- PassTheRemote
- Mar 15, 2007
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Number 6 holds The Village record in Duck Hunt.
The first one to kill  wins.
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Some of the funniest people in the world wrote and acted on that show, and you'd never know it because the showrunner was a man who did not understand comedy at all. His name was David Saltzman, and I think he used to work in sports.
Some of the most talented improvisers in the country would get hired on MADtv as either writers or actors. Key & Peele, Andy Daly, Rich Talarico (who writes for both K&P and Review), Ike Barinholtz (who is amazing on The Mindy Project), Tami Sagher (incredible writer)...just so many amazing comedians in one place. My favorite writer, a guy named Chris Cluess, was an old school guy from the National Lampoon and Cheers and Night Court and stuff. Cluess served in the Korean War, and I think he just won an emmy for The Simpsons.
But anyway -- so you get it, some of the finest comedic minds in the country were all working on this show. And every tuesday morning we'd have a table read where we'd go through 45 sketches. There were always a ton of incredibly smart and funny sketches in this phone book-sized script.
Then David Saltzman would get in a room, pick the worst and dumbest sketches, and that'd be that.
Everyone who worked there saw it as a steady paycheck, and nothing else. Like, I got hired in season 11 right out of college, and by that point everyone knew: this show will never be good. So they'd all try and have as much fun as they could then go home and try to get better jobs. Try and get their movies sold, or audition for movies, or cartoon voices, or anything else. One time I heard Mo Collins give a speech at ImprovOlympic where she said, "I worked on MadTV for 7 seasons and I audition and nobody knows who I am." I felt super depressed.
The show could have been good! But Saltzman was such an incredible political operator...for some reason FOX always trusted him. I think it's because he reported to FOX's "Late Night" department, and the majority of that department was one show: MADtv. Unless you count "Talk Show with Spike Ferinstein" -- which I do!
This explains a lot. I always felt MadTV was very hit or miss.
Is saltzman to blame for all the Mrs Swann sketches?
He's probably responsible for all those Stuart sketches as well.
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Aug 26, 2015 22:33
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