Television writers deliver laughs and advice

Aspiring writers who are stuck should just keep generating ideas whether they are good or bad.

That was the message from television writers Tom Gammill, Max Pross and Marc Wilmore on May 18 the Haugh Performing Arts Center.

Gammill and Pross have worked together on numerous shows including "The Simpsons," "Futurama," "Saturday Night Live" and "Seinfeld." Wilmore has worked on In "Living Color," "The Tonight Show: Jay Leno," "The PJ's" and "The Simpsons."

Language arts division professor Colville Smythe, invited the writers to speak for his English class and then extended the opportunity to other teachers and their students.

"I have known Tom (Gammill) for 15 years, both as a neighbor and a friend," Smythe said.

The event started with thunderous applause as Smythe introduced the writers individually.

Finally after waiting for the clapping to abate the writers began talking about their backgrounds and what it is like working in the industry.

"We met in Boston at Harvard working on the comedy magazine called the Harvard Lampoon, and we became friends not having the idea that comedy was where we wanted to go," Gammill said

Gammill and Pross's friend, James Downey, had worked on the weekly live television show, "Saturday Night Live" and read the work that they had done in the Lampoon.

Downey set up an interview for Gammill and Pross to meet Lorne Michaels, and "We miraculously got the job," Pross said.

"We were 22 with an office at the Rockefeller Center and a telephone," said Gammill.

"I was a pre-med student at Harvard," Pross said "Comedy is what I enjoyed doing in college. I never thought of it as a career."

Gammill and Pross began writing in 1979  for "Saturday Night Live." They moved to "David Letterman" in 1982 and began a process of coming up with jokes on a daily basis.
After Lettermen, it was "Seinfeld" and then "The Simpsons."

On Lettermen they worked daily, like on a newspaper, and if David [Lettermen] liked what they wrote, it was aired.

Wilmore said that he was a marketing major at Cal Poly Pomona before going into stand-up and then writing comedy.

Wilmore got into the writing business when a pre-existing condition forced him to stop performing live. Then he started to work for "In Living Color."

The trio of Gammill, Pross and Wilmore were all collaborating, finishing off sentences and delivering laughs to the Citrus College students. Then they started to take questions from the audience.

One student asked the differences between writing for an animated show and a live action show like "Seinfeld."

"It's not like on "Two and a Half Men" where you can say lets' have them go bull riding this episode because the set would have to be built, whereas with "The Simpsons" it works because you can draw the scene," Pross said.

Another student asked where do their ideas come from.

"A lot of our ideas come from personal experiences," Gammill said "Like when I bought a car, and I read the car was owned by John Voight, and when I showed Max [Pross], he told me that John was Jon, and we used that in an episode of Seinfeld."

The audience laughed at the small mistake that became a memorable "Seinfeld" episode.
Gammill draws and writes a daily comic strip on gocomics.com called "The Doozies."

He also has YouTube videos titled Learn To Draw with Tom Gammill. Gammill will also be hosting the Reuben Awards Memorial Day Weekend in New York City.