Write On: Comedy Writing with Brent Forrester

“My recommendation to anybody who is writing animation is to take advantage of the things you can do in animation that you can’t do in live action, which is to spend an infinite amount of money, right? If you and I are going to write a scene and you say, ‘Oh, let’s set it on a battleship, but then space aliens come and suddenly we’re transported to Jupiter,’ it better be animation because if it’s not, we’re never going to be able to shoot that. But if it is animation, that’s exactly what we should be doing all the time. You want to create the most expensive set in the world because it costs nothing to draw that battleship and send us to Jupiter. And that’s really the glory of an animated show,” says Brent Forrester, about what he learned writing for The Simpsons for three seasons. 

On today’s episode, we chat with Emmy-winning writer Brent Forrester about his prolific comedy writing career that includes shows like The Office, King of the Hill and Space Force. He shares why the writing room for The Simpsons was so intimidating and his surprise when The Office showrunners had to teach him the specific tone and structure for the show after he turned in his first episode and just wasn’t getting it.  

“I had gotten the tone wrong – it was largely my attempt to make it wall to wall funny. I wasn’t getting that you really had to make it serious. There were other aspects, too, that I had to pick up. One of them is the use of what are called ‘talking heads.’ It’s when the character speaks directly to camera. It comes from reality TV where they pull the subject of a reality show aside and ask them a question and they just speak directly to camera. So we stole that device and it’s a great crutch for writers because one of the hardest things for us is getting the exposition across,” says Forrester. 

He also shares his advice for writing a great TV pilot that will hook the reader and offers a simple formula for writing jokes by mixing the sacred with the profane. 

To hear more, listen to the podcast.