Few screenwriters can concentrate for more than a few hours, let alone sustain a career in Hollywood for over 30 years. But the blockbuster comedy writing team of Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel has been making television and film audiences laugh for decades. Starting with Happy Days, they followed actor-turned-director Ron Howard into feature films like Night Shift, Splash, Gung Ho, Parenthood, and Edtv. In total, Ganz and Mandel have written an astonishing 18 produced feature screenplays, including City Slickers, A League of Their Own, Mr. Saturday Night, Forget Paris, Where the Heart Is, Robots, and Fever Pitch, while also maintaining a “secret career” of un-credited rewrites on studio comedies. Listen in as these Bronx-born, old-school funnymen explain how to suckerpunch viewers with jokes they never see coming, why writing out loud is the best way to find your voice, how to avoid research, and when to build a scene around a housewife with an axe.

Buy Collections Featuring Lowel Ganz & Babaloo Mandel:

Running Time: 88 minutes

DVD Chapters 1. Intro 2. A Thousand Half Hours 3. What Do I Want? 4. Hearing the Audience Crack Open 5. The Exact Geometry of a Joke 6. Specific, Honest, and Emotional 7. Can I Sell You a Vegetable Slicer? 8. It's Always Been a Stone in Our Shoe 9. You Suck, Mandel! 10. Enter With an Axe 11. It's the Punch You Don't See That Knocks You Out 12. John Candy's Point of View 13. A Verbal Cul-De-Sac 14. Quirky American Movies 15. If Three People Say You're Sick, Lie Down 16. He Bought Me Nothing