Sketch Comedy
“Hey! Fuzzy Yellow” Update!
In a previous blog post, I mentioned that I wrote two episodes of the animated preschool series Hey! Fuzzy Yellow. At the time, one of the episodes was streaming on the Irish video service RTÉ
Player. Now, both episodes are available there, along with 50 other episodes of the show. Here are the titles and episode numbers for the two episodes I wrote:
- “Boomerang Jelly Car” (Season 1, Ep 5)
- “Sculpture Jam Abstract” (Season 1, Ep 20)
I co-wrote the script for “Boomerang Jelly Car” with McPaul Smith and Måns Swanberg. And I was the sole writer for the “Sculpture Jam Abstract” script.
This show was also my professional television debut as a lyricist! I co-wrote the lyrics for the “wrap-up” song in “Boomerang Jelly Car.” And I was the sole lyricist for both the “rollerskate” song and the “wrap-up” song in “Sculpture Jam Abstract.”
I don’t know when Hey! Fuzzy Yellow will start airing in the United States. But when I find out that information, I’ll update this page to include it. In the meantime…
Here’s an official description of the show: “In Hey! Fuzzy Yellow, we meet a blurry bundle of fun and friends who want you all to know the world is full of possibilities.”
The series is produced by Curiosity Ink Media, Toon2Tango, Treehouse Republic, and Hotel Hungaria Animation, in partnership with Måns Swanberg. Learn more about the show HERE.
Here’s an official synopsis of “Boomerang Jelly Car”:
“As Fuzzy Yellow is followed by a big space-jellyfish, Bennu and Moon build a wooden downhill-racing car.”
And here’s an official synopsis of “Sculpture Jam Abstract”:
“Fuzzy Yellow’s friends play soccer in the mud, then decide to make clay sculptures. Fuzzy Yellow models for them.”
I’m quite proud of how both episodes came out. Working with the show’s head writer McPaul Smith and the series creator Måns Swanberg was such a blast!
But if you don’t have RTÉ Player, you probably can’t see what the episode looks like. So here are some screen-grabs from “Boomerang Jelly Car”:
And here are some screen grabs for “Sculpture Jam Abstract”:
Also, here’s the trailer for Hey! Fuzzy Yellow:
Last but definitely not least, if you’d like to find out about my other television writing credits (the ones that are neither fuzzy nor yellow), you can check out my IMDB page, as well as the Television Writing section on this very website!
That One Time I Played A Bed (Well, PART OF A Bed) On National Television
Some time ago, I was a staff writer on the television series TruTV Presents: World’s Dumbest. For those of you that don’t know, World’s Dumbest was a “clips show,” and that means that people would send us clips of themselves and their friends doing stupid things. And we (the writing staff) would write comedy sketches and jokes making fun of the clips.
Someone had sent us a clip of this moronic woman playing a prank on her boyfriend. She had bought a plastic mannequin’s head, got under the covers in bed and pretended to make out with it (no I’m not making this up). Her idea was that her boyfriend would come home and he’d be all like, “Oh no, my girlfriend’s cheating on me!”
I wrote a comedy sketch making fun of this clip, which featured cast member Amanda Landry. In the sketch, Amanda is in bed with the plastic head, and she’s ACTUALLY cheating on her boyfriend with it. So she keeps saying tender, sentimental things to the head. We keep cutting to the mannequin head who says nothing, then back to her, reacting as though the mannequin head has said something profound or romantic. It went like this:
CLOSE UP ON: mannequin head, completely still and silent.
AMANDA [to mannequin head]: We almost got caught last time. We have to be more careful.
CLOSE-UP ON: mannequin head, completely still and silent.
AMANDA [to mannequin head]: You always know just what to say.
You get the idea. Anyway, when we actually went to shoot this comedic masterpiece, we got a prop bed for Amanda and the mannequin head to lay down in. BUT…
When the bed arrived on set, it was missing two of its legs. The legs that go below the headboard. Someone had to CROUCH DOWN BEHIND THE HEADBOARD and hold up that end of the bed and play the part of the missing legs. Since I wrote the sketch, and all the Production Assistants were busy, I got drafted.
This is the way it went down: they would shoot a take, then they’d yell cut, I’d stretch my (real) legs, then I’d crouch back down behind the headboard and hold up my end of the bed by the time they yelled “Action” again. This went on for HOURS. They even tweeted a few photos of me popping my head up from behind the headboard between takes.
Over the years, I’ve taught screenwriting and comedy writing courses at quite a few different schools. And I often tell this story to my students. The moral of the story is that the entertainment industry is WEIRD. If you are lucky enough to make a living in show business, at some point someone’s going to ask you to pretend to be the two missing legs of a bed in a nationally televised comedy sketch. Or they’re going to dress you up in a turkey costume, like Paul Simon in that “Still Crazy After All These Years” bit on SNL. Or they’ll ask you to hold a sandwich between your legs while Kenneth Branagh shoots a scene in a Woody Allen movie (that happened to a friend of mine once).
And you’ll do it, because that’s show business, and there’s a line a mile long of other people who would kill to have your job, even if that job involves being the missing legs of a bed. So there’s no room for divas, and you’ve kinda got to get used to all the weirdness inherent in the entertainment industry or you won’t last very long.
Like Lee Strasberg says in The Godfather: Part II, “This is the business we’ve chosen.”
Boy is it ever.