Inside Conan: An Important Hollywood Podcast - Merrill Markoe

Episode Date: October 16, 2020

Comedy legend Merrill Markoe (Head writer for Late Night with David Letterman) stops by to talk with writers Mike Sweeney and Jessie Gaskell about learning how to produce a morning talk show on the fly during her time working on The David Letterman Show, where the idea for remotes with Letterman came from, what she was looking for in writers for Letterman’s move to Late Night, how her background as an artist helped her write comedy for TV, and her new book “We Saw Scenery: The Early Diaries of Merrill Markoe.” Plus, Mike and Jessie answer a special two part listener voicemail question. Got a question for Inside Conan? Call our voicemail: [phone] and e-mail us at [e-mail] For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com

And now, it's time for Inside Conan, an important Hollywood podcast. Hello, and welcome back. This is Inside Conan, colon, an important Hollywood podcast. We are your hosts. We are. I'm Mike Sweeney, a writer on The Conan Show. And I'm Jessie Gaskell, another writer on The Conan Show. There's more than one of us. There are. I don't know the exact number because I can't count above 10. Is it 12 writers?

And we're a very tight group for a guy who doesn't know the number. It just feels like it's just one big person. We're that close. Yes. Thank God for the Zoom meetings with the writers because we have a lot of laughs. We do. And actually, we were going to have an emergency Zoom today, even though we don't have a show, just to discuss the breaking news that the president has coronavirus. Already big news week because of that debacle of a debate. the breaking news that the president has coronavirus.

Already big news week because of that debacle of a debate. And you're like, okay, well, nothing will knock that off the ledge. Can't top that. Whoopsie, whoopsie. When this episode comes out, we could be all living in caves by then. I know, that's how fast it moves. You might be like, President? America? What are you talking about? It is weird, though, when a big story like this,

a really juicy story breaks, and we're not on the air. Right, which we're not. We're not on the air for a four-week hiatus. Because of baseball, right? Yes. No, it is weird when there's a premise where normally you'd, everyone would jump on it and come up with ideas, and it's like, there's nothing to do with it.

Do you still come up with ideas and you're just like, well, we can't do that. Sometimes. I know the monologue writers because they really have to grind out so many jokes. Yeah. On a daily basis. I know for them, it's a giant relief to have a hiatus.

Yes. To just like, okay, I don't have to read every news story. I can just read 10 instead of, you know, 50. But then something like this happens and it's like, well, the jokes are writing themselves. So. Yeah. That would probably be a good week for the aboon. I know.

It's a little on the nose, I guess. And yet, it must be done. We have a great show today. We sure do. It's a great country and a great show. It's actually one of my heroes, Meryl Marko. I have admired her since she first hit the scene in 1982. Oh, my God.

As the head writer of David Letterman's first, his morning show, and then his nighttime show. Yeah, she basically co-created Late Night with David Letterman. Yep, and created so many famous comedy bits for that show. Yes. So she is a comedy icon. A true late night legend, yes. Very lucky and excited to talk to her. And she has a great new project that came out this week.

Yeah, she writes a lot of books, but this one is a graphic novel. And we will talk all about it. We'll explain everything. Here's Meryl Marko. Meryl Marko, thank you so much for being here. It's wonderful to meet you. Same here. So this is Inside Conan.

And we usually talk to our guests about their connection to the Conan show, which in your case, you were the first head writer of the David Letterman show and then Late Night with David Letterman. So you really kind of influenced everything that came after in terms of Late Night. And I think a big part of that was an influence on Conan O'Brien. Well, that's what he has said, so. Yeah. Has he said it to you personally? Yeah, actually, he has.

It's true. There's so many things that you helped create on The Letterman Show that just, yeah, I mean, when he took over late night, of course, he wanted to, you know, they kind of wanted to go in different directions because everything that you and the Letterman Show had created had become so iconic. And so I think they wanted to try to go in a different direction. And they succeeded. That was amazing to me because we had eaten up a lot of directions. That's true. We were intentionally eating up every goddamn direction we could find.

So, you know, so I was impressed that they were, the group who followed us were coming up with directions we hadn't eaten yet. It was really kind of the first comedy talk show on it that started at 1230 at night, which must have been very liberating, I would think, in terms of going in all directions. I guess so, except the truth is that we were going in any direction we could think of, no matter what time of day you gave us. He had a morning show first. Right. And we were given a lot of advice about what people wanted to see in the morning on a morning show. And we just went in every direction we wanted to go anyway. I was wondering, I used to watch the morning show because people started talking about it immediately. And just like, oh, my God, you've got to watch this hilarious David Letterman show.

It's on in the morning. Were you getting kind of insane daytime TV or morning TV notes during that show? Like more makeovers. Where's the cooking segment? That's exactly what we were getting. When Letterman was just sort of chomping at the bit to get a show. It was like more makeovers. Where's the cooking segment? That's exactly what we were getting. When Letterman was just sort of chomping at the bit to get a show, you know, he had had, we, this was, he and I did so many different shows together before the late night show launched kind of successfully. We had also done a pilot before the morning show and we kept refining a little bit

what we were doing, but it was the same general sensibility and sense of humor repeatedly. And by the morning show, it was the first time that we were a network. Before that, we were ONOs, they were calling it, owned and operated stations. Affiliates? Yeah, affiliates, right. And you could individually decide whether or not you wanted to take the show. The morning show was, for for me this weird bath of fire because he wanted to do the show we were going to do. And the networks had me in for notes and they gave me a pretty good rundown about what women wanted to watch in the morning on television. And I remember, because I am me, saying to them, well, it looks to me like I'm the only woman here.

I think I know what women want. And of course, I had no idea what women wanted to do. But it sounded great. Yeah. It wouldn't make sense except for that I am a complete Martian. And I was completely disconnected from what women wanted to see in the morning. And also didn't care. So it was not a good melding.

They had a list of, you know, makeovers and astrology segments. And also, I don't know if you remember the name Fred Silverman? Sure. He was the NBC guy then, and he had figured out that the Letterman show should be done in the manner of a show that he liked when he was a child or however, whenever it was. There was this thing, the Arthur Godfrey show. Have you ever heard of that? I have heard of it. Yeah.

I have not. Right. Arthur Godfrey was, I think he was either a radio, he was a radio star. I think radio originally, right. A big, big, big radio star. Yes. Not a funny guy necessarily. You know, he had that kind of wit that, you know, you could go, was that a joke?

He was funny for radio. Yeah. You don't know. He kind of chuckled and stuff, but he wasn't exactly funny. And he had a family, so to speak, of people on the show. And they were a singer that did a song every day and like that. So that was a custom that was not any longer on television anywhere and didn't really match anything that we had in mind for what the show was going to be. He wanted a family. So we had to hire a family. And in order to hire a family, Dave and I hired all what Fred Silverman wanted was an 11-year-old banjo player.

And she would come on every day and Dave would say, what'd you do last night? How's your homework? Or whatever he would say. And then she would go, well, I've got a new song I just learned. And then she would play the banjo for three minutes or whatever. So that was the show idea they wanted. We hired a family and the family

were all friends of ours that I'm amazed that any of them are still speaking to us because I still feel bad about it. They didn't really want a family like that. Our favorite show was SCTV at the time. So we were thinking, okay, characters. And we brought in friends of ours who were really good at doing characters and there was no budget for anything like that, nor was there. Now, listen to this one. Think about it for one second, if you will. Writing every single day pieces for four or five different people every day. Yikes.

Yikes is right. And there wasn't that kind of a staff. There was a writing staff of like four of us or so. You know, it was what we ended up doing, we really briefly tried this was we were not writing for Dave because there wasn't any time to write for Dave with his eyes on his own, you know? So it was a big mess until it wasn't, you know? Wait, did that show go out live in the morning? Yeah. That's another thing. It was live. Wow. Capital L-E, live. I have actually all my best stories are the nightmare that was

that morning show. And we actually won an Emmy for it, which is the only Emmy that ever really meant something to me. Oh, wow. Because it was like, how did we do that? You really earned it. That was good. Good for us. You were lucky not to be arrested. It was really tough. And then there was this story of the producer who Dave had insisted that we hire because he had enjoyed working with him on a show called The $20,000 Pyramid. And so he'd never done a talk show. And also, he was only funny in the sense that, you know, he could wisecrack occasionally. But he didn't like the comedy that we were writing. And he quit a week before we hit the air. He was a funny Arthur Godfrey. He quit a week before he went on

the air. He walked out. And then I was the producer. This was an amazing experience for me. Amazing for a whole lot of reasons. So that was when you got promoted to head writer? I was already head writer, but then I was also producer. And I'd never worked on a talk show before, nor had I ever seen one in operation. So what I couldn't figure out, and it was suddenly totally on my shoulders and there was nobody to advise me, was how you figured out. Now, this may seem stupid when I explain it to you, but think about never having been around a talk show first. How you figured out how long those segments were going to be. So I thought, okay, he comes out and that's like, he talks to the audience for what, two minutes or is it three minutes? And then

somebody sits down and they talk for two or is it four minutes? You know, I was sitting alone in an office by myself going two plus four plus, and then how long are the commercials? It was this nightmare. No, that is tough. Yeah. It was horrifying. And then I go, okay, there's going to be how many commercials? Nobody had given me a list.

All right, well, then I have to add those in. So then is the next segment one minute or is it five minutes? I was doing math. Carry the one. Yeah. When you think about it, it's like a boxing match, like a live boxing match where the commercial is in between rounds and you've got. I didn't know how long the rounds were. Yeah.

I never thought to time a talk show because I'd never really given a shit about talk show. Right. I like comedy and I wanted to write comedy, you know, and that's what I was there to do was facilitate comedy. And I didn't know how you make that structure. Right, right. Which I now understand, you know, it gets very formulaic and you can break with the formula.

But at the time there were people coming in who were actually some people who had titles like executive producer who were saying things to me like, is there anything I can do to help? And by that that they meant can i get you a cup of coffee right because i would go well yes when two minutes and four minutes and then one minute and then three minutes and then and then they're going how about that coffee yeah yes please get me many cups of coffee right wow so did you feel like you had to, I mean, because putting myself in that position, I would have felt like I had to really kind of stretch time, like get as much out of every segment as you possibly could. No, I was afraid we'd already booked a lot of stuff. There were bookers.

Right. You know, I mean, I didn't know they had booked things and I didn't know how long to give them. And the show was also 90 minutes a day. It was 90 minutes. Wow. Live. So, you know,

we hit the air with me as the producer and I, and I was running around backstage going, Oh my God, segment three is in the script as segment two, just put those reverse those. And that, you know, it was this,

and we actually got a good review of newsweek, which was this amazement to me because it was pure chaos until they brought in a producer who had worked at a talk show who just said, all right, now here's how you do the lineup. Wait, so 90 minutes a day? Yeah, that's unbelievable. Is it kind of a thing where the kind of the fire you were thrown into, did you realize it at the time? Or is it more like looking at it once you came out of that challenge? Oh, I realized. Yeah, I would think. I would have been just, you know, hyper and concerned just about writing the comedy, let alone taking over everything.

Right. So it was amazing. Bastard fire, really. I mean, by the time that show got canceled, two notable things that you'll find amusing. First, we got bumped back to an hour. They took the last half hour off. And of course...

Which is not really a punishment. No, but Dave took it very badly. You know, it's like, oh, my God, I'm failing so badly. They took my time away. And then also, I remember he got some kind of a communication from Johnny Carson who said, congratulations. You were able to do in just a couple of weeks, which took me 15 years to be able to do. He got his show apparently used to be 90 minutes. Oh, and then was.

Oh, right, right, right. So there was that. And then. What time did you show up for work? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Like five o'clock in the morning. Because we were.

Oh, that's another thing. We were on the air live at like, I can't remember if it was nine or ten. I think it was nine. Oh, man. In those early. I mean, were you just working around the clock in the early weeks there? Yeah. Were you all morning?

I'm assuming none of you were morning people, right? Because you had done stand-up as well. Yeah, comic. And stand-ups are usually going to bed at three in the morning. I have enough adrenaline to, if you tell me that I have to do a thing like that at six in the morning, I'm up at six in the morning. Right. I'm not going to sleep through anything like that, especially when you get home with the host. Right.

You know, he's not exactly relaxed. Yeah. Oh, that's right. You had zero escape. I know. So anyway, the show found its way after we had to get rid of the family, which are all our friends. Oh. found its way after we had to get rid of the family, which are all our friends. There was absolutely no budget, which I actually look back on as having been sort of a gift. Because, you know, when you get a real severe creative constriction, sometimes that just gives you all the liberation in the world. Yeah, I agree. I think that's a really interesting

paradox, that usually the more limitations you put on a writer, it's almost easier in a way to work within that than to just have unlimited potential. That's terrifying. We also had the excuse of, well, what do you want from us, where our budget is $34 a day, you know? Right, right. Well, and then you can have Dave making fun of things on the air, which is... Right. Which you would have no matter what the budget, but... Yes.

You really created the idea of the remote, the host going outside the studio to do things on the street. And did that start on The Morning Show, on The David Letterman Show? I was working with all the things he was comfortable with. So he was a big personality on local television in Indiana before I met him and used to do like four different shows, including some 4-H show. But he would go on location to things. So he had it in his head that he could do location. So I started looking for locations and finding a very different sort of location. I mean, my idea of a location and the ones that the 4-H,

I remember what the first location was, which was it made me laugh that just exactly around the corner from the studio. So here's the studio. And then you walk out the door and then you make a sharp left. And there was such a filthy sink full of crap, just inches from what was being televised and looked like a slick, smooth kind of a network situation that made me laugh. So I brought the cameras out there. It's just what was feet away from the, so we were, that's where we started with that. And then I just remember, I used to go out the door and just walk up and down the streets looking for stuff that made me

laugh. Wow. And finding stuff. Oh, that's great. Yeah. How did you have time to do that too? I didn't have time to do that. Just on the way to work. Yeah, on the way to work was part of work. Yeah, there was no Google Earth back then, Google Maps. Yeah, I mean, can you imagine? I've thought about that occasionally, not often. But I used to, I think some of this stuff, I've given these interviews before, years ago, you know, and I used to talk about the thing I did most to look for research for that stuff was I read the phone book, which was the only real big compendium of

everything. Right, right. There wasn't, I can't imagine how much easier it would have been, although maybe, maybe so much easier that it would have been less specific. You know, the phone book gave you some restrictions. It gave you all of Manhattan, but if it were the whole internet, you know, you would also be looking in Babylon or, you know, ancient Babylon, or you'd be looking in Boston, or it would have been probably less easy on some levels, but much, much easier on others. I could see the yellow pages coming in handy because I remember like early late night remotes where he'd go to Just Bulbs store. Well, that's right. We got all that stuff from the Yellow Pages.

I was always looking for anything that you could ask a question about, especially like things that were in quotes, like, you know, world's best cheesecake, so that you could challenge somebody. Right. You'd have a reason to talk to them. Yeah. Those were so funny because they were, as you're saying, they're such simple ideas. Just going in and starting to, you know, bust their chops about stuff they have on their signage outside. Well, you need a point of otherwise. What are you there for?

Why are you there? Yeah. Well, you need a point of otherwise. What are you there for? Why are you there? Yeah, I remember looking for just, I liked all the slogans that Bale Bondsman put up or- Oh, yeah. I remember there was a whole lot of all over the whole, because I have a weird brain that collates repetition. And there was the thing, no job too big or too small. I saw in a wealth of different kinds of places, so I was given a list of them.

And then I would do a piece called No Job Too Big or Too Small, and we'd find out whether there was a job too small. Yeah. Or a job too big. Would you be involved in the editing of those pieces as well? Yeah, I did the editing of those pieces, but I didn't have laptop editing equipment. So I'd sit for decades with editors. You took forever. Forever.

I mean, the greatest gift that anyone ever gave me is laptop editing equipment. It just is the most amazing, wonderful thing. When you had to have a teamster do your editing for you, and you'd sit there and you... At NBC, when the computer, like you're saying, computer editing came in or non-linear editing. This was reel to reel. Right. Actual tape. It was reel to reel. So what I would do is go through all the footage.

I'd have them give me a three quarter inch tape, which is what size tape was then. And I'd go through all of it and make what amounted to a film script. I still have those. Wow. Because that was the only way I'd know how it would it and make what amounted to a film script. I still have those. Wow. Because that was the only way I'd know how it would play. You know, I wouldn't be able to do a rough. Right. And then I'd sit there with them and go,

take off four more frames. Now take off four more frames. Now it was so slow. To do like a two and a half minute piece would take minimum 10 hours. And sometimes it would take two sessions of 10 hours you know get one goddamn two and a half minute please if you watched it back after all that and it didn't flow the right way you have to go back and read with the original tapes often and recut well i would always it would

always flow pretty well because i because those scripts I was making, I would read them. They would read like a script. So I would just, I'd know just where to cut and just where to, you know, I couldn't fall too far off the map because it read like a script. That was a great skill to learn, too, was you actually had to map out the entire piece on paper. Yeah. Well, it's the only way I could survive with it. Yeah. Otherwise, you know, you couldn't do any kind of freeform thing like that

with a Teamster editing. Yeah, let's just put it together and see how it looks, you know? Right, right, right. With editing things like this, were you often up against it, like for deadlines, like the show's taping soon and you're still chopping away or not really? Running the tape to the control room. No, actually, I'm a lunatic.

I don't know if you can tell that by looking at me, but I am a lunatic and I was working like 100 hours a day. I was always on schedule. I was always, if I could, making two pieces out of one day of taping or three pieces. If I could, if I could get like three, two minute segments, I'd do that. Because, you know, as you know, the nightmare of it all that confronted me when I finally wasn't the producer anymore, I was just in charge of the comedy, was that you're looking at a schedule and you say, okay, we've got today and we've got this and this for tomorrow.

We've got nothing for Wednesday. We've got nothing for Thursday. We've got, it just stretches out like what the hell goes in all those slots, you know? And you can- It's endless. And then Friday, you can't even relax because you have to worry about Monday.

Right. You've got to have Monday nailed. Well, Friday are the days we went out with the crew. Ah, okay. So it was a real big learning experience. The weird part was the morning show, I hired people who really didn't write for Dave particularly well. And then the night show, I have learned that lesson and I hired people who really did figure it out. So that was a big help because I could actually, I could say to them, you know, you guys do this and you guys do that. What was the gap between, you said when the morning show ended, how long was it between then and when you started up late night? It was something around a year, but maybe not,

maybe not a full year. I'm not sure. You had a little time to sleep. Yeah, there was no time to sleep. There was no sleeping going on. No, there wasn't any sleeping going on. When the morning show went away, was there already talk about, oh, let's take this and put it late at night? Or was there kind of a break before that thought came up? It depends on who you were talking to. I mean, I think his people were

saying things like that. And I think maybe some of the people at NBC, Dave himself, who I listened to more than I ever had any contact with his people, was saying, my life is over. This show is over. Nothing will ever work again. I'm destitute. Right. Gearing up then for the late night show, what were you looking for in writers? And what, I mean, were you hiring mostly stand-ups at that time or sketch writers coming out of Second City? There weren't that many people that were right for that job. It was such a weird job.

There weren't any people coming out of Second City. I wasn't hiring stand-ups necessarily because it was always my opinion at that time that they would save all their best jokes for their act. I mean, why wouldn't they? Right. Obviously, they would. So I was looking for writers.

And, you know, in some ways, I'm responsible for the takeover of the Harvard Lampoon because I was having trouble finding writers that I was looking for writers that reminded me of the cerebral, silly sense of humor that Dave and I shared. And that so you could use it however you needed it. And I found a pocket of them graduating Harvard. And then a couple of them had been on Saturday Night Live. I'm talking about Tom Gamble and Max Bross, who you may know, and George Meyer, who became the vanguard of The Simpsons. I gave him his first TV job after he was doing, I think, cancer research in Arizona. So we got rid of that trivial cancer research crap.

That's also great preparation for comedy writing. Yeah. And cancer still hasn't been cured. No. He can go back to that now. So he made for comedy writing. Yeah. And cancer still hasn't been cured. No. He can go back to that now. So he made the right move. Yeah. I was having trouble finding anybody that matched what I now knew we needed.

To the extent that I have regret, it's that I didn't find women. On the other hand, I remember there were only two women submitted stuff. When I was looking for that pile of people that could write for Dave, two, count them, two. And one of them was, it was one-act plays. And the one-act plays were about a woman. So, I mean, it wasn't easy for me to see whether that was going to be, and I didn't have any time. We were about to hit the air again. And I thought, oh no, I'm headed back for that morning show where I'm going to be sitting in an office going two minutes and four minutes and three minutes. So, I was eager to find people And I thought, oh no, I'm headed back for that morning show where I'm going to be sitting in an office going two minutes and four minutes and three minutes. So I was eager to find people

that I thought could hit the ground running, writing something that Dave wouldn't say no to. So I found this bunch of guys that connected to Harvard. Yeah, you started that pipeline. And they're still my friends. I mean, they were great. They were great. You've written a lot of books in your time since working with David Letterman. And I'm afraid to look at them again because I'm afraid if I open them up and I notice that, like, something should have been rewritten or— Right, right, right. Well, that's every writer, right?

Sometimes, though, you look back and it's actually not as bad as you thought. Oh, yeah. There's that, too. I've read things I've written where I think, who wrote this? Right're right, you're right, you're right. Yeah, this is pretty good. This is pretty good. I'd hire her. Yeah, I have had that experience where I don't even recognize it. So, just crazy. So, do you think in general, do you self-censor a lot or are you a person that likes to just put things out there and then, you know then not worry too much about whether it was perfect or not. I have gotten more and more and more.

The last time I talked to Mr. Letterman, he was talking about how fast I write. And I used to write really, really fast. And the older I get, the more I rewrite and rewrite to where there's at least one book I put out where I remember I rewrote it back to the original draft.

I mean, I just went in a circle where I rewrote and I rewrote and I rewrote and I was changing every and to but and every just to so. And then I go back and do it again, you know, because it didn't matter. You can really just... Just lateral moves. Lateral moves. And they all seem better at the time. And you really, I can't tell at some point. There's an early point.

I think rewriting is so critical. I mean, it's almost the whole skill of writing is rewriting. But you can't really tell whether it's a good draft until you haven't seen it for a while. Yes, you got to put it in a drawer. And of course, if you're writing television, you don't get that drawer. No.

It's on television. And then that's when you decide if it was good or not. After it airs. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. No, you don't even have time to think about it. It's like, what's happening tomorrow? Yeah.

But not so with a book. Well, the amazing thing about your new book, I did not know what a fantastic artist you are. Yeah, it's a graphic novel. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, it's a graphic novel. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, I went to art school, and then I put that in a drawer for the next 40 years.

I didn't, you know, I would occasionally make someone a birthday card, but I just, I put it aside. Well, and I read also that you were also an art professor. Yeah, that was my, that's how I switched into TV, is I got a job, I went to graduate school in art, and then I got a job teaching art at USC for a year. I was teaching freshman painting and drawing. Oh, wow. And then while I was there, I discovered that they had this really exciting film department.

So much to the displeasure of my fellow art department people, I was hanging out at the film department auditing classes. That's how I switched careers, weirdly enough. Oh, wow. I took screenwriting and they let me audit classes, you know, so I took the screenwriting class. I took basic filmmaking. I took basic editing.

I took like these great classes taught by wonderful professors. And then I went back up to San Francisco and I wrote spec material. Wow. That's so cool. Do you think your background as an artist informed or helped you with comedy on television? Because it's very visual. Yeah, no, yeah.

I'm very, very visual. I'm mainly visual. I mean, I would say, well, no, I guess that's not true. I guess it's a combination. But yeah, I love my background in art. It really gives me a lot of pleasure. I mean, it's way, way more fun doing art than it is writing. You know, as any writer will tell you, writing is really, you got to be there all the time. You can drift when you're drawing. You do drift.

Yeah, it uses a different part of your brain, I think. It's the left and right brain thing, as I understand it. The left brain being sort of an organizational center where you got homework and math and writing is on that part. And the right brain being intuitive and music and art. All the fun ones are on the right brain. And writing got stuck on the left brain with math, you know? That makes sense to me. That really has unlocked a lot.

Math equals writing. It's like accounting. It's like homework. Yeah, it is. No, you always hear about art, that when you do it, time becomes fluid and, you know, three hours has gone by and you don't even realize it. Yeah, that's true. But the thing about writing, when you think about it for a second, is every word changes your meaning. So, and every word is a choice you're making. Whereas if you commit, okay, I'm going to draw a daisy, the daisy isn't unless you're just doing abstractions and so forth, the daisy is going to look like a daisy and your options are not limitless. That's true. Whereas in writing, it's a limitless thing you're being evaluated on.

Yep. Yeah, that's true. Well, I was wondering, so we should say the name of your book. It's called We Saw Scenery. And the title, if you would like to know why that's the title, is because I started illustrating my childhood diaries because I wanted to see what they looked like. I was reading them and going, who wrote this stuff? And because I was so unlike myself as a kid and I wanted to see what it looked like. So I thought, well, this might be a comic strip. So I started just illustrating them verbatim, not just taking them totally seriously, not judging them.

And I said, we saw scenery at least three times before I decided that was the name of the book because that was how I was describing anything that wasn't me. Got it. It was me, me, me, me. Oh, and scenery. Yeah. It sounds like a teenager. And now back to me. Yeah, exactly.

I'm really interested in diaries. I also was a girl that kept a diary as a teen. And then I recently have gotten back into journaling again to just because I have a terrible memory and I always forget the things that happened to me. But so I was curious if you now have a, do you have a journaling practice now? Do you write what happened to you every day or? I used to write for years and years. I've got pretty much up until a few years ago. And then a few years ago, I started doing it in drawings because I realized that if you do a drawing a day, that drawing is so much more entertaining to look at later than the whining that I would do when I would write. I didn't keep diaries like Anais Nin or somebody. I was keeping diaries like, and then he said, and then I said, and then fuck him, fuck that guy.

That was what the diaries. I'll show them. That's what they turned into. The diaries that we saw scenery weren't like that. I started out saying what I did every day, thinking, well, that's what you do in a diary. And I would list, I listed so much stuff that I thought, well, these are hilarious. They're every school assignment and every movie and every TV show. Just, it was a compendium of, yeah, it was so specific. It's such a compendium of life at that time that I thought, all right, this is a dead sea scroll kind of, you know, you can't find this stuff anymore.

It's shows that are not anymore. It's reflections that don't exist anymore. There's a really funny panel about, I think you've talked about your parents and just how they reacted to you being a comedy writer. And I imagine, you tell us, but being a woman, a female comedy writer back in the 80s, probably, did they think, oh, that's so unique, it's really cool? Or the opposite, where it's like, what are you doing? You know, what's weird is I really wasn't aware how stacked the deck was against women. Right.

I mean, I sort of fell forward into this, and I really, it took time for me to become aware how stacked the deck was against women. I, at the time, didn't actually know. I just was doing my job. And my parents, my parents just were, part of their religion was that they just didn't approve of anything. Right. So, yeah, I mean, at the time, you were probably one of the only women head writers in television, period,

not just late night. There was more women employed in sitcom. You know, it's funny, I did an audiobook last year where my partner at the time named Megan Keister and I researched why women who are 51% of the population are considered a minority and went back in time to learn about just how horrible it was for women from the beginning of organized civilization on i mean not just not just drudgery i thought well i'm going to read about drudgery you know gee i drudgery drudgery no slavery and um yeah it's if you're interested you can find it on audible but but, um, and it's called the indignities of being a woman.

What we've talked about pretty often in there is the way that feminism moves forward. And then it rolls backward. I'm afraid that it's my hope that it isn't about to roll backward again. There was a forward thrust in the early eighties and then it rolled backward. And then there was a period of the nineties where there are a lot of women all over the place in TV, and then it rolled backwards again. And I'm, you know, the Me Too movement was a giant surge forward. I'm worried it's going to now do a backward roll again. I hope it doesn't. Right, because when you do start to reach some equity, then people think, okay, well, this is no longer a problem, so we don't have to

worry about it anymore. And then that's when all the inherent bias comes back in. Yeah. No, that is what happens. Nobody is tending the farm, and then it's all back to what it was. Yeah. Did you ever find, I mean, so it sounds like you also didn't have time to be aware of your gender when you were running the show completely. But I didn't have a problem with that. I always, I get along real, I got along well with all the guys I hired. You know, I mean, they're still my friends. I mean, I didn't really feel that they were treating me weird or maybe because I'm forceful. I don't, I don't know. I'm not.

But you're the boss. Yeah. But also when you all have the same sense of humor. Yeah, the sense of humor made a big difference to me. Well, Meryl, we have to wrap up, but we always love to ask our guests if you had a piece of advice that you could offer to someone who would like to pursue a career like yours,

someone who's just starting out. I always feel like the gift of the career, to me, the career is comedy. It's not really, and you find where you can go with it. You know, like if you can't get work in TV, then you get work in print. And if you can't get, I guess it's not print anymore, it's digital, but that still is print to me. You just look forward into places where you can, you can apply your comedy. I mean, pieces on YouTube or whatever. The main thing is finding everything funny. I mean, that's, that's the gift.

The gift of the whole career is the ability to dissociate and then be in a horrifying situation and be finding it funny. I mean, that's, that's the thing I love the most about the whole career is that you go out and walk around a city block and there's nothing funny there at all, but you come back with a memory of three things that were funny. I say this in the book, but it's the thing that I think about a lot, which is the image that I always thought about was, I guess it's Wile E. Coyote on the Roadrunner cartoons, painting a tunnel and then the Roadrunner runs through it. And that to me is what comedy always is, is you just paint a tunnel and run through it.

You can make an escape path for yourself. You're in a terrible situation, but you can recreate it somehow by reframing it in your head. You didn't really do anything but reframe it, but it's a tiny little constructive thing you can do. I love that analogy. Yeah, I love it too. That's going to save me at some point.

I've had people tell me that the couple of times that I've been in the hospital, I just start joking. Right. I can't stop joking. I just, it's a sickness, I guess, really. It comes from a certain kind of disease childhood, but I like it. I'm sure you got better faster because you were joking around about it.

Do you know what I mean? I couldn't not, sort of. You know, I mean, it's easier than facing darkness. It's easier to just reframe it. Yeah. Wow. Well, that's not just career advice. That's life advice.

Yes. Well, thank you so much, Meryl. It's been a pleasure. Well, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you guys. Yeah, really great. Oh, that was Meryl Marko. Yeah, it was great talking to her.

What fun. We've got another surprise for you, listener. I guess everything's a surprise because you don't know anything that is about to happen. Our producer said we had a voicemail. Yeah. Here we go. Part one, it's a two-parter?

So, that boulder, uh-uh. Hey. Oh. Oh, man. I think he was eaten. There was that one guy who just breathed heavily for the whole call, but I think this one, we owe that guy an apology. I don't know. Yeah, let's hear part two.

Yeah, it really ends on a cliffhanger. I'm excited to know they called back. Hi, I called yesterday. And for some reason, I was watching my pups play around in the yard. And I thought it would be a fun idea to get one of them to pant heavily into the phone after playing very hard and running around as they do. That's just because I'm a weirdo, and I thought it would be a good idea. But I'm out here watching them play again, realizing that they're not trained actors. And instead, what you got yesterday was my little puppy seeing a big dog, saying grr, and chasing him. So now that you know that, I would like to ask you if you know how to get burnt potatoes off the bottom of a pot.

Thanks. Have a good day. You've come to the right place. I would love it if he was just calling every podcast and leaving that message. Well. Wow. Yeah, well, first I think we need to say great advance on the beat. Yes. That comedy beat of breathing heavily into the phone.

Right. This time adding the dog. And then calling back and topping that. I have to say I didn't see potatoes at the bottom of a pan coming after the dog barking. It didn't. That was a real twist. Yeah. And it's a real question. It's a great question. I don't know. What would you do? I would soak it. Soaking. It's all about soaking.

Yeah. Didn't we cover this in season one, I think episode 12, right? But I was going to say that this wouldn't have happened if he had properly seasoned his cast iron skillet in in the first place that's a good point did he say it was cast iron i missed that he didn't i'm just assuming oh okay all right that's what you want to cook potatoes in probably it also probably means he had if it wasn't cast iron a thinner pot tends to burn more easily i i think he needs to spend a lot more money on pots

and then he'll have less issues with potatoes. Well, again, we can't get enough calls. No, think of all the ones we had to eliminate that we didn't air to get to that one. Congratulations, you won our phone call contest with that potato dog barking entry. So keep them coming. Keep them coming.

Yeah, you can call us at 323-209-5303. Or write us insideconanpod at gmail.com. And that's our show for the week. Yeah, thanks for hanging in there, everyone. Just in general. Okay, we'll see you next week. Yeah, we'll send up a flare. We like you. on Apple Podcasts. And of course, please subscribe and tell a friend to listen to Inside Conan on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher,

Google Podcasts, or whatever platform you like best. This has been a Team Coco production in association with Earwolf.