Topics of the Town

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Life in Laughter

Continued from Preceding Page in May 1975, Zweibel was sitting, dejected, at the bar waiting for Crystal to finish his spot so they could head home to Long Island. “I just couldn’t make six drunks from Des Moines laugh about the Chassidic orgy I said I’d gone to,” he writes in the book. A young man with longish hair sat next to him and started staring at him and wouldn’t stop. “Fi nally, when I asked him what he wanted, he proceeded to tell me that I was one of the worst comics he’d ever seen. ‘But your material isn’t bad,’ he added. ‘Did you write it?’

The man was Lorne Michaels, scouting talent for the new TV show, Saturday Night Live, that he was putting together. “Lorne was underwhelmed by my performance,” Zweibel said last week. “But he liked what I had to say. I had no idea what I was getting into. How could I know? It was this new show at an ungodly hour. I was just happy I was given a job. But when I start ed to learn about who the other people were, I knew it was something new and different.”

After SNL, Zweibel went on to co-create It’s Garry Shandling’s Show and was a consulting producer on Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. He collaborated with Crystal on 700 Sundays, and they worked together on the upcoming movie Here Today, which co-stars Crystal and Tiffany Haddish. Novels, plays, and additional films are also on his resume.

What is clear is that Zweibel loves to write. Crafting novels and coming up with comedic material are “night and day,” he said. “When you’re collaborating, whether it’s with a team of writers on a TV show or one other person, it’s social. There’s a synergy there. To write a novel — on one hand, it’s torturous. But if you’re inspired, it’s a very fascinating form of writing. Because you can get into the eternal life of your characters. Some things are just meant to be personal. Look at Philip Roth — he couldn’t have collaborated. If you strike a good note, the characters start to take on a life of their own. They inform you how they want to behave. It’s the greatest joy in the world, like you’ve created a world.”

Zweibel feels an affinity with his fellow comics and writers who come from Long Island like Crystal, Jerry Seinfeld, Carol Leifer, and, from a younger generation, Judd Apatow. “It was just something about the cul ture of our parents’ generation,” he said. “The parents moved there from Brooklyn and Queens. It was a new world for them. We were all cut from the same cloth, I guess. We laughed at the same stuff. Funny is just funny.”

—Anne Levin

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TOWN TALK © A forum for the expression of opinions about local and national issues. Question of the Week:

What are your biggest environmental concerns? (Asked Thursday at the Princeton Shopping Center) (Photos by Charles R. Plohn)

“My greatest concern right now would be off-road vehicle destruction, specifically to the Pinelands of New Jersey. It’s become a Wild West of a very brazen group of people. It has, in my own opinion, become an industry. And absolutely no one is doing anything to stop it.” —Albert Horner, Medford Lakes

“My biggest concerns are our oceans and marine life. The threat of rising oceans due to global warming is real, and the ocean is the largest host to the oldest species of life on our planet and truly is in danger because of climate change.” —Susan Conlon, Princeton Junction

“My greatest environmental concerns are probably destruction of forestlands and global warming. I have many, but those are probably my biggest. Right up there with those two would be waste disposal and plastics.” —Chris Kunkel, Hopewell

“My greatest environmental concerns are that we learn to continue growing as a community that prioritizes density and is conscious of the true pressures of a changing climate like storm waters and rising heat. Those threats are truly coming and we need to be planning in advance for them.” —Molly Jones, Princeton

Andrea: “I really cannot be specific because I have five grandchildren, so just the whole climate change issue, and everything to do with the environment. To be honest, President Trump is truly one of my biggest concerns in terms of threats to the environment right now.” Kathryn: “Mine would be the prior inhabitants of the land, which would be the wildlife. When people come in we just push out the wildlife and then have no concern for the habitats, their houses, their food supply, and so forth.” —Andrea Bonnett, East Amwell Township with Kathryn Trenner, Lawrenceville