> In return I loaned him some other comedy arcana, the
> three issues of the magazine "Army Man." If I remember
> correctly, Andy Breckman had a few cartoons in Army
> Man. One was captioned "Proud Dad" and showed a father
> carrying his infant son as a plane crashed in the
> background; the son is saying "Pane Rash!" and the
> pleased-looking father responds "That's right! Plane
> Crash!"
>
> Army Man was put together by George Meyer, one of the
> main writers for the Simpsons, and is mentioned in a
> profile of Meyer in the New Yorker. (Online at
> http://www.snpp.com/other/interviews/meyer00.html)
> Does Dennis or anyone have an opinion of that article
> and Meyer?
Thanks for the link, Reed. This is the first in-depth piece I've ever seen on Meyer, who has become what Doug Kenney was predicted to become before he fell off a Hawaiian cliff in 1980 -- the comic genius of his generation. I knew a guy who worked with Meyer on Letterman, and he said pretty much the same things that were said in the article, that Meyer's brilliant, focused, etc. Michael O'Donoghue told me he loved Meyer's work. He was a big "Army Man" fan, and after O'D died and I became his biographer, I looked in vain through his files for copies of "Army Man," and never found them (though there were plenty of Meyer's SNL scripts). Do you still have "Army Man"? I'd love to get a hold of some Xeroxed copies. Let me know offlist.
One of my favorite Meyer bits was on SNL -- "Johnny Canal." That week's host, John Malkovich, played an Old West visionary who thought that instead of railroads, the US should have an extensive and integrated series of canals, and that people would travel everywhere by boat. Every time he proposed this idea, someone would respond, "That's ridiculous!" And Johnny Canal would then try to kill them. That was it. Simple and fucking hilarious.
> But what's weird is the author of the article fails to
> ask the obvious question, which is: how does Meyer
> feel about becoming so rich ("so much money that
> continuing to work has become essentially optional,"
> says the article) by working in commercial television?
> It seems a little unseemly and/or schizo to do that
> yet publicly complain about advertising.
Nature of the beast, man. Tough to turn down that kind of dough, esp since it buys you a lot of freedom. At least Meyer has a social conscience and tries to live by it. I've met Hollywood writers who were absolute whores and could care less about anything except money and what power they could grab.
DP