Tuesday, February 8, 2011

An Artist Statment

Armed with nothing more than a small notepad and pen in my back pocket, I find myself in daily battle with the seemingly ordinary and mundane hoping to find fresh comedic treasure. When home, I attempt to take such relics and craft them into stories, concepts, sketches or even just jokes. I do use a Macbook and Final Draft, and thus must apologize for trying to portray myself as a savage scribe. My current favorite outlet for such musings is spec television scripts. I do quite enjoy attempting to fit a complete story into a 22-minute space. When it comes to writing television, I do prefer laugh-track sitcoms even if they are somewhat outdated.

My inclination to write comedy of any sort began in high school. As I watched film and television's portrayal of American high school students, I began to feel disenfranchised. My high school experience was possibly the furthest from that of Dawson Leery of Dawson's Creek. Having no knowledge of screenwriting whatsoever, I began to write a story based on my life in high school. My tale consisted of an overweight adolescent with a “jew fro” trying to obtain alcohol and girls. When Superbad came out in 2007, I saw the film six times in theaters simply because I could not believe how close it was to my story. Despite the setback, the minute I began writing, I was instantly hooked.

Comedic writing is surely my preference. I do prefer crude humor but not in the sense of being over the top. Judd Apatow is currently and has been a huge inspiration as his films and television shows often feature very crude humor, yet we still find the characters saying such things to be rather endearing. When writing for television or film, I attempt to find that organic dialogue which Apatow thrives at. Because of the nature of my writing, relationships are often a major source of inspiration and material. I attempt to strip relationships down to their rawest principles and procure comedy.

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