  Comedy
This week: Too Funny Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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Love your enemies. It makes them so damned mad.
-P.D. East
You can't have everything... where would you put it?
-Steven Wright
There's no such thing as fun for the whole family.
-Jerry Seinfeld |
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Too Funny?
Let me start by saying that there's no such thing as too much comedy - when you're writing comedy. The jokes just keep piling on each other like monkeys on a banana, until you have a gigantic wriggling pile of simian laughs.
But recently I watched a movie - I'm not going to tell you which one, because I don't want to prejudice you against it; it really was otherwise a good film - where it occurred to me that there might have been just a bit too many humorous moments. Because the movie was a very serious action/adventure flick, not a parody.
Understand, often parodies have greater staying power than the thing that they are parodying. The movie Airplane, for instance, is repeatedly quoted to this day; Airplane was a parody of airline disaster movies such as Airport '77. "Airport '77? What is it?" "It's a really bad disaster movie, but that's not important right now."
Or, to take another example, the mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap has outlasted any and all actual rockumentaries like... like... well, damn. I can't think of any. And just to demonstrate how fully the Spinal Tap movie has invaded everyday life, go to the BBC website, find a video, start the video. Not loud enough? Go to the volume control and turn it up to eleven. Because it goes to eleven.
That's how influential and pervasive comedies are in our world.
The problem comes in when you're writing a romance, or spy thriller, or action story, or courtroom drama. Now, don't get me wrong; I'm a big fan of comic moments in such deadly serious narratives. I could be writing a story about a person with Alzheimer's whose dog dies and then she gets cancer and has a stroke and finally croaks from a heart attack, and I promise you I'd put at least one joke in there somewhere.
It's when the jokes start to take over the story that you may need to think about toning it down just a bit. The book, movie, play or whatever stops being a drama and turns into a parody of itself. This is especially bad when it's the sequel or threequel or the whatever you call the 13th movie in a franchise - you've gone from writing something serious with moments of comic relief to parodying the earlier installments in the series.
How far, you ask, is too far? I don't really know. It's not a number thing: "We have one joke per five minutes of screen time. Better take out a few." No, it doesn't quite work that way, because it depends on the genre and the kind of jokes. You can get away with more jokes in a buddy cop movie, for instance, than you could in a tragic romance. It's more of an art than a science.
So when you're writing comedy, go all out. Turn it up to eleven. Don't stop the jokes. But if you find yourself writing a biopic of, say, Morrissey, keep the funny to a minimum. Your audience will thank you. Morrissey's fans will not change their expressions, but everyone else will thank you. |
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Last time, in "Comedy Newsletter (April 10, 2013)" , I totally ragged on New Jersey, and received NOT ONE newsletter comment defending the state. Youse guys are slipping.
Rhyssa  : Thank you for highlighting my poem. The zombies and I thank you.
Sure thing! Really, it was a no-brainer. Um... zombies? No-brainer? Okay, I'm out of here...
And that's it for me for this month - until June, stay alert and
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Comedy: May 08, 2013 Issue [#5658]
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