That's Funny

"Teddy loves Teddy," Nigel Horatio said in his Oxford english. Harry understood the subtext; Teddy Slutsky was still a putz.

A Slutsky montage flashed through his head:

Teddy as Harry's football coach, pacing the sidelines doing his Bear Bryant schtick on eleven year olds with delicatessen love-handles.

Teddy, the stand-up vulgarian on stage at McChuckles keeling over in hysterics at his own (pilfered) borscht belt jokes.

Teddy as the fu manchued disco king of Coco's boogying to the beat in his Versace shirt unbuttoned down to his navel, two-tone platform shoes and white polyester crotch-riders advertising his mighty manhood.

O how Teddy loved Teddy!

And now Harry and Teddy's paths had crossed again. Nigel Horatio, Harry's new agent, Teddy Slutsky's former agent, was the connection. It's a small world after all. It's a small, small world.

Harry nodded in agreement.

"I can't wait to meet with Teddy next week after the taping. Hope he remembers our old football days. We went undefeated one year."

"No doubt. I'm hoping he'll ask you to pitch some episode ideas for his new show, I.P. Pudel, Pet Shrink."

No worries, thought Harry. If Teddy didn't pan out, then something else would. He was not alone anymore, Harry had an agent, a real agent from a respected mid-size agency, in a glitzy building on Beverly Drive, with a roster of working clients, including Mel Brooks' cousin, Murray Lipschitz, creator of the hit series, The Harlem Zaydie. With the right agent, you were made. Too bad for the other agents who passed on Harry.

Like Mike Winikoff's agent, Shel Pollack who was, "Looking for edgier stuff now. Writing that makes them wince."

Like what, Shel Pollack? Like your clients working on comedic gems such as The Jensen Twins and House Fulla Bakers, penning punchy punchlines like, "Daddy did it!" and "Wud' you say, fat boy?" God bless the laugh track, Shel Pollack, arbiter of edgy writing. And even if Shel Pollack, agent extraordinaire, already had the home in Beverly Hills, the season tickets to the Lakers, the Porsche Douche Bag 911, he would inevitably rue the day he tossed Harry Starr's Feldman spec script in the recycle bin of shredded dreams.

"I know comedy when I see it," Nigel told Harry while flipping through the pages of the Feldman spec script. He randomly stopped at one page, "Take this Gary - Herb bathtub bit: Ha-lar-i-ous! Brilliant!"

Thus spoketh the agent, Nigel Horatio neé Nachum Horowitz, the British born son of Lithuanian herring merchants who escaped an impending pogrom by stowing way in a giant vat of smoked kippers bound for London. Nigel nee Nachum, the one-semester Oxford thesp - (kicked out for plagiarizing Stanilslavsky on a term paper entitled, Method Acting for Mimes) - was in the mood to perform...Nigel neé Nachum was always in the mood to perform. The ersatz Englishman rose from his Herman Miller chair, cleared his throat and in his impeccable American accent, read from the script:

" 'What about last week when your mummy gave you a sponge-bath?

   Low blow. You know I had tendinitis in my shoulder.
   I was practically disabled.

   But did she actually have to be in the tub with you?'"

Nigel neé Nachum screeched with laughter and applauded his crowd-pleasing
performance. Of course Harry was an easy audience to please. It was the first time that the fledgling sitcom writer heard his bon mots performed and he was smitten. Not just with Nigel, but with the whole package, with his own brilliance, with the chase, with the world. After eight long gut-wrenching weeks posturing as a scriptwriter in every Starbucks in Santa Monica, wondering, worrying, hoping, and praying for success, there was finally a pay-off. Recognition at last. Portrait of the artist as a young man, a kindred spirit with James Joyce.

And Nigel proclaimed, "That's funny!"

And Harry believed.

"Brilliant, positively brilliant, Harry. When I read your script, I said to myself that I wasn't going to let another wonderful new writer slip through my fingers." Nigel reached into his desk drawer, pulled out a script and dropped it on his desk.

"I passed on this chap when he sent me his spec script and I vowed that I would never let it happen again."

Harry opened the script and read the cover page.

                                                       SUDS WISER

                                 "THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEER"

                                                                 by

                                                         Mike Winikoff

"Harry Starr, you are my next Mike Winikoff."