Who Wrote It?
by: Adam Yuster
A Recurring Column Interviewing Screenwriters
We all have a favorite movie. Star Wars. Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Godfather. Just to name a few. You probably know the names of the actors in your favorite movie by heart. If you’re a true film fanatic, maybe you even know the director. But there’s one name that probably skipped your mind, and that’s the name of the unsung hero of the movie in question: the writer.
Article 1:
Interview with Steve Zacharias, Emmy-Award-Winning Writer of All in the Family and Revenge of the Nerds
This week on Who Wrote It?, I decided to interview my mentor, Steve Zacharias. Steve and I met back in 2012 due to a mutual affiliation with The Music Theatre Company in my hometown of Highland Park, IL, and we have been close ever since. Among other credits, Steve wrote the 1984 comedy classic Revenge of the Nerds and episodes of the acclaimed 1971-1979 TV show All in the Family. Below, we discuss the ins-and-outs of writing comedy, the true story behind Revenge of the Nerds, and a “very Hollywood experience” Steve once had involving cocaine at a Halloween party. Yes, you did read that right.
Q and A
Q: First off, give us a little background about yourself. Who are you?
A: My name is Steve Zacharias. I was a comedy writer in Hollywood for 40 years until I got old and they threw me out. Then I moved back to Chicago, and now I’m a teacher. I teach at DePaul University, Columbia College, and Second City, and I love it! I love the kids. I just have a ball with them.
Q: How did you decide to go into the TV and film industry?
A: I went to University of Wisconsin and I was in a fraternity that was exactly like the one in Animal House—I mean, exactly the same. I was a total goof-off. I would yell out funny things at our events and stuff like that. Eventually, one of the guys from the fraternity came up to me and said, “Steve, would you write our play?” I didn’t even know what he was talking about, but I said, “Yeah, I’ll write it.” Turns out he was talking about this play festival all the fraternities and sororities participated in every year. So I wrote ours. That was my junior year. It was so exciting, so much fun. After I graduated, I discovered the guys who had written the play during my sophomore year were now working for Garry Marshall on the Odd Couple TV show. I went out to visit one of my friends there and he had me write some spec scripts. He liked them, so he showed them to Garry. Garry liked them, and Garry Marshall became my manager within three months.
Q: Wow. Three months? That’s amazing.
A: Yeah. Back then, The Partridge Family was what I wanted to write. That was my style, light and whimsical and ridiculous. I got to write an episode of The Bobby Sherman Show because I had some friends who were working on that, and I didn’t know it, but the executive producer for The Bobby Sherman Show was also the executive producer for Partridge Family. He liked my script the best, so he asked me to write for Partridge Family. I wrote five episodes, and then I was made a story editor on Partridge Family. I was 23 years old!
Q: Who are some of your comedy-writing inspirations?
A: Woody Allen was always my idol. Mel Brooks, too. It was always those two. And then I saw the film Putney Swope in 1969 and Robert Downer, Sr. was the director. It blew my mind. I mean, that was exactly the style I liked. I actually tracked him down and befriended him—
Q: Robert Downey, Sr.?
A: Yeah, we used to go to the racetrack every day at 12 ‘o’ clock. He’s the greatest, just a great guy. And then I had—well, Garry Marshall was an idol, too. And Norman Lear, who developed All in the Family, which I also wrote for. I won an Emmy for All in the Family, again when I was 23 years old, for “Edith’s Problem”, the episode about menopause. That was a great episode.
A: What was the story behind that?
Q: I had written an outline for this episode about menopause, but Norman didn’t want me to write the script. I asked him why not, and he said, “What do you know about menopause?” I said, “My mother’s going through menopause.” He said, “No, we’re going to get someone the appropriate age to write this.” [Fellow TV writer] Burt Styler was hired, he wrote a terrible script. Then Don Nichol, the story editor for All in the Family and one of the greatest writers of all time, he wrote it. It was a fabulous script. I couldn’t complain. I never could’ve written what he wrote. Then when we won the Emmy, I was home because if you only write the story for an episode and not a full script, then you only get a certificate, not the actual trophy. So I was at home in my boxer underwear winning an Emmy. [Laughs]
Q: We’ve spoken a lot so far about your TV work. Let’s move on to movies for a second. How did you come up with Revenge of the Nerds?
A: Revenge of the Nerds was an article in LA West magazine that they wanted to make into a movie.
Q: Did you write the article?
A: No, someone else wrote it. It was actually called “Revenge of the Nerds”. It was about a bunch of kids who were screwing around with computers in North Ridge. It just hit me perfectly. I knew if I wrote a script based on it, I could do my kind of dark, campy style, and I could show that nerds can be just like normal kids, too. You know, they could do mean things to each other, drink beer, smoke dope, and still be nerds.
Q: Are any of the scenes in your TV shows and movies are based on real life? Do you prefer writing from experience or coming up with new, wacky situations?
A: Well, kind of both, but it does start out with real life. For example, for Revenge of the Nerds, there was a kid back at University of Wisconsin who was my next door neighbor. He didn’t get into any fraternity, so he created his own fraternity. They had awful parties and they’d lose in football 80 to nothing—but they had a blast, and that, along with the article, was the basis of Revenge of the Nerds. It was a real-life story, but embellished. In a lot of my other movies I used real-life stories, too. But yeah, I would also make things up.
Q: Pretty much all of your work thus far has been in comedy. Have you ever had any ideas for dramatic shows or movies?
A: Yeah, but they were dismal. I wrote them, I actually wrote out whole scripts, but they weren’t good. It wasn’t my thing. Every writer’s got to write their strongest thing, ‘cause you’re competing with 10,000 other writers. So you gotta put your best—whatever your best thing is, do it. But there are some people are good at everything. Stanley Kubrick, he could do Clockwork Orange and he could also do Dr. Strangelove. So he’s eclectic. I’m not eclectic. If you’re a comedy guy, should you do a drama? Not necessarily. But if you’re eclectic, then you might do a comedy, you might do a drama, and you’re probably good at both. A lot of the people who are just great filmmakers are good at both. Like Scorsese. Did he do a comedy?
Q: He did The King of Comedy, I think.
A: That was a great movie. That was with Jerry Lewis.
Q: What kinds of things have you experienced as a result of writing movies that you think would never happen to the average person?
A: I’m not gonna name names, but there have been some wild experiences. It’s an utterly ridiculous lifestyle. The TV show Entourage? That’s what it’s like behind the scenes. My favorite moment was when a very famous producer I was friends with had a Halloween party. There were about a hundred people gathered around a door waiting, and all of a sudden the door opens. The producer comes out and everyone cheers. One guy had put a ring of cocaine around the entire swimming pool. Two other guys came up to the producer, held him upside down, and he snorted the whole line! At the end he raised his hands, we all cheered, and he went back into the pool house. I guess you could get that anywhere, but it seemed like a very Hollywood moment.
Q: Have any of those experiences ever inspired movie ideas?
A: Oh, sure! I wrote a script about kids in the mail room at talent agencies. That was based on a real story. There was this guy named Jay Cantor who was working the mail room at William Morris Talent Agency. He was told to go pick up Marlon Brando from the airport. By the time he got back to William Morris, Brando had hired him to be his agent! William Morris was mortified. This kid from the mail room had stolen Marlon Brando! So I thought that would be a good movie.
Q: How do you get yourself in a “writing state of mind”? Do you always write in a certain room or—
A: No, I write everywhere. I write on my iPad. I can write in the garage, I can write at the car wash—but I don’t write until I like an idea. I wait it out until I have an idea that I think can actually be made into a movie.
Q: Have you ever considered dabbling in something other than screenwriting, such as directing, producing, or acting?
A: I did direct and I did produce. But I was a writer who became a producer; they’d only let me produce something if I was writing it. Directing they only let me do once. It was Revenge of the Nerds 4, and I had a ball. That was like a dream come true. And I’m hoping I’m going to direct another project I’m working on, Nude Beach. That would be my life’s dream.
Q: But screenwriting is your mainstay.
A: Yeah, although I have been branching out. I have a couple musicals in the works: Throw Fruit, which is the story of Cortez, and Revenge of the Nerds: The Musical. And novels! I’m also writing novels now.
Q: Do you prefer working alone or with others?
A: I like both. I write well with others. I can lead, I can follow. I mostly lead though. I can lead a group.
Q: How does that work, writing with other people?
A: Well…I had a writing partner, Jeff Buhai, for 17 years. When were working together, we’d meet every morning and I would just grill him until I had all the information I would need in order to write. And then I’d throw him out of the room and I’d write the first draft. Then he’d write the second draft, then I’d write the third draft, and so on. It’s good writing with another person, ‘cause two heads are better than one. But I don’t like writing in teams of three. With two you can argue, but with three you get outvoted. If they want some joke in there and you don’t like that joke, it ends up in there anyways.
Q: Lastly, do you have any advice for young screenwriters out there?
A: Yeah. Don’t ever write what you think someone wants you to write. Always write what you want to write.
