Ken Levine's Comedy Conference Call

Ken Levine cracks me up. I'm sitting on his conference call right now and he's killing. I honestly can't believe the amount he does for aspiring writers.

Right now he's discussing a valuable comedy lesson he and partner David Isaacs learned early in their career. They'd written a series of one-act comedies in different styles, including a farce. On the opening Friday, the audience laughed uproariously throughout most of the play, but near the end just stopped. Concerned, they tried to figure out what might have been the cause but couldn't find anything. During Saturday night's performance, the crowd laughed all the way through. Ken and David decided it was a fluke.

The following Friday, it happened again. Apparently, audiences are just too tired after a full week's work. So, when they reached the point in their careers where they had enough juice to demand it, they insisted on Tuesday tapings before studio audiences. Remember that: you want a fresh audience, especially if you're showing farce.

I'll leave it to others to discuss the difficult actors Ken's worked with. I will say that he said Shelly Long was not difficult at all, but that her process was time-consuming.