Jack Handey

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Jack Handey : biography

February 25, 1949 –

Jack Handey (born 25 February 1949) is an American humorist. He is best known for his Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey, a large body of surrealistic one-liner jokes, as well as his "Fuzzy Memories" and "My Big Thick Novel" shorts. Although many people assume otherwise,Biography, "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey" Website, http://www.deepthoughtsbyjackhandey.com/answer.html. Accessed 6 June 2008.Handey, Jack: "Deep Thoughts about Me: Questions I Am Often Asked (and My Answers)", Texas Monthly, January 2002. Handey is a real person, not a pen name or character.

Deep Thoughts

In April 1984, National Lampoon published the first of Jack Handey’s Deep Thoughts. Additional Deep Thoughts appeared in the October and November 1984 editions as well as in the short-lived comedy magazine Army Man, while more appeared in 1988 in The New Mexican. The one-liners were to become Handey’s signature work, notable for their concise humor and their outlandish hypothetical situations. For example:

  • If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.

Handey, Jack: Deep Thoughts (1992). Berkley Publishing Group, n.p.

  • The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw.

Handey, Jack: "Deep Thoughts," Saturday Night Live Episode 18.7, 21 October 1992. Cited online in The SNL Archives, .Handey, Jack: Deeper Thoughts: All New, All Crispy (1993). Hyperion, n.p.

Handey’s work next showed up in the Mike Nesmith produced TV series Television Parts, in the format which would later become famous on Saturday Night Live (though in that program, Nesmith provided the narration). Some of these bits appeared in the compilation video of that program, Doctor Duck’s Super Secret All-Purpose Sauce.

Between 1991 and 1998, Saturday Night Live included Deep Thoughts on the show as an interstitial segment between sketches. Introduced by Phil Hartman and read live by Handey (neither actually appeared on screen), the one-liners proved to be extremely popular. Hartman would intone "And now, Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey…", and peaceful easy listening music would play while the screen showed soothing pastoral scenes, much like a New Age relaxation video. Handey would then read the Deep Thought as the text to it scrolled across the screen. They became an enduring feature of SNL, often having multiple Thoughts in each episode, and made Handey a well-known name.

Other SNL work

Other Handey pieces that appeared on SNL included Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, from CNN "Fuzzy Memories" which depicted reenactments of a twisted childhood memory and aired in the late 1990s, and the short-lived "My Big Thick Novel", which were spoken excerpts from a very long book in the style of "Deep Thoughts" and which aired during the 2001–03 seasons of SNL.

Handey is also credited with creating Toonces, the cat who could drive a car.Carman, John: "We Paws for This Message", San Francisco Chronicle, 14 February 1992 The recurring skit originated in 1990 with Steve Martin and Victoria Jackson as the crash-prone kitty’s owners. In 1992 NBC aired a half-hour Toonces special. Handey, who owned a real cat by the same name, once said he couldn’t remember exactly how he dreamed up the premise. He said, "It was just one of those free association ideas you write down and look at later and think, ‘Maybe.’"

Early years

Handey was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1949. His family later moved to El Paso, Texas, where Handey attended Eastwood High School (where he was editor of Sabre, the school newspaper) and the University of Texas at El Paso.

Handey’s earliest writing job was for a newspaper, the San Antonio Express-News. He lost the job, in his words, after writing "an article that offended local car dealerships". His first comic writing was with comedian Steve Martin. According to Martin, Handey got a job writing for Saturday Night Live after Martin introduced Handey to the show’s creator, Lorne Michaels."Martin Writes Off Fried Shrimp Days," New York Post, 1 October 1999. For several years Handey worked on other television projects: the Canadian sketch series Bizarre in 1980; the 1980 TV special Steve Martin: Comedy Is Not Pretty; and Lorne Michaels’ short-lived sketch show on NBC called The New Show in 1984. Handey returned to Saturday Night Live in 1985 as a writer and co-producer.