Katie Rich: Do you think… animation can make something not as poetic seem a little bit more poetic, it can also make something harsher seem less harsh. You can get away with more with animation, right?
RJ Fried: Yes.
Katie Rich: It’s a lot easier hearing it come out of a cartoon than it is hearing it come out of a human voice, a human mouth.
RJ Fried: Absolutely.
Katie Rich: From a topical standpoint and a news standpoint and a satire standpoint, do you feel that you can get away with more things having an animated news show?
RJ Fried: Oh, I know we can. I mean, I don’t think… well actually, I remember being an edit when we were just workshopping the show and a character said something and Stephen Colbert turned to me and he said, “I could never say that.” Even as my Colbert character, I could not say that because there’s something about hearing it from a human face that’s too visceral.
Katie Rich: It’s too much.
RJ Fried: And I would even when we were handing in scripts, I would tell them, S and P and Legal, “On the page, I know this looks rough. Can you just wait till you hear it out of a bright cartoon with a whatever, the Ken haircut and all that stuff, because I’m telling you, it’s going to land on you a little different and it’s going to wash over you and you won’t think of it.” And that’s exactly what happens. And there’s definitely certain… I don’t know, we get away with so much. We say some pretty dark stuff and it just washes over you for whatever reason.
Katie Rich: Yeah, it’s not inappropriate, it’s kind of dark, which I love because the darkness is also the truth right now.
RJ Fried: I know. That’s the other thing too, is I do feel like I always bristle when S and P Legal say it’s inappropriate to talk about this or that, because it’s like, “Well, that’s why it continues to happen is because we’re saying well, we can’t talk about that in public.” It was the stigma around mental health for so long where it’s like, “Oh, that’s a private thing. You can’t talk about that.” And so then it just propagates and it’s bad. And that’s how I feel about all issues. So I feel very grateful that we have these cartoon characters that can go to these dark places that are considered inappropriate because if we don’t talk about war and how horrible it is, if we don’t talk about poverty and how horrible it is, these things that are considered, I don’t know, inappropriate or something, then they’re never going to get solved. And so I like that a cartoon character kind of lubricates that conversation.
Katie Rich: Yeah. Very well said.
RJ Fried: Thank you.
Katie Rich: And I think as… and if you disagree with me, please tell me, but I feel like as the appetite for news was so much, we were so hungry for it, and then we got like, “Ah, is it too much? Do I just want to watch reruns of Friends?” I think this cartoon aspect of it is kind of a nice way to keep people…
RJ Fried: Okay with the news.
Katie Rich: You know what I mean?
RJ Fried: Well, I mean, what I almost feel like is I don’t have to worry about… look, I am a white man, I’ve been very fortunate. I don’t have to worry about politics in my daily life. That is far from the case for most people, and politics is very much a part of their life. It does affect them in very real ways. And that’s my privilege. And so whenever I hear-
Katie Rich: It’s a privilege to say, “Politics don’t affect me.”
RJ Fried: Yeah. And so when I hear this thing of, “Ugh, I can’t take it anymore,” it’s like, “Congratulations, you get to do that. You get to step away from politics.” But for most people, that’s not the case. It’s very real how cops when they’re pulling someone over, what our tax system is, how hard it is to get housing. Politics means a lot to lot of people, and so disengaging… Yeah, at some point you do have to say, “Well, how come I get to disengage?” But most people don’t.
Katie Rich: And I want to say this from a writing standpoint, why do you think conservative comedy is harder to write?
RJ Fried: Well-
Katie Rich: Do you see what I’m saying? And acknowledging that in Late Night, it’s hard, we have Gutfeld and that’s about it as far as a conservative late night show.
RJ Fried: I don’t think it’s hard to make fun of the Democratic Party, and we do it on Tooning Out the News, and we have this satire show called Virtue Signal and that’s what we do. And to be honest with you, our liberals love that show, they love… I feel like that they get a kick out of it, even though it is making fun of I would say liberal overreach or at least democratic liberal media overreach.
And so here’s what I would say is that I think, and this is something we look for in our writers, is that if you look at the world as left, right, liberal, conservative, you’re kind of missing the point. And I think we try to look at it as top and bottom and where is the power structures, and so the Democratic Party, don’t kid yourself, is a power structure and it is interested in preserving itself and raising money just like the Republican Party is. And if you start to see it that way, then you can, I think, start to make fun of… it’s the classic thing of punching up. Then you’re starting to punch up at wherever it is. And so I guess conservative comedy, I mean-
Katie Rich: I know, it’s not a perfect term, but…
RJ Fried: I think comedy could work and it can be directed at the left, but I think it needs to be directed at where these power structures are. It needs to feel right. It needs to feel like the targets are correct.
Katie Rich: That’s interesting. So it’s more of the… it’s not that it can’t work, it’s just that perhaps sometimes it’s directed at the wrong target, like you’re saying?
RJ Fried: Yeah. I mean, look I’ll be honest, there are times where I’ve watched… I’ll have to watch Sean Hannity and Tucker for this job, and there are times where they will say something about Democrats that are correct. It does happen, it’s very rare, and they’re saying things that will not be said on MSNBC. And so look, it can work, but that said, I don’t have any interest in calling people who are poor lazy, that doesn’t work. And so, like I said, I think if you just brush us aside, conservative liberal comedy, and just say comedy directed at the powerful and injustice and hypocrisy, it’s going to work no matter which political party it’s directed at.
Katie Rich: I love that. So I’m a writer, I want to-
RJ Fried: And a damn good one.
Katie Rich: Oh wait, I’m being hypothetical here. Oh, I’m a full hack. I’m saying like so if I’m a writer and I am like, “I want to get into late night comedy. I want to get into satirical comedy.” What are the sources, where do you get… I know you have to be familiar with more than you would ever want to be familiar with on a news level, but where do you find the best, most primary source news outlet?
RJ Fried: That’s a great point. I would say, and here’s what I learned working with Lawrence O’Donnell, is you have to be a ferocious reader and you have to read everything and you have to read the whole article. Because typically… yeah, I know. I know. I know. Sorry folks.
Katie Rich: But can I just read the Twitter headline and quote it?
RJ Fried: No, that’s not what I’m saying. That’s not what I’m saying. You have to read the whole thing and it’s going to get worse because when you… Yeah, I’m telling you. When Politico writes up the speech that someone gave on the house floor, you’re probably going to have to go watch the speech and see… I know, you’re going to have to do some work. This happens so much where they’ll be a headline, “So and so said this, it’s so terrible.” You go watch it. They were joking, they were saying it tongue in cheek, or it was within some other context.
And so I think, look, the only way to make fun of something is to know it completely. And so I always hesitate. There’s been times in writer’s room where we want to talk about something, but I don’t feel confident enough to put our flag and say, “This is what this show believes.” And so I would say, look, New York Times and Washington Post I think are great, I think that’s, to be honest, where the best reporting is as far as I can tell, the most in-depth, the most three dimensional, that’s where I typically start. But then honestly, you kind of have to, even then, go watch the raw thing and make sure it is what it says it is. But you really have to be a ferocious consumer I think of news.
Katie Rich: And I think that that is a thousand percent on the mark, that as a writer, you have to be intimately familiar with the story to then make a comment on it in a comedic way. However, we can’t expect the audience to also be that way. So how do we manage that when we know that the audience might mostly be reading a headline and that’s their frame of reference for a story? How do you dive into it without expecting… I want to rephrase this because I don’t want to make it sound like I’m saying people are stupid because I don’t believe that.
RJ Fried: No, I know what you mean. You need to meet people where they are.
Katie Rich: Can I just rephrase it so it’s like-
RJ Fried: Sure, go ahead.
Katie Rich: But knowing that the audience should not be expected to know something, to know a story as in depth as you, the writer, how do you meet them at the point where they are?
RJ Fried: Yeah. I think how much you challenge the audience, I think is something we talk about. Actually I go back to something that Lawrence said to me, which was there’s this level that the audience is kind of at and there’s this point you want to make that is kind of way up here, and if you do that, there’s just going to be a disconnect. They’re not going to be able to relate to it. And then there’s this other point that’s kind of in between where you’re giving them an in to understand it. And so I think obviously like John Oliver, what he does is so brilliant and he gives people all the logical steps they need to follow along.
Katie Rich: But he also has 30 minutes and no commercials.
RJ Fried: Exactly. Well, I think you have to be careful of just honestly what topics you choose.
Katie Rich: Got it.
RJ Fried: And whether you can make a point within the minute you have to make it. But no, you’re right, at the end of the day, this is television and you’re here for the audience. And so if you’re just doing your own thing and not giving them an in, there’s something just kind of I want to say obnoxious about it. Meet people where they are and give them all they need to follow the logic steps to understand your joke. TV cannot be a [inaudible 00:31:38] exercise. You’re in the wrong business if that’s the case. It’s like you’re here for the audience and so you got to give them what they need to understand what you’re trying to say and in the timeframe you’re trying to say it.
Katie Rich: Do you feel that audiences, when it comes to late night animation, are different from the audiences from late night live action for lack of a better term? Is your writing different or no, from an audience perspective?
RJ Fried: I think we’re writing for our time slot.
Katie Rich: Got it.
RJ Fried: We’re on after the Daily Show and so we’re writing for I think largely that audience. That said, you want to be able to expand upon it and go into your own creative eccentricities, just in the same way Colbert Report was different from the Daily Show when it was on. Yeah, I mean Robert Smigel I don’t know if you ever saw that Hulu documentary about the Dana Carvey show.
Katie Rich: Oh my God, it was so good.
RJ Fried: It’s so good. And Robert has this moment and he’s talking about it before, where he talks about… so home improvement was their lead in and he talks about after he had completely conceived… I think it was maybe even after the first episode had even aired, he went and watched, he was like, “What’s actually leading into us?” And he went and watched it and was like, “Oh my God, what have I done? What have I done?”
And so look, you trust network execs, well I’ve always thought Tooning Out the News belonged where it is now.
Katie Rich: Agreed.
RJ Fried: We’re so happy that it’s there. It was on Paramount Plus before, before that CBS All Access and streaming, it’s an okay place for those kind of things, but not the best. The best place for it is… So you hope the industry puts you where you need to be. But you do have to keep mind what are people coming out of? And honestly, what I say to people is if you’re going to board a cruise ship, the cruise has to start at the dock. And so a show is like that, where it’s like, “Let’s start at the dock, let’s pick people up and then we’ll go out to sea, but we can’t just go be playing around the sea and hoping people jump off the dock and swim up to the ship.”
Katie Rich: Yeah. We don’t start at international waters. We start at Miami.
RJ Fried: No. Yeah. So we do say to ourselves those first few jokes coming out of the Daily Show, what do we feel like people will want to-
Katie Rich: I love that.
RJ Fried: Yeah, yeah.
Katie Rich: I love that because it’s something that I think you lose when it comes to streaming because you don’t know what has happened prior.
RJ Fried: Yeah, totally.
Katie Rich: You don’t know what has happened prior in the person’s viewing.
RJ Fried: Pryor, Richard Pryor. They may have watched the Richard Pryor special.
Katie Rich: Maybe they were Pryored, maybe they had a Richard Pryor Marathon and so they were Pryored prior to watching your program.
RJ Fried: You’ve never made a mistake on this podcast. Whatever you do, you just own it and just say, “That’s what I intended to say.”
Katie Rich: I don’t make mistakes.
RJ Fried: Oh yes.
Katie Rich: I only make mistakes. But just really quick, I do want to touch on that, especially a topical news show on a streaming network has had its struggles, right? Because-
RJ Fried: Yeah, for sure.
Katie Rich: Can you just touch on why you think that is? I mean, I have my ideas, but I’d rather hear yours.
RJ Fried: I think it’s just the fact that streaming doesn’t have, or at least hasn’t figured out, a way to add a temporal element to it, like an expiration date element to it. They’re working on it. You see Amazon’s doing football now, but the main things that are time sensitive in television right now, it’s news sports and late night comedy. And so those things in particular need to have some kind of immediacy attached to them, and I think the streaming services are trying to figure that out.
Like I said, they’re starting to do more event. When you go on whoever’s doing the World Cup right now, it’s going to say this is on at this time. That wasn’t always the case. It was just this big jukebox and here are all these things you can look at. I think they’re still figuring it out, but for now, the best place to be on is linear for those kind of things. But yeah, I’m sure streaming will figure out a way to say the sports game is on and Jake Tapper is on here and you need to come here and watch it at this time, but it’s just not there yet.
Katie Rich: I want to end this with a really important question that I have for you. What is it like being a writer who has a modicum of athletic talent? For those of you who don’t know, RJ is a very talented hockey player. He could have gone into hockey. For those of you who don’t know about me, the only thing I’m an expert in is the NHL in 1993 to 1994. I loved hockey. So I am so obsessed with the fact that you could have played in the NHL.
RJ Fried: What is it like? I would say a couple things. It feels like something I am shameful of, I need to hide at every time.
Katie Rich: What?
RJ Fried: Oh my God yeah, because when I moved to Los Angeles, I just did not look like a writer. I looked like a hockey player who had just left professional hockey. And so I did not work out for a very long time so I could get down to the size of what looked like someone who could walk into a writer’s meeting and not look ridiculous. And another great thing happened 10 years in, which is my eyes started to go. And so I got glasses. And so I think I’m getting close finally after all these years to what resembles a writer. And now I need to actually get back in shape and stuff, but…
Katie Rich: So your advice to writers would be like, “Don’t get too hot.”
RJ Fried: I would say… well, my advice to all those professional hockey players who want a writing career would be to just go easy on the weights, because otherwise it’s going to take years of body transformation to be able to walk into a pitch meeting and just not be immediately dismissed as a meathead. So here’s one thing about hockey is I will say is that it made all those late nights writing and all that stuff, professional hockey’s a very hard sport, and so-
Katie Rich: Yes very much so.
RJ Fried: … after that, doing all-nighters and whatever we have to do as writers to hit deadlines just isn’t as hard. And also learning team dynamics and knowing… when I played college hockey, the coach would sit the best player on the team if they didn’t do what they needed to do. And that was the culture. It was it doesn’t matter who you are, you have to meet the vision here. And so I’m not that harsh. I don’t like bench writers or something who are not doing a good job.
Katie Rich: But it’s about the team, it’s not about you.
RJ Fried: It’s not about you. Exactly. And you need to buy into the vision, and if you don’t go right for… then, that’s okay and yeah, you should go to a different team where it makes sense for you. But we all need to be working in the same direction. I think that’s something certainly that I took from those hockey team dynamics and try to bring to shows and honestly, and don’t be a jerk and don’t be selfish. Yeah, just making sure everyone’s kind of pulling the same direction.
Katie Rich: I think we should incorporate penalty boxes in writer’s rooms.
RJ Fried: That I can get behind.
Katie Rich: Just a heads up, “And you have two minute…” But then you get five minute majors for when you don’t listen to someone’s joke and you re-repeat it.
RJ Fried: We need fighting too.
Katie Rich: And we need fighting. Okay.
RJ Fried: It’s about time we had just some brawls in writer’s rooms.
Katie Rich: RJ, I cannot tell you how happy I am to see you and I’m so proud of you. Congratulations on everything, and this was just a delight.
RJ Fried: It was a delight. And Katie, you are so wildly talented and so funny. No, it’s true.
Katie Rich: Right back at you.
RJ Fried: I’m not just saying this because it’s being recorded. You are brilliant and funny and a true force of nature and comedy, so I feel so blessed to be here with you.
Katie Rich: I feel exactly the same. So go back to World of Warcraft. I just think that-
RJ Fried: I’m going to do cool hockey stuff, okay?
Katie Rich: Okay. Okay. I forgot. I forgot you’re a cool jock. Sorry.
RJ Fried: Yes. Cool.
Katie Rich: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: On Writing is a production of the Writer’s Guild of America East. This series was created and is produced by Jason Gordon. Our associate producer and designer is Molly Beer. Tech production and original music by Taylor Bradshaw and Stock Boy Creative. You can learn more about the Writers Guild of America East online at WGAeast.org. You can follow the Guild on all social media platforms @WGAeast. If you like this podcast, please subscribe and rate us. Thank you for listening and write on.
