FW: This is funny

Sarah Silverman has a memoir out.

“The writer’s room is just so animalistic,” says Silverman. “It’s like there’s this safe haven with only six of us being animals, and I get joy from it. It’s absolute, total freedom.”

I mention to Silverman that, anecdotally, I find her fans to be mostly male. (That she’s a vocal pothead might be one reason; she proudly points out to me that her book’s release date, April 20, is Stoner Day.) She tells me that she has zero interest in a conversation that might turn into a Woman in a Man’s World discussion. “A lot of women comics got all upset by Christopher Hitchens’s [Vanity Fair, January 2007] article about why women aren’t funny. Or like when Jerry Lewis says women aren’t funny,” she says. “If you are truly offended by an 80-year-old man saying you’re not funny, then you’re probably not funny.”

Full interview at New York Magazine. The pic of Silverman-as-Winehouse (a dream, really) is courtesy of the Annie Leibowitz cover shoot for Vanity Fair.

LA Times columnist Randee Dawn [real name, and no, I don't know if she knows Lisa Zunshine] writes of the writers room:

They say that explaining a joke kills what's funny about it. But every day, television's top comic writers have to do exactly that. No, not kill their jokes -- but plan them out, break them down, go over them dozens of times and then fit them all into 21 minutes and 35 seconds of air time. Give or take.

And when it comes to the mechanics of sitcom assembly, it's rarely a rote process. Each show has its own style, flair and tolerances. But if there's one thing virtually any sitcom just can't do without, it's the writers' room.

Full article at the LA times here.