The Weekly Insider
The Weekly Insider
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Garrett didn't get the job. The fellow they gave the headwriting job didn't do any actual writing, however, and Garrett decided to write the script anyway. Garrett was then elected headwriter by default. Garrett had to rewrite a script by Donnie Becker, about goings-on behind the scenes at a tabloid newspaper in L.A. Says Garrett, "I thought it was the worst, most cliched, most unfunny thing I'd ever read. My rewrite wasn't much better really. I just hated the story and the subject matter." Garrett would wind up having to rewrite the entire script every week, since dozens of jokes would be cut out every week when the class didn't like them. "It's a wonder the thing got finished at all." At one point, the class producer tried to have Garrett fired. "One week I was surprised to find they'd written a new version of the script without me. The producer just conspired on his own to make this new ... thing, and ignore what I'd done. But his script was really really bad, and it went over badly, so the next week I was back, and they were finally somewhat glad to have me. Some of the class came up with some good ideas. There was also Lisanne Falk, who was an actress, she came up with some good one-liners. I asked David Ashe to come up with some stuff but most of it got cut by the class." Finally, the script was taped as a 26-minute pilot at the Carson stage at USC, with a cast hired out of Backstage West. Garrett was not involved in the taping, though he was there as an audience member. "They'd continued to cut a lot of jokes out and rewrite scenes without asking me. Ignored a lot of my changes. It was pretty rough. They taped the show twice and the first taping went really badly. None of the jokes worked and the actors didn't deliver the lines the way they needed to be delivered. They'd just fired one guy for talking sass to the producer, and some of them were worried they were going to be fired. They hadn't hired a comedian to warm the audience up so I tried to talk to the audience myself. I was being a jerk. They got more and more bored as the show went on and eventually I just got depressed and stopped talking to them. I wound up playing a depressed drunk guy as an extra at the end, and I said I was a depressed writer. The second taping went better, but it proved why I need to direct my stuff myself ... apart from mistakes in casting, it was just a cast that hadn't been directed right. None of the class really had a taste for comedy. Some of the cast members were quite talented, most of them slightly miscast. I actually loved watching the second taping, like a play, but it didn't translate that well onscreen. It's just too slow and has no comic timing and, well, isn't that funny. I hated having no control over the performances or my own script. It made me promise myself never to work in television ever."
