Frank Santopadre's "comedy rolodex" the secret to his success
By Carla Baranauckas
Even if Isaac Asimov once said, “It pays to be obvious,” Frank Santopadre has found that being subtle delivers his paycheck.
As a writer on “The Joy Behar Show” on CNN’s sister network HLN (formerly Headline News), Santopadre’s job is to add the touches that make the show funnier.
“Joy is certainly funny in her own right,” he is quick to point out. When Santopadre steps in, he said, he “rewrites the segments that the producers write and puts them more in Joy’s voice.” He writes introductions, asides and questions that Behar can use in her interviews. And he comes up with banners, graphics or words for the crawl that runs along the bottom of the TV screen -- for a recent segment on Tiger Woods it said, “Wandering Eye of the Tiger.”
This isn’t your look-straight-into-the-camera-and-tell-jokes kind of humor. “The witticisms have to be buried in the conversation,” Santopadre said. “But the same discipline goes into the design of the joke. You still have to have the hook and the turn and the punch.”
“The Joy Behar Show” takes up four days a week and in his remaining time, Santopadre helps others make themselves funny through a business he has with Jim Pharo, comedywise.com. In that endeavor, he offers his writing and producing services to corporate executives, politicians, advertisers, event planners and entertainers. He has written for roasts, including the one for Meredith Vieira, when she left “The View,” and awards shows, like the ASPCA Awards, for which Chuck Scarborough was the host.
And even though he may not always get to hear the laughs that his humor triggers, Santopadre said he finds the work satisfying. “I love the joy of, pardon the pun, coming up with them.”
Finding his niche was not a quick process for Santopadre, who grew up in Brooklyn. As a college student he thought he would follow in his father’s footsteps and become an illustrator. Then he switched his focus to film studies in an effort to become a screenwriter. But he said he didn’t have the patience for what he called “the long slog” of screenwriting, so he started writing jokes and tried to figure out what to do with them.
He sold jokes to “The National Lampoon” and “Mad Magazine,” among others. Soon he found an agent and a manager. “I would do piecemeal work,” he said. “I’d write funny questions for game shows. But it wasn’t a living.”
He moved to Los Angeles to write for children’s television, like “The Muppets” and Nickelodeon. But he grew concerned that he might be stereotyped as a writer of kids shows and jumped at the chance to return to New York to write for “Caroline’s Comedy Hour.” “That’s where I realized that I’m a joke writer,” Santopadre said.
He wrote gags for Friars Club Roasts and tried screenplays and sitcoms. “I really was all over the place, looking for a niche,” he said.
What he discovered is that the best fit for him is being the last writer on a project, not the first. That way he can punch up a script and tweak the jokes instead of spending a year or more writing it from scratch.
Santopadre, who blogs for vanityfair.com, said he also has some ideas for books and would like to find more places to publish parody and satire. “I worry that we’ll never see a Spy magazine or Lampoon because magazines are dead,” he said.
His advice to aspiring comedy writers is to identify your strengths and “where your real love is.”
“Watch the best of it,” he said. “Be as good as you can at it.”
He also recommended networking as a way to find work and as a means to survive as a writer. “It’s a very isolating, lonely life,” he said.
Breaking in as a writer is extremely difficult. Staying connected with a peer group is a way to find others who may break through and will take you along. “Network like crazy,” he said, “join organizations, take classes take workshops, friend everybody you can and really build your comedy Rolodex.”
And most important, Santopadre said, “don’t forget to give back.” Let others benefit from your experience, he said.