Sketching Their Future

Things were looking up for the comedy team of Kravits & Jones. In 1999, the duo won a spot in the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colo., the HBO-sponsored retreat held each year to honor comedy’s big names and showcase new ones. Kravits & Jones fell heavily in the latter category--two unknown actors from New York with agents but not much else, who suddenly found themselves performing their sketch comedy show “Making Faces” to ski-weekend audiences composed of television executives, managers and comedy stars like Martin Short and Ben Stiller. They did their best bits--”Saving Private Ryan: The Musical” and “Unpin My Heart,” a love duet sung by two heartsick professional wrestlers.

By the festival’s end, Kravits & Jones won a jury prize, and people were comparing their act to an earlier comedy team, Mike Nichols and Elaine May. This was typical of industry hyperbole (and not necessarily good hyperbole, since the reference might be lost on many in the TV business). But Kravits & Jones’ comic timing was undeniably good; they cut an amusing image onstage (Kravits is 5 foot 4 and balding, while Jones is stocky, with thick curly hair); and their sketches didn’t pander--as evidenced in “Waiting for Waiting for Godot,” in which Kravits & Jones play two actors waiting to hear if they’ve been cast in “Waiting for Godot.”

Today, Kravits & Jones have gone the way of a lot of sketch comedy teams who try to make the transition from stage to television--they’ve split up. Not officially, of course (they would still love to work together and recently did a show at the HBO/Warner Bros. Workspace in Hollywood). But these days, while Joel Jones, 40, is doing what actors must do to get by--day player work in movies, going on commercial auditions--Jason Kravits, 33, has become a regular on an acclaimed drama, ABC’s “The Practice,” where he plays the nebbishy-looking, ultra-competitive Assistant Dist. Atty. Richard Bay.

Over breakfast recently, it seemed somewhat symbolic that Kravits’ cell phone rang several times while Jones, his hands otherwise free, ate his food. Indeed, it is difficult not to see Jones’ glass as half-empty (there he is, holding a spoon to his mouth at an audition for a Kellogg’s commercial) and Kravits’ as more than half-full (there he is on a hit show, featured in yet another dramatic courtroom scene opposite Dylan McDermott and having sexual tension with Lara Flynn Boyle, who plays his boss, Dist. Atty. Helen Gamble.)

“It’s hard in this business in general not to compare yourself with other people. And if you’re partners, I’m sure that’s harder,” said Kravits of the natural tendency for actors to mark their success in terms of the other guy. “But again, we’ve always been very supportive of each other. And in the long run, that might sustain us as a duo.”

Kravits, raised in Maryland, and Jones, from Agoura, met in 1994 through an ex-girlfriend of Kravits and later formed Kravits & Jones in New York, after the two worked together in a larger sketch group called Rumble in the Red Room. After putting up their show “Making Faces with Kravits & Jones” in a cabaret and getting reviewed, they eventually came to Los Angeles to showcase for Aspen and promptly landed a spot in the festival. It all seemed to happen in a pleasing blur.

What transpired after the festival was more indicative of how the comedy business works, particularly for sketch teams. Fresh from Aspen, Kravits & Jones decamped to Los Angeles for what they call the “couch and bottled water tour”--meetings with development executives at studios and networks about bringing their comedy to television. They were not only unknowns--anathema in a climate where networks want stars fronting their sitcoms--they didn’t really have an ironclad pitch.

“Every place we went they would say the same thing,” said Jones. He affected the voice of an earnest executive: “ ‘No one’s probably going to ask you this, but, um, ‘What do you want to do?’ ”

“The smart answer, if we were prepared, would have been [to say], ‘Well, we have this or that or the other thing,’ ” Kravits added.

For a time, they scrambled to come up with this or that or the other thing--with, in other words, viable sitcom ideas. What if they were a jingle-writing team? The offspring of a Vegas duo who inherit their fathers’ act? What if they were two hacky comedians touring the country and affecting people’s lives--a version of “Touched by an Angel,” only “Touched by a Comic” instead?

They did not pitch a sketch comedy show. “Sketch,” says Kravits, was “not a good word to most of the places we went.” While nearly every broadcast network has a sketch comedy show in development--including NBC, which has ordered six episodes of a show called “The Downer Channel” for a potential midseason or summer run--network bosses are still uncomfortable with the format in prime time. The comedy of sketch teams--edgy and topical in a way that can make advertisers nervous--is deemed better-suited for alternative or late-night programming. Besides, with no-names in a cast, how do you generate interest?

To NBC, “The Downer Channel” is promotable mainly because Steve Martin is attached as executive producer, which may or may not mean anything to viewers. Robert Morton, another of the show’s executive producers, thinks “The Downer Channel” will have what failed sketch shows lack--a point of view.

“What was great about ‘Saturday Night Live’ was, [executive producer] Lorne Michaels had a point of view in the beginning. And for the last 30 years he’s nurtured that point of view. The [cast] names have changed, the writers have changed, but there’s still a solid point of view,” he said.

The last high-profile prime-time sketch show, ABC’s “The Dana Carvey Show” in 1996, was a flop, though the network has since scored a modest, low-cost hit with “Whose Line Is It Anyway?,” featuring comedian Drew Carey in an improv setting. There is also “Hype,” the WB’s attempt at prime-time sketch (albeit with a cast more in keeping with the network’s emphasis on youthful good looks than purist sketch experience).

So Far, Sketch Hasn’t Worked in Prime Time

The WB, UPN, Fox and ABC all have sketch in development. Ellen DeGeneres’ sketch series for CBS was scrapped, and the comedian is now developing a more conventional sitcom.

“Sketch is traditionally too alternative [for prime time],” said Julie Pernworth, vice president of comedy development at CBS. “Until somebody develops the prototypical example of it working. Then there will be a slew of copycats.”

Four years ago, when the Upright Citizens Brigade, a sketch group with a cult following in New York, was pitching itself to TV executives, “we were told not to ever say the word ‘sketch,’ ” said Matt Besser, a UCB member. The troupe landed a series on the cable network Comedy Central. It generated good reviews and a little notoriety and then was canceled after three years.

Since then the group has been repackaging itself to the TV industry, and Besser says “sketch” is still a dirty word. “We have four ideas, but the bottom line of all the ideas is, ‘Do you think the four of us are funny?’ It seems we have fans at every network, but they all say, ‘We don’t know what to do with you.’ ”

Like Kravits & Jones, the UCB has seen the industry chase one of its members--Amy Poehler, who drew heavy interest from NBC for a role in “The Michael Richards Show”--over the group as a whole. Besser credits Poehler with turning the offer down and thus keeping the group together. “But a year from now, I don’t know that we’d stay together,” he said.

As it happened, Kravits--and not Kravits & Jones--got the big break first. All along, both understood that they were a team more for packaging reasons than creative ones. “Not to take anything away from his talent, but Jason has a look,” Jones said. “I’m a mutt.”

Kravits was working as a day player on a movie called “Monkeybone” when he got called to audition for a lawyer part on “The Practice.” He was still living in New York and had to borrow a suit from the film’s wardrobe department--and borrow it again when he got a call-back.

“I wouldn’t have gotten the audition if he didn’t write ‘short,’ ” Kravits said, referring to the note from “The Practice’s” creator-executive producer, David E. Kelley, that a smallish actor be cast in the role of the Napoleonic assistant D.A. “If he had said, ‘We need a lawyer,’ everybody would have sent in everybody,” says Kravits. “But he said he needed a short lawyer, so that automatically cuts out everybody over 5-5.”

Kravits signed on for two episodes--a commitment that grew as Kelley kept feeding him plot lines, energized by Kravits’ performance as the competitive, insecure assistant D.A. By the time the current season of “The Practice” began, Kravits’ name was on the opening credits and he was guaranteed at least 17 episodes of work.

At breakfast, Jones listened to Kravits talk about life on a hit series. The ups and the downs. This week, Kravits is featured in a People magazine profile. Jones recently put up a one-man show and got called back for a lead role on a Nickelodeon show.

“He’s got a very busy schedule now,” Jones said of his partner. He betrayed a hint of envy--but just a hint, still waiting for his Godot.