A joke writer who learned, at MTM and then in the garage of Taxi, that the funniest line is often the one a tired man cannot quite get out. His best work was made with partners, and it still holds.
Fi1m perspective
The joke in an Ed. Weinberger scene tends to arrive late. Somebody has been asked a simple question and is too tired, too embarrassed or too recently disappointed to answer it neatly, and the pause before they do is where the laugh lives. That is the engine of Taxi (1978), which he created with James L. Brooks, Stan Daniels and David Davis, and it is an odd engine for a comedy about New York cab drivers, since nobody in that garage wants to be one and the programme never pretends otherwise. The trouble it finds is the daily business of earning a living, and it is enough.
He came to this from the other end of comedy. Weinberger began in the early 1960s writing jokes for stand-ups, Dick Gregory, Richard Pryor and Bob Hope among them, and spent five years on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, which is work for the punchline and not the pause. MTM Enterprises took him on as a writer and producer on The Mary Tyler Moore Show from 1972, and that is where the second lesson was available: a room of colleagues can carry a series if the writing gives them something to lose. We cannot say how much of that programme's patience is his; our review does not pick him out of the writing staff. What we can say is that in 1977 he left with Brooks, Daniels and Davis to form the John Charles Walters Company at Paramount, and Taxi followed the next year.
It moved us more than a multi-camera sitcom has any business doing, and the reason is the acting he and his partners wrote for. Judd Hirsch and Marilu Henner make small troubles matter, and the programme has a patience with ordinary disappointment that most comedies would cut for time. It also has a weakness for caricature, and the broader jokes are the ones that have aged. Weinberger the joke writer and Weinberger the character writer are both in that garage, and the second is better company.
After Taxi the credits get longer and the shape gets harder to see. He co-created The Cosby Show (1984) and created Amen (1986), then Dear John and Sparks through the 1990s, and wrote the screenplay for The Lonely Guy (1984). We have not reviewed them and will not judge them at second hand; the record shows some of the later series ran shorter than Taxi, which is true of nearly everything. He has since written books and for the stage.
Asked about the plays, he said, "I set out really to make an entertainment. To entertain that's been my business." It is a modest claim, and Taxi is the evidence that the modesty was the method: a comedy that trusts a tired man's silence to be funnier than the line he eventually finds. Start there.
Biography
Ed. Weinberger is an American television writer and producer. He began his career writing for stand-up comedians and variety shows, including The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and The Dean Martin Show, before moving into situation comedy.
Weinberger joined the writing and producing staff of The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1972, contributing to 20 episodes as a writer and serving as producer or associate producer on 120 episodes. He was part of the core MTM Enterprises team alongside James L. Brooks, Allan Burns, David Davis and Stan Daniels. In 1977 the group formed the John Charles Walters Company, for which Weinberger co-created Taxi (1978).
He co-created The Cosby Show (1984) and created or co-created other series including The Associates (1979), Amen and Dear John. Weinberger has received nine Primetime Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards and a Writers Guild of America Lifetime Achievement Award. He has been married to actress Carlene Watkins since 1984.
