Alan Lebetkin's One-Website Deal

Commercial parodies are low-hanging comedy fruit that often surface weekly on SNL. In my opinion, they’re also consistently the funniest — for SNL anyhow. All students of comedy cite “Oops I crapped my pants” at least once during their freshman year of comedy skool. We even watched that sketch for a commercial parody assignment in my Upright Citizens Brigade Sketch 101 class, for which I wound up writing this CANNIBILIFY COMMERCIAL.

There were no parody medical marijuana commercials on YouTube or Funny or Die at the time of the writing, to my complete and utter surprise. Therefore, if any exist now, they are ripping me off.

This is too easily made into a hilarious joke, but I don’t actually like AVERAGE SEX. Case in point, just now, I accidentally typed “I don’t like AVERAGE SKETCH.”

I suppose I found it funny when I wrote it in 2008, but the script isn’t that special when I consider it now. The sketch killed during its two stagings however, so I’m including it here. Maybe it was actors elevating the material.

Or maybe my tastes have changed. I do remember being a little surprised by the strong response. Oh well. I’d be remiss to reject applause.

911 PRANK CALLS was written for my Upright Citizens Brigade Maude team Old Man Girlfriend. The team was formed during the beginning of Maude night back in 2008. You wouldn’t know it now, but the program was tentative at the time, with adjustments coming about every month. Now the sketch program and its corresponding performance nights are one of the Theater’s undisputed crown jewels. While I don’t believe I contributed much to the launch of the program, I really enjoyed the experience and look forward to writing for a Maude team again one day, with several more years of sketch under my belt.

The theater’s artistic director thankfully coordinated the video’s cast and director/editor. The talent here is amazing and recognizable to most LA comedy fans. I’m not keen on dropping names in these blog posts — that’s not what this is about — but they can be easily sourced on the video’s YouTube page. For all involved, their body of online work is voluminous and very worth checking out.

I’m producing KAFKA’S CEREAL as a video short next month. Here’s the commissioned puppet bowl of cereal:

CEREAL was an early sketch of mine and my all-time favorite. One of those sketches that came so easily in writing that it felt like it always existed, and my job was merely to transcribe it into physical existence.

A lot of my good feelings were born in watching it performed for the first time in the Mainstage Sketch Show. The over-the-top silliness had the cast breaking throughout with sheer joy, and the energy in the room was tremendous. The scene contained many memorable moments, such as George’s Herr revealing his giant wooden spoon, and the triumphant flourish of Emily’s Greta after the final line delivery.

Man, this sketch is fun. I’m really looking forward to shooting it.

You know a webseries about a struggling musician sharing his Hollywood two bedroom apartment with a Vietnamese pop star has reached its natural conclusion when all characters are in the same room drinking green milkshakes. 

Well, everyone except Wayne…

WAYNE (ON T.V.)
I mean, yeah, but you know, come on, give me a break…
(then)
It’s just a milkshake.

On TV: The audience gasps. Cut to the judges, mouths agape.

It’s been fun reliving the heady days of late 2010, when I holed up in rough westwood coffee shops with bathroom doors that didn’t even have locks, to emerge triumphantly a few weeks later, script in hand.

This was the second webseries I’d written and by far my favorite. I may or may not revisit the first. The experience of making that one has a raft of ambivalent feelings to unpack. I’ll get around to it someday, after a strong drink.

VERNE
But I was gonna play my new song.

DEENIE
Sorry but you’ll have to play with yourself. I want the first man I kiss to care about his friends, not about how quickly he can get into a girl’s mouth!

And so begins our journey to the thrilling conclusion of MY ROOMMATE’S A VIETNAMESE POP STAR.

By this point in the project, I’d established the world and was ready to go nuts with the dessert-based humor. In fact, considering my intense addiction to candy, I was born ready.

The Halloweens of my youth concluded with me dumping out a pillowcase of candy on the carpet and then collapsing to the floor to immediately eat it all. Rarely would one morsel from the whole pillowcase survive those first few critical hours. The only fruits consumed those evenings were the ones of my labor.

And then there were family trips to the Western Steer all-you-can-eat buffet down the street (R.I.P.), where I would take my bowls of marshmallows, straight, forgoing the ice cream they were supposed to be a topping for. Upon returning home, I’d immediately collapse on carpet for an hour of recovery, my swollen, 11-year-old belly not quite understanding what had just happened, and not exactly thrilled about it either.

These are the memories of my youth. Not games of hide-and-seek or clubhouses for boys only. No, I ate shit. And now I write about it. Because you write what you know.

Ron Artest changed his name to Metta World Peace over a year ago and I didn’t hear about it? Why do I get the feeling that between the two of us, I’m the only one who’s embarrassed?

The VIETNAMESE POP STAR series has so many cultural references from late 2010 that I often need to remind myself just what some of these phenomena were. Millions of Milkshakes, Rock Band, and now Ron Artest. Ron Artest was, I believe, was a professional orangeball player who was kind of a big deal for the Clippers. Hi, sports.

Episode 4 was a bottle episode (not progressing the series arc) which proved to me the series had legs through the various character relationships. Some of my favorite interactions occur here. For example:

CORNELL
If Ron Artest sees you then I’m pretty sure he will continue not caring.
(beat)
Ugh, at this rate you’ll sleep with Ron Artest before Deenie.

VERNE
Hey! I respect that Deenie wants me to be God’s sloppy seconds!

Then the worthy comeback:

VERNE
And you made fun of me for Ron Artest?

CORNELL
That’s different. He’s an athlete.

VERNE
Dam does pushups.

CORNELL
Completely different context.
(to Dam)
Not that your pushups aren’t awesome.

I love when my jokes are still funny to me years after writing them. I love even more when others feel the same way.

(Back, trolls!)

There was a time when having your Millions of Milkshakes photo-op was a required stop on the greyhound bus to gutterfame. Fortunately, I happened to write MY ROOMMATE’S A VIETNAMESE POP STAR, EPISODES TWO and THREE while that circus was in town. 

Following celebrity gossip is a pastime of mine, albeit from a detached anthropologist’s “Let’s observe the tragedy of the human condition!” kind of way. I favor Perez Hilton for the double-dose of relentless celebrity updates, as well as the oblivious, self-parody of his own ridiculous unearned celebrity. VIETNAMESE POP STAR gave me the pleasure of creating my own alternate vapid celebrity culture in this vein.

Re-reading it now, I kinda wish a version of the show could one day get made. Simply update the Millions of Milkshakes references to the latest dessert fad, and it’s ready to roar. Development execs: There’s two built-in audiences for my exploration of polite paparazzi and dessert-based celebrity, those who enjoy Perez Hilton, and those who hate Perez Hilton. Get on it!

MY ROOMMATE’S A VIETNAMESE POP STAR, written in late 2010, makes perfect sense in a post-Gangnam Style world. Before Psy broke, I had doubts sending it to people for fear of the absurdity of the concept not landing. Who knew that 2 1/2 years later there would be a similar real world example I could point to.

I never really considered investors in the beginning, but had marketability been a concern, I probably never would have written the series. There’s too much racial humor for consideration. Later on, when it was clear I wouldn’t film it myself and a friend asked for shootable scripts, I sent her this, never to hear back.

Personally, I feel all race humor is problematic at its core. Whether it’s thoughtful or not, there will always be a segment of the audience that becomes offended, the origins of the offense are almost always rooted in personal experience outside of the writer’s control. Therefore, the writer is choosing to enter into a difficult relationship with the audience, regardless of intent, and the dynamics of the relationship can cloud the larger point being made.

As with most writing, I feel the best approach is to write with the audience in mind but ultimately for myself. I know what I believe, and so if I write something that seems to have crossed the line, then I can conclude that I either didn’t express myself well, or the offended person is overly sensitive.

That’s my overwrought disclaimer for Episode One of what’s basically a Zach Braff meets Gangnam Style webseries.

Believe it or not, my sketch about the star-crossed lovers of Cookieville and Chewyburg merited the writing of an alternate clean version.

I wanted to include the sketch in my submission packet for a food-themed kids show, but had the nagging feeling that lines like “Suck my dick you cookie whore!” could use another pass for the target audience. That target audience being fucking children.

Looking over the rewrite, I’m amused by many of my revisions. Some of them have the feel of lame overdubs for television broadcast, such as “Fair my ass!” becoming “Fair my boot!” Others make no sense to me (anymore), like “We hate Chewyberg the way pirates hate broccoli!” And then there’s changes that feel like outright violations of style, as when the citizens chase the Guinness official out of town instead of tearing him limb from limb.

In the final analysis, both versions have an equal right to exist. The fact that I wrote an R-rated sketch about two towns fighting over the world’s largest cookie probably says more about my own comedy preferences than it does the broadcast standards of network television.