UNLV alumnus Mike Upchurch

BY SUZAN DIBELLA

It's still a matter of some embarrassment to Mike Upchurch.

It was 1992, and he was an aspiring young comedy writer who also happened to be a graduate student in communication studies at UNLV. As part of his research for his master's thesis on the narrative of sketch comedy, he hoped to interview a few famous sketch comedians in order to glean new insights into his area of research and do a little networking.

"Basically, I hatched this plan to go to New York and talk to Al Franken, and I figured I could somehow angle my way on — to what I'm not sure," says Upchurch, who was surprised and pleased when Franken, who was the head writer on Saturday Night Live at the time, consented to meet him at a New York sushi bar for a little shop talk.

But things didn't go exactly as planned, Upchurch notes. As he was cleverly weaving into the interview some of the scholarly terms he was applying to sketch comedy in his thesis — ostensibly for the purpose of impressing Mr. Franken — it began to dawn on him that Franken thought he was taking this academic thing way too far.

"I was just a real egghead with sketch comedy," Upchurch says. "I was writing sketches at the time and doing very well at it. I mean I knew how to write sketch, but I was trying to be analytical about it for the thesis. And real comedy writers aren't very analytical about it. Al Franken was just kind of shaking his head and saying, 'Ah, well, we don't exactly use terms like that. We pretty much think of something funny, and if it makes us laugh, and then we can find some way to bring it to a close, that's important. But we don't really use a lot of terms while we're working on it.'"

Then, as if to add an unintentional comic-relief-coup-de-grace to the whole experience, Upchurch managed to dip his elbow in a dish of soy sauce.

"That was the low point," he says with the resignation of someone who has had plenty of time to get used to the discomfort of a particularly embarrassing moment. And, he added, no, the interview didn't get him on — or into — anything in the world of big-time comedy.

But to say things have turned around for Upchurch in the last eight years would be a bit of an understatement. Since the Franken interview, the UNLV alumnus made his way to L.A. and on to the writing staff of Mr. Show with Bob and David, a critically acclaimed, Emmy-nominated sketch comedy show. From there, he went on to join the New York-based writing staff of HBO's The Chris Rock Show; last year, he won an Emmy Award for comedy writing for his work with that team and has been asked back for a third year. In the meantime, he has been given a contract by industry giants Imagine Entertainment and DreamWorks SKG to write, produce, and direct a sitcom short for their recently created Internet entertainment company called "POP.com."

Upchurch, top left, describes winning the Emmy Award as an "incredible, surreal experience." Here he poses with his colleagues from The Chris Rock Show right after winning the Emmy in the category of comedy writing last year. He has been nominated again this year for his work on the show.

Upchurch is, of course, ecstatic at the success he has achieved so far — or as ecstatic as a low-key but affable guy like him seems to get. Despite the considerable success he's achieved at the age of 34, he's not exactly crowing about it. He is a bit subdued, maybe just this side of shy, when you first meet him. But the initial demeanor wears off after you get him going, and he lets on to the fact that he has plans — lots of them. He's hungry, as they say in the business; one senses he knows he's into something good, something that he loves, something that seems to love him back. And he's not willing to stop for too long to look over his shoulder to see how he got there. But when UNLV Magazine asked him to do just that — tell us how a local boy like himself made it to the big leagues so early in his career — what's a low-key but affable guy to do but answer?

To this day, Upchurch is not sure if it was the wise-cracking of Mad Magazine that got him started or the insanity of Monty Python's Flying Circus. But somewhere along the line, he got hooked on comedy.

"Mad Magazine was a really big influence in my life," he says, recalling that while growing up in Boulder City, the owner of the local collectibles store used to call him "the Mad Man" because of his attempts at getting his hands on every copy of the publication he could.

"I guess Mad kind of set in place my cynicism early on because I became a practicing cynic as a really young kid. Then when I was 9 years old, I saw Monty Python's Flying Circus, and it was great. It was just so insane and so funny — and there was just nothing like it on American television. I just thought it was great. I watched it religiously every Sunday night."

Dubbed "the Mad Man" by the owner of the local collectibles store, Upchurch was a devoted fan of Mad Magazine. He says that the publication contributed to the development of his cynicism at an early age.

Although he was almost compulsive in his consumption of comedy while growing up — and began writing sketch comedy at about age 11 — he didn't make a conscious decision to pursue it as a career initially. In fact, when it came time to enroll at UNLV, he decided to major in finance.

"I figured that clearly I was going to be wealthy, and so I had to know what to do with the money," he jokes, noting that he took only one finance course before recognizing how ill-suited he was to that major. "So I ended up taking a lot of classes that looked interesting and eventually began gravitating toward communications courses because I liked working in television. I liked doing the projects and getting my hands on the equipment."

In his senior year, he found a perfect outlet for his knack for comedy writing when he received a grant from CSUN, UNLV's student government, to produce a series of commercial parodies. The project firmed up his interest in the field of entertainment and taught him a great deal about the process of guiding a production.

"I learned a lot in my classes, and I especially learned a lot when I got that grant," he says. "A commercial parody is just a microcosm of any other big production. It's smaller, but all the things you have to do are the same."

Scouting talent and locations — both of which he often found on campus — renting equipment, doing publicity, and handling post-production were valuable learning experiences for him.

After finishing his bachelor's degree in 1989, the thought of teaching communication classes appealed to Upchurch, so he enrolled in graduate school and became a teaching assistant. He hoped to find a way to incorporate his fascination with sketch comedy into his graduate work; his adviser, former communication studies professor Brad Chisholm, helped him develop a scholarly approach to examining sketch comedy, and his thesis topic was born.

Despite his chagrin at perhaps over-analyzing the subject in the presence of Franken, Upchurch remains proud of his thesis.

"I'm pretty sure it was the first study on sketch comedy that's been done," he says. "When I first starting researching it, I was worried that I would find that I'd been scooped. You just assume that somebody's all over it. But I found very little, and what I did find was pretty shallow. There was a lot of stuff on what is funny, what makes you laugh. But I really didn't care about that. In fact, I think that's almost a sacred thing. You don't want to break it down into elements because that tends to encourage a formulaic approach, and then it really isn't funny anymore. I just wanted to look at narrative structure — beginnings, endings, through-lines, things like that." He describes his definitions of the three different types of sketch comedy as his "big closer."

Now that he's a pro, he admits he doesn't exactly bring up his former academic pursuit in the company of his colleagues. It's not that he's not proud of it, but, as he points out, there is probably nothing so patently un-funny as studying comedy.

"Looking back, I even thought it might be a pretty asinine thing to do," he says, quickly adding a qualifier. "But I took it pretty seriously. I mean there were a lot of footnotes...."

After the poverty years of graduate school, Upchurch decided to look for a more substantial means of support. After taking a variety of odd jobs, he decided to move to L.A. with a friend who was a stand-up comic.

By day, he worked a series of what he describes as lousy temporary jobs.

"I had a really crummy first year in L.A., but it's not like I could write a novel about it," he says. "It wasn't that bad. I can't complain about my suffering; I didn't suffer that much. It was just a drag. I had temp jobs. I worked at this place that did hair transplants."

When he wasn't writing during his off hours, he spent time in nightclubs watching stand-up acts with his friends, several of whom were (and still are) aspiring comedians; it was at one of those clubs he met Bob Odenkirk (the Bob in Mr. Show with Bob and David), who gave him his big break.

"I was so ready for the job," he says. "I had so much material by then; I was writing like crazy. I'd come home from my temp job and write for another four or five hours. I found out later that there were writers also pitching material to Bob that had credits on incredibly popular shows like The Simpsons. So I think I was just a little more eager than everyone. I definitely wanted it more than everyone else. And I pitched so much material to them that I think they just decided to give me a shot."

Aired at the time on Comedy Central, Mr. Show, which had received abundant critical praise, was composed entirely of a series of sketches linked together, Upchurch notes. It was right up his alley.

He recalls that at the time he was offered the job, he was stunned by the money offered. Although the show hadn't received a great deal of financial backing, the producers were able to offer the Writers' Guild minimum wage.

"Bob and David [Cross] were telling me that they didn't have much money and that it was a very low-budget production and so on. Then they broke the news to me: I was going to make $2,200 a week. I about fell over. I told them, 'You know, I was going to hold out for about eight bucks an hour.' I'm like, 'Get outta here — I would've done it for free.'"

Upchurch wrote sketch comedy for Mr. Show with Bob and David for one season. He's seen here in a pitch session with members of the Mr. Show comedy writing team, including the show's namesakes, Bob Odenkirk (far right) and David Cross (arms extended).

Upchurch served on Mr. Show for one very important season in 1997, learning what it was like to work on a writing staff in a ultra-creative environment.

"When you're writing on a sketch show, you begin your day by sitting and reading newspapers, magazines, and anything you can get your hands on to get input to generate ideas," he says. "It's a sketch show. You can write about anything you want. So I had a little reference library. I had a concise encyclopedia. I had a movie book. I had a bunch of stuff to draw from. I would just thumb through them and think of topics.

"And then I'd use my walls as bulletin boards," he says. "I'd think of a sketch title and write it down on a little piece of paper with maybe a few notes on it. Then I'd pin it up, so I'd have ideas all over the walls."

When it was time for a brainstorming meeting, he'd grab his best material off the wall and pitch the ideas like he'd been doing it all his life.

"At any point, someone might come in and say, 'Meeting — quick!' And we'd have to run in and be funny," he says. Sometimes Bob and David would ask the writers for their ideas for new sketches; at other times they would be working on an idea and turn to the writers for concept development.

"So they'd call the writers in, tell us the premise, and we'd just sit around and brainstorm and order lunch in," he recalls. "We ate horrible diets of just fast food and junk."

Though the on-the-job nutrition was poor, the climate at Mr. Show had a wonderful effect on creativity.

"It was a very generous room. Basically, the word 'no' was not really welcome. You wouldn't say, 'No, but,' no matter what the idea was. You'd say, 'Yes, and....' It was just the unspoken rule that if somebody puts an idea out there, you don't shoot it down." The net result was so hilarious, he says, that the show gained an almost cult following and became very well respected among comedy writers.

Three of his sketches made it on the air that season — as many as any of the other writers got on — including a rather bizarre one about America blowing up the moon that came from an idea he had been carrying around with him for years.

Mr. Show was nominated for an Emmy Award for comedy writing that year; The Dennis Miller Show won. Though Mr. Show didn't ask Upchurch back the next season, The Chris Rock Show, which had also been nominated that year for an Emmy for comedy writing, picked him up, and he was off to New York for the next phase of his career.

That was two years ago, and in that time, he has adapted to the stepped-up pace of a New York show and its corresponding responsibilities. Each day he still absorbs large amounts of source material to generate ideas and has begun writing jokes as well as sketches. He has also developed an addiction to coffee to meet his joke-writing deadlines.

"I never drank coffee until I started writing monologue jokes," he says. "I discovered it makes you kind of talkative. I remember one Wednesday, the day before the joke deadline, I was thinking, 'I've got nothing. I'm looking at the subjects, and nothing's coming out.' And somebody said, 'Hey, you want to go have some coffee?' I went and had a double espresso, came back, and in about 45 minutes, I'd written about 10 or 12 jokes. I'm like, 'Hey, there's a connection here.' But I still don't consider myself a coffee drinker. Now, I administer it to myself like medicine."

A small price to pay, most would think, for the kind of success he has achieved on the show. Last year, he and his colleagues on The Chris Rock Showtook home Emmy Awards for comedy writing, beating out such big names as David Letterman and Conan OÕBrien, as well as his former pals from Mr. Show.

To Upchurch, it was, as one would imagine, a high point.

"It's great to be nominated. It's exciting, and there's tension up to the point when they announce the winners," he says, recalling his experience at the awards ceremony the year before for his work on Mr. Show. "And then if you don't win, you basically start wondering what they're going to serve at the Governor's Ball.

"But if you win, it's tension all the way up to the same time, and then it's this incredible, surreal experience. There are all of these flashbulbs going off, and people are asking you questions, and you have to get up on stage for the acceptance speech. I was ready to go back to my seat, but no, no. You go right off the stage and the interviews begin. You go down the red carpet walk into one room full of photojournalists from all over the world. So you stand there with so many flashbulbs going off, and youÕre trying to keep a good expression on your face the whole time. Then you go into another room where the print journalists are, and then on to another room where the TV journalists are. And they're all shouting questions."

Chris Rock answered most of the questions, he points out, noting that his biggest burden of the evening was carrying around the statue all night to a number of fabulous parties.

"I carried that Emmy around for the next 12 hours and the next 12 beers," he says. "From that evening until dawn of the next day, it was just a peak. We were laughing and talking about it the whole time. It was a lot of fun."

Aside from receiving a huge number of calls — some from people he hadn't talked to in years — life returned to normal pretty quickly, he says.

"We had to hop on a plane the next day. We had to get going on our first show of the second season I was on, so we had to go back and write jokes. I had been able to have all of the newspapers delivered to the Four Seasons while we were still in L.A., and then I sat by the pool and made notes for the show before we left."

In the long term, he recognizes the Emmy has had its effect, but more on his reputation than on him.

"It certainly helps with the career in that it gives people a comfort level with your abilities," he says. "That way if a show tanks, they can say, 'Well, look, we hired Emmy-Award-winning writers! We went to the right people!' They have a level of deniability about anything that goes wrong. So it really helps in that way. But my first response to winning the Emmy was, 'Oh, this is good because it will now be easier to make things happen in my career.' But it went straight to my resume and not to my ego."

He now looks forward to returning to The Chris Rock Show, where he enjoys a great rapport with the team of writers and another extremely creative, albeit different, environment.

"It's a little less frantic at The Chris Rock Show," he says. "We have scheduled pitch sessions, and it's more laid back than Mr. Show. Chris is great to work with; he's probably different than most people would think. In a pitch session, you pitch five to seven ideas, and he'll just sit and be very analytical. He doesn't really laugh a lot; of course, he doesn't want to because he would have to paint a smile on his face for everybody for two hours. So he just listens, and he laughs when something is funny. But it's a tough room because it's tough to get people laughing. At Mr. Show, people were bouncing off the walls."

The environment at The Chris Rock Show is enhanced further by its location, he asserts.

"I can see the Chrysler Building out my office window," he says. "Our offices are on 43rd Street in Manhattan in the same building that used to be occupied by the writers of The New Yorker in the '30s and '40s. It has a historical marker on it. So I look out the window, and think, 'Who knows? Maybe James Thurber could've been looking out the same window.'"

In stark contrast to the prime real estate at which he resides professionally, the tiny New York apartment in which he actually lives is mostly a testament to the cost of rent in the big city.

In addition to his work on The Chris Rock Show, Upchurch is currently serving as writer, producer, and director of a sitcom short for POP.com, an Internet entertainment company.

"Right now, I am bicoastal in the most pathetic way," he says. "If you took both of my apartments, the one in L.A. and in New York, you'd have a room roughly the size of a standard faculty office here in the [Flora Dungan] Humanities Building."

He keeps his apartment in L.A. for his frequent trips to the West Coast to pursue other projects, such as the one he's doing with POP.com. The project is a live-action short sitcom that appears exclusively on the Internet on the site recently created by Imagine Entertainment and DreamWorks SKG. Upchurch is visibly excited about it.

"The Internet is the future, even in comedy," he says. "And our show is great. It's about Carl, an office worker who does a secret webcast from his cubicle. He is a master loafer who has avoided doing any actual work for years but has managed to convince his coworkers that he's the hardest working guy in the company."

Carl is played by Upchurch's longtime friend and fellow UNLV alumnus Alfredo Treferis, who is a stand-up comedian and writer. Upchurch himself plays Russel, Carl's colleague who usually gets stuck doing all of the work.

"I'm not an actor, but I had to do the part for economic reasons," he says, adding that despite having big-name backers, the project is not very well funded. "After reviewing the tapes, my fake acting doesn't ruin the show. I think I might actually fool someone. We've shot the first six episodes, and it looks to be hilarious."

Soon the show will be accessible to the general public via the Internet at www.POP.com, Upchurch says. And he has other projects pending, including several screenplays, that he plans to promote as tirelessly as he has promoted himself and his writing up to this point. After all, he notes, work in the entertainment biz can be as fleeting as fame.

But Upchurch's optimism about his career seems to be more firmly planted these days; shortly before this issue of UNLV Magazine went to press, he received word that he has been nominated for an Emmy Award again this year for his work on The Chris Rock Show. So, it would seem, things are continuing to go his way.