I AM FIRMLY CONVINCEDthat having some kind of serious maladjustment in childhood that gives you an offbeat slant on life is one of the most important prerequisites for a comedy writer. If you are completely integrated, well-adjusted and happy -- if you accept the commonplace as commonplace -- then there's simply nothing funny in it. On the other hand, I can tell you, based on my own experience, that if you can't quite conform, if you don’t feel exactly the way everyone else feels, then everything that other people do can take on a sort of ridiculousness.
Equipped with the requisite offbeat point of view, a comedy writer can find humor even in the unlikeliest of situations. My favorite example involved Lester White, a veteran comedy writer for Bob Hope and others, who succumbed to cancer a few years ago at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. After lengthy treatment, Lester's doctor finally visited him in his room one day and gave him the grim prognosis: the doctor could not predict how long Lester had to live -- he could go at any moment.
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"Lucy's Lost Scenes"
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by Jess Oppenheimer with Gregg Oppenheimer
© 1996 by Gregg Oppenheimer. All Rights Reserved