As a ghostwriter, I work across lots of genres, both the big and the little, the serious/intellectual and the wildly creative/comedic.
On the wild side, I’ve written thousands of jokes behind the scenes as both a late night staff writer, and a late night submission writer (where you send jokes into a show, either because you’re paid an ongoing freelance retainer, or they buy individual jokes from you when they like the joke). I’ve also written for some truly great standups, including Ron White, Dennis Miller, Billy Gardell (from Mike and Molly), Jimmy Shubert (look him up, the world’s best Irish ranter), and many others.
But the person I wrote for that hit me the hardest -- as in, “I can’t believe he actually just said a joke I wrote for him, out loud, on national TV” -- was David Letterman.
It’s just otherworldly hearing someone you’ve watched for decades say jokes you thought of.
I still remember the first time Letterman told a joke I wrote.
“President Obama is upset that Iranian President Ahmadinejad just won reelection with 99% of the vote. He believes the election was rigged. In protest, he says he’s no longer going to smoke Camels.”
(The joke uses the classic Letterman structure -- take two disparate news stories (Obama still sneaks in a cigarette here and there, and the Iranian elections) -- and crash them together in the last word of the joke.)
I wrote that joke the way most ghostwriters write -- at my house, on the couch, on my laptop. I heard him tell it the next morning when I watched video of his monologue, as I served my kids pancakes. There I was, pouring syrup on short stacks for short people, and this megalith of comedy came on screen and said words I wrote in-between helping those same kids do homework the night before -- “President Obama is upset that…”
It’s one of the things I find so interesting about creating for/with other people -- you write the words in your mundane, everyday world, they take them out and perform them in a mystical space seen by millions.
It’s really just… satisfying.
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