Howlin' with the Coyotes: A History
One of the most fun, exciting and rewarding aspects of my creative life has been my involvement with Coyote Radio Theater. CRT is an utterly unique Prescott, Arizona radio comedy troupe which performs mostly original material. It is the brainchild and labor of love of my good friend Andrew Johnson-Schmit, a mere part of his master plan to create a community radio station (and a radio community) in Prescott. Andrew's vision, dedication and uncanny ability to energize people is nothing short of phenomenal.
I became involved in Coyote in October of 1999, when the project was in its infancy. (I still call myself a founding member, though I was not there at the very beginning. I hope my secret is never revealed.) By a chance meeting, I ran into Andrew and his wife Angie (also a vital cog in the Coyote machine.) We'd been good friends in Chicago, and they had actually lived with me for a time in Prescott, but at that point we hadn't spoken in over a year. I won't go into the reasons why, except to say it had everything to do with my psychotic ex-girlfriend.
I was delighted to be reunited. That was a very strange period in my life. I was living by myself in a tiny studio apartment, walking to work at a blueprint shop, freshly released from a 10-year relationship of staggering dysfunction. I felt like a man on parole, unsure of what to do with this strange new thing called freedom. I had little human contact outside of work and a shaky "post" friendship with my ex, so it was wonderful to talk to stimulating people I genuinely liked.
We caught up over coffee. Andrew talked about Coyote, his latest and greatest creation, and invited me to come check it out. He was writing all the material at that point, and sort of wondered aloud if I'd be interested in contributing as well. Andrew had read some of my writing, though at that point it was all in-your-face sexual horror stuff so I'm not sure why he thought I had potential as a comedy writer.
I'll never forget the first rehearsal I attended in their smoky cabin up in Prescott's Ponderosa forest. I had thought I was just going to be a writer, but Andrew handed me a script titled "Kyla Jackson: Temp Spy" and told me that I would be playing the part of "The Lash." Panic-stricken, I affected a voice somewhere between Peter Lorre and Boris Badenov. In that moment of terror, I became a permanent Coyote voice actor and invented my signature character. I picture The Lash in my mind as a tiny man in black cape and tights, with a disquietingly large codpiece. Broo-ha-ha-ha-ha.
Desperate to impress, I went home that night and started work on the first Coyote sketch I would write myself. "Night of the Squirrel" was an apocalyptic horror story about rodents bent on world domination, only to be foiled by the hypnotic power of the Don Knotts episode of "Biography." The sketch turned out way better than I could have hoped, still ranks as one of my favorite pieces, and from then on I was "made." Andrew and I wrote the material more or less 50/50 from there on.
We had our first public performance at the late, great Prescott bookstore Satisfied Mind. The audience was small but enthusiastic, and I'm sure had no idea they were witnessing history in the making.
From there it just grew and grew and grew (minus the occasional misstep like the show in the health food deli where the performers outnumbered the audience.)
In November 2000, Coyote had its first annual Day of the Dead Dinner Show, an event which has gone on to become a community institution.
After that, fearing the dreaded label of "respectability," we did a few uncensored shows, allowing us to get all those pent-up bestiality and vibrator jokes out of our system.
For a while, we were even actually on the radio, with a live monthly broadcast of all-new material. A whole thirty days to conceive, write, rehearse and revise an hour of comedy? Oh, the luxury of time! No. Actually, it was quite, quite draining. The show lasted about six months, but was an amazing experience all around.
At some point during the broadcasts, Andrew and I began to automatically "swap" first drafts for the other person to revise. Up to that point, we'd only truly collaborated on one piece, the dueling bi-partisan psychic classic "The Future's Not What it Used to Be." I'm not sure why it took us so long to figure this out, but we finally realized how much each of us could improve the writing of the other.
The partnership has been, for me, very rewarding. Andrew and I have different styles, methods and sensibilities when it comes to writing comedy, but we "mesh" remarkably well. Much of this comes from the fact that we know, trust and respect each other immensely. Equally important, neither of us is afraid to tell the other when something just does not work.
Writing for radio (entirely for the ear) presents some unique challenges. Stephen King, in the introduction to his short story collection "Everything's Eventual," spoke of his own failure to write a radio play and went so far as to call radio scriptwriting a "lost art."
Amateur.
Andrew and I, rather than imitating old-time radio, have instead set out to create something entirely new. That's not to say we completely ignore the past. I haven't listened to very much OTR, but Andrew has. He takes what he needs, cribbing from the masters. I, in turn, crib from him. Then he cribs back from me, and somewhere in there a new form is created. You might call us Raiders of the Lost Art.
(Pause for laughter.)
Seriously, the first (and hardest) rule we learned was that nothing makes a script feel dead like excessive wordiness. Writers love words, that's why we write, and so it's often difficult to pare back the language to its barest essence. Rule #2: narration is a crutch. Not that "voice-overs" are forbidden, but you should always strive to make it feel organic. Above and beyond the other two rules is this: make it funny. And the difference between funny and flat is often just a word or two.
Of course, the collaboration does not end with the two of us. You don't really "hear" a piece until the actors read it. Lines which made you laugh to yourself as you typed them sometimes fall flat when read out loud. Sometimes you get lucky and it works the other way, too. A line you struggled with suddenly comes alive from the actor's reading. In any case, there's always at least one more round of rewrites after the first rehearsal.
I should stop to praise the actors; we've been blessed with some very talented vocal performers. Angie, in addition to her role as Coyote Quality Control, is also an effective and versatile actress. Pam Martin has a great range, which we've exploited mercilessly, and is also a pretty decent writer herself. Greg Fine adds a fine gloss of professionalism, plus a willingness to go into whatever weird gonzo territory we can come up with. (I especially like writing female parts for him to play, as well as gay monkeys.) Then there's me. As an actor, I make a pretty decent scriptwriter. Of course, I do have the advantage of writing myself parts tailored to my limited range.
Then, after the rehearsals (it never feels like we've rehearsed enough) comes the ultimate: in front of a live audience, with sound effects and music. When it all comes together, there's nothing like it.
Right now we're gearing up to write material for the 7th Annual (7? Good grief!) Day of the Dead Show. Andrew and I are still in the exhilarating "brainstorm" mode where all things are possible. This will soon be replaced by the not-as-exhilarating "practical considerations" stage. ("What do you mean nobody in the cast can do a convincing Samuel Jackson impression?") Then the real work begins.
Here are a few of my favorite Coyote scripts (in no particular order:)
"Dead Man Laughing" First performed at the 4th Annual DotD Show. A comedy-western-horror story set in old Crest Top, AZ. (Crest Top, an anagram for Prescott, has become to Coyote what Springfield is to "The Simpsons.") Our only award-winning script to date.
"Kyla Jackson: Temp Spy" Andrew's delightfully non-linear spy spoof series, in which I get the great honor of playing the happily evil villain, The Lash.
"Frederick Undertakes Censorship for the King" My first uncensored piece (check the acronym in the title) about the definition of obscenity in the small, war- and radio-obsessed kingdom of Nuthertucker. Contains Coyote's only instance (so far) of sexual relations with a horse.
"Bad Day to Be Jesus." If Andrew is the Paul in our Lennon/McCartney partnership, this is his "Helter Skelter." "Anybody who does not want to be crucified today, raise your hand." That's it, he's going to hell. (PS- Just because Andrew is dressed in white and barefoot in the cover of our "Montezuma Road" album does NOT mean he's dead.)
"Se7en Deadly Castaways." A mash-up of "Gilligan's Island" and that David Fincher serial killer movie, which fit together with surprising ease.
"Mystery at the Circus Schmircus." Our first long-form script, complete with a well-populated sideshow tent, a courtroom scene featuring a rhyming clown, and a commercial for "Tootie Fruits," the candy which makes your burps taste fruity.
"Video Killed the Rodeo Star." A rare case of "too many cooks in the kitchen" actually turning out a decent script. Four writers worked on the first draft (one of whom was fired soon after,) then Andrew & I whittled it down to a workable size. Imagine our dismay when we brought it into rehearsal only to learn there was a serious lack of female voice parts. Another draft with several cowboys becoming cowgirls, and we had a top-notch Crest Top episode.
"Night of the Squirrel." I still have a soft spot for this one. Milton Squirrel later went on to hawk Zippity Pea-Bu, the caffeinated peanut butter. "It's pea-nutty-riffic!"
"Porn in the USA." My favorite unperformed sketch. In the wake of 9/11, the adult entertainment industry does their patriotic duty. Oddly, the female cast members balked at playing porn stars.
