Speaker Series: Mike Henry

Our speaker today was Mike Henry, a writer and character for Family Guy. Mike plays Herbert the Old Man, Cleveland, Cleveland Jr. and Death among other characters. His voice, while not any one of theirs, has aspects of all of them, which made his talk quite amusing. During his time with us, he focused on a few things:

The making of Family Guy
The Family Guy Theory of Comedy
His biography

First, he talked about the making of the show. He told us that when creating an episode, the writers keep in mind that they have 22 minutes to present a three act piece. For that reason, they start their storyboard with one simple idea: being fired up about being an American, day labor, etc. After choosing a main concept, the show unfolds as the writers focus on sandwiching emotion in humor. To make each episode is a three month process that goes something like this:

Whiteboard
Outline
Seth McFarland looks at it
50 page script is written
50 page script is torn apart in meetings
Table readings
Fix jokes that don't work
Record
Fix jokes that still don't work
Animation
Color screening
Rewrite again
Sound mix with 30 piece orchestra
Put the show on air

Second, Mike talked about the Family Guy Theory of Comedy, which he summed up as "make Seth laugh." He pointed out that most shows focus on getting the whole audience to laugh. If a joke won't appeal to almost the entire audience, it's out. At Family Guy, they don't agree with that idea. Mike pointed out that if everyone is laughing at every joke, the jokes are probably too broad to be memorable. Instead, the writers at Family Guy believe in what they call 10%ers: jokes that make 10% of the audience laugh really hard. In short, if it's funny it should be in the show. One thing that I found particularly interesting is what 10 out of the 14 writers do voices on the show. That way, the show remains pure -- comedy is heard the way that the writers intended, as there is no middleman.

Lastly, Mike talked about his history and how he met Seth McFarland. Mike Henry originally started in Advertising on the account side. He worked at Martin and found himself uninspired to the point where he spent his time making prank calls to his boss and making fun of clients. he moved to Hollywood, took classes and did standup for threee years before discovering that he needed a reel to get anywhere. And so, he moved back to Richmond where he did radio vices, produced and worked with some small agencies. After building a reel that way, Mike moved to New York. At that point, his brother was a student at RISD, and kept asking Mike to be in his film projects. His brother also happened to be a friend of Seth McFarland's. The three of them became friends, Seth created Family Guy, and Mike has had a job ever since.

Mike's final advice to us was that side projects can keep you alive creatively. He taked about taking time off from Family Guy to get some perspective and do other things, working on his own films in his free time, and always envisioning new things rather than just relying on Family Guy to fulfill him creatively.