The World Would Be Better With Charlie Kaufman's 'Weirder Al' Yankovic Sketch

I had to get to the bottom of this Charlie Kaufman "Weirder Al" Yankovic comedy sketch. I had to know the details. It took me, literally, years.

Okay, let's back up.

Quite a few years ago now I spent months working on an oral history of The Dana Carvey Show for GQ. The sketch comedy show would premiere in ABC prime time in 1996 and only last seven episodes, but would feature some of the biggest names in comedy in the coming years like Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, Robert Smigel, Robert Carlock and ... yes, Louis C.K. Also of note was a writer on the show named Charlie Kaufman. In the oral history, Steve Carell said of Kaufman, "Who knew that, way back then, the quiet guy at the end of the hall was going to become the mad genius of cinema?”

Oral histories are extremely difficult to put together. Especially when it's for something considered a failure, even though failures that feature very successful people always make the best oral histories. I remember sending out my initial wave of interview requests to the individual publicists and the response was ... tepid. "Who else is participating?," was the most common response. "Will this be in the magazine?," was the second most common response. At the time the answers were, "no one yet, but I literally just sent out the emails today," and, "No, but it allows it to be a bigger piece and more people will read it on the internet." As you might expect, this did not win over many hearts and minds.

The first to agree was Robert Smigel, who I had just spoken to for another project and this whole idea kind of came out of some things he had said during that interview. The second to agree, no questions asked, was Stephen Colbert – who, then, was still hosting The Colbert Report on Comedy Central. So, yes, once I could respond, "Yes, I've already spoken to Robert Smigel and Stephen Colbert," all of a sudden I got a lot more "yes" answers. (But not Louis C.K., he still refused.) And there was still nothing I could do about the whole, "will it be in the magazine?," aspect.

I found myself in a bit of a time crunch. I was starting a staff position at Huffington Post in early August and the terms of my employment could not have me working on anything else once I started. I had already been working on this piece for about two months and the plan was to finish this up in late July, go on vacation to the Bahamas to decompress, then come back and start my new job. What actually happened was I worked through that entire "vacation." At least I had a nice view from the room. The last interview I did for the piece, Dana Carvey, was done from a Bahamas hotel room. On the very last day of the trip I turned in 14,000 words to my editor, Sean Fennessey. Then I flew back to New York.

Charlie Kaufman also wouldn't talk to me. Unlike Louis C.K., I never even got a reason why. But, then again, I didn't really expect an explanation from the director of Synecdoche, New York. In no world did I imagine Charlie Kaufman saying, "Oh yes, I will spend a part of my day talking about The Dana Carvery Show with this stranger."

Though, what's interesting about when someone won't agree to be interviewed for a piece like this, that means you just ask everyone else about that person. If Kaufman had agreed to be interviewed, I would have never learned about "Weirder Al" Yankovic.

I brought up Kaufman when I was interviewing 30 Rock showrunner Robert Carlock and he shared this story about a Kaufman sketch that was cut,

"The one sketch of his I really enjoyed was Weird Al Yankovic and his brother, Weirder Al Yankovic—who took Weird Al Yankovic’s songs and parodied them so they would turn back into the original song. And then Weirdest Al Yankovic would take those songs and make gibberish out of them. The usual meta nonsense."

How does this not exist? After hearing this, I never stopped thinking about "Weirder Al" Yankovic who turns Weird Al songs back into the original songs.

A few years later, in a very meta moment of my own, I brought "Weirder Al" up in an interview with Weird Al. Weird Al said,

"I had read about that. I would die to see if that ever made it to dress rehearsal. I would have loved to have seen a tape of that. I'm very honored that Charlie wrote that. Charlie Kaufman should just write all television."

A couple years after that I finally got to ask Charlie Kaufman about "Weirder Al"...