Steve Kindof popped in to the BCK board and passed on a bit of Kaufmanliness. Steve's a regular at the Tenacious D message board, which is also frequented by writer Dino Stamatopolous (Ben Stiller Show, Conan O'Brien, Dana Carvey Show, Mr. Show, TV Funhouse, David Letterman). Says Steve:

Just today upon being asked, Dino made this comment on working with Kaufman on Carvey (thought you'd like it . . .) :

Needless to say, I do. Here's what Dino had to say:

Charlie's a great sketch writer, unfortunately, very few of his sketches got on Carvey. The show was misrepresented to the writers and ended up being more of a primetime SNL, with long character pieces, rather than conceptual sketches. Charlie had a great idea that would have been perfect for Dana though. It was Weird Al Yankovich's brother, Weirder Al Yankovich. He would take Weird's parody of "Beat It": "Eat it" and make it even crazier: "Schmeat It." Then, another brother would be introduced in the scene, Normal Al Yankovich. He would take "Eat It" and turn it back into "Beat It."

Charlie is a very mild-mannered guy, and kind of a depressive. I had fun going into his office and trying to cheer him up. He ended up spending most of his time writing his pilot, "Depressed Roomies" which was hilarious, but too funny for TV.

He wasn't at all happy with what "what's his name?" did with "Confessions of A Dangerous Mind" though and contemplated taking his name off the film. The script is great.

Basically, Charlie's a really sweet guy, but the world seems a little too much for him sometimes.

The Depressed Roomies script is available here.

A while ago I was told about another Dana Carvey sketch penned by Charlie. (Penned but never aired.) It was a riff on DOA, the film noir masterpiece about a guy who discovers he's been poisoned and spends his last few dying days trying to find out who did it and why. In Charlie's sketch, a guy discovers that he's been poisoned... but the poison takes 50 years to kill you. Even so, the doomed man spends his last 50 years of life trying to find out who did it and why.

Ahaha.