The comic double take has a long tradition. The master of late-night talk, Johnny Carson, spent decades waiting for minor absurdities of life to unfold on his set so he could offer up the reaction shots he'd borrowed from Jack Benny (the slowly turning head), Jackie Gleason (the "whooo") or Oliver Hardy (the fluttered tie). Carson just preferred that his guests provide the absurdities live, whereas Stewart's show imports them via videotape from the news — and the news of the moment was Vice President Dick Cheney's shotgun, which was providing fodder for half a dozen bedtime stand-ups, or, in Stewart's case, sit-behind-the-desks.

The point is, if you're in the late-night comedy business, you have to go after Cheney this week, however much you're craving to do bits on North Korea or the secretary of Agriculture — and if you're writing the opening extravaganza and monologue for the Oscar broadcast, you've got to come up with "Brokeback Mountain" stuff and George Clooney stuff, no matter how many others are doing it. The trick is simply to do it smarter and funnier, and that's the challenge for Stewart and his partners in both endeavors, Ben Karlin, executive producer of "The Daily Show," and David Javerbaum, its chief writer.

Not that they wouldn't like to toss in some routines on "movies we found interesting that may be too esoteric for a general audience," says Karlin, and then he too brings up the academy-snubbed "Grizzly Man." If Stewart fantasizes about pairing the hungry bear with penguins — lots of penguins — Karlin fantasizes about playing off the documentary's auteur-narrator, Herzog, intoning in his German accent over footage of the deadly grizzlies in the Alaska bush, "speaking very coldly about, like, chaos and life and death and all men are animals," then looking into the eyes of an enormous bear and, 'There is no human there. Life is chaos and destruction.'

"If you've seen the movie, it's hilarious," Karlin says. "If you haven't ..."

The two men working with Stewart on his material for next Sunday are both 34 and, like their boss, clever suburban boys: Karlin from outside Boston and Javerbaum, like their front man, from Jersey.

Both are veterans of the Onion humor news rag and website and proved that they could venture beyond the comfort zone of their Emmy Award-winning TV formula when they teamed with Stewart to write the bestselling "America (the Book)." Javerbaum writes the lyrics for musicals in his spare time; Karlin has written two screenplays that never made it to the screen, one with other Onion staffers "about a high school where the nerdy kids are the popular ones [and] another about a dog and a dogcatcher ... the greatest idea," he says, "ever."

Unlike their boss, those two have done the due diligence of watching screeners of this year's Oscar contenders, even if they have missed a few from the past. Javerbaum insists that he has never seen "Gone With the Wind," but has seen, several times, "Quigley," in which Gary Busey is sent back to Earth as a dog, and the same with "Battlefield Earth," the John Travolta epic. "Yeah, three times," he says.

Javerbaum would not want academy members to think that their dues are paying total film ignoramuses to write their annual gala, however, so he notes that he is an aficionado of true moving-picture history such as " 'Woman Goes for Stroll.' 1898. Ten-second film. I walked out in the middle of 'Train Entering Train Station.' "

Karlin insists that he has never seen "The Sound of Music."

"I hate sounds," he says, "and I hate music too."

But both did enjoy last year's "The Aristocrats," about the world's dirtiest joke, except that one avoided nomination too, so if Oscar night is not going well, Stewart will not have the option of grabbing the mike and saying, "This family goes into the office of a talent agent ..."

An afternoon break from putting together the Wednesday "Daily Show" becomes this sort of exercise, a recitation of what they ain't gonna do that night — because they ain't gonna give away the bits they've already written for March 5.

They decided early on not to bring the "Daily Show" desk to the Kodak Theatre. No fake news, either. Or fake remotes from the red carpet with leering fake correspondents trying not to stare down actresses' half-dresses.

"Doing stand-up on the red carpet may have been thrown out" — and rejected — "at the very first idea meeting we had," Karlin recalls.

As their boss says, "Not doin' the 'Daily Show' .... Definitely hosting the Oscars."