30 Rock Book

Roe Mike Roe

Description

The hilarious true story of the making of the cult classic hit show 30 Rock It's hard to remember a time when Tina Fey wasn't a star, but back in the early 2000s, she was an SNL writer who was far from a household name. It's even harder to remember when Fey's sitcom 30 Rock was tanking, but it was-it premiered in the fall of 2006, and by November, the New York Times wrote that 30 Rock was "perilously close to a flop."But despite all expectations (including those of some of the cast and crew), Tina Fey's eccentric buddy comedy lasted 138 episodes, spanning seven seasons. It resurrected the career of Alec Baldwin, survived an extended absence by Tracy Morgan, and permeated the culture- its breakneck pacing, oddball characters, and extremely rich joke writing are deeply beloved by millions of fans. Through more than fifty original interviews with cast, crew, critics, and more, culture writer Mike Roe brings to life the history of the gloriously goofy show that became an all-time classic. The 30 Rock Book has everything in it, from tales of the amazing music still stuck in our heads, to the iconic bit characters that make the show, to all the love and drama of the backstage crew . . . and the creative failures and successes along the way. So grab your night cheese and muffin tops, cuddle up with your slanket against your Japanese body pillow, and settle in for the story of one of the funniest shows in television history.

Sujets

• Television

Informations

• Publié par: ABRAMS BOOKS
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781647001094
• Langue: English

Extrait

Copyright 2021 Michael Roe
Cover 2021 Abrams
Published in 2021 by Abrams Press, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021933484
ISBN: 978-1-4197-5044-1
eISBN: 978-1-64700-109-4
Abrams books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact [e-mail] or the address below.
Abrams Press is a registered trademark of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
ABRAMS The Art of Books 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007 abramsbooks.com
To Kristiana, my spectacular wife. Thank you for being the Liz to my Criss (and thankfully not a Hazel).
Contents
Introduction Seven Seasons of Super-Specific Weirdness
Creating the 30 Rock Pilot
Season 1 (2006-07) 30 Rock vs. Studio 60
Season 2 (2007-08) The Strike
Season 3 (2008-09) Tina s Doppelg nger Celebrity
Season 4 (2009-10) Selling NBC, a New Cast Member, and the Quest for the EGOT
Season 5 (2010-11) Breaking the Format
Season 6 (2012) Jack vs. North Korea
Season 7 (2012-13) Happy-ish Endings
30 Rock s Legacy From Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt to Mr. Mayor
Acknowledgments
Sources
Selected Bibliography
INTRODUCTION
Seven Seasons of Super-Specific Weirdness
30 Rock was the show that made Saturday Night Live head writer Tina Fey a bona fide star. It was always a ratings underdog, but one that fought its way into the hearts of viewers season after season. Coming on the air after the end of Friends , the show embodied an idea that was revolutionary at the time: it was better to be funny than to make an audience swoon or to tie characters up in romantic entanglements.
What set 30 Rock apart, besides Tina Fey s distinctive view on the world, was the show s obsession with hyper-specific jokes-from Liz Lemon s much-memed night cheese to cutaway music video earworms proclaiming, It s Never Too Late for Now. In the comedy world, those are often called one- or two-percenters-the jokes that will only work for 1 or 2 percent of the people out there, but for that audience, the jokes really work. When you re in that group, you feel like there s a show that s finally talking to you, just you, for a moment-that 2 percent was enough to earn the show seven seasons and numerous awards.
But with 30 Rock , it wasn t just the type of jokes, it was the pace. The show never paused to wait for you to catch up. It would continue throwing jokes at you so fast that even if you missed what a few of them were going for, you d still be laughing from the one before that.
It s an approach to comedy that wasn t usually done in sitcoms, which had traditionally been shot with a multiple-camera setup, filmed before a live audience. Those shows had to make sure their setups and punchlines were so super clear that every member of the audience could catch them, then pause for extended laughter, the kind that makes people feel like they aren t alone. The Simpsons , since it was animated and had no studio audience or laugh track, was able to fit in more jokes-but it took mainstream TV a long time to catch on to the possibilities dropping the laugh track could bring.
Where 30 Rock s contemporary The Office used the lack of an audience to allow awkwardness to hang in the air, 30 Rock pulled you in. This was not a lie back and enjoy yourself show-this was a you better sit on the front of your couch or you will miss twelve amazing jokes that you never saw coming show. 30 Rock was part of a generation of single-camera sitcoms that popularized a denser joke format, and it was the most packed of them all.
The show would let Fey deliver commentary about her time on SNL , network execs, and everything else she had to deal with as a creative person in comedy at a major TV network. Liz Lemon became the ultra-relatable nerd who d won at life, the underdog who blossomed and finally achieved everything she wanted. She was someone who got ahead because she worked hard and cared a lot about what she was doing. It reflected Tina s intense drive, and her awkwardness made all those viewers who d felt just as awkward over the years-which is basically everyone-latch onto her.
This book is about how 30 Rock survived tough competition and a changing network TV landscape year after year, the true stories and behind-the-scenes battles that often turned into plotlines, and how it found its voice while becoming a critical favorite and beloved cult classic. It will explore the castings that almost were, and glimpse awkward and heartfelt moments between cast and crew, drawn together in their quest to create top-notch comedy. It tells the story of 30 Rock primarily based on nearly fifty interviews I conducted with members of the show s cast, guest stars, writers, directors, producers, and crew, as well as TV critics, personal assistants, and more, as I investigated what was behind the jokes that made me laugh so hard my face hurt. My extensive research also includes material from archival interviews I conducted with members of the 30 Rock family, DVD commentary, books, and other published interviews. I used to write and perform sketch comedy at several Los Angeles theaters, so I apply my own experience with writing jokes to examine how next-level the team behind 30 Rock really was. And I ll be sharing stories throughout in the words of those who lived it so that you can feel what it was like to be a part of that moment. (Some quotes have been edited for conciseness and/or clarity.)
Congratulations! You re about to take a tour through 30 Rock . I m your Kenneth the Page (but moderately more self-aware and less likely to tell you you re condemned to eternal hellfire).
Ready? Let s go.
Creating the 30 Rock Pilot
In 2002, Tina Fey was looking for a new project. She d made a name as the first woman to become head writer of Saturday Night Live , as well as the first woman to anchor Weekend Update since the early eighties. She was proving all the idiots who said that women aren t funny wrong by writing jokes ten times funnier than those of her male colleagues, leading an SNL renaissance.
But while she was well liked by comedy fans, Fey wasn t quite a star yet. She hadn t made her impact outside of late-night comedy, just beginning to develop the script that would become the feature comedy Mean Girls , and she was working to figure out how to graduate out of SNL to her own projects. This was during the era where she said herself how bad she was in sketches on SNL , including saying so in an actual SNL sketch, long before her breakout performance as Sarah Palin in 2008.
Daisy Gardner (writer): One thing that s really hard to remember in an era of Fleabag, Broad City , shows with funny women in them: Networks didn t take a chance on funny female leads, written and directed by funny female leads. Like, that was Tina.
SNL creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels, the behind-the-scenes Yoda to generations of late-night talent, suggested Fey develop a sitcom with NBC. As with the show s other talent, her contract included Michaels and his Broadway Video production company being involved in the show s development. Then-president of NBC Entertainment Jeff Zucker was also encouraging Fey to do a sitcom, convincing her that this was the right move and convincing Lorne Michaels that she was the next great voice in comedy. Tina signed a contract in 2003 that required her to develop a project for the network.
After a few months of working on ideas, she was set to make her pitch to NBC exec Kevin Reilly. Reilly had developed shows for NBC in the eighties and nineties including Saved by the Bell, Law Order , and ER . He d left the network but continued to develop for them, including shepherding NewsRadio to air, as well as The Sopranos at HBO.
Reilly was back at NBC, but it was a time of decline for the network, with NBC in fourth place behind ABC, CBS, and Fox. Longtime hits including Friends and Frasier were wrapping up, with decades of Thursday-night Must See TV comedy dominance fading. The network responsible for Cheers, Seinfeld , and Will Grace was desperate for another hit.
Fey came to him with her big idea: a show about a cable news producer working with a right-wing host, la Fox News ratings champ/blowhard Bill O Reilly. And she wanted the part to be played by liberal actor/activist Alec Baldwin, who d proven his comedic performance chops through years of guest hosting on SNL .
Reilly said thanks, but no thanks. Fey was told that she should write something inspired by working on SNL , since her original pitch had just taken her own experiences and put a light veneer over them anyway.
At the same time, she d been working with Michaels on the movie Mean Girls , which went on to be a huge hit and offered a look at what Fey s voice would sound like outside of SNL . The movie, which debuted in spring 2004, took the feminist ideas that had often been part of Fey s work on Weekend Update and put them in a fictional world that fans continue to quote.
Fey reluctantly went back to work on her project, writing a new version of the 30 Rock pilot episode. The new direction wasn t lighting a creative fire for her, but she was inspired when her husband, composer Jeff Richmond, suggested keeping that conservative Alec Baldwin character. She realized that, in a faux showbiz show, she could add her former SNL castmate Tracy Morgan and create a triangle of different viewpoints going at each other-and the earliest version of 30 Rock was born, which would ultimately take its name from the site of the iconic NBC studio that houses SNL itself. Richmond would continue to collaborate with Fey on the show, providi