Arts and Entertainment

Roomful of monkeys with typewriters pen another Seinfeld spin-off

By Nate Macredi
The Bubble News Service

The same roomful of monkeys with typewriters that created “The Michael Richard’s Show,” “Bob Patterson” and “Ellie” have produced their fourth Seinfeld spin-off, according to sources close to the garage where the monkeys have been working for the past two years.
Tentatively titled “Wayne Knight and Friends,” the story centers on Knight as a CEO of a large energy trading company who faces bankruptcy as a result of his decision to hire only former Al-Qeada terrorists to run the firm’s various investment businesses.
“This time, the monkeys seemed to gravitate toward social relevance and topicality,” says Professor Tom Bates of Harvard University’s Missing Link Project, which has overseen the monkeys’ work since they were originally brought together in 1998 to produce a pilot for the Fox Network about a gay adoption of a Szechwan Panda who is taught proper gun licensing and safety entitled, “Rosie and the Bear.”
“We were a little disappointed that one never got off the ground,” says Bates, who told The Bubble that Fox Executives objected to the Panda being categorized as a bear, instead of a raccoon, which Pandas are anatomically more akin.
Bates recalls, “I told them, ‘Look, it’s a bunch of monkeys in a room with typewriters. You expect them to get every little detail exactly right?’”
Bates says the monkeys do more than just bash out sitcoms. Over the four years of production, the monkeys have managed two novels, a screenplay and a television miniseries.
“It comes down to time,” explains Bates. “Harvard insists the Missing Link Project be completely self-funding. With 25 monkeys banging away on typewriter keys 16 hours a day, it can take them a whole year to generate a commercially viable novel. But they can knock out a sitcom pilot sometimes in a matter of days. And Fox has a standing option on everything the monkeys produce.”
Bates says that he and his staff provide very little in the way of supervision and direction.
“We like to let the monkeys do their own thing,” he explains.
He hastens to note, however, that sometimes that freedom has its downside.
“One time the monkeys managed a complete sitcom pilot in just one day. We knew something had to be wrong, because normally they can barely come up with a readable sentence in such a short span of time.”
Bates says when the monkeys brought him a script entitled “Baby Koko” about a six-month old chimpanzee that speaks street-wise, smart-alecky French, he didn’t even want to show it to Fox brass.
“But they loved it,” Bates says, adding that Fox only passed on “Baby Koko” when they decided instead to pick up a series about two underage binge drinking daughters of a sitting president.
“It’s hard for even a roomful of monkeys with typewriters to top something like that,” commented Bates wistfully.
A PETA spokesperson says that organization currently has no objection to monkeys working in the entertainment field, although it would like to see opportunities extended to a broader range of animals, especially domesticated varieties.
“We believe there’s a lot of untapped talent in those barns, pig pens, catfish farms and chicken coops,” the spokesperson said. “With the expansion of cable, networks are going to have cast a wider net to find the creative talent it’s going to need.”
When Bates was asked what he thought of PETA’s ideas, he rolled his eyes, wondering what kind of quality you could expect from a barn full of cows with laptops.