“The Dana Carvey Show”: The Best Writing Team of All Time?
If you follow comedy enough, sooner or later you’re going to come across someone touting the short-lived 1996 comedy show “The Dana Carvey Show” as the greatest of all time. Now, I’ve never seen an episode of the show – in ’96 I was more focused on masturbating than watching subversive sketch comedy, a trend that continues today – but after seeing the following list of the writers involved, I may be forced to pick up the box set. Check it out:
(image courtesy goldenfiddlr)
Just look at what the writers went on to make after the show was canceled:
Louis C.K. – One of the funniest stand-ups working today, he was responsible for the (not too shabby) Lucky Louie on HBO, as well as the director/writer for Pootie Tang.
Steve Carell – The 40-Year-Old Virgin, The Office, etc.
Robert Carlock – Currently writing for 30 Rock.
Dana Carvey – Well, The Master of Disguise technically counts as “something”.
Bill Chott – A whole bunch of voice work, including The Ambiguously Gay Duo, and guest work, including an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Stephen Colbert – The man with the biggest, and most brassy, balls in all of cable television.
Spike Feresten – A writer for The Simpsons and Seinfeld – including some of the best episodes of the show’s run like “The Soup Nazi” and “The Reverse Peephole” – Feresten currently hosts an underrated Saturday night talk show on FOX.
Jon Glaser – A guest star on pretty much everything Adult Swim has ever aired, Glaser most recently starred and created Delocated, a series about a family in the witness protection program who gets sent to New York City.
Elon Gold – Starred in Stacked, that horrible sitcom a few years back with Pam Anderson working as a book clerk.
Charlie Kaufman – Genius screenwriter of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Heather Morgan – Can’t really find much about this one, unfortunately.
Bob Odenkirk – Co-creator of the brilliant Mr. Show as well as the producer of Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job, among other hilarious pursuits.
Steve O’Donnell – Head writer of Jimmy Kimmel Live.
Robert Smigel – The man behind Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog.
Dino Stamatopoulos – Another comedian that’s done just about everything on Adult Swim, Stamatopoulos is probably best known as the man behind the stop-motion parody Moral Orel.
Mike Stoyanov – Awesomely, one of The Joker’s goons in The Dark Knight.
This is, essentially, the comedy writing equivalent of the famous Bill Walsh coaching tree. Who’da have thunk the star of Clean Slate would be responsible for the best comedy of our generation?
About Rick Mosely Rick is the editor for TSB magazine.