(Photo: Patrick McMullan)

It’s a challenge putting together The Daily Show when no one working there is allowed to write. “We just sit around a table all day, telling stories and not writing,” correspondent Aasif Mandvi said last week at Sundance, where he was promoting his film Pretty Bird. But, he said, they’ve figured out a way of getting around the Writers’ Guild rules. “Actually, you can write. But you can’t think,” he said. “Not many people know this, but it’s just the thinking and writing at the same time that they object to. You can put pen to paper as long as there is absolutely no coherent thought. You can draw pictures, you can write words, but it can’t make any sense to anyone who has a basic education.” He hasn’t had any ugly confrontations with the striking writers, who might not appreciate his parsing of the WGA’s strictures. “I don’t cross picket lines,” he said. “Because they don’t start picketing until, like, way in the afternoon, and I’m home by then.”

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