Mark Katz - Al Gore Is So Boring

 

I was packing furiously to catch an early morning Metroliner to Washington D.C. Watching with one eye the political pundit panel on The Today show when I heard it. “Al Gore is so boring. His Secret Service codename is Al Gore.” [audience laughter] I jumped for a pen and paper to write down every syllable of this killer line before I forgot it because I was on my way to Washington D.C., to the White House to write a funny speech for Vice-President, Al Gore.

 

This was March of 1993, and I was now on my fifth consecutive year of career crisis. My career took a wrong turn right out of the gate. Right out of college, I joined the Dukakis campaign. [audience laughter] But in some ways, it was the best job I ever had because I was 22 years old and I knew what I wanted more than anything else in the world. I wanted to write jokes for a Democratic President of the United States. It's a weird dream, but it was mine and America's a great country. [audience laughter]

 

And before the campaign was over, I actually attained-- I became the go to guy on the campaign to write the jokes. And that's how I became-- I earned my moniker, the guy who made Mike Dukakis so funny. [audience laughter] In fact, to this day, when the Dukakis Campaign is dismissed as a joke, [audience laughter and applause] I get all tingly. But I never did get to write jokes for President Mike Dukakis. And after the campaign, I went on to another line of work that didn't require anyone to get 270 electoral votes. I went into advertising. 

 

And as it turned out, I had a real talent for advertising. More specifically, I had a talent for getting jobs in agencies just about to lose their biggest account. [audience laughter] So, in four years, I went through four jobs. And I was in between jobs in 1992 when something really weird happened. A Democrat got elected President of the United States, you may remember Bill Clinton. And I called my friends from Dukakis Campaign, now honchos in the White House, and I started pitching myself as the guy who should be writing President Clinton's jokes for his annual series of humor speeches to the White House correspondence dinner and they thought that was pretty audacious for an unemployed copywriter who only had Mike Dukakis to his credit.

 

So, he struck up a bargain. He said, listen, “Al Gore has a speech coming up to the Gridiron Club. Why don't you work with him and if that works out, we'll talk about moving up the constitutional organizational chart.” So, as I'm sitting on this Metroliner to Washington D.C., the stakes could not have been higher. And I am staring at this joke, like, it's a code that needs to be cracked. In these 16 syllables is this E=MC2 of a joke that I needed to understand on a subatomic level so I could unleash its power on behalf and make a speech as funny as that one joke. 

 

So, for those next three hours, that train was like a mobile humor lab where I am studying this joke. And it was around Wilmington, Delaware, where I had a breakthrough. I realized jokes with the word “Al Gore” in them were funnier. [audience laughter] There's just something intrinsically funny about the name Al Gore. Then I hypothesized that if Al Gore said the name Al Gore, it would be exponentially funnier. [audience laughter] And from there, I extrapolated that if Al Gore said the joke, “Al Gore is so boring, his Secret Service codename is Al Gore.” Al Gore would be saying the name Al Gore not once, but twice. And my head began to spin at the very possibilities of it.

 

So, by the time this train pulled into Union Station, I had an idea for this speech, and I'm very excited and I get out of the train, I jump into a cab, and I say the most aggrandizing things you can ever hear yourself say to a cab driver, “To the White House.” [audience laughter] And I dropped off at the West Wing Gate, and I walk in and I announce myself, and I'm escorted to the Vice President's office. And there I meet Lorraine, another Dukaki-done good. And she sits down and talk about the speech. And I tell her about this idea I have for a speech, “Al Gore should tell his favorite Al Gore jokes.” And she says, “Like what? Like what?” Like, “Al Gore is so boring, his Secret Service codename is Al Gore.” Lorraine falls off her chair with laughter. I couldn't imagine she hadn't heard the joke, it was on The Today show. So many people come running into the office, seven or eight people. She repeats the joke more loud, raucous laughter. And just as fast as that, I was the owner of that joke. I wrote that joke, and I didn't have the moment. There wasn't a moment to say, “Ah, I didn't write that joke. I just told you the joke.” And everyone dispersed. And just as quick as that, I was the genius who wrote that joke.

 

Now I'm sent off to an office to write the speech that has to go along with this joke. And for the next 72 hours, I'm holed up in a room thinking about the speech that would be kind of the proper setting for this crown jewel of a joke. And it's a whole speech. It's not just one joke. There's many premises. But it took its cue from the joke because the speech was kind of predicated and executed and in a kind of a third person way where Al Gore would go fearlessly at the idea of him being stiff and boring.

 

So on Friday morning, I'm escorted by Lorraine to the West Wing to meet with the Vice President. He's standing outside his office waiting for me. He says, “Welcome to the square office of the Vice President.” [audience laughter] It was kind of a prepared joke, but I appreciate it just the same and we walk in, and on his wall, I see the picture-- a famous picture of the earth as big blue marble. And I noticed it because my freshman year roommate had the same picture up and immediately had a flashback. And he says, “You like that photograph? I took it myself.” [audience laughter] You know, just one of the prepared jokes. But look, I was impressed with the guy because of the two of us, him, the second ranking constitutional officer in the United States and me, an itinerant wise ass, of the two of us, he was the one who was hoofing it to show me how funny he was. [audience laughter] That's when I knew I liked Al Gore.

 

So, he says-- so we sit down for this meeting. He says, “Do you have any ideas for an opening bit?” And I was actually taken aback because bit is kind of comedy parlance. And I said, just-- I shot back, I just said “A joke. I wanted to see if I could make them laugh.” I said, “Yeah, we're going to put you in a hand truck and wheel you out to the podium.” He says, “I love it.” [audience laughter] Now I'm struggling to catch up to him because I just said it as a joke to see if I can make him his laugh. He actually beat me to the actual idea and I'm struggling to catch up. I'm like, “Oh, yes, wait a second, let's actually put Al Gore in a hand truck and roll him out to the podium,” and “Yes. This is brilliant. Good God, I am a genius.” So now we sit down to go over the speech and I explain the premise of speech and we get to the section where he tells his favorite Al Gore jokes. And the beauty of it is, according to the premise, he's just repeating jokes. He doesn't need to know if they were original or not. They're just jokes that are his favorite jokes. The bit begins with, “By now I've heard them all. Al Gore is so stiff that racks buy their suits off of him. Thank you.” [audience laughter] 

 

Al Gore is an inspiration to the millions of Americans who suffer from Dutch Elms disease. [audience laughter] And now I'm holding my breath because I know what joke is coming next. And he reads it, “Al Gore is so boring--" He can't get through the joke. He starts vibrating with laughter. So, he's laughing so hard. And I'm struggling to make sense of this because I was 9-10 sure he was going to say, “Yeah. You know, people have been telling me this joke all week, coming up to me because they saw it on The Today show.” This guy had crisscrossed the country twice since that joke was on The Today Show, and no one had brought it to his attention. And I'm trying to-- struggling, struggling to figure out, did I-- “Was it really on The Today Show? Did I just imagine hearing it on The Today Show? And if I did, isn't that the same thing as writing?” [audience laughter] 

 

So we go through-- so this is the fevered pit monologue that's going on through my head. And he continues reading through the speech and he gets to the end of it, and we read through it one more time. And he goes through it and picks out his favorite joke. You'll never guess which. Lorraine says, “That's a great joke, isn't it?” He says, “Yes.” He's looking through the speech. He says, “These are all jokes you wrote?” Well, I'd gotten this far into the week without sinking to an explicitly stated lie. I just let this assumption go uncorrected day after day after day. And was bird bite, I wished it was-- I never intended to steal this joke, but I just never could find the moment, the right moment, to give back the credit. I didn't know how to do it. I was stuck with this joke, and it was weighing heavily on me. But now the Vice President had given me the perfect opportunity to come clean, except Lorraine was standing right there, and I would have had revealed myself to her as a weasel. That's when I heard myself say this, “Mr. Vice President, I'm just the ghostwriter. As far as I'm concerned, you wrote these jokes.” [audience laughter and applause]

 

Now, I am not proud of what I said, [audience laughter] but even as those words left my lips, their brilliance stunned me. [audience laughter] Deploying false humility to let a falsehood stand was at least as brilliant as the joke I was in the process of stealing. And just as a political maneuver was worthy of my current surroundings, the West Wing of the White House. “Good answer,” Al Gore said. Al Gore did not know the half of it. The next night, Al Gore and I put on our white tie and tails and go to The Gridiron Club. Now, I must explain to you what this is, 300 of the most important people you can fit into a room in Washington. Supreme Court justices, the entire cabinet, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I mean, just to give you a sense of this room, Congressmen are checking coats at The Gridiron Club, and Al Gore gets up to give his speech and from the very moment he was rolled out on a hand truck and two guys wearing a UPS uniform and signed for by The Gridiron Club, set off the speech with loud, uproarious laughter that did not abate for the next 20 minutes. And I will spare you the many glorious details of one of the great nights of my life, except to say this. On the next day, the front page of the Washington Post Style Section had this headline in big, bold typed “Al Gore bore, no more.” [audience laughter and applause]

 

You're very kind. If there was any disappointment at all to the speech was the fact that right after the speech, the Vice President had to leave early, hop on Air Force Two to go to a hemispheric summit. Global warming, if I had to guess. [audience laughter] So, we never got that moment after the speech to kind of high five and share and join this celebration of our-- this joint accomplishment of ours. So, I go back to New York the next day, enjoying my trip on the Amtrak train, taking pleasure in the speech that I'd written on the way down. And I get a phone call from Lorraine a few days later, “He's back from his trip. He's going to be up in New York, and he'd asked to see me. He's going to be speaking. He asked if I would come to the speech.” So, I take time out of my schedule as an unemployed copywriter [audience laughter] to put on a suit and tie and go to the Essex House. And I tell him my name at the door, and I'm escorted to a VIP room where there are 500 people going to hear him speak. But there's a dozen or so people who have been invited to meet with him before he does. And in this room are there the local dignitaries and celebrities. In fact, by the bar, I see Richard Dreyfuss.

 

I'm actually very excited to see him because I had just seen the movie What About Bob? Which is hysterical, a revelation of humor, and I was excited to talk to him about it. So, I-- You know, we're all peers here in the VIP room, so I sidle up to the bar and introduce myself and start asking about What About Bob? Well, I should have taken the cue. He was wearing his very serious, bookish, thick glasses that says, “I'm a serious person here to talk to the Vice President about serious things.” He had no time for me, so I back away. Minute later, the Vice President walks into the room, and I see him coming. He's coming in my direction, but I assume he wants to talk to Chuck Schumer over here or Charles Rangel over here, but no, he's coming right at me, and I only have time-- I have a glass of red wine in my right hand, and I switch it to my left hand so I can give him a good, “This is a long overdue celebration.” I want to give him a good handshake. I underestimated Al Gore's enthusiasm to see me because he reaches down, picks me up, gives me a flying bear hug. “Hey, hey.” My legs go flying out like I'm a rag doll. The wine in my hand spills all over the place. He pays it, no, never mind. In fact, it was right then and there that a Secret Service guy dove in and took the stain. [audience laughter] that joke I did write. [audience laughter] 

 

So, now we are going over this speech like it happened five minutes ago. He's telling me what it was like from the front of the room. I'm telling you how loud the last were in the back of the room. We're going through it line by line. “That was a joke. That joke was a nine. That joke was a ten.” We're going through it line by line. Finally, we get to the end of the speech and we're done congratulating ourselves. And he says a quick hello to the other people in the VIP room and as we're all filing out to go hear the speech that he's there to give and the 500 people are waiting patiently to hear, Richard Dreyfuss turns to me and says, “Tell me who you are again.” [audience laughter] I told him my name, but not what I was thinking. What I was thinking was, I'm the guy who wrote the speech that Al Gore knocked out of the park. I'm the guy who's going to be writing humor speeches for the President of the United States of America for the next four to eight years. Who am I? Who am I? I'll tell you who I am. I'm the guy who wrote the joke. “Al Gore is so boring, his Secret Service codename is Al Gore.” Thank you very.