The Burnzo Diaries

Tuesday, October 27, 2026

GETTING THE FEAR: How Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Changed My Life

Let me just confess right off the bat that I watched the movie first.

Yes, the movie with Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro that was directed by Terry Gilliam. I was about 19 years old. My sophomore year in college. I had no idea that it was an adaptation of a book. And I had never heard of Hunter S. Thompson before, either.

My brother had rented the movie and was watching it in my downstairs basement. I happened to walk in the room and I saw an actor who looked familiar. “Is that Johnny Depp?” I asked him. He said that it was, indeed, Depp. This immediately intrigued me because I was a fan of Depp’s but had never seen this particular movie of his before.

I stayed in the room for a few minutes and I liked what I was watching, although I had no idea what was going on. The movie made little sense to me. It seemed more like an experience than a movie with a coherent story that was easy to follow. But, yes, I did like what I saw.

I know I didn’t watch the whole movie at that time and I don’t think I even watched it later. I think my brother returned the movie to the video store without me ever seeing it in its entirety. My memory is hazy about all this, but I think it wasn’t until I actually saw the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas VHS, maybe for sale at Walmart or something, that I decided to just up and buy it. I already knew I liked Johnny Depp. And I knew I had liked the few minutes or so of what I had seen when my brother was watching the movie in the basement. So I said, screw it, I’m just going to blindly buy this thing.

And that’s exactly what I did.

This is when I’m pretty sure I first saw the movie in full. I still had no idea what was going on. Hardly understood any of it. So I watched it again.

And again.

I still didn’t really understand the movie at all, but for some reason I still loved it. I kept watching it so many times and I never got sick of it, not even a little bit. I must have watched the movie more than a dozen times.

I eventually did come to realize, of course, that this movie was based on a book by a writer named Hunter S. Thompson. Since I liked the movie so much, I figured I should probably read the book that it was based on. I also figured the book would help me better understand the movie.

So I went to my local library, took out a copy of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas …

And, from that point forward, my life got divided into two clearly-demarcated parts. There was pre-Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. And there was post-Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

The original first edition cover art
for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that this book changed my life. It was seriously the best book I had ever read up to that point in my life and remains the best book I have ever read to this day.

Not that there aren’t “better” books out there. I’m sure that books by Herman Melville or Henry James or Ernest Hemingway are better than Thompson’s book. The difference, however, is that Fear and Loathing is, indeed, “serious literature,” yes, but it is more enjoyable to read than any other work of fine literature I have ever read before.

See, I am not a good reader by nature. Reading has always been a struggle for me. Although my skills have improved over the years, I was always a slow reader in school and had terrible reading comprehension skills. I was one of those readers who had to read a paragraph twice or even three times to fully absorb what I was reading. I usually did well in my English classes, but this was just because I made the extra effort to make sure I understood what I was reading. I found most works of literature that I read in these classes to be absolutely boring and I’m ashamed to admit this because most of these books were brilliant works of literature. But they were still boring to me!

Then came along Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I can honestly say without any exaggeration that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was the first work of literature I ever read that I didn’t struggle reading. Well, not only did I not struggle with it, but I genuinely enjoyed reading it, had genuine FUN reading it, and genuinely had trouble putting it down. It was the first actual page-turner I had ever read.

It was also the first book that ever made me laugh out loud.

Seriously, I can’t remember any book actually making me laugh out loud like Hunter Thompson’s book did. And I’m talking uncontrollable bursts of laughter. I have a distinct memory of being on the commuter rail train circa 2001, coming or going to BU (i.e. Boston University), and trying to hold in my laughter so I didn’t look like a weirdo howling out loud. I think what I did was hide the laughter with coughs or maybe even a fake sneeze.

Overall, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas taught me a very important lesson. Literature can be fun, not boring. It can also be cool. It can be serious while at the same time being wacky. And weird.

But, yes, the book is definitely “serious” literature—no doubt about that.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is basically about America coming down from the high it was on in the 1960s. In the book, there is Thompson’s famous “wave speech” that analogizes the late-1960s hippie culture—one of peace, love and idealism—to a great wave that came ashore with so much positive energy but then broke, left a high-water mark, and rolled back. Woodstock in 1969 may have been the peak of this “wave.” But then, a few months later, there was Altamont, the free Rolling Stones concert that hoped to be a sequel to Woodstock. Everything went south at that festival; there were fights, rapes, a murder and an overall different, more negative vibe.[i] Some people say that Altamont marked the official end of the hippie movement, the peace and the love.

The "wave speech."

The decade of the 1970s was essentially the aftermath of the wave’s break. Nixon was president. Vietnam continued to go sideways. The Manson murders and the Kent State shootings left everyone feeling rattled. Downers became more popular within the drug culture. People abandoned an American Dream filled with peace, love and unity, and instead, basically said “fuck it” and put their faith back into money. People no longer went to a place like Woodstock to find the dream. They went to Las Vegas instead.

And this is really what Hunter’s book documents so well. This cultural shift from the Age of Aquarius to the age of the casino.

Well, sort of.

Although Hunter’s book does accurately reveal how America had “lost its way” in the 1970s, I think the book also suggests, perhaps more subtly and maybe even subconsciously, that it may not be as bad as it all seems.

Part of what makes the book so funny is how paranoid the characters of Raoul Duke and his sidekick Dr. Gonzo are. These characters are walking embodiments of fear and loathing, always convinced that the people around them are out to get them, that the cops almost have them cornered, that their arrest is imminent, that the axe is always about to fall.

"Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas... with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether."

"No! Fuck! Don't go near the elevator, man, that's just what they want us to do. Trap us in a steel box, take us down to the basement. Come here. Don't run, man. They'd like any excuse to shoot us."

But the funny thing is that this is not really true, no one is out to get them. Nobody is onto their schemes. There are no cops after them. In fact, when one highway patrolman does pull Duke over, he is actually pretty cool with Duke, even gives him a break. The people in Las Vegas mostly just keep to themselves. They’re focused more on winning big in Vegas than anything Duke and Gonzo are up to.

One of my early interpretations of the book saw Duke, a journalist, as a personification of the media. Just like the media, Duke constantly exists in a state of fear and loathing because he is hyper-focused on all the bad things in the world. He often broods over negative current events through newspaper articles and TV news reports while ignoring the overall banality that surrounds him on a daily basis. If you think about it, how much less fearful would we all be without the media constantly trying to get us to focus on all the bad things happening in the world?

Looking at the book through a more philosophical lens, however, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas can also be seen as a book that simply warns us about the destructive nature of fear. You know, it’s like what FDR said: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” There are always horrible things happening in the world all the time. The media would have us believe that these horrible things are happening in our immediate surroundings. But this is not usually true. Our biggest enemy is not the horrible things that the media tells us are happening in the world, but, rather, our biggest enemy is really the FEAR of these horrible things.

This may be a controversial reading of Fear and Loathing, but I would argue that Duke and Gonzo are not simply victims of the fucked-up society around them, although I think, to some degree, that they definitely are. They are mostly victims of themselves and their own fear. They do obscene amounts of drugs simply because they are afraid, but in doing so, they ironically become more degenerate than the very people around them that they fear. Maybe some fear and loathing of how fucked up America had become in the 1970s was justified, but at the end of the day, their choice to become junkies is a direct result of allowing their fear to dominate them.

"Arming themselves to the teeth." The obscene amounts of drugs that Duke and Gonzo do in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

There is a quote at the beginning of the book by Dr. Samuel Johnson: “He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” This quote is basically saying that becoming a junky—which is essentially becoming a beast—is a kind of copout. And maybe Hunter put this quote at the beginning of his book because he thought this to be true of the 1970s drug culture … but also, deep down, maybe he even knew this was true of himself. Maybe Thompson, who famously used drugs to numb his “pain of being a man,” knew that he was really just copping out at the end of the day.

Not that he can be blamed. I certainly don’t judge him or anybody for “copping out.” It’s tough being a man, especially in a screwed-up world, and I’ve certainly done my share of numbing over the years. Yes, I’ve certainly copped out at times. It’s hard not to.

Anyway, all of the above is just my way of saying there are deep, “serious” things going on in the wacky, weird book that is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In fact, the absurd wackiness of the book sometimes ends up overshadowing just how much there is to appreciate about this work of fine literature. Not just the work’s content …

But also the form itself.

I think people think of Fear and Loathing as being “below” other books of fine literature because it is written in such a strange, irreverent manner. This, however, is not the case. The writing is so crisp, so punchy, so to-the-point, flows so fluidly and is so easy to read. No wordy sentences. No long descriptions. And especially no adverbs. Yes, the prose isn’t easy to read because it’s low art; it’s easy to read because it’s simply so well-written.

From what I understand, Hunter learned from the best. He taught himself how to write novels by literally retyping books by Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner and other great writers. I believe he said that he wanted to know what it felt like to write a great work of literature. Reading the books is one thing, but the actual process of typing them out, word-for-word, helped Hunter get a sense of the prose’s rhythm and style.[ii]

Hunter S. Thompson on his typewriter.

Ironically, I learned from Hunter in the same way he learned from Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and others. Ok, I didn’t go so far as to actually retype his book, but I must have read Fear and Loathing countless times. I spent a great deal of time studying how he constructed his paragraphs and seamlessly wove in the characters’ dialogue. One night, I actually read much of the book out loud to myself, very slowly, so I could micro-analyze the way in which he constructed his prose.

In fact, I don’t even know if I would have had the courage to try my hand at writing a novel if it hadn’t been for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The biggest thing that the book taught me is that you can write in a completely liberated, irreverent—even punk-ish—manner and still be writing actual “fine” literature. Fear and Loathing taught me that there don’t have to be any rules and that “fine literature” doesn’t have to be boring. It sounds so silly to say, but Thompson’s writing made me realize that I can write a book that is written in a way that I always wanted one to be written. You know what I mean? I didn’t have to conform to what I thought a book should be like. I could literally just be myself and write a book the way myself wanted to write a book. Once I got that into my head, the idea of writing suddenly became exciting to me. What?! I can write a book like THIS (i.e. like Fear and Loathing)?! Why didn’t you say so?! I’m all in!

And the rest is history. Over the past 20 years, I’ve written more than a dozen novels (about 14, to be exact, but who’s counting?).

For all the above reasons, I think I can safely say that the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is not only my favorite book of all time, but it is also the book that inspired me the most as a writer. Aside from a couple of movies (Repo Man, for example), I don’t think there is another work of art that has played such a profound role in shaping me as a creative person.

There is no other book in existence that I have read more times than Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. No book even comes close. Other than Fear and Loathing, I actually can’t think of any book out there that I have read more than twice. With Fear and Loathing, I have read that book God knows how many times.

Whenever I am in need of inspiration or encouragement, I read Fear and Loathing. Whenever I feel like I need to ground myself, I read Fear and Loathing. It may sound strange to say this, but reading the book gives me a feeling of going home for some reason. Yes, I don’t know why, but I feel like I’m “at home” when I read the book.

Which is odd. Because why would a drug-fueled book about the dark side of the American dream make me feel “at home”?

I don’t know.

But it does.

…

MATT BURNS is the author of several novels, including Johnny Cruise, Supermarket Zombies!, The Woman and the Dragon and Weird Monster. He’s also written numerous memoirs, including GARAGE MOVIE: My Adventures Making Weird Films, Lymey Bastard, My Raging Case of Beastie Fever, Jungle F’ng Fever: My 30-Year Love Affair with Guns N’ Roses, Bostonwood and I Turned into a Misfit! Check out these books (and many more) on his Amazon author page HERE.

Other trending articles by Matt Burns that may be of interest to you:

Writing Tips/Advice:

THE AUDIO BOOK EXPERIMENT: Tips and Advice on How to Record Your First Audio Book

Getting Your Novel Done

Making Your Good Writing Great

Getting Your Screenplay Done

Writing the Sequel

Writing the Trilogy

No-No, Learn to Love the Rejection: Some Sage Advice for Writers in Search of an Agent or Publisher

The Story Behind Supermarket Zombies!

The Story Behind The Woman and the Dragon

Film-related articles:

REPO MAN: It’s Not Just a Movie, It’s a Way of Life

2001: A Shot-by-Shot Odyssey

WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER TURNS 25 (and it’s only gotten better)

NOT PLAYING IT SAFE: How Todd Haynes’ Film Was Used to ‘Deprogram’ Me and My Fellow Film Students

How I Got into the Films of John Cassavetes

If I May Say a Few Words About FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR

35 YEARS OF TURTLE POWER: A Tribute to 1990’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie

Revisiting the Blair Witch Project

My Childhood Obsession with Rambo

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeere’s Charlie (a story about Burns’ recurring nightmares featuring Charlie Chaplin)

Short memoirs/nostalgia:

BOGGLED BY THE BELL: How I tried to write an episode of Saved by the Bell and ultimately failed

The Case for Cassette

A Trip Down DVD Drive

Some Wicked Good Times: A Love Letter to Newbury Comics

A Love Letter to the Emerald Square Mall (about the death of the shopping mall age)

I Dream of Dream Machine (a memoir of the local video arcade)

I USED TO BE A GAMER: The 8-bit Nintendo Years

Video Store Memories

NEVER FORGET the Fun-O-Rama (a traveling carnival memoir)

Skateboarding in the 1990s

WAAF Goes Off the Air

CAPE CODDING IT: A Cape Cod Vacation Memoir

GREYHOUNDING IT, BABY! A Guide to taking a Greyhound Bus Long Distances

Visiting Mom in the ICU (short story contest winner)

Remembering That Time I Tried to Stop a Shoplifter at the Wrentham Outlets

The Strange, Surreal Moment of Being Called a DILF Inside a Panera Bread Restaurant on a Wednesday Afternoon

Weird Times en la Weirdioteca

Gaming/computers nostalgia:

RIP PowerBook G3

PROXOS IN THE PLEX: A Goldeneye 007 N64 Retrospective

100 DAYS of ZELDA: Revisiting Ocarina of Time

SOURCES:

[i] Gimme Shelter. Directed by Albert Maysles, et al., Maysles Films, 1970.

[ii] Rose, Charlie. “Hunter S. Thompson / Isabella Rossellini | Charlie Rose.” YouTube, uploaded by Charlie Rose, 31 October 2013, https://youtu.be/JVcrimSicek?si=oG4l_JF8x_fKFMN8.

Sunday, October 18, 2026

BOGGLED BY THE BELL: How I tried to write an episode of Saved by the Bell and ultimately failed

I’m not totally sure I ever watched Saved by the Bell until it was in reruns. It’s possible that I watched it sometimes on Saturday mornings, but even by that point it may have been reruns. What I do know for sure is that most of my watching of Saved by the Bell occurred in the later 1990s when it aired as reruns on TBS.

Remember TBS? Ok, TBS still exists, so I’m sure you remember it, but remember when it showed reruns of TV shows in the afternoons and, for some reason, the shows began five minutes after the hour instead of right on the hour like most normal shows started? What I’m saying is that Saved by the Bell started at 5:05 in the afternoon and then another episode aired at 5:35 in the afternoon.

For years, I never knew why TBS did this, but I just looked it up and apparently this was known as “Turner Time.” Ted Turner, founder of TBS, basically thought it was good to give people five extra minutes to get to the couch and figure out what they wanted to watch. He figured a lot of people sat down, started watching a show that began at the top of the hour, maybe didn’t like it, and then surfed through channels to find something better. If they ended up on TBS within the first five minutes, they would basically arrive at the channel right as a show was about to begin (instead of arriving five minutes late to the show).[I]

The TBS afternoon lineup in the mid-1990s.

Anyway, there was a period of several years in the mid-to-late-1990s when I would watch Saved by the Bellbefore dinner, usually during the 5:05-6:05 time slot. This was when I got most of my exposure to the show and I eventually got to a point where I saw every single Saved by the Bell episode ever made.

Now, I could bore you with all my theories that could explain why I actually liked Saved by the Bell, but the fact of the matter is that nobody can really explain why the show was so popular. The closest they get to an explanation is that it’s “comfort food,” a safe, colorful and, yes, predictable world to escape to with fun characters. A world where every conflict gets resolved within about 25 minutes. A world where Zack Morris constantly falls prey to life’s temptations but always does the right thing in the end. A world where we can always depend on Screech to do or say something ridiculous to make us laugh. A world where the beautiful, all-American “girl next door” (Kelly Kapowski) is actually a nice person and also dateable. A world where friendship is central.

In one word, Saved by the Bell is simple. And people like simple.

But is it really as simple as it seems?

Well, I for one always thought the show WAS simple. And even cheesy. Only recently, however, I started to change my tune on this.

See, during a recent hunt for used DVDs, I found and purchased a super-cheap used copy of Saved by the Bell, the complete series DVD set. It had been several years since I had watched the show, so I thought I would watch a few episodes.

A “few episodes” turned into a few more episodes. And then a few more episodes. And a few more. Soon, I pretty much watched every single episode (except for the Malibu ones with Stacey Carosi, which I never really liked, nothing against Stacey or Leah Remini who played her).

The Saved by the Bell complete series DVD box set.

What surprised me the most when I revisited the show was how much I actually still liked it. Yes, there was the nostalgic aspect and maybe the “comfort food” aspect, but I was surprised by how funny the show actually is.

Dustin Diamond (Screech) is genuinely funny. I think when I was younger I mostly just saw him as some goofball geek character, but, as an adult, I find myself better appreciating his comedic talent. I think he got funnier the longer the show went on. In fact, I think he was perhaps at his funniest in the latest seasons, like when he’s using a book to learn how to pick up girls in Palm Springs, or when he falls for Tori in the very last season and asks her over for dinner at his house:

TORI: But, Screech, you’re not my boyf—

SCREECH: Tut-tut-tut. Shh! We’ll discuss while we dine. I hope you like Brussels sprouts.

Screech Powers played by Dustin Diamond.

Screech when he and the gang snuck into Club Attic.

Then there was that one episode when Kelly becomes a teen model, enters a modeling competition and wins a trip to Paris. In one scene, Screech and the gang ask Kelly if she wants to go to The Max for a little sendoff party. Screech then has a line that, for some reason, I find to be hilarious, mostly because of how he delivers it:

SCREECH: Yeah, in honor of your trip to France, we were all gonna eat some pizza.

The best of Screech Powers.

Mr. Belding is genuinely funny, too. One Belding scene that I always think of is when Screech is trying to create a diversion for whatever reason (probably as part of Zack’s schemes), runs to Mr. Belding and says:

SCREECH: Mr. Belding, come quick! Somebody poisoned the chess team.

BELDING: It’s a sick world.

Yeah, that line always gets me for some reason, especially the way he delivers it.

And then there’s the episode when Belding is talking to an Air Force UFO investigator in his office. During the meeting, a secretary calls for Belding over the school intercom and says:

SECRETARY: Mr. Belding, please report to the gym. The water polo team has a horse in the pool again.

Mr. Belding then says to the investigator before excusing himself:

BELDING: Kids love horseplay. Ha-ha-ha! [laughs his signature, high-pitched laugh]

That line always gets me, too.

Mr. Belding (Dennis Haskins) doing his signature laugh.

This still is from the episode "Breaking Up is Hard to Undo."

A lot of the guest stars were really funny as well. Remember James in The Haaaaahvard episode? He is the aspiring actor who works as a waiter at The Max. Zack and the gang recruit him to play a representative from Harvard at the college fair. He sets up a table next to “Stansbury” University (a fictional stand-in for Stanford) and starts raving about how wonderful Jessie Spano is despite her subpar SAT score. Stansbury suddenly gets interested in Jessie after turning their nose up at her before. If Haaaaaaahvard wants her, then they do, too.

James (Mark Blankfield) representing Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahvard.

Although the actors playing these characters (Dustin Diamond as Screech, Dennis Haskins as Mr. Belding and Mark Blankfield as James) are clearly very talented, it’s important that they don’t get ALL the credit for the comedy. While watching the show in 2026, I really began to appreciate the writing of the shows. Yes, you need good actors to act out the physical comedy and deliver the comedic lines, but you also need good writers to actually write the lines and come up with the comedic bits.

This was when I had my revelation. I always thought Saved by the Bell was so simple and so cheesy and for this reason I always assumed that it would have been easy to write an episode of the show. Heck, I thought you could practically sneeze and an episode would come out of your nose. Right?

Maybe … not …

What I started to realize while rewatching the show in 2026, especially since I then had some writing experience under my belt, was that writing an episode of Saved by the Bell was probably more difficult than I would have thought.

But I wasn’t sure. Heck, maybe it WAS a breeze to write an episode. I wanted to find out for myself, though.

That’s right: I wanted to try writing an episode of Saved by the Bell.

So that’s exactly what I did. I wanted to pretend that I was a TV writer in the early 1990s and I had to write an episode of Saved by the Bell. Not a revamped 2026 version of Saved by the Bell, mind you. But just an ordinary episode of Saved by the Bell that could nicely fit in with all the other Saved by the Bell episodes that were made back when the show was in its heyday.

At first, I thought this writing exercise would be a ton of fun, mainly because the show is so fun. But I was wrong. Not only was writing an episode of Saved by the Bell more difficult than I thought, but it was also so much more stressful than I ever would have imagined.

Let me start from the beginning. The initial blank page.

First off, I needed to come up with a premise for the episode. This took a while, especially since most of the ideas I came up with had already been done before. Finally, during a walk, I came up with a semi-unique idea that I decided to go with. The episode would be called “The Switch” where Zack and Screech switch bodies and Zack is forced to experience life through the perspective of Screech. After being treated like a dork, a dweeb and a geek for about 24 hours, Zack realizes how mean he has been to Screech over the years, how he uses him and calls him a geek all the time, and realizes he should be treating Screech with more respect.

Was this too deep of an episode for Saved by the Bell, a show for tweens that usually aired on Saturday mornings after cartoons? Maybe, but I decided to go with it anyway. It was a fairly interesting premise, albeit not completely novel since it would basically be like Freaky Friday. However, there was a good moral lesson that Zack learned by the end. I thought I could picture it as a real episode of Saved by the Bell that would feasibly air on a Saturday morning in the early 1990s.

So I started writing the episode. And it started out pretty good. The episode opened with Zack and Screech working on a science fair project in Screech’s science-lab-like bedroom. Well, Screech is actually the one doing all the work. Zack is relaxing on Screech’s bed, reading a car magazine and listening to a Walkman.

Picture the opening scene taking place in this bedroom.

Screech says:

SCREECH

Hey Zack, I was wondering … since this is supposed to be a group project, maybe we should be working as a group?

ZACK

Oh, well, that’s a fair point, Screech, but you’re so smart you don’t need my help. In fact, I’d just be weighing you down. So I’m actually doing you a favor by letting you do all the work.

SCREECH

Gee, Zack, never thought about it like that. That’s really nice of you.

ZACK

Hey, what are friends for?

Screech eventually finishes the project and Zack checks out his work:

ZACK

(looking over the project)

Wow, great job, Screech!

SCREECH

Thanks, Zack.

ZACK

What is it?

Audience laughter.

SCREECH

It’s a body swapper.

ZACK

A what?

SCREECH

I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, Zack, but it’s been a little difficult for me to get a date.

ZACK

You don’t say?

SCREECH

It’s true. Zack, this may come as a surprise to you, but all of the girls in our school think I’m a geek.

ZACK

No … really? Haven’t noticed.

SCREECH

Well, my invention would allow a geek like me to swap bodies with somebody girls actually like.

ZACK is intrigued. We can see the gears and wheels turning in his head.

ZACK

You mean, like a movie star or something?

SCREECH

I was thinking more along the lines of Albert Einstein.

ZACK

To each their own.

ZACK takes a closer look at the “body swapper.”

ZACK (CONT’D)

Wait, are you telling me I could switch bodies with somebody like Tom Cruise?

SCREECH

Potentially. But why would you want to do that? You can score a date with pretty much any girl at Bayside.

ZACK’s gears and wheels are REALLY turning now. He turns to the camera and breaks the fourth wall.

ZACK

(speaking to the audience)

Yeah, but if I was Tom Cruise, I could get any girl in the world.

Then he turns back to SCREECH.

ZACK (CONT’D)

Tell me how this thing works, Screech.

Screech does show Zack how to use the machine, but of course it doesn’t work as planned, there is a big chemical-like explosion, Screech and Zack emerge from the toxic smoke, both in a daze. Zack is ticked off, calls Screech an idiot, then basically orders Screech to fix the machine by morning. Then Zack goes home and gets some sleep.

The next morning …

Zack gets out of bed, walks by a mirror, catches a glimpse of himself, backtracks, takes a good look in the mirror and realizes he is in the body of …

Screech!

We cut to Bayside High now. Screech (really Zack) walks through the hallway, looking dazed and confused. He notices that all the girls are making dirty faces at him, as though he is a walking fungal disease, and he heads to his locker.

He opens his locker to get his books for the day and this is when KELLY KAPOWSKI walks by.

SCREECH

Hey Kelly, we still on for the movies tonight?

KELLY

Hm? What are you talking about?

SCREECH

You know, the movies?

KELLY

Sorry, Screech, I’m going with Zack tonight.

SCREECH

But I am Z—

He stops short.

SCREECH (CONT’D)

Never mind.

KELLY

Have you seen Zack, by the way?

SCREECH

Um … no, haven’t seen him.

KELLY smiles at him and keeps walking, disappears around a corner.

SCREECH (CONT’D)

(to himself)

What the heck is going on here?

One of the HOT GIRL EXTRAS we always see in most of the episodes (maybe GINGER?), walks by.

SCREECH (CONT’D)

Hey Ginger! How’s it going?

GINGER

Get lost, creep!

And she keeps walking.

SCREECH turns into the camera, again breaking the fourth wall, and says …

SCREECH

It’s true. I’m Screech!

Meanwhile everybody is treating the actual Screech like Bayside royalty because he’s in Zack’s body. While Zack is horrified that he’s in Screech’s body, Screech actually LOVES being in Zack’s body. He’s suddenly big man on Bayside campus and girls look at him in a completely different way. More importantly, he realizes that this is his one shot to win over the love of his life: Lisa Turtle.

“Screech” pulls “Zack” aside in the Bayside hallway …

SCREECH

Hey … uh … Zack, can I talk to you for a second?

ZACK turns and sees who it is.

ZACK

Uh … oh.

SCREECH

Are you in there, Screech? Cuz I’m in you.

ZACK

I … I don’t know what you’re talking about.

SCREECH

It is you, isn’t it? I can tell by the way you’re talking.

ZACK

Ok, yes. It’s me.

SCREECH

Don’t you see what happened? We switched bodies!

ZACK

I guess we did.

SCREECH

It was that stupid machine of yours!

SCREECH goes to strangle ZACK but stops midair.

ZACK

Don’t be mad, Zack. This wasn’t my plan. I wanted to be in Albert Einstein’s body, remember!

SCREECH

Well, come on, we gotta try and switch back!

ZACK

I can’t do that!

SCREECH

What do you mean you can’t do that? We’re in the wrong bodies!

ZACK

Just give me 24 hours! This is my only shot at Lisa! Please, Zack, I’m never going to ask you for anything again!

SCREECH

But this is ridiculous. Lisa’s going to think I have the hots for her. Kelly’s going to think I’m dumping her for Lisa!

ZACK

I’ll tell Lisa what happened tomorrow—I swear. I’ll clear it all up. I just want one date with her. It’s been my dream ever since kindergarten—you know that.

SCREECH rolls his eyes.

SCREECH

All right. Fine. 24 hours!

That’s the basic setup for the episode and that’s basically all I ended up writing until I hit a wall of writer’s block that felt insurmountable. I knew that the episode was either going to end with Zack waking up from a bad dream, which of course is a bit cliché, or end with Zack and Screech back in Screech’s bedroom after the chemical explosion, the switch never happened, but it was all a strange hallucination that taught Zack he needed to treat Screech with more respect.

So, yes, I had the set-up, the ending, but the middle was the tough part. That’s where I ran into big trouble. I had about ten pages of setup, maybe two or three pages of an ending, but I needed about 12 or 13 pages of a middle-section. I guess you would call it “the second act.” Is that what it’s called in TV? Sorry, I’m more familiar with writing feature screenplays (sniff of the nose). But that’s where I was hitting the wall. In the second act.

I did have a scene that takes place in The Max where Zack (really Screech) asks Lisa to the movies. Lisa, of course, finds this completely confusing. Why did “Zack” all of a sudden want to date her? And this creates a conflict with Kelly who is dating Zack. Why is Zack suddenly into Lisa and completely ignoring me?

That Max scene was slightly interesting, but I ultimately didn’t know where it was going and generally didn’t know where the rest of the second act was going, either.

The other big problem I was encountering that I never would have thought would be a problem unless I actually wrote an episode myself was trying to find a role and a purpose for every single main character in the show. I mean, my episode mainly involves Zack, Screech, Lisa and, to some degree, Kelly, but how do Slater and Jessie fit into the picture? You can’t just suddenly not have those characters appear in this particular episode. But I had trouble even coming up with one or two lines for them and even those lines felt forced.

And then there was Mr. Belding. Any Saved by the Bell episode taking place at Bayside needed to have Belding involved or it would just feel weird. Saved by the Bell did have episodes without Belding, but those were usually episodes that took place in a mall or in Palm Springs or at the Malibu beach club. If the episode took place at Bayside, the episode NEEDED to have Mr. Belding in it.

But, like with Jessie and Slater, I had trouble writing Belding into the episode without it feeling shoehorned in. I was tempted to simply have him come out of nowhere and say, “Hey-hey-hey, what is going on here?” just for the hell of it, but I suppose, if I did, I needed to have a reason for him to do this that felt fresh. I guess I could have had Screech (really Zack) putting Zack (really Screech) in a headlock or something, bullying him into reversing the body switch, then have Belding come up and do the whole “Hey-hey-hey” thing. Maybe that would have worked, but the Belding catchphrase ultimately felt too easy. Too predictable.

"Hey-hey-hey, what is going on here?" highlight reel.

I guess what I probably needed was some kind of B story for these supporting characters; you know, a subplot. I tried to think of one but came up dry. B stories can’t just be tacked on. They are in the background but also somewhat part of the A story. Maybe if Jessie and Slater had some sort of debate amongst each other about which gender was superior? Maybe Jessie would insist that, if they switched gender roles, Slater would never survive a day in her shoes, something like that? This would at least fit in with the whole “body switch” theme.

As for Belding’s B story? I don’t know. All right, now that I think of it, maybe if I had him say “hey-hey-hey” at some point I’d be done with him for the episode. But his character is so good I would need to come up with something better than that!

Ugh. Anyway, I eventually got to a point where I got tired of trying to write an episode of Saved by the Belland gave up doing so. What I thought would be a fun writing exercise had turned into a tedious chore. I needed things to happen in a second act, but I didn’t know what those things should be. I knew I needed Zack to gradually learn to treat Screech with more respect, but I didn’t know what “beats” (i.e. events) needed to take place to gradually get Zack to have this epiphany. Yes, I needed more scenes but not too many scenes before I got to the ending where we find out it’s all a bad dream (or hallucination). Everything has to be resolved in about 24 pages or so (the standard length for a Saved by the Bell episode, which translates to about 24 minutes of show time, leaving room for commercials), so the arc of Zack learning he needs to treat Screech with respect must happen fast but not feel too fast.

Then, there’s the whole matter of having mini-cliffhangers before each commercial break. You know, there needs to be a cliffhanging beat before commercial break one. Maybe this would be when Zack agrees to the 24 hours or maybe even earlier when he finds out he’s definitely in Screech’s body. And then there would have to be one more cliffhanger beat before the second commercial break (I have no idea what this would be).

In other words, writing a “simple” episode of Saved by the Bell is ironically much more complicated to pull off than you would think.

It was a fun experiment, trying to write the show, but I think I just prefer to go back to being ignorant me, watching the show and not worrying about how the writers managed to write a staggering 86 episodes over the course of four seasons. Although I have a whole new appreciation of how the series came into existence, I also prefer to preserve its illusion of simplicity. It was the simplicity that always drew me to the show and makes me revisit the show time and time again, apparently even far into my adulthood.

Thus, from this point forward, I will forget about this writing experiment that I found to be overwhelming. I am 1990s Matt again. Watching the show as a passive observer. Not a care in the world regarding how it was made and what effort went into all of it.

Oh, and I also still think Kelly Kapowski is dateable.

…

MATT BURNS is the author of several novels, including Weird Monster, Supermarket Zombies!, The Woman and the Dragon and Johnny Cruise. He’s also written numerous memoirs, including GARAGE MOVIE: My Adventures Making Weird Films, Lymey Bastard, My Raging Case of Beastie Fever, Jungle F’ng Fever: My 30-Year Love Affair with Guns N’ Roses, Bostonwood and I Turned into a Misfit! Check out these books (and many more) on his Amazon author page HERE.