Episode notes
Photo: Daniel Speer / Maximum Fun
Elliot Kalan is a comedy writer. He writes jokes professionally. Now, he’s written a book about writing jokes. It’s called Joke Farming: How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense, and it seeks to answer the question joke writers have spent their whole lives puzzling over: what makes a joke work?
We can think of no one better to answer the question than Elliot Kalan. He started as a production assistant on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and eventually became the show’s head writer. He was also the head writer on the rebooted Mystery Science Theater 3000. He also hosts The Flop House, a podcast “devoted to the worst in recent film,” on the Maximum Fun network.
He talks to Bullseye about developing a process for writing jokes reliably, writing topical jokes, and writing jokes for voices other than his own.
In this episode...
Guests
- Elliot Kalan
About the show
Bullseye is a celebration of the best of arts and culture in public radio form. Host Jesse Thorn sifts the wheat from the chaff to bring you in-depth interviews with the most revered and revolutionary minds in our culture.
Bullseye has been featured in Time, The New York Times, GQ and McSweeney’s, which called it “the kind of show people listen to in a more perfect world.” Since April 2013, the show has been distributed by NPR.
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