Anne is a name well-known to comedy nerds and maybe she rings a bell if you watched the Netflix movie A Futile and Stupid Gesture; she was portrayed by Natasha Lyonne. As per the movie, Anne got started as a writer for National Lampoon and her most famous piece was the VW ad saying Ted Kennedy would be president if he drove a Beetle in 1969. Then Lorne Michaels poached her with other staffers to make the first writing team of SNL. The Nerds with Bill Murray and Gilda Radner was her signature skit.
However, I’m not really a big fan of those two comedy outlets. They weren’t consistent thanks to heavy drug usage and Lampoon was often vulgarity for its own sake. What made Anne my heroine was her first creation after she left SNL, the short-lived sitcom Square Pegs which CBS showed on prime time, Monday Nights in 1982-83 before cancelling it. Square was a more accurate portrayal of high school before John Hughes did it; maybe he ripped Anne off, he wrote for Lampoon too. Despite the show being a starting point for Sarah Jessica Parker (overrated), other people close to the right age were cast with several exceptions, namely Merritt Butrick who was Captain Kirk’s son in Star Trek II and III. To me this really mattered. Hollywood still casts people in their early twenties for high school for two major reasons: labor laws involving children and more importantly, image. Hollywood wants to project ideal teens with no skin problems, no awkward facial hair, no growth spurts and most importantly, girls with fully developed breasts. Anne stuck to her guns on getting the key actresses to be under 18 along with one side character. Other than Merritt, Wells and Caliri, the remaining supporting cast members were pretty close. One inaccuracy I’m pretty sure Anne had to accept was condensing the popular clique types into one group even though we all know in reality, Valley Girls and Black Girls didn’t hang out in a public LA high school nor did they date boys who acted like Stallone.
To boost the show’s popularity with mainstream audiences, Anne got Bill Murray to be a sub teacher, Father Guido Sarducci help Marshall kick his Pac Man addiction and the LA Dodgers to appear. She also proved she “got” modern teens by having musical cameos from Devo and the Waitresses, not what gave Boomers a boner. The better selection is another foreshadowing of what Hughes would implement.
Obviously, Square Pegs failed. It was a couple years too early for mainstream audiences and I think it turned off the core demo CBS pursued then via MASH (heading into its final season), Newhart (struggling to find its voice in its first) and Lou Grant. Years later, Anne confessed how the staff was somewhat chaotic thanks to drugs and it was a factor in CBS wanting to cancel.
Anne fell off my radar afterwards and in TV/Film writing in general. Her credits get pretty spotty if imdb.com is to be trusted. It seems she continued to remain relevant in teaching future generations as being an instructor at numerous California universities.
Thanks for Anne, especially with Square Pegs by showing there was at least one person in show business and comedy who shared my perspective. I also want to give you a standing ovation for sticking to your guns, fighting for your place at the writers’ table and paving the way to future women writers/producers such as Nell Scovell, Caroline Omine, Tina Fey, Minty Lewis and the Molyneux sisters. The list should be longer but these are the great women I know off the top of my head. Trust me, we’ll be learning more names as the years go by courtesy of Anne being a trailblazer.
