Brian Dreger has another good question…
You have mentioned that at one point you had a writing partner, Dennis Palumbo. Is there any advantage to having a partner when writing for television (I am assuming that is what the two of you were doing when you were partners)? Do you both need to have the same agent to do that? Do you split the salary of a staff writer, or are you both just single writers who happen to work together on the project at hand? Do you both "audition" for a staff writing position as a team? Do other writers in the room resent that you have a partner? Does it cause a lot of friction or "joke counting" (who had the most jokes survive and make it to air)?
Dennis and I teamed up in 1975 because at that moment, TV comedy writers almost always came in pairs. There were exceptions, though a good many of those who wrote alone had broken into the field as a member of a writing duo and then gone their separate ways. I'm not sure exactly why this was — or if it's that way these days — but in '75, if you thought you could make it as a comedy writer, the prevailing bit of advice was "Find a partner."
Yes, you usually need to have the same agent to do that. Dennis and I were a team when we signed with an agency. After we I split up — amicably, because we wanted to go in different directions — I wrote a few scripts with a lady named Marion Freeman. Marion had been part of a team and she and her partner had split up around the same time. Both teams had the same agents so one of our mutual agents put Marion and Yours Truly together, though we both also worked without the other during that period.
Later, I teamed up (briefly) with another female writer for one project and we did not have the same agent. Her agent and my agent got together on the phone and agreed that my guy would represent the team on this project and her guy would represent the team on the next one if there was a next one. They would split all commissions. That writer and I did not get along, the project went nowhere and (of course) there was no next one. But that kind of situation is very rare. Usually, one agency represents a team.
Sometimes, a team splits one writer fee. Sometimes, you negotiate for a higher fee because you're a team and you split that. You usually "audition" and are hired as a team but there have been times when some producer has met Writer A independently of Writer B and he wants to put them together as a team so he can pay them one writer fee instead of two. The Writers Guild has usually stopped this practice if they know about it.
I don't think other writers resent working with a team. I don't think it leads to any more joke-counting than if the room is full of unpaired writers.
Getting back to your first question: I think it sometimes is an advantage to write with a partner, especially when you're new. You have someone on your side to tell you that one of your big ideas really sucks before the producer or story editor would have to tell you. When you're drawing a blank, your partner may have an idea. In the case of the team of Evanier and Palumbo, Dennis was much better at the "pitching" part of the job than I was. I could not have "sold" my own work as well as he was able to sell ours…and he was a very good writer on his own, as he has since proven.
TV writing is usually a highly collaborative experience with most projects involving other writers as well as directors, producers, actors, network execs and others who have input into a script. There are personal stories that you may need to write by yourself…but if it's the kind of project that's going to be written by six people in a room with eighteen more having input, it can be helpful to have one of the others be a fixture in your life and career because you can backstop each other.
Disadvantages? Well, there are dozens but the first that comes to mind is the need to write when your partner is available. In the wee hours of this morning, I couldn't sleep so I got up about 3 AM and wrote for two or three hours before going back to bed. It's tough to do that when you write with a partner who's miles away, sleeping like a baby. And when career decisions have to be made, there's a difference between asking yourself the question, "Is this good for me?" and asking, "Is this good for us?"
Mostly though, I was glad I met Dennis when I was starting out. When you're almost certain to get lost in the woods, it's better to have someone with you to help figure out where the hell you are and how to get to wherever the two of you are going. That is, if you're both trying to get to the same place.
