The term genius is thrown around the television comedy writing world but Smigel is one of the true ones. His pedigree runs along side Conan's, Spike Feresten's and Dino Stamatopolous' to name a few. And if you don't know Spike and Dino do a search of their resumes and you'll see what I'm talking about.
That pigeon and statue line is quite smart if you think about it. I mean if Morgan freeman would have said it would have been one of the those golden lines that everyone keeps quoting.
I'm sure he's pissed about Conan's situation, especially since they've been good friends and colaborators since 1988. Robert does NOT own Triumph - NBC does. He can only do Triumph on other shows if NBC says ok and they won't say "ok" if it is to appear with Conan on another network. Robert will probably just let Triumph die, sadly.
I propose... Triumph travels to China for the Yulin dog eating festival. They're super aggressive about being questioned about. It would make for awesome TV
Robert Smigel gave Louis CK his first TV job by hiring him as a writer on Conan's original Late Night show back in the 1990s. So they've known each other for many years now. Here's a video of them doing a bit together. Possibly the original of Triumph. watch?v=2FFyNyfOqQQ
After watching this guy talk over the years, even if i find Tryumph very funny, this fella thinks that he is the best thing in tehe world and everyone else is crazy and deserves to be ridiculed. Right there is a sociopath behavior.
I don't think CK was a SNL writer. Saw Smigel say in other interview that if he used a CK joke, he would put his name in the credits, but that's it. I know that ck wrote on the Conan show, but before they were all writers on the Dana carvey show: CK, Smigel, colbert, Carrell, Dino, Bob Odenkirk, insane amount of talent.
Smigel is just brilliant. The Joe Kamal - Pokemon skit was so multi layered and ridiculously well written. TV Funhouse was light years ahead of the rest .
Robert Smigel, for my money, embodies the best aspects of Conan’s 12:35am era, aspects that are currently lost ever since Conan moved to LA and to 11:00pm. If you watch any Late Night era comedy bit, it definitely FEELS like something that Smigel created, even if he didn’t.
