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LAUGHTER ON THE 23rd FLOOR
by Neil Simon ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Neil Simon is generally regarded as the king of broadway comedy. He turned 82 this year (2010) and has written thirty plays, twenty screenplays, and five musicals. He was one of the original writers for the classic TV variety show Your Show of Shows and created The Phil Silvers Show.. Despite his tremndous succcess and the fact that plays like The Odd Couple have become classics, he is not held in the same high regard as playwrights like Eugene O'Neil or Clifford Odetts. As Mel Brooks has said "He doesn't have his credentials. And he will not be allowed into Serious Land. That's because comedy writing is still regarded as beneath 'serious literature.' Comedies rarely win best picture awards at the Oscars and comedic scripts and performances are likewise rarely nominated. There are two links below. The first is to an online copy of the script for Laughter on the 23rd Floor, which is a somewhat biographical play about Simon's early years as a writer for Your Show of Shows. It's worth reading not only because it illustrates Simon's skill as a comedy writer, but it also shows the world of comedy writing, especially as it exists for television. The characters in the play are very similar to the writers Simon worked with on Your Show of Shows: Larry Gelbart, Mel Tolkin, Michael Stewart, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Selma Diamond, and Woody Allen, all of whom went on to have successful careers writing somedy. The second link is to an article about Neil Simon from The New Yorker magazine by John Lahr titled Master of Revels. The article discusses Simon's style of comedy ("He doesn't write jokes or particularly like telling them...His laughs are character laughs: they emerge from the distilled rality of personality...Simon's comedy lies as much in structure as in dialogue...hilarity is teased out of the ordinary...'what is funny to me: saying something that's instantly identifiable to everybody.'" The article also talks about the structure of Simon's works and their underlying themes.
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