John Lutz
John Lutz is an actor and writer, best known for his work on 30 Rock, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and Saturday Night Live.
He has a recurring role as 'Warren' in Hulu's Not Suitable for Work.
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Not Suitable for Work is now streaming on Hulu.
John Lutz is a supporter of Breakthrough T1D.
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Mike Reflects
Being born, raised, and living in the Chicago area, sketch comedy is in the area's blood. In 7th grade, I entered a speech contest that was, for all intents and purposes, a sketch comedy performing contest.
We didn't get to write our own stuff, but picked pieces from pre-screened options.
The piece I picked was a good one, in the sense that it was quite funny.
It was, however, not a particularly good one, in the sense that I was unfit to perform it. The piece required various accents and impressions, which I'm not particularly good at or comfortable attempting.
As a result, I dropped out of the competition quite early on.
I tried again in 8th grade, this time with a different piece that I was better suited for. I wasn't a particularly strong performer, but I saw it through to the end, was glad I did it, and that was that.
Over the past year or so, I've gotten more interested in sketch comedy. Not in performing it again—nobody wants that, especially me—but in learning more about it, especially how the medium affects the joke.
While I certainly have an appreciation for how hard it is to perform, I can't even fathom how hard it is to write. It's not about coming up with 1 bit—most people with a sense of humor could probably do that to some degree—it's about coming up with 10, 50, 100+.
Even (especially) when writing recurring characters, keeping them consistent while keeping them fresh feels almost like an oxymoron.
I love conversations like this one, because it gives me a chance to explore something that I'll not only never do, but simply cannot ever even hope to do, even to the smallest degree.