic we looked, frenetically pitching our jokes, and we slunk back to our table and sat down...
...That night Glenn “laughed his reputation as a tedious orator away,” David Broder later wrote, with a speech “that can fairly be called a triumph...
...Gary is interrupted by an aide, who whispers in his ear and hands him a piece of paper], . . Oh...
...Franken, the comedy hardliner, was ready to go home...
...Third, the group wrote some new funny stuff...
...All 1 wanted was to forget about the whole experience...
...All he has to do is read...
...I didn’t want to sound too interested, so I sniffed in the manner of Barney Fife explaining pistol handling to Opie and said, “Wellll, I’m pretty busy writing magazine humor [a lie] but I can probably give you a hand...
...And nothing about Mondale...
...The idea is to make Gary seem less remote and to neutralize some of the things we’ve been criticized for,” said Irving when he recruited me...
...There was almost nothing he hadn’t rejected...
...We wrote an elaborate introduction for John Denver, based on the premise that Linden was mistaking him for Bob Denver, the star of “Gilligan’s Island .” Andrea Hart’s introduction, clawed out late in the day, was based on her statement that she didn’t want to live in the White House...
...According to Cerf, Mankiewicz was “brusque” but thought some of the material could be used by other panelists...
...This is a staff error...
...JFK Another accusation that’s been thrown at me is that I’m trying to imitate Jack Kennedy...
...The staff was also nervous about Hart...
...Ladies and gentlemen of New York-I have just returned from Florida and I bring you a message: Call your mothers...
...Cocky once again, I could be heard at parties saying things like, “Obviously, Mondale’s organization simply does not understand humor, and that’s hurting the candidate...
...This event, at which politicians and journalists trade insults and perform skits, is the major showcase of political humor each year...
...For example, there’s been some to-do about my age...
...The best Mudd ,joke was: “Actually Roger and I are still good friends...
...I’ve called for new ideas, and now everybody thinks he’s got one...
...A slim archive of political jokes I’d collected...
...To pacify Miller, Chris Cerf and the show’s producer, Lisa Smerling, assured her that nothing I’d written was set in stone, that the whole thing could be heaved out the window and done over and nobody would care...
...Well, there was this one joke I wrote for Mondale, but it’s not that great...
...Monahan, fighting a rearguard action, defended the concept of the roast, but not our material...
...Miller, who was prepared to spend the evening writing a reply, was piqued that I had already done it...
...They never arrived...
...But name changes are an American tradition...
...Some of us thought this was a less than boffo opening, but the majority felt that this “homage aux Catskills” would provide Hart with a warm, comfortable, and easy-to-handle start...
...And so on...
...For over an hour we thought and typed and scribbled as fast as we could...
...Uh...
...All three of them...
...There were jokes that no one laughed at, jokes that no one laughed at but were described as “conceptual humor,” and jokes that received the comparatively high accolade of “That would be funny if it were said to me in a bar...
...Then I put on my headphones and started “writing...
...No more delays...
...The panel was uneven...
...The whole damn country laughed at that one...
...We were convinced that the present reply was funny, largely inoffensive, and equipped with a sacrificial chainsaw joke...
...That’s actually a good one, though...
...And for someone walking around calling himself “a humorist,” this is truly an existentially tragic discovery...
...The speech is set, but Mort wants me to pepper it up with some jokes...
...So nothing about cocaine orgies in a rumpus room full of 1 I-year-old girls...
...I found some good jokes, and some very odd ones, like this one Richard Nixon told in New Hampshire in 1968: ‘‘I understand the skiing is great up here...
...Most references to Reagan were out...
...Most of them ran through a roster of name, age, and beef jokes...
...So I gathered my meager resources...
...The issue is experience...
...As my paternal grandfather, Morris Hartbaum, once said, “OJ the goyim, feh...
...Lynch thought the routine was very funny, and couldn’t see what Sorensen’s problem was, unless he was worried about Hart’s ability to perform...
...Jamie Malanowski is a writer living in New York...
...NEW IDEAS I think my platform’s been stolen...
...The haul included an enormous number of jokes about beef, altered birthdates, JFK, changed surnames, and different signatures...
...We were thinking of stealing Ted Kennedy’s line about how Hollings had given hope to so many by being a non-English-speaking candidate when we received word that Hollings had dropped out...
...I tried to be as sheepish as possible, but there was no getting around it: I was outside the bounds of comedy protocol...
...I mean, Warren Beatty’s doing everything he can to stop this .” “Warren Beatty, the actor...
...He did some other jokes, too...
...Trying to educate myself about the style and content of political jokes, I looked at the work of past greats...
...1’11 see what Mort thinks...
...Around 1:30 Franken and Smerling returned from meeting with Mankiewicz, Caddell, and Hogan...
...They’re sort of expected to tell some jokes...
...This is what I mailed: Dear Sirs: This joke is designed to comically play on the charge, likely to be made often during the campaign, that Walter Mondale i...
...But first, let me explain-I may be a humor writer, but I never claimed I could write jokes...
...Or breaking...
...Each time they started filming, Franken threw back his head, simulating laughter, no matter who was or wasn’t speaking...
...There is no doubt that he could have delivered the material we wrote...
...I guess this is one of those things that happens with frontloading...
...And self-directed stuff by Fritz is good...
...Cary Grant used to be called Archie Leach, John Wayne used to be called Marion Morrison, Ronald Reagan used to be called a Democrat, and Mrs...
...The first writers’ meeting took place on March 24, when 12 or 15 of us got together to talk about material...
...I considered this wound to be the formal end of my career as a political joke writer...
...Hart was appropriately and jocularly insulted by the emcee, actor Hal Linden, and by the panel, which included singer John Denver, concert promoter Barry Fey, actors Jack Gilford and Marlo Thomas, author Stephen King, comedian Freddie Roman, Representative Tim Wirth, campaign pollster Dottie Lynch, and the candidatorial daughter, Andrea Hart...
...The Star Wars speech...
...At the writers’ table, we took some satisfaction from the fact that we hadn’t written that one...
...Politics is just like show business,” he told Miller, “except there’s less talent .” And Hart...
...It was my great privilege to be a member of this committee...
...Incidentally, I’m pleased to take this opportunity to announce that I have been declared the Official Candidate of the I984 Olympics...
...If Meese can get the same repayment schedule for the deficit as he got for himseK the country will be out of debt in no time...
...One reason was we were having a good time, but a more important reason was that we began to develop an “us versus them” mentality...
...On Saturday, we met with Hart’s pollster, Dottie Lynch...
...Some of you may remember that Fritz also ran for president this year...
...First, it reviewed the inventory and selected the best lines...
...Somehow, we had convinced ourselves that our idealized Gary, the one who was as mistrusted as we were, would go with our jokes...
...But this was overwrought...
...Nothing could be further from the truth...
...After repeated entreaties, we were able to establish these facts...
...Ted [Kennedy] will introduce the candidates with a few barbs and then they get to speak...
...We were a frenzy of joke-writing...
...He’d open by saying, “Frankly, a lot of people never thought an event like this would be happening tonight...
...It clearly bears my signature...
...Hart read all his jokes well...
Vol. 16 • June 1984 • No. 5
