Andy Breckman

Andrew Ross "Andy" Breckman (born March 3, 1955) is an American television and film writer and a radio personality on WFMU. He is the creator and executive producer of the Emmy Award-winning television series Monk on the USA Network, and is co-host of WFMU radio's long-running conceptual comedy program Seven Second Delay. He has written screenplays for a number of comedy films including Sgt. Bilko (starring Steve Martin) and Rat Race (directed by Jerry Zucker), and is frequently hired as a "script doctor" to inject humorous content into scripts written by other screenwriters. His production bio at USA Network says, "He has trouble making friends." 2Television writing Breckman wrote for Late Night with David Letterman from 1982 to 1984, and contributed sketches to Saturday Night Live from 1983 to 1996. One of his most well-known vignettes was a Saturday Night Live sketch called "White Like Me" (which he also directed), in which Eddie Murphy disguises himself as a Caucasian for a day. In 2003 he served as a jokewriter for comedian Steve Martin's stint as host of the Academy Awards. Breckman's biggest success, Monk, was a murder-mystery with a humorous edge. Breckman told New Jersey Monthly that he was a voracious reader of the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, John D. MacDonald, and other authors of “solvable” mysteries, as well as being a big fan of the TV series Columbo. “In a way, it’s similar to comedy writing,” he says. “It’s puzzles and puzzle solvin