VALUABLE LESSONS - Nicholls + Vickers

Valuable Lessons 103
L.A. and enthusiastic about working with a legend, we outlined Mickey’s
story in more detail, then broke it into thirty-nine scenes and made a binder
for the outline, with a page per scene for noting the setting, situation,
characters and jokes. We spent a month writing gags and allocating them to
the scenes in which they seemed to best work. Then, armed with our now
forty-page play bible, we began writing, slotting-in the gags as we went.
PATIENT
I have a little thrombosis.
DOCTOR
I have a little clarinet, we’ll
get together. Are your parents
living?
Yes.
(THE PATIENT DOES)
PATIENT
DOCTOR
You must be a big disappointment
to them. Touch your clavicle.
DOCTOR
So that’s where it is. I want you
to go outside, stand on one leg
and whistle.
PATIENT
Will that help my condition?
DOCTOR
No but it’ll help me get a cab.
Nurse, I need an E.K.G., an E.E.G.
and an E.G.G.
NURSE
What’s an E.G.G.?
DOCTOR
An egg, I’m hungry. (TO PATIENT)
If you have to go the bathroom in
the night, take two of these.
(HANDS OVER TWO HUGE WHITE FLUFFY THINGS)