Alan Zweibel has a real good gig

His first largely successful job as a comedy writer was for the seminal television show “Saturday Night Live” and it was TV that influenced Alan Zweibel’s career choice.

“The old Dick Van Dyke show, I watched this show,” Zweibel said. “Here was this guy married to Mary Tyler Moore, had a house in New Rochelle and spends his days lying on couch making jokes with Buddy and Sally. I thought it was a real good gig.”

Zweibel, who graduated from Hewlett High School in 1968, initially wrote jokes for Catskill Mountain comics and became one of the great comedy writers said the New York Times. “Mr. Zweibel has earned a place in the pantheon of American pop culture,” Jill P. Capuzzo wrote in a Dec. 12, 2004 article. He is scheduled to speak at Congregation Sons of Israel in Woodmere on Saturday, March

31 at 8:30 p.m.

“We are looking forward to a lovely night of comedy, nostalgia and storytelling about his experiences in Hollywood and television,” said Congregation President Lori Ginsberg, who added that Zweibel was bar mitzvahed at the shul. “It’s hometown boy makes good,” she said.

Though Zweibel landed in Woodmere at 15, his family first lived in Brooklyn and then Wantagh. “My father had a couple of good seasons,” Zweibel joked about how his family moved to the Five Towns in the middle of 1965. Julius Zweibel was a jewelry manufacturer. He and wife Shirley, Zweibel’s mother, now live in Florida.

Being in a family with a humorous approach to life and then living in the Five Towns propelled Zweibel toward thinking funny. “We moved to Woodmere and things started really kicking in,” he said. “I was a cabana boy in Atlantic Beach and there is a mother lode of stuff to make fun of. In high school, I started writing and instead of a poem I would write a funny short story. That’s when I formulated what I wanted to do.” He worked at the Westbury Beach Club for two summers and was a soda jerk at the Inwood Beach club, he said.

After college, where he did the Jewish hippie thing, “bomb, strike, fly home for Yom Kippur,” Zweibel moved back to Woodmere and with encouragement from his parents began his comedy career working days at deli on Hillside Avenue in Queens and writing $7 dollar jokes for Catskill Mountains resort comedians. “There was no prescribed course then on how to be a

comedy writer,” he said.

In 1975, three years after college graduation, Zweibel was hired as a writer/performer for “Saturday Night Live.” He was in the first filmed segment shot for the TV show. The Spuds beer commercial, where he played an electroshock patient that receives the beverage after therapy. “It was great fun, a high wire act,” Zweibel said about his years on SNL. “I learned nothing that you write is so precious that it can’t be rewritten or made better,” he said.

His TV credits also include “It’s the Garry Shandling Show, “Monk” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” the play “700 Sundays” with Billy Crystal and several books, including the latest “Lunatics” a collaboration with humor columnist Dave Barry. “It was so much fun,” said Zweibel, who lives in Short Hills, NJ about working with Barry (Coral Gables, Fla.) though they were 1,500 miles apart and corresponded by email. “We passed the baton back and forth and I said to my wife, ‘Dave is funnier than I am.’” A screenplay was recently sold to Universal Pictures with comedic actor Steve Carell slated to star in the movie.

Material accumulated throughout his career is what highlights his talks ranging from successes to failures, comedy from the 1970s to the present and the people he has worked with. “It’s a full circle,” Zweibel said about coming back to Woodmere. “I wished my parents still lived there.”

Reservations are $50 per person and students and groups of four or more are $40 each. A dessert reception by Prestige Caterers is included. Zweibel’s books will be sold and available for him to sign. For reservations call (516) 374-0655.