Written by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller and Bill Lawrence

Abe Lincoln has got the hots for the beautiful and popular Cleopatra, and hopes to make his move at JFK's party. But JFK, who's also looking to score with Cleo, won't let Abe come unless he brings the beer. The only question is -- how will he get it? Meanwhile, Goth chick Joan of Arc tries to win Abe's heart through community service, starting a Teen Hotline to help her peers deal with the pressures of being clones. All the while, Principal Scudworth and his robotic sidekick Mr. Butlerton crash the party in an attempt to better understand the students. And that nutty Gandhi? He forwards calls from the hotline to his cell phone so he can go to the party.


THE GREATEST JOKE EVER WRITTEN
Let me tell you a little story, dear reader. This story takes place a year and a half ago, when I was but a down-on-his-luck, unemployed screenwriter struggling to find a job. An assistant to an agent, who had read a couple screenplays of mine and was helping me find employment, sent me a pilot script called “Clone High USA.” He did this to help me prepare for a meeting with the two young creators of the show, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who were looking for an assistant. Before this, my most promising job opportunity was to be the guy who copied scripts in the middle of the night for the show “Bob Patterson.” (They eventually decided to “go another direction.”)

The day before my interview, I sat down and began reading the “Clone High USA” pilot. The first three or four pages basically summed up the premise of the show, which, as you know, is that famous historical figures were cloned and are now attending high school. Pretty funny. But then æ then! æ on page five, there was a joke that summed up, to me, all the potential that said premise held. This joke was a shining beacon of comedy that said to me, “Adam, you need to work on this show! For this is not just a show, but the very vessel that will change the world... forever!” Anyway. It was a really good joke.

It goes like this. It is the first time we see the high school. JFK is leaning against a tree. Marilyn Monroe walks by. JFK nudges his pal Julius Caesar and says, “Hey, Caesar. I invaded her bay of pigs. If you catch my meaning.” That’s a pretty good joke in itself, but not the joke I’ve been building up here. The joke that I want to draw your attention to, which made me laugh out loud, which made me want to work for Phil and Chris, which made me question my very existence, is what Caesar says back to JFK in response.

JULIUS CAESAR: Veni, vidi, booyah!

(You can hear the line by clicking on the link above, or by visiting the “outtakes” area of the website.)

Veni, vidi, booyah. Three simple words that summed up everything I needed to know about Clone High. A historical reference crossed with teenage slang. It was groundbreaking! Mind blowing! Would an MTV audience find this funny?

Well, a year and a half later, I can answer that question for certain: we will never know. Not because the show hasn’t debuted yet (who knows if they’ll find anything funny), but because the Greatest Joke Ever Written has been cut. Why? I don’t know. Maybe it’s because this episode was running very long so a lot of jokes were cut. Maybe it’s because often times things that are funny on the page turn out to be less funny on the screen. Maybe it’s because it’s a fairly obscure Greek reference that many TV viewers wouldn’t get. Maybe it’s because “booyah” is a phrase that was popular a couple years ago when the joke was written, but not so much today.

Okay, that’s four good reasons to cut the joke, and usually Phil and Chris only need one. But still. It makes me sad that you, dear reader, will never experience the Greatest Joke Ever Written.

Tune in next week to Pun Dog’s Corner, when I will lament another Greatest Joke Ever Written. Thank you.

TEASER? I BARELY KNOW HER.
As you will come to see, every episode of Clone High begins with a “teaser,” where a voice-over narrator tells you what happened previously on Clone High. This isn’t unusual. Lots of shows do this. Teen dramas almost always do this. And since Clone High is a parody of teen dramas, it makes sense that we would as well.

Well, that begs the question, what do you do in the first episode? You can’t say what you missed in previous episodes. Phil and Chris and Bill, in an early version of the pilot script, decided to write the teaser to show what would happen, in vague terms, in the first episode of Clone High. It went like this:

NARRATOR (V.O.): Tonight, on a very special "Clone High”... A main character must make an important choice. A supporting character has an amusing side story. While a mysterious subplot reveals the shocking truth behind Clone High.

This scene was eventually cut. That’s okay. It wasn’t laugh-out-loud funny, and it took a lot of time. But there are three things that I really like about it, that I want to share with you right now.

1. The Narrator calls this (and every) episode of “Clone High” a “very special episode,” which, those of you who watched a lot of TV in the 1980s will know, is something that was done a lot on commercials for shows that could never be “very special,” like Family Ties and Growing Pains and Blossom.

2. The first two things that the Narrator says will happen actually occur in every episode of every sitcom ever.

3. The third item in the list, “a mysterious subplot reveals the shocking truth behind Clone High,” is something that actually doesn’t happen. There is no mysterious subplot. There is a subplot about Scudworth trying to get to know his students for a report, but that doesn’t reveal the shocking truth behind Clone High. If anything, the theme song gives all the back-story needed to understand Clone High, but it isn’t very shocking.

WELCOME TO OUR ABANDONED OOLS.
Speaking of the theme song, originally Phil and Chris envisioned it to be “a Gilligan’s Island”-style narrative. At different points, the writers thought it would be cool and/or funny if it was sung by James Kochalka Superstar, Bon Jovi, Ben Folds, No Doubt, Elton John, and many others. Eventually, everyone decided on that the band Abandoned Pools were the right mix of emotional sincerity, indie-band coolness, and MTV hipness to sing it.

Tom Martin, one of the writers, pitched this as the final line of the song: “This particular high school of clones is called Clone High. Clone Hiiiiiigh!” It never made it into the version you hear every week, but was often sung by Tom, myself, and the other writers around the office. Because it’s funny. So very, very funny.

ROAPERS AND...
Scudworth says he’ll title his report to the Shadowy Boards “What It’s Like To Be A Teenaged Clone: A Rope Of Sand.” When Chris was a student at Dartmouth, he realized he could add a colon, followed by “A Rope of Sand” to the title of any essay to make it sound more academic. “A Rope of Sand” is a phrase that doesn’t mean anything, but sounds very intellectual.

COLONOSCOPY
Notice that Phil and Chris used the “A Rope of Sand” technique on the title of this episode. This happened well after the episode was written, after somebody noticed that the next two episodes (“Episode Two: Election Blu-Galoo” and “A.D.D.: The Last ‘D’ Is For Disorder”) both contained colons in their titles. Someone decided that all titles should have colons. From that point on, all future episodes were titled with colons, and episode one, which had previously just been named “Escape to Beer Mountain” was re-christened “Escape to Beer Mountain: A Rope of Sand.”

KIDS AND THE HALL & OATES
In one draft of the script, there was a scene at JFK’s party where Buddy Holly and some fiends were playing in a band. It went like this:

BUDDY HOLLY: I'm Buddy Holly, and this is Richie Valens, and Stevie Ray Vaughn. We are... Black Box! (SINGING) Private eyes (CLAP) Are watching you! (CLAP CLAP).
GANDHI: (TO ABE) These guys are the best Hall & Oates cover band in town. With the exception of the Maneaters and the Kiss On My Listers.
ABE: What about the You Can Rely On Your Old Man's Money Five?
GANDHI: I am so over them.

MTV executives reasonably brought up the point that many of their viewers wouldn’t get the reference. Phil and Chris agreed. The scene was rewritten to this:

BUDDY HOLLY: I'm Buddy Holly, and this is Richie Valens, and Stevie Ray Vaughn. We are... Black Box! (SINGING) Black Box’s back, bye bye!
GANDHI: (TO ABE) These guys are the best ‘N Sync or Backstreet Boys cover band in town.

Ultimately, the scene was cut. Everyone was happy.

HISTORICAL JOKE GRAVEYARD
It may seem that a comedy about historical figures would include a lot of jokes about said historical figures. Ironically, in the editing process, they are often the first to go. Why? Well, there are a variety of reasons, but generally, they’re usually pretty cheap laughs. Plus, Phil and Chris want to make sure that Clone High isn’t just a one-joke show. Otherwise it would be a Saturday Night Live sketch, not a series. So, when it comes time to edit, more often than not, they’ll chose to keep a joke that’s funny because of the situation, or because we care about the character, over a one-line historical allusion. Here are some examples of history jokes that were cut from episode one:

• When we first see Nostradamus, Jimi Hendrix says hi to him. His response: “I knew you were going to say that!” (You can hear that audio clip by clicking... here! Just kidding. It’s actually... here.)

• When we first see the kid’s smoothie shop hangout, The Grassy Knoll, the clerk called out over the intercom: “Kennedy, you can pick up your smoothie at the juice depository.” In different drafts of the script, JFK turns to the camera and says, “Something about this place gives me the creeps” and “I hate this place.”

Come back next week, and every week, as we add to the Historical Joke Graveyard.

Until then...
~Pun Dog