Keys to Comedy Part 1

I saw Horrible Bosses last night, unfortunately I didn’t find it all that funny. A lot of comedy comes from surprises, catching you off guard by presenting a different point of view than you’re own. If you’re able to come up with the punch line before the actor says it, it’s probably not very original or unique. The problem with Horrible Bosses was so much of the comedy was predictable.

1st Choice

I blame this on lazy writing and going with the ’1st choice.’ One topic that’s touched upon in improv classes is going with your 3rd choice. If I say the word beach, 1st word association to pop in your head is ball, 2nd choice may be lifeguard, 3rd choice might be shack. It’s easy to trace how I reached shack, but it’s more of an interesting choice to respond with shack versus just ball. Comedy is about surprises and not being predictable, so you always want to go with 3rd choice to catch your audience slightly off guard.

I’ll follow up this post with a couple other comedy concepts and the problems I see in a lot of mainstream comedy.

Facebook Burnout

I’m over Facebook. It was cool and cutting edge back when I joined as a college sophomore at the beginning of ’05, but when business’ began using it as a marketing tool it lost the cool factor. Now at this point, it’s really just a lazy way to keep tabs on other people and most people aren’t that interesting. Oh you had a baby? That’s so unique, only 4 million* US couples did that this year.

I’ve avoided putting personal information on there these days because I don’t want it indexed by some search engine or anybody that’s just an acquaintance. The term connected these days just means means you’re able to keep tabs on someone without even talking to them. Certainly no need to go to high school reunions anymore. I don’t need to make small talk, it took me a minute to find out you’re still binging like a 19 year old on Mad Dog and smoking Virginia Slims.

Only reason why I don’t do a massive friend purge is incase they’re a valuable connection down the road. And of course the pics of girls on toilets.

*I realize some people have twins/triplets/any other “lets”, bare with me.

Goodbye Greek

Being busy between improv, work, and classes, I hadn’t gotten a chance to catch up with the final remaining episodes of ABC Family’s Greek, but over the weekend I watched the remaining episodes. It was bittersweet seeing these characters semi-wrapped up, and knowing this is the last time we’ll see them all together. For me it almost felt like graduating again. I wrote a review of the pilot episode a term before I graduated college, so watching this show brought up memories of my own times in college. But with this series coming to a close, it’s all over. Since I’ve watched every episode, I calculated how much time I spent watching them: ~3,182 minutes, or about 53 hours. While I’ve been drawn to writing features more than television, it reminds me how much more attached you get to characters on television. It truly is like joining your friends for an hour (or half an hour) a week. I still have a lot of catching up to do of The Office this season, but with Steve Carell’s exit I’m sure it will be a sad goodbye as well.

Welcome Back… to Me

It’s been almost a year since my last post, so I figure its time to give an update. I’ve been in LA now for over a year, and the most important thing on my mind is… the rain. It doesn’t rain here often, but when it does, mother nature is a bitch. Several condo units in our complex have mold problems and been flooded. I myself now have damp carpets, it smells nice. Other than that, things have been going well with writing, my acting/improv, and living in the city. I’ll have more frequent updates now… I think. We’ll see. Till next time — toots.

Hot Tub Time Machine Thoughts

Before I discuss the story problems with this film, I want to preface it. I’ve been looking forward to this movie for months. John Cusack, the king of the 80′s, returning to an era he knows all too well, joined by talented funny guys, how could it go wrong? But while the concept was fun, it missed a lot of marks.

1) Humor — this movie has been advertised as a raunchy, crazy comedy, but it didn’t really do that at all. There were some subtle jokes thrown in the film, which I appreciated, but the laughs just weren’t frequent enough. I found scenes where it appeared they didn’t try to put any sort of jokes in it. For screenwriters the universal rule is there needs to be at least a joke on every page. Even if it’s not the funniest joke every written, you need something for everyone included.

2) Time Travel Talk — they spend way too much time discussing the theory of time travel, or how it worked, yada yada. At this point in the history of cinema, everyone has seen a few time travel movies. We get it. Just move on. Take a cue from Coppola’s only comedy (from the 80′s) “Peggy Sue Got Married.” Just jump into the story, let the characters and audience figure out what’s going on as the story continues. Don’t stop the action so these guys can sit in a room for what felt like 5 minutes.

3) The bad guy sucked — big time. The big “rival” to Rob Corddry’s character was hardly threatening, and I never felt like the guys were ever in any real danger of not returning. Part of the problem is you don’t ever meet this character until a third into the film, which is a real problem. The script needed to take a closer viewing of Back To The Future and see how they handled Biff, introducing him as a jackass who controls Marty’s Fathers life, to the end, where he kisses his ass.

4) The whole premise of Hot Tub Time Machine is that they travel back in time. And that’s why we are in our theater seats! So why do they wait until Act 2 before they FINALLY travel back in time? Too long! Too much backstory! I want to see these guys rip apart and make fun of people in the 80′s, not bitch and moan for the first 20 minutes about their lives.

I really wanted to love this film, it was aware the premise was ridiculous and was ready to go crazy. But then they backed off by trying to instill more of a deeper meaning into the film, which wasn’t going to work. Would I watch it again? Sure, but only for the actors…

Day 1: Job Hunt

As you may have seen on my Twitter feed, I’m now in Los Angeles, throwing my job net over the metropolis known as L.A., and all I’ve caught are crabs… wait a second… In the weeks leading up to moving, I began to realize my resume sucked, so I had been desperately re-tuning it to showcase my abilities. If anything positive comes out of job hunting, it’s that you spend hours pouring over 2-sheets of papers and over analyzing whether every word conveys who you are, so eventually you’re able to summarize your accomplishments pretty well.

Yahoo recently posted an article of 5 steps to help your job hunt. Of course it would be more helpful if they were new suggestions I hadn’t already seen. But what’s interesting to note was the large percent of people who said they’re unhappy with their new job. Bad sign for a lot of companies once the economy turns around.

I’m glad I’m beginning my job search before college seniors graduate in the spring, although it may not make that much of a difference. With a recent job I applied for, I went through the interview process and found out later who I was up against — people with years and years of experience, and they were all fighting me over a part time job. It’s brutal out there.

With all that said, I just have to keep at it. I spent several hours today calling production offices, searching online sites, and contacting recruiters. We’ll see where all these roads lead.

RIP Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien

And just like that, he’s gone. It’s been an interesting few weeks with all the back and forth negotiations between NBC and Conan, with Leno and Letterman stirred in. There was always a small hope of mine that perhaps they could figure out some alternative plan and keep Conan around, but apparently it wasn’t in the cards. I’m glad I was able to at least participate in history, as one of the first audience members to ever see his show, and now a small group who ever attended during its brief run. Perhaps now my Tonight Show hat and ticket are worth something.

For those who haven’t watched the final episode, small spoiler alert — Will Ferrell sings a cover of Free Bird with one of the ZZ Tops, Beck, and Ben Harper, along with Conan and the tonight show band. I thought it was an appropriate song, especially since it belongs to Lynyrd Skynyrd, who only got to experience a few years of success before a horrible plane crash that killed several members.

Part of Conans downfall that caused him to bleed viewers was that he abandoned his form — what made his success. He hardly brought any of the characters or skits with him to LA. He felt that those wouldn’t be kosher during an 11:30 time slot, but what only ended up happening was he alienated himself from his fan base and made a generic late night show for the Leno audience. Problem is his humor doesn’t appeal to the Leno audience. Even Conan toned down, they still aren’t into him. Perhaps he’ll be better suited on another network though, and be able to return to what made him a success — random, ridiculous skits that don’t attempt to be anything but funny.

De-constructing Comedy

Today when I tried to access my admin controls for the blog, I forgot the login information. Perhaps that’s a sign it’s been too long? Nevertheless, I thought I’d discuss learning and writing comedy.

After reading articles/books, watching lots of films, and working on my own scripts, I would think it would be easy to understand that ‘main stream’ jokes don’t work for me. As amusing as a typical Two and a Half men episode may be, I know at least half the punch lines before they even say them. I think half the jokes of a sitcom are going to contain the ‘structure’ of the same joke you’ve heard a million times before. That’s why whether or not your joke succeeds, you also need to write for characters that the audience cares about, so they care to see what happens to them during the story.

Over the last year or two, whenever I hear a joke/situation that catches me off guard, I’ll write it down, and deconstruct it. What was funny about it? Was it the content of the joke or just how it was said? Having the right delivery is a huge component of selling the joke or letting it fail. By keeping track of these, I’ll eventually internalize the structure and apply them to jokes I write without even thinking about it.

Getting back to the topic of jokes that don’t work for me, it’s not that they aren’t funny, it’s just amusing. I know the jokes there, but it doesn’t surprise me. When Conan O’Brien was on ‘Inside the Actor’s Studio’ he talked about this. He’d be in the writer’s room, and a fellow writer would be pitching his joke or skit, and with a dead pan face, Conan would tell him that’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard.

But Conan also touched on another thing, improv. He feels that even the most brilliant thing written and planned out ahead of time won’t get as many laughs as something that’s in the moment.

I had never thought of it that way but I can see his point. As you watch something unexpectedly unfold, it catches you off guard. It’s like when you’re hanging out with your buddies, and somebody cracks a joke and everybody gets a huge laugh. If you go home and write that situation out on paper, it’s probably not that funny, which confuses people because they figure if they’re funny in person, they can write funny too.

My LA Visit

This last week I spent some time in LA/Hollywood/Burbank to do some sight seeing with friends and meet with some people. My blog has been a bit neglected, but my Twitter is always busy with updates. This trip also gave me a chance to begin to familiarize myself with the town, figure out my next step, all of that. I’ve never been a fan of California; I think the con’s far outweigh the pro’s. BUT, and it’s a huge but, it’s where the film/tv industry is, and suffering through the living conditions is worth pursuing work that I’m passionate about.

On Monday we attended Conan O’Brien’s very first taping for the Tonight Show. It was fun being part of history and getting a nice souvenir hat. That being said, I didn’t realize how much waiting was involved, between arriving & the taping started we were waiting for 4 hours. Not to mention we were by far not the first ones to arrive. Too much standing around to do it often, but for a once in a lifetime opportunity… it was worth it.

Blog Upkeep

Who would have known how much work it is to keep a blog going? It’s like when you start a script, but you keep putting it off, first by days, then weeks, and you just feel guilty the whole time. I think the Spammers now officially visit my blog more often than I do, lucky for me the Spam filter is my trusty bodyguard.

Twitter really does seem like the new ‘it’ thing. Before it was building your own web page, then blogs, and now Twitter. Unfortunately Twitter still has a ways to go with dealing with the growing pains that other similar services have fought, that is, poor content and spammers. But the people who stick it out and continue to be active will make visiting the site worthwhile.

Later this month I’ll be traveling to LA for some sight seeing as well as begin to figure out my plans for moving, but in the mean time I’ll see about putting up some more content on this site.