Show biz: common ground

Los Angeles. Move-in day was just two days ago, and The Showbiz Show with David Spade offices were most notable for the fresh paint, bare walls and empty desks rather than the comedy being created. But that was about to change.

Indy native Hugh Fink is creator of Comedy Central's 'The Showbiz Show with David Spade.'

Hugh Fink, Indianapolis native and Showbiz Show creator, would be spending the next 45 days increasing the staff from 10 people to 50, developing the irreverent show’s look and tone and preparing to launch the weekly series, which debuts at 9:30 p.m. Thursday on Comedy Central.

If all goes as planned, The Showbiz Show will do to entertainment what The Daily Show has done to news. This may be a tougher task, though, because while Washington, D.C., has proved to have a sense of humor, Hollywood does not.

“We’re going to force them,” Fink, 44, says with a smile. “And we’ll piss them off.”

The blueprint for The Showbiz Show looks like this: a quick opening piece about a big show business story that will end with Spade making a joke about the topic; opening credits that tell a Hollywood rags-to-riches-to-rags story in less than 30 seconds; Spade commenting on the week’s entertainment news; Spade being joined at the anchor desk by celebrities, comics or personalities — including Fink himself — who will skewer the week in movies, music, television and more. Fink’s plan is to provide “Hugh Fink’s Schadenfreude” — his moment of pleasure from the misfortune of others.

Entertainment Tonight this is not. In fact, the bumpers in and out of commercials will mock Entertainment Tonight-style vacuity, asking questions like “Did you know there’s one Aboriginal tribesman who hasn’t heard the rumor about Richard Gere and the gerbil?”

“What excites me as a comedian and a writer is deconstructing show business,” Fink says. “It’s kind of an obsession of mine. I think my standup reflects it, too, and in the sketches I wrote at Saturday Night Live, I was always really fixated on the self-importance, the hypocrisy and the mediocrity of show business — those three things. We’re in this culture now where people know more about J.Lo and the Tom Cruise Ritalin statement than they do about who’s going to replace Sandra Day O’Connor or what’s happening in Iraq. For better or worse, show business is the common ground right now. So I thought there has to be a show that doesn’t do the actors’ publicists’ version but does the real version from funny people’s perspective. So I pitched it to Comedy Central.”

The Showbiz Show actually traces its history to Spade’s Hollywood Minute, the Saturday Night Live sketch that brutalized show business and left a trail of hurt feelings. During one legendary Minute, Spade showed a picture of Eddie Murphy from the movie Vampire in Brooklyn and said, “Look, kids, a falling star.” When the crowd booed, Spade added the tag, “Make a wish.”

Fink says Murphy called NBC the following Monday screaming and demanding that Spade apologize. Spade, who freely admits to being as thin-skinned as anyone, says he can understand Murphy’s reaction. Most everyone in Hollywood hates being made fun of, he says, “because it’s such a fair-weather town. The tides change so quickly over nothing. No one knows even why they’re a star. And then if one person says you’re not cool, it could all shift over night.”

But Fink has a different take. “To me, that only proved the joke to be true because if you make fun of a celebrity’s movie not doing well, but they’re still secure and happy, you’d think they would ignore it or laugh,” he says. “But for them to (complain), it’s like, thou doth protest too loudly.”

Before you get the wrong impression, Fink isn’t mean. In fact, he’s one of the nicest and smartest people you’ll meet in Hollywood or elsewhere. He grew up in Indianapolis loving comedy and violin, the latter of which he made part of his standup act when he realized he was good — but not good enough to be a professional musician.

He graduated from North Central High School in 1979 and New York University in 1983, then headed for California, where he was a road comic for 12 years. In the late ‘80s, he met Spade, who had moved to Los Angeles from Arizona, at the Melrose Improv comedy club. They found that they shared, in Fink’s words, a “low-key, irreverent attitude,” although to hear Spade tell it, Fink eggs him on.

“Hughgie is vicious,” Spade says. “He is a quiet storm. He’s a guy that plays his violin, and he’s from Indiana, but when it comes to a rough joke about anybody, he’s right to the bone. We have to pull him back like a pit bull. It’s good to have that on our side.”

When Spade left L.A. for Saturday Night Live in 1990, Fink would fax him jokes. Eventually, Spade helped Fink land a writing gig at SNL in 1995. Working together, they developed Spade’s reputation as the king of snark. Spade would later cement that title when he returned to Saturday Night Live and did a sketch where he portrayed actor Owen Wilson by wearing a phallus on his face. (Wilson apparently wasn’t happy with the bit, but he did show up at Spade’s birthday party in July and the two made peace.)

While Spade left SNL in 1996 to do movies (Tommy Boy, Lost and Found) and TV (Just Shoot Me, 8 Simple Rules, those Capital One commercials), Fink stayed with SNL until 2002. After earning an Emmy for outstanding writing, he decided to move back to California with his wife, Sandy, and their daughter, Julia, who turns 3 in October. (They’re expecting their second child in January.) Since then, he’s been a staff writer for two sitcoms — the mediocre, quickly canceled A.U.S.A. and the final season of The Drew Carey Show — and head writer for The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

All the while, he was plotting The Showbiz Show, hoping someone would give him the chance to pierce the bubble that engulfs so much of show business. As Fink says, “I know mediocrity. I worked on A.U.S.A.” As if to remind himself and everyone else of that, Fink planned to post a sign in The Showbiz Show writers’ room with his four-word mantra: “It’s the writing, stupid.”

The idea is not to be snarky or mean — “I was just saying that on the first show, everyone thinks it’s going to be a certain way, but you’re wrong,” Spade says. “Now let’s talk about that fat whore, Jennifer Garner” — but truthful and funny.

“It’s just whatever makes us laugh,” Spade says.

“We know what we’re going for,” Fink says. “We’re not satirizing Entertainment Tonight. We’re taking on all the things in the business. As Spade likes to say, we’re not attacking it or saying everything sucks. We’re just calling it as we see it.”