![]() He describes the experience as amazing and tough because of the long hours (it’s not uncommon, he says, to stay up for 40 hours straight writing that show). He then submitted some sketches to Saturday Night Live, a show with a history of taking young writers, and he was hired. “I didn’t get any of the jokes at the time, but I was laughing my head off because Dad was laughing his head off.” His mother, an English teacher, liked the idea of Kelley writing, but had understandable concerns about his ability to make a living at it.Īfter Kelley graduated in 1994, he worked briefly on a Showtime sketch called Twisted Puppet Theater, but without a budget the show never got off the ground. His parents were “confused but supportive.” He describes his father as a big fan of Late Night with David Letterman and Saturday Night Live, and says some of his earliest memories as a kid are of listening to old Steve Martin albums. Having found his passion, Kelley switched his major to English (Harvard has no comedy writing program), became president of the Lampoon and spent his college years practicing his craft. “I came to see that writing comedy was not a colossal waste of time, but an art that is beautiful.” “I very quickly realized what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” he says. Meantime, a buddy of his had decided to try out for the school’s humor magazine, “The Harvard Lampoon.” While Kelley had no intention of trying out, he went along for the ride and he got in. He switched to math, then history in his freshman year, yet still felt aimless. Although Kelley had graduated with honors from Connecticut’s Darien High School and earned a perfect 1600 on his SATs, he didn’t feel at home in Harvard’s physics curriculum. So how does a guy go from test tubes to cartoons? Somewhat by accident, it seems. Writers get to sit in the recording booth as actors record the show and explain the emotion behind the scenes. Same goes for the composer who does the music. “On an animated show you get to work with the animators and help them any way you can. “There are a lot of decisions that go beyond merely writing,” says Kelley. Turn on The Simpsons Sunday night and you’ll see Kelley’s name roll by in the credits as co-executive producer, one of the titles the Writer’s Guild negotiated for writers who work on television shows. Four years later, he emerged as a television comedy writer. HCMG 0001: Introduction to Health Economicsīrian Kelley could be the poster child for John Lennon’s famous lyric, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Kelley entered Harvard University in 1990 as a physics major.STAT 0002: Introduction to Statistics and Data Science.STAT 0001: Introduction to Statistics and Data Science. ![]() FNCE 0002: Essentials of Personal Finance.FNCE 0001: Introduction to Financial Markets and the Global Economy.Cambridge, UK: Strategy and International Management.San Francisco, CA: Innovation and Startup Culture.Management & Technology Summer Institute.
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