Frank Conniff of Mystery Science Theater 3000 has written and directed a radio musical, The Wonderful Pundits of Oz. It is quite a polished production with songs that are definitely better than anything by Andrew Lloyd Webber and a very good cast. The problem with it is that the script could be tighter. A lot tighter.

I don’t mean to be too critical. The truth is, it is still damned funny and I have little doubt that you will spend the next hour and fifteen minutes doing something worse than listening to The Wonderful Pundits of Oz. I mean, you’re reading this, right? But whenever I enjoy something like this radio play, I can’t help thinking about my own work. The fact is, I am extremely jealous of Conniff. Clearly, he can take a script that is “only” pretty good and get a lot of really talented people to work on it. Since no one is interested in producing any of my scripts, I have the advantage of being able to polish them. A lot. Until the end of time.

Last night, I returned to the second episode of “The Post-Postmodern Comedy Hour.” When last I left it, I thought it was in a good state. So good, in fact, that I thought that all I had to do was a little copy editing and that I could send it off to some friends to get comments. Alas. It has lots of problems. But these aren’t big things like the structure is all wrong or the characters don’t work or it isn’t funny. The problems are more around the edges: awkward bits of dialog, scenes that fall flat, momentum problems. And that’s what’s going on in The Wonderful Pundits of Oz. But frankly, much, much more.

Now I feel like David Mitchell in the wedding speech skit from That Mitchell and Web Look[1] The truth is, the radio play is a lot of fun. My problem is that I think it could have been a whole lot better. People often question me about my compulsive rewriting. It can’t really be getting better, diminishing returns, blah, blah, blah. But I always come back to one of my favorite scenes in All That Jazz. Joshua Penn is complaining to Joe about the editing of “The Stand-Up” taking too long. Joe has him sit down at the moviola and watch a scene. Staring at the screen in frustration and admiration he says, “It is better. Oh, God, it is better.”

So I wish that The Wonderful Pundits of Oz were better: quicker, sharper, funnier. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t good or even quite good. And I bet it is better than anything on TV tonight. And where else can you see Emo Philips play a psychopathic Toto? Nowhere else, that’s where!

[1] Here is the skit. It is very funny.