Jon Stahl: TV Writer & Producer, VEEP

Jon Stahl builds comedy by making choices nobody sees. His work on Veep, HouseBroken, and independent projects isn’t driven by punchlines. It’s driven by the attitudes he plants before a scene even exists. That’s the part people miss — the private work in rehearsal, the blocking that turns into discovery, the cuts that make a joke land because everything unnecessary is gone. What looks loose on screen is usually the opposite. The early decisions lock the shape long before anyone calls action. We talked about attitude, economy, and how comedy ends up engineered.

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When you’re shaping a scene, what’s the invisible choice you make early on that most viewers never notice but ends up steering the whole thing?

So much of comedy relies on strong character attitudes, so I try to go into every scene with a clear idea of how each character is feeling, what they want, and what’s preventing them from reaching their goal. People think the best TV comedy is about coming up with great jokes, but that’s only a small part of it. For me, so much of it is about picking the right attitudes at the start of the scene. Viewers don’t see the amount of writing and rewriting that goes into making a scene funny, and almost all of that comedy comes from figuring out the character attitudes that actually fuel the scene.

Comedy looks loose, but it’s usually engineered. What’s one structural decision behind a joke or beat that people assume is spontaneous?

If you’ve ever been on a TV or film set, you know how much energy goes into blocking. That’s when the director, EP, and actors rehearse a scene for the physical movement. There were so many absurd and hilarious moments on Veep that we discovered in rehearsals: bits of dialogue, physical gags, etc. There’s a lot of play that happens in blocking, but once we “discover the funny,” it’s pretty much locked in when we go to shoot. That’s how I try to approach my own projects as well.

You’ve worked across platforms. What changes the moment a story moves from creator space to traditional TV, even though the audience would swear nothing changed?

I try to make my own projects look and feel like they were made for ten times the money we actually spent, but in scripted narrative it mostly comes down to time. On a TV show with a sizable budget, you have more time to work with your crew to pre-light scenes, rehearse, and other helpful stuff you just don’t have the bandwidth for on creator shoots with a tenth of the budget.

In a writers room, what’s the quietest force that actually decides what makes it to screen?

Brevity. All things being equal, if I can pitch a story beat that gets rid of two or three scenes, I’m a hero. If I can get the same laugh out of five words as twenty-five, that joke usually goes in the script. Adding words doesn’t make a script great. Finding the right way to remove them usually does.

What’s something you cut or never pitch because it only works in your head but would die on camera even though it feels brilliant?

First-thought jokes. I’m always wary of jokes that just pop into my head. They’re usually the writing equivalent of fast food. Cheap, easy, and low nutritional value. A writer pitching only puns is a red flag for someone who’s not getting their contract renewed, and in the Venn diagram of TV writing, there’s a big overlap between first-thought pitches and puns.

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When Jon talks about comedy, he’s talking about control. The early choice that locks a scene onto a track the audience never notices but everything depends on. They only get the finished beat. He’s creating the moment that determines it.

Learn more about Jon at:

• Website