John Lutz – Mapleworth Murders

By starrymag | August 31, 2020

By: Jamie Steinberg

 

 

Q) What are the recent projects that you have been busy working on?

A) I’m lucky enough to be doing small bit parts on “Late Night with Seth Myers.” That has been very nice. Then, I am currently just working on an Audible project that I did called “Escape from Virtual Island,” which was an audio book that I wrote. I’ve just been currently trying to rework it to pitch it as some other form than audio because it was so much fun.

Q) How did concept for “Mapleworth Murders” come about?

A) Basically, I had very bad writers block and I was trying to come up with things to write for myself. I just couldn’t come up with anything fun. My wife, Sue Galloway, said, “Why don’t you try to come up with something for Paula [Pell] because she’s the funniest lady we know? And she deserves to have her own show.” So, then I went off to my little table in our bedroom and came up with a bunch of different ideas. Like five minutes later I came out and said, “What if she is like a Ms. Marple?” I watched a lot of BBC murder-mysteries like “Vera.” So, Sue was like, “What if it was like ‘Murder She Wrote’ but with a comedy version?” Then, immediately after that everything just fell into place. You could just visualize Paula being that type of nosy inspector-y – the funny version of that. It just kind of fell into place after that.

Q) What was Paula’s reaction when you pitched her this series?

A) I was lucky – she was immediately on board. It was the kind of thing that I first pitched to Michael Shoemaker and Seth Myers, whom I work for already. Shoemaker was like, “It’s perfect for her. Now pitch it to her.” I wrote a letter and pitched it to her and she was like, “Yes!” Sometimes people come up with ideas and pitch them to you, but I think she just liked the idea and that is not really too far away from her – the character. She’s a lesbian who has five dogs and three cats, which is exactly what Paula is. I think it just spoke to her because she knew it would be fun to play that character.

Q) How involved were you with the casting of the show?

A) Paula and I had our fingers in all of it! That’s probably not the right phrase to use. [laughs] Paula has said this, we wanted to have a no-jerk zone for this project. We wanted to do something that would just be fun to write, fun to perform in and fun to produce. We wanted, basically, to use all our friends from the other shows we’ve done – “Saturday Night Live,” “30 Rock,” “AP Bio” and people from Second City and Improv Olympic and UCB. We just wanted to pack it with all of our friends. When we were writing it, majority of the parts were written specifically for the people who actually ended up doing them because we were lucky enough to ask people who are our friends and, luckily, they said yes to do it. So, we got really lucky. We shot it right around the holidays of last year (in November and December). The only reason people weren’t able to do it was because of the scheduling. Other than that, we got 80% of the people we asked.

Q) Were you always meant to star in the series?

A) Yes. Originally, even just the outline or pitch – it was always in our minds Paul, myself and JB Smoove. We all wrote together at “SNL” at the same time and I love the dynamic that Paula and JB have when they play off each other. They used to do an audience bit where they were a couple in monologues at “SNL” and they were just so funny doing it together that we thought it would be fun to have him be the Chief of Police that was always at odds with Mrs. Mapleworth. The only person we didn’t have cast was the Heidi part because we’re old and we didn’t know anybody young. [chuckles] But we lucked out with that, too, because Hayley [Magnus] came in and did an amazing audition with Paula. She also kind of just fell into place. It was like perfect casting.

Q) One of my personal favorite characters is Dink. Who are some characters that are personal favorites for you?

A) I‘m just happy that you said the name “Dink” because it’s so stupid. It’s such a stupid name. [laughs] Jack [McBrayer] is like one of my oldest friends from my Improv Olympic and Second City days. I’ve known him since like 1996. He’s also one of those people where we call up and say, “Hey, would you like to do this?” And he says, “Buddy, of course.” We write him these silly things and he does it. He is actually coming up in the last there episodes as well. We were lucky to have him around for a lot of it. We wanted to just inhabit the town with all of these funny, weird characters. Jack is the most perfect person to just do dumb things.

Q) Was there much room to improv when it came to filming?

A) We had a very tight shooting schedule because the budget was very small. It was still very good. We had a good budget, but we had a short time to shoot it. For the most part, we stuck with a lot of our lines, but we also had so many funny people who are good at improvising that we do…Things did sneak in there. With JB, we kind of just let him go sometimes and just let him run. A lot of the stuff that he improvised made it in the final cut because he’s just ungodly funny. So, we really stuck to the script for the most part, but we had a good hit ratio when we would improv. We’d maybe do one take of improv if we had the time.

Q) The show seems to fit nicely at Quibi with these ten-minute episodes. Was it always meant to be a sitcom format?

A) It was originally written to have it be a sitcom – a standard twenty-two- or twenty-three-minute sitcom. We did sell it to another network that we wrote it for and then they passed on it. Then, Quibi came and kind of scooped it up. We thought it was done. It was like three years ago that we wrote it – maybe even three and a half years ago. Then, they came in and scooped it up and we were toying with how to fit it into that seven to ten-minute Quibi style and it ended up just kind of working that each story ended up kind of being like a three-act sitcom. It helped us with the story because then you would create kind of a cliffhanger for every episode. We were going to just make it be a ten-minute story, in and of itself, but it seemed really hard because usually the procedurals are like an hour long and the first fifteen minutes are just them introducing all the new characters. So, we thought, “How are we going to introduce characters, have a murder and have it be solved in ten minutes?” We made it easy on ourselves and just said, “Oh, we’ll have cliffhangers and make each story be three parts.”

Q) You have great comedic timing. Is it a natural ability for you or have you had to work at it?

A) Well, originally…My family is very funny. My Uncle Jerry was always just the fastest person with a joke. He was just one of the funniest people that I knew and Also my grandparents. My Grandpa and Grandma Lutz were also very funny people and they just liked to life. The same thing with my parents. So, I started to do goofy stuff to make them laugh because I loved hearing them laugh. So, I had that comedy sensibility and I loved comedies. But once I went to Improv Olympic and took improv classes and once I toured with Second City and then wrote for “SNL.” I feel like I almost got an education starting with improv and then I got to learn how to write live sketch comedy at Second City and I got to write for “SNL.” Then, I’m surrounded by all these other fantastic wonderful writers like Paula at “SNL” that I just learned and learned and learned and so by the time we got to write this Paula and I had a communication that was easy and we just knew how to play off each other. It really honed my comedy sensibilities.

Q) What kind of feedback to the show have you received from your peers?

A) People have really enjoyed it. They really are happy with how silly it is and how campy it is and how it has nothing to do with what is going on in the world right now. I think people are craving an escape, even if it’s just a seven-minute Quibi. When they watch it, they get to be enjoying something for that amount of time. People have been very, very complimentary on it. It’s been very nice to hear.

Q) I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the incredible success you had with “30 Rock.” What does it mean to you to have been a part of such an iconic series?

A) I am just lucky. I just feel super lucky to have been a part of it. It really was an amazing show. I was in the first episode, but I was an extra. Tina [Fey] just asked me to be in this thing and she just wanted to make sure that if she were to give lines to people that they would be able to actually perform them. So, she stacked the pilot with all performers and writers. I just feel lucky that over the course of the seven years that I got a bigger and bigger part in it. The amazing people that I worked with there are people that I wanted to work with on this show and other projects. I just met so many amazing people and it was a true blessing.

Q) What advice would you give to upcoming comedic writers?

A) Well, I think the main thing I always say to people…It’s hard to do right now because of the way the world is, but it really it is that I think you need to find a group of people or even just one other person that you really connect with and you hone your talent and then hopefully you’ll be able to work with those people for the rest of your lives. I was lucky enough…The guy in the grapes who played the saxophone in the wine episode is my friend Jim Carlson. He and I were in our first improv class together and that was back in 1996. So, I’ve worked with him in improv groups and sketch groups. I’ve just known him forever. It was just basically finding people whose comedy sensibilities were the same as mine and continuing to work and expand that group of people that you like working with so that by the time you get to write your own show you are able to do what Paula and I were able to do and just say, “Who are all the people that we’ve ever worked with that we want to work with again?” Then, you just have an amazingly fun time.

Q) What would you like to say to everyone who are fans and supporters of you and the work you do?

A) I would just like to 1) thank them for the nice comment – they are so rare to get on Twitter. You usually get stinky ones, but through this a lot of people have been saying nice things, which is great. And it means a lot to me because the reason that I do what I do is because of them. I feel like laughter is the medicine we need right now to get through a lot of stuff. It makes me feel great that people are enjoying what I enjoy to do.