That’s a clunky headline, but it’s better than “I Shot a Pregnant Hippo Just For Laughs”
It started with a story in the LA Times: LA Zoo officials announced that one of their hippopotamuses was pregnant, but they hadn’t discovered her condition until the mother was well along in her term.
I found the article one morning when I was skimming through the news sites. A big part of a Late Night comedy writer’s job is going through the day’s headlines to find stories to turn into jokes or sketches. As a general rule, Conan’s Monologue writers concentrated on front-page hard news, whereas his Sketch writers tended to scroll further down for more odd news and pop culture stuff.
I showed the story about the pregnant hippo to the head writer Mike Sweeney, and I pitched an idea for a fake commercial about an Early Pregnancy Test For Hippos. Could I make a commercial for a Hippo EPT?
I got the “yes,” and I wrote the script. Then I started calling the necessary departments.
The best thing about writing on Conan’s show was that the writers were responsible for producing their own pieces. I came up with the idea, so I had to get the necessary elements together to make the commercial: In this case it was emails to various departments (Props, Special Effects, Costumes, Casting, Graphics, Music, Sound Effects, etc.)
Sometimes a drawing is the fastest way to convey what you want to film, so I sent out two sketches: The first is what I wanted to show on-camera:
This next one is what I felt we needed offscreen to make it happen:
“Pee rig” for Hippo EPT
And here’s the result. I hope you like it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJv4VyzzRS0
We shot it on the Warner Brothers lot, in full view of visitor trams full of bewildered tourists. Thanks to just some of the many people it took to film that piece of comedy fluff!
Producers - Tracy King, Jason Chillemi
Associate Producer - Jordan Schlanksy (one of his “various duties” was overseeing some aspects of show production)
Art Department - Bobby Lord, Mike Denering
Special Effects - Eric Allard
Cameras - Seth St. Vincent, James Palcziewski
Audio - Jason Muñoz
Graphics Dept. - Eric McGilloway, Angus Lyne, Emily Prill
Props Dept. - Bill Tull, John Rau
Still Camera - Meaghan Sinclair
Costumes - Scott Cronick
Editor - Rob Ashe
Sound FX - Rob Ohlandt
Hand of Zookeeper: Jose Arroyo
Music - Jimmy Vivino
Casting -Ric Enriquez, Vana Dabney
Clips Research - Diane Harmon, Alex Wallachy