Darrell Vickers – The Magic Hour Part 8 – “I Am Sooo Sorry, Tony”

For many weeks, I have tearfully journeyed through the annals of the ignominious, ignoble and egregious disaster that was The Magic Hour. I shall now visit the anals, for the jaw-dropping account I am about to chronicle involves a world-class-plus asshole. Enter Mark Poisonpen, the writer from hell.

Darrell Vickers – The Magic Hour Part 7 – Put on a Happy Farce

For good or for incalculable evil, I have earned my daily crust as a professional comedy writer my entire adult life. During the innumerable decades spent splashing ink onto three-hole-punched paper, I have fashioned myriad ludicrous plots and fanciful situations. I’ve woven preposterous storylines replete with illogical reasoning and nonsensical outcomes. But only once have I found myself trapped inside a full fledged, Loony-Tunes, Ionesco play in real life.

Darrell Vickers – The Magic Hour Part 6: How Can I Miss You If You Won’t Go Away?

One requires only a smattering of seconds après being rudely jettisoned from the casual comforts of the birthing canal to realize that not everything in this life is perfect, though getting to snack on a pair of righteous milk-muffins ain’t a bad way to start. But we who toiled on The Magic Hour were a long time gone from getting to attach lip to nip eight times a day. After-all, we weren’t Les Moonves. All Andrew, Tony and I had for nutritional and spiritual succor was bad coffee, misshapen pastries and the occasional wife-swapping fruit flies in the snack-table trail mix.   

Darrell Vickers – The Magic Hour 5

Steve White. That’s all we really needed, just Steve White. He’d been air-lifted onto The Magic Hour pilot at the last tumultuous second as our co-host and he knocked it out of the park for us. Steve and Magic had a cool, breezy rapport with one another. Just a couple of guys rappin’ about the events of the day that segued seamlessly into our opening comedy bit. You can search for years and not find that kind of chemistry. Steve was also a dedicated team player and a truly funny guy. So of course, our first assignment on the show was to work with new possible co-hosts to replace him. Huh?

The Magic Hour Part Two – Part Two: A Change is Gonna Come

Those nascent days on The Magic Hour were like being airlifted into a room awash in eggshells while wearing size 26 snow boots. Every attempted micro-step caused annoyed and bitter heads to swing in our unintentionally crunchy direction. Needless to say, our relationship with the head writer, Pete, was tense at best. We were about as popular as having Matt Gaetz attend your high school prom.

The panicky act of Fox dragooning us onto the show had basically taken a Weed Whacker to his nether parts. Severely truncheoned his pink and tenders. Wantonly augered his… well, you get the idea.

Darrell Vickers – The Magic Hour Part One of Part Two – I Don’t Know Why You Say Goodbye I Say Hello

“My pants are down around my ankles and I’m bent over my desk.  What do you want?”

This colorful interrogative was bellowed over the phone to our agent by a Fox executive in Business Affairs. 

Perhaps I should back this story up a smidge:

Darrell Vickers – The Magic Hour: Part Two of Part One – Tonight’s the Nights

When dealing with a humor-challenged performer such as Magic Johnson, you craft material that involves him peripherally but passes on all the heavy lifting to a rib-tickling professional. It’s a comedic slight of hand. Basically, Mr. Johnson set up the jokes and Barry would bring home the side-splitting bacon. It gave the illusion that Magic was a part of frivolity unbound without actually requiring him to personally reduce the audience to spit-spraying bucket-chuckling gibbons.

Darrell Vickers – Magic Johnson Part One of Part One – Every Little Thing We Did For Magic

 

For all the excitement and laugh-a-minute hijinks that ultimately end up on the small-but-getting-larger-every-day screen, animation is a fairly dull medium to write for but you sure can’t beat the commute. You lucubrate in the bosom of your own homestead, tenaciously hack your way through the occasional set of nettlesome network notes and when it’s all done and dusted, you press a couple of keys on your computer and send it off to anywhere in the world. A life of toiling in animation is totally absent the non-stop madcap Joy Circus that you get sucked into when manning the helm of a Hollywood set. It does not require dealing with studios and networks both asking you to do the impossible as a million unforeseen crises swirl around you like pissed-off bees. It is blissfully free of discontented actors unable to remember the simplest sequence of dialogue. You are spared having to wait endless hunger-filled hours for that intern to bring back food from Jerry’s Deli while you “amp the stakes” at the end of Act One.