Six nominees for WGA Awards in the Comedy/Variety Series – Talk or Sketch category grappled Wednesday night with one of the great riddles of our age: Is Donald Trump actually funny?
Opinions on the topic – one of many covered in a multi-faceted, 90-minute discussion about the craft of comedy writing hosted by the union at New York’s SVA Theatre – varied widely.
Zhubin Parang, a writer for The Daily Show, didn’t hesitate. “He is very funny, both intentionally and unintentionally,” he said. “I don’t think you can deny that. The guy knows how to tell a joke. The guy knows how to be mean in a very funny way.”
The president’s comedic moments, Parang added, often reveal his “bottomless well of pettiness.” Those glimpses, he said, are “in a very real way endearing. And I know that’s a charged word, but there is an element of woundedness” that he said makes him think, “‘Oh, I see. I see where this all comes from. I get it.’”
Late Night with Seth Meyers writer Jenny Hagel agreed with Parang’s main take, but added a caveat. “There’s a difference between him being funny and him being good for comedy,” she said. “That’s the thing people ask me about a lot. They’re always like, ‘Wow, your job has gotta be pretty easy these days – Trump’s great for comedy!’ And I think it’s the opposite. Because I think so much of comedy is heightening. And he’s so extreme all the time. … I don’t know how you write about it, cause it’s already the version I would make up as a joke.”
Trump is a “cartoon person,” parried Liz Hynes, a writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Recently, she continued, “I was about hitting my limit with this guy. I had just about enough of Mr. Donald Trump. … I was like, ‘That’s it! I’m not gonna find him funny anymore. I’m done.’ And then I saw a clip of him on the plane where he [said to reporters], ‘Have a safe flight. You know why I say that? Because I’m on the flight. Otherwise, I wouldn’t care.’”
As Hynes sarcastically threw up her hands and the crowd laughed, Hagel deadpanned, “Hit after hit after hit.”
Jill Twiss, a writer for Have I Got News for You, said she finds Trump funny – “but I don’t think he laughs. I don’t think he’s ever enjoyed anyone else’s humor.”
In order to do that, Hegel replied, “You’d have to lower your status for a moment, and he would never.”
Jon Glaser, nominated for his stint as a writer on short-lived ESPN series They Call It Late Night with Jason Kelce, weighed in heavily in the negative column.
“I don’t think he’s funny at all,” he said. “I really don’t.” In contrast to Parang’s experience, Glaser said when he watches Trump, “It’s like watching some sh–ty f–king hack who thinks he’s funny, because there’s so much confidence in it, and there’s so much confidence in that delivery. … I just feel like that confidence is so unearned when it comes to him trying to be funny.”
Personalities in line with Trump’s can often make for great material, he added. “That’s the other thing that makes me so mad about it. It’s a kind of comedy that I personally love. The overconfident, smug a–hole can be such a funny archetype, but God, I just– I just don’t.”
Alison Gates, one of Saturday Night Live‘s head writers, did not tackle the “is he funny” question. She did offer a dry take on a semi-related follow-up question about how writers determine whether a potentially comedic subject is fresh or past its pop-culture expiration date. “I think we actively end it when we have it on our show,” she joked.
Asked about the process on SNL of capturing a breaking-news event, Gates described a sequence of organized chaos.
“In a dream world, the political stuff gets written with everything else early in the week, but now it’s like kind of impossible,” she said. By Thursday and Friday, Gates added, “you’re just trying to figure out what the thing is of that week, and I feel like it’s either the cold open” or a character on Weekend Update.
“Those are the things that get put together like late in the week based on what’s happening,” she said. After the show’s producers confer with Lorne Michaels, choices are made in order to have costumes and props ready for Saturday.
“When it’s like that late in the week, it’s kind of like an all-hands-on-deck thing with the writer where then the writers will get like looped in on what the general idea is, and then everyone will start like pitching jokes and character ideas. It’ll get kind of cobbled together with everyone’s feedback when it’s kind of a late breaking thing like that.”
Kathryn VanArendonk, a critic at Vulture, moderated the panel.
The WGA Awards will be handed out at ceremonies in New York and Los Angeles on March 8.