A Conversation with Pat Hazell—Part 1

Rick Alloway Author

01/28/2021 Added

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Pat Hazell is a former writer for "Seinfeld". During part one of his interview with Rick Alloway, he talks about his journey from Omaha to "Seinfeld" and what he's doing now during the pandemic.

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[00:00:08.130]Our guest is Pat Hazell.
[00:00:09.480]Pat is a native of Omaha, Nebraska
[00:00:11.870]though his no longer lives in the state,
[00:00:13.770]but has made his career
[00:00:15.080]over the past several decades as a comedy writer,
[00:00:18.310]producer of his own one man shows in many occasions
[00:00:21.950]and one of the best writers I know.
[00:00:23.920]So I'm happy to invite him
[00:00:25.230]to be part of our class discussion this morning
[00:00:27.530]to talk about writing of comedy,
[00:00:29.890]Pat, great to see you.
[00:00:31.680]It's terrific to be here, right
[00:00:33.077]This is the way of the world now
[00:00:35.380]we're all TV stars on Zoom
[00:00:38.350]Right a little boxes on Zoom.
[00:00:42.045]Give us the thumbnail description
[00:00:44.200]of your journey from Omaha to where you are now.
[00:00:47.950]And what got you into writing of comedy.
[00:00:52.070]Comedy was something that I was always attracted to
[00:00:54.980]I guess, from a young age
[00:00:57.320]and kind of surrounded myself
[00:00:58.890]by other comic friends in high school.
[00:01:01.300]And you know, it made every part of life
[00:01:03.740]a little bit better to look at it
[00:01:04.963]in a kind of a skewed perspective,
[00:01:07.880]but also it became,
[00:01:09.850]it was a bit of a developed defense mechanism.
[00:01:13.725]I started out as a magician
[00:01:15.270]doing magic tricks and juggling.
[00:01:16.810]And at the time that you met me
[00:01:18.500]that was sort of my go-to,
[00:01:20.630]but often the comedy was a result
[00:01:23.790]of the trick didn't work
[00:01:25.280]or I needed to get a volunteer up
[00:01:27.540]and I needed to create a relationship
[00:01:29.100]and comedy makes all of that easier.
[00:01:31.940]And then as I matured in it
[00:01:34.060]I started to realize for messaging
[00:01:36.620]if I was writing for a corporate person
[00:01:38.510]or something else that that comedy was the sugar pill
[00:01:42.100]that would make the medicine go down, right
[00:01:43.770]So they could take the message if it was light.
[00:01:47.070]That was always the approach to that.
[00:01:48.330]But, I went on from Omaha
[00:01:51.070]where I was doing comedy and magic
[00:01:52.780]and such to LA where I shed all the variety arts
[00:01:57.640]and sort of focused strictly on standup
[00:01:59.930]and writing comedy
[00:02:01.220]and trying to get on the Tonight Show
[00:02:03.710]with as just a standup was a big goal.
[00:02:06.480]So I was able to achieve that.
[00:02:09.270]And then I realized, you know
[00:02:11.200]in some ways I missed using props and so forth.
[00:02:13.820]So I began to write in a form where that was okay
[00:02:16.520]which was writing plays
[00:02:18.440]and things where the environment became important.
[00:02:22.650]The, you know, characters we reporting,
[00:02:26.220]some things and we can talk about this today.
[00:02:29.125]Comedy works sometimes in monologue as a standup
[00:02:32.780]but sometimes it works better in a dialogue
[00:02:34.870]it's ideas being exchanged between people
[00:02:37.320]where everybody's not always funny
[00:02:39.010]or where there's a situational argument
[00:02:41.860]or where you have a theme to explore.
[00:02:44.280]And it's kind of awkward if a standup
[00:02:47.060]takes both sides of an argument
[00:02:48.540]without a compelling way of doing it.
[00:02:51.890]And, and so there's times
[00:02:53.770]I think that's a better form of humor.
[00:02:57.760]After Tonight Show, start to end some of that,
[00:03:02.170]my plays were essentially writing samples
[00:03:05.210]that were sit-com samples for me
[00:03:06.580]that got me the, you know, King of all jobs
[00:03:09.870]which was to be a writer on the Seinfeld show.
[00:03:12.960]And, you know, in that I learned quite a bit
[00:03:15.520]even though the people involved
[00:03:17.440]were also learning at the same time.
[00:03:19.680]Jerry didn't have any sitcom writing experience.
[00:03:21.850]And Larry had had some experience on Saturday Night Live
[00:03:25.760]and Fridays and things,
[00:03:26.830]but really we didn't know what we were doing,
[00:03:30.050]but we all set out to as Jerry said,
[00:03:32.770]it's, let's make ourselves the audience
[00:03:35.120]and see if we can entertain ourselves
[00:03:38.550]will there be other people that
[00:03:40.740]like the kind of humor we like?
[00:03:42.110]So we were trying not to be derivative
[00:03:44.270]of other television shows like Murphy Brown
[00:03:47.350]and things that were already on TV.
[00:03:49.500]And after writing on that
[00:03:51.490]and becoming mechanic in their shop
[00:03:53.040]for a certain period of time,
[00:03:54.480]I was tapped by NBC to convert one of my plays
[00:03:59.480]into a sit-com which we made six episodes of
[00:04:01.900]it didn't get a widespread viewing,
[00:04:04.210]but it basically gave me
[00:04:06.100]what I would consider the advanced film school
[00:04:08.820]because I executive produced six episodes
[00:04:11.180]that I starred in and wrote in.
[00:04:12.590]And, and that was like learning every part of,
[00:04:16.087]you know taking an engine apart
[00:04:18.020]and putting it back together.
[00:04:19.370]So my tool kit became much broader
[00:04:22.270]for kinds of work I could do
[00:04:24.950]all of that led me ultimately to
[00:04:27.856]becoming a creative consultant
[00:04:29.860]for a lot of different people.
[00:04:31.990]And I consider myself to be
[00:04:35.732]somewhat of a ghost writer for ad agencies,
[00:04:39.765]for TV studios, for networks, for places
[00:04:43.320]I don't really care my vanity isn't getting credit.
[00:04:46.230]It's just that I have continued to make a job
[00:04:49.170]by being what I call the human resources department
[00:04:52.870]for all of these companies.
[00:04:55.260]And by not putting myself out front,
[00:04:57.580]it means I can work for all of them
[00:04:59.000]and nobody knows who I work for.
[00:05:00.700]Right, so it's, you know, again,
[00:05:03.060]it's a way to sustain working
[00:05:06.350]without being concerned that you go to a specific
[00:05:09.290]employer to buy my wares, if that makes sense.
[00:05:12.050]So, I mean, that brings me to the seat in Austin
[00:05:14.850]where almost all the skills I had built up
[00:05:19.570]were about gathering people, live performance,
[00:05:23.096]stand up comedy, theater for plays, directing commercials.
[00:05:25.990]All of these things require people to come together.
[00:05:29.060]And then courtesy of the pandemic
[00:05:30.510]I was given the pink slip.
[00:05:33.380]On every job I have there's no way to gather people
[00:05:38.125]but what I'm excited about is that
[00:05:42.300]I looked at my reel
[00:05:43.250]and I go, I've been wanting to make some new stuff.
[00:05:45.800]What do I do?
[00:05:46.633]And so I began to write, go right back to the root
[00:05:50.430]which is write funny things, make fake commercials
[00:05:54.020]make fake products,
[00:05:55.350]you know, almost treat it like
[00:05:56.210]it's Saturday live or something
[00:05:57.680]and I keep myself busy
[00:05:59.630]and call my voiceover friends.
[00:06:01.160]And now we can do it responsibly
[00:06:03.170]because they have a studio at home and they send it to me.
[00:06:05.690]And I sent it to an animator at his house
[00:06:07.520]and he does it.
[00:06:08.353]and then come back.
[00:06:09.320]We made a few of those
[00:06:10.440]and I'm telling you
[00:06:12.030]weeks after we had them done
[00:06:14.740]companies were buying them
[00:06:15.980]to put in their Zoom meetings or their virtual conference
[00:06:20.330]because they didn't want it to all be talking head.
[00:06:22.050]So there is a value,
[00:06:23.618]you know while people gathering is quite dead,
[00:06:26.810]creativity is not.
[00:06:27.860]And so humor or comedy writing,
[00:06:31.690]I mean there's there's room for all kinds of writing,
[00:06:34.030]but you know there's frosting on comedy writing, right.
[00:06:37.510]And people like the sweetness of it.
[00:06:40.520]So I just feel like it's ultimately the most sellable.
[00:06:44.630]If you write a traumatic drama
[00:06:47.600]about life survival right now,
[00:06:49.900]it's, you know you'd be lucky if
[00:06:52.490]you know Lifetime channel or somebody wants it
[00:06:55.208]just because we're in a counter-programming thing.
[00:06:59.560]And I would say this for every time that
[00:07:01.920]and there's a lot of bad sectors for working right now
[00:07:06.390]but there are ones security, virtual.
[00:07:09.540]Like I guarantee you
[00:07:11.000]whatever the stock price is on Zoom,
[00:07:12.940]it's through the roof, right.
[00:07:15.090]So there are clients that need your services
[00:07:19.470]and you just have to be sure that
[00:07:21.327]you haven't like moved into an area
[00:07:24.510]that's not a value, right.

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A Conversation with Pat Hazell—Part 1

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