I thought SNL writing team was massive and cannot really be matched (from seeing the round table reads), but like 3 or four writers who arrive like a month early in front of the host so they can get the feel for SNL and bounce idea’s off of each other. I always thought writing comedy is trial and error sometimes. It’s just throwing wet noodles at the wall and see what sticks. I think of them like a baseball and they aren’t going to get fired instantly because a bad run for a season.
CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world 1 week ago
SNL style comedy and the format of said comedy is very specific. Most guests do not have comedy background or their own comedy writers, why would they? SNL is also a brand, putting out good consistently content is critical to its success, allowing outside writers every single week would result in episodes being significantly different quality. They do take their cue from guests when they can and allow input of course but allowing/requiring guests to have their own comedy writers is impractical from most angles. As far as pressure, it’s their job, they understand how the job works, the flow of the work, they have real life experience in what translates to their specific format and what doesn’t, what their audience is looking for and expects, outside writers would have none of these things and would need to rely heavily on SNL writers which, at that point if I were an SNL writer I would rather just do it myself than help some random stranger who may or may not be any good at comedy writing do my job.
Patnou@lemmy.world 1 week ago
CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I’m not a comedy writer so I can’t speak to that and I do think it’s a novel idea that would put money into hands of writers so I’m always for that but I don’t know how practical that is. I have seen hosts talk about late night production and I know that’s a very specific and streamlined process, probably more so as an almost nightly show, but television is a very high pressure industry. I also can’t imagine producers would be willing to let go of their decades of trial and error insights for a wet noodle approach, not all comedy translates well to TV or to the audience SNL is serving.
VitoRobles@lemmy.today 1 week ago
Reminds me of when non-comedians get the mic.
How many times have JD Vance thought he was funny only to throw out the most offensive racist joke? I can absolutely see a celeb who is funny in their inner circle just looking like a fool on national TV.