Ex-'Onion' head speaks

Scott Dikkers is in a lot of pain.

The former editor-in-chief of The Onion spoke at a Pierson College Master's Tea on Thurs., Dec. 6 about growing up as a geek, getting beaten up in high school, and life after running the funniest comedy publication in the country. He said his decision to leave the paper was largely a result of its success.

"I'm a lot more comfortable trying to achieve something than actually being successful," he said, attributing this feeling to his difficult childhood in rural Minnesota and Wisconsin. "Maybe if I'm successful with this [movie business] I'll be better at it the second time around."

Dikkers, who headed The Onion from 1989 until 2000, started as a comics artist at the paper, which was a parody of tabloids like the Weekly World News until 1995, when it transformed itself into a parody of info-tainment newspapers like USA Today and established an online presence. The paper's popularity has grown wildly since then—currently it has 200,000 readers of its print format and one million visitors to its website every week, who come to read stories with headlines such as "Breakup Put Off until Bioterrorism Scare is Over" and "Man Waxes Patriotic, Truck."

During the Master's Tea, Dikkers played selections from The Onion's radio featurette program and showed a feature short film he made for the New York Comedy Film Festival called "E-Day" about the United States being invaded by Eskimos; Chevy Chase plays an inept President of the United States. Dikkers hopes to turn the movie into a feature, but he says he hasn't had much luck beating the Hollywood system, even with a high-powered name like Chase attached.

"These movie execs say, `Your script is really funny, I can't wait to see what you're going to do next,'" Dikkers complained. "They don't want to touch what you've already got."

Dikkers has strong views about the current state of comedy. "Sitcoms are for stupid people to chuckle at stupid things," he said, admitting that he had never laughed at The Simpsons. "I really don't like a lot of comedy that's out there, so I have to do it better."

He also let the audience in on some inside secrets of The Onion, such as where they get the photographs of fictional columnists like Jim Anchower, Smoove B, and Jean Teasdale: from 1970's Mikwaukee-area high-school yearbooks. "We're just running these people's pictures without their permission," he said. "We've got a great lawyer, though," he added mischeviously.

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