As promised, today is a VERY special edition of Friday Pages: we’re going behind the scenes with The Onion!

This script is brought to you by @mattklinman (and, as you can see below, also David Iscoe and @danielmirk ). Matt also generously shared thoughts and background on the sketch, as well as a description of the process at The Onion News Network.

Without further ado — check out Matt’s write-up below, and watch the wonderful sketch that emerged from his idea! And then shower all parties involved with praise in the comments! (And check out the full sketch at the Friday Scripts link in bio. It’s so good!)

“it went through so many script iterations and ultimately ended up on the IFC TV show as a Today Now! so it’s a lil different from the draft that i was able to dig up which still has it as a newsroom script.

The main change other than the host is the second beat of the ad. I think in this version it was meant to be people ironically making fun of people ironically making fun of eating at applebees, but the final version has this kinda Gen X vs Millennial bent to it which I think is richer. I love the sincere “thank you” to the waitress. In retrospect watching it now it is a really interesting meta element because a lot of The Onion back then was this meshing of the “over it” Gen X sense of humor that founded it and the millenial “do it ironically!” sensibility that was coming up (which is what I was originally making fun of). 

I also wanna point out the rigorous authorship system you see at the top. So i pitched the idea and David Iscoe wrote the original version of the script. It then goes through lots of people and drafts (including me getting it back and doing a re-write at some point) but then the final version you see is credited to DM which is Dan Mirk. But the reason those old ONN videos are so so good is how many amazing people worked on them and how many drafts and alt/punch up rounds they would go through.”

#comedy #theonion #onionnewsnetwork #sketchcomedy #scriptwriting #screenwriting