And now, please enjoy Pat Walsh: An Interview in Three Hilarious Parts.
For the wannabe writers:Jeanette: Your friends and blog readers know that your rise to writing success took patience, wit and gumption in varying quantities. For those trying to fill your penny loafers, care to share, in a few lines, what you had to put up with to get to where you are?
Pat: Aside from the constant rejection that goes with trying to be a writer, let me break down what the past few years have looked like for me. I got held up at
knifepoint, I had all of my belongings stolen from my apartment, I bought a '97 Saturn that exploded in a month, I lived at the corner of
Meth Street and
Stabbington Road in Hollywood, I strongly considered semen donation…I could go on. From the day I left college, I have been broke broke broke. This time last year I was temping at State Farm Insurance! But those miserable, lonely, pathetic times gave me stuff to write about. You know who's not funny? Rich people. That's why television sucks, because they'll only give shows to people with proven success. People with proven success are likely rich. And those people can't write shows anyone can relate to, because most of the country is poor. You know what is one of the best shows ever made?
Roseanne. They were poor as shit, it was a huge hit, and yet you don't see people like that on TV anymore for some reason. (Also, there was a constant threat of spousal abuse on that show that I found fascinating.) What I’m getting at is that you need to be prepared for a real
suicidey couple years if you want to do this professionally.
J: What advice do you have on getting an agent?
P-Money: They all love cocaine, so keep some on your person at all times. Honestly, here's the secret trick on getting an agent -- be a good writer. Connections can help you to some degree, but
nobody's going to sign a crappy writer. Unless that crappy writer has cocaine, as we discussed.
J: What was it like coming in on the 4
th season of a successful show, where a group of writers have already found their groove? Any hazing?
P: No one made us run through the quad naked or anything, but there's always some hazing in a writers' room. Writers tend to be pretty sarcastic people, and everyone gives everyone else a fair amount of shit. If you wear a pink shirt to work, it’s not going to be an easy day for you. You've got to have thick skin, and you’
ve got to be ready to shoot back at all times. That said, you’ll never laugh more than you do in a writers’ room. I’
ve been so spoiled on this show. Rob, Charlie, and Glenn are exceptional people, and they are super open to our ideas. That is great because a first year writer on a show is lucky to be listened to, let alone be allowed to write an episode, as Sonny and I did.
J: I was once at an event where Tina Fey's advice to potential writers was to keep on keeping on, no matter what. Seconds later, Lorne
Michaels said that at some point if you're not having any success, you should take the hint. If Tina is a 1 and Lorne is a 10, where do you stand? Explain.
P: They're both right, but I'm closer to
Lorney. (I call him
Lorney.) You have to be persistent and believe in yourself, because no one else will -- absolutely. But to a point. Writing is a very, very difficult business to break into and 99.9% of aspiring writers won't make it. Just because you make your friends laugh
doesn’t mean you’re Chris Rock. When I moved to Los Angeles, people told me it's a 7-year town. "Stick with it for seven years, and if you don't make it, try something else." I find that completely ridiculous. If you've been actively trying to be a comedy writer for two years, and you're nowhere closer to your goal, it might be time to rock that GMAT, Chuckles.
J: Sunny aside, what do you think we should be watching this season?
P: Oh man, have you seen the ads for
Hole in the Wall? Fat people trying to fit through a hole, so as to avoid getting knocked into a pool. On television! Is that the four horsemen I see on the horizon? Fox owns
FX, so I should probably stop knocking their programming. Do any new shows look good? That
True Blood is interesting so far, and I certainly appreciate all the nudity. My faves are all returning shows:
30 Rock,
The Office,
The Shield,
Mad Men, and
Lost. I pray for another season of
Curb Your Enthusiasm, that’s top of the pops. Oh, and I love
Tim and Eric Awesome Show on Adult Swim. Those guys have caused me to hyperventilate on more than one occasion, and I'm not a big
LOLer.
J: Because your writing partner's name is Sonny and Paddy's Pub is named for you, you Irish brute, true or false, you guys feel you are only claiming what is rightfully yours by writing for this show?
P: True, and it doesn't stop there, Sonny went to college in Philadelphia! And my middle name is Always.
For the Sunny fans:J: On a show like
Sunny, where comedic boundaries are always being pushed, is there any writer's room discussion about how much is too much? Any juicy examples for us? Feel free to make something up.
P: The discussion is never "is this too much?" but "can it be made funny?" A great example for you is that this year we toyed with putting the gang back in high school for an episode (I'll leave details vague
incase we use it for a future season). One of the
storylines we worked on had the guys trying to stop school shootings. We had a take on it that was really funny, but it just felt…icky. There’s good icky and bad icky, and we always try to land on the good side.
J: This one has two parts. Stay with me. You and Sonny have been doing a crackerjack job running the Paddy's Pub blog. Does this qualify as the kind of new media that had Peter
Chernin fearing that he would loser pennies to the dollar to the people that were creating it? It reads as if Peter
Chernin's fellow suits have been nowhere near this blog, in that it just reeks of you and Sonny. Do you guys get absolute freedom with what to publish here?
P: Thank you, and we've had so much fun running the Sunny blog (ahem –
paddyspub.blogs.fxnetworks.com). The writing/producing/editing we're doing does qualify as "New Media," and we are getting paid to do it. I thank the
WGA, even though I have to pay them a shocking amount of dues and they still have not provided me with health insurance. I guess it's one battle at a time over there. Second, we pretty much have absolute freedom on the site, yes. We were told there could be no "fucks," but I'm used to hearing that in my personal life anyway. We get crude, especially with Frank's advice column and Dennis' erotic memoirs, but they encourage that at
FX. This is a network that showed a major character forced to blow a dude at gunpoint on
The Shield. I will say it is massively awkward that our point person for all this content is a very sweet and innocent woman named Colette, and we have to have conversations that start with her asking "is there a funnier word for cock?"
J: Which character is the most fun to write for? And don't say Sweet Dee so Kaitlin Olson will sleep with you.
P: Oh
geez, you're asking me to choose between my bosses! I talk a lot like Mac, Dennis, Dee, and Charlie in my personal life, so Frank might be the most fun because it's more of a challenge to write for a 60 year old pervert. Plus,
DeVito's voice makes everything you write gold. I think back to season two -- the way he said "your whore mother" had me in stitches every time. The great thing about this show is that you know whatever line you write will be delivered in the most hilarious manner imaginable. This is the funniest cast on television, right down to the ringers they bring for an episode or two each year -- David
Hornsby, Artemis
Pebdani, Mary Elizabeth Ellis...I could go on. Come on Emmy voters, you're telling me Adrian
Grenier is funnier than Charlie Day? You show me a man who has laughed at anything Adrian
Grenier has said and I'll drag him into the street and beat him.
J: Give us at least one spoiler for this season. Go.
P: It's the most ambitious season yet, I can tell you that much. The episode I co-wrote – “The Gang Solves the Gas Crisis” – deals with post 9/11 paranoia and proposes a solution to the frightening situation with gasoline in this country. Other episodes...the gang will consider cannibalism. There will be episodes poking fun at Bachelor-type shows and Extreme Home Makeover. We’ll see what Paddy’s Pub was like back in 1776. And watch out for the episode with the musical -- we were on set for their rehearsals and I think that’s going to blow people away. These guys can really sing!
And finally, Pat Walsh, in the words of Bernard Pivot:
Second, could someone tell me whether Gail Simmons has left Top Chef for good? Last we saw her, she was being ridiculous at her bridal shower (i.e. blaming the chefs for ruining her upcoming marriage with sub-par sushi rolls). She was conspicuously absent from the last episode, and previews reveal a surly bald Brit in her place. AS IF ANYONE COULD REPLACE GAIL.
You'd think the images in the opening credits of white children in Klansmen gear and a church sign reading "God Hates Fangs" would be enough, but no: we also need at least one scene per episode of the spokeswoman for the National Vampire League advocating on television for vampire rights legislation. And we definitely need protagonist Sookie Stackhouse telling her best friend who thinks that vampires can put humans under their thrall, "Yeah right, and black people are lazy, and Jews have horns." 
Buffy: You guys, weird things keep happening here. I found a dead lunch lady in a locker today. She had bite marks on her neck.
