I managed to finalise the Meaning of Life script, which coincidentally came in at 42 pages long. Given that that is Douglas Adams' solution to the meaning of life, this is either a good portent or a sign that I am going to die in two years.
The downside of having a 42 page script is that I have to learn a 42 page script (though about five pages of that is a sketch that I am going to have animated, so can happily read that). This is an overly ambitious project and I think that might be where my ambition is defeated. My memory is good, but it takes a good few weeks of solid previewing to get a script this long into my head. The task I have set myself is like putting together an Edinburgh show a month for six months and then having it judged on the first preview. On the plus side I can just keep retaking every line until it is right, which will be fine for the people at home, but perhaps a little patience stretching for the audience. There is no going back now, though I found the fear a little overwhelming and paralysing and spent an hour in the bath trying not to think about it.
I'd finished by 10pm and went to bed and my wife and I watched some Saturday Night Live from 2010 on Netflix. We've been quite getting into this over the last few weeks. Many of the references go over our heads, but the performances are so good (especially from Kristen Wiig) that it often doesn't really matter if you know who or what is being satirised. Some of the sketches are much too long and there are some ones that flop quite badly, but there's usually something great in every episode and sometimes whole episodes seem to hit all the way through. The thing that is really making us laugh at the moment is the running sketch "What up with dat?" I am not sure if it's a satire of something in particular or just a dumb idea of a seventies talk show host who keeps getting distracted into singing, but the thing that makes us really laugh is the track-suited guy who leaps in and dances during each song. It's very hard to explain why it is funny and why it gets funnier every time and it might just be the merry enthusiasm of the dancer or just the anticipation of something that we know is coming, but it's ace.
I have ironically enough, been critical of the SNL team for not learning their lines and clearly reading everything off cue cards. Now I appreciate more how difficult it is to learn stuff, but then I do not have a budget behind am not getting paid and can't afford autocue machines. I am pretty sure Stew and me learned our script for This Morning With Richard Not Judy, though it was up on autocue too as a safety net. And when something is live I suppose you don't want to take the chance.
Attempts have been made in the UK to do a similar kind of show, with varying degrees of success, but it seems insane that we can't do it on a long term and weekly basis. The show can be silly or satirical but still packs a punch. You'd think a team of our best comedy performers and our strongest topical writers but America pisses over us on this. Maybe if the Meaning of Life works out then that's the next thing I can do. Or maybe not. I'd quite like to live more than two more years.
