Sunday Picture Post 24 / How to be Funny
photo credit: Chris(sy) W
For The Sunday Picture Post, we are going to flip upside-down the saying: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Thousands of words are great if you are writing a novel, but if you are writing a screenplay, you need to do the opposite and be as concise as possible.
Each Sunday I will post a picture. For your screenwriting practice in brevity, in the comments section, please post one or all of the following:
- A title for this movie
- 1 word describing the theme, mood, or scene
- 1 sentence to describe the scene
- A pitch to sell the entire movie
The more colorful and creative you are, the better! Use any genre.
A good screenwriter is laconic, using a few words to say a lot.
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SCREENWRITING TIP OF THE DAY: HOW TO BE FUNNY
The line between what is funny and what is offensive is almost invisible.
Here you are, making the best jokes of your life, but you either get blank stares, or people shrink away with embarrassment, or you get violent death threats, or the public boycotts your movie.
Why don’t they get your jokes?
It happens to me regularly when I intend to deliver a compliment, or try to explain something, or God forbid, crack a joke and the people completely misunderstand me; the results are disastrous.
My intentions are good; my heart is in the right place; what went wrong?
I figured out one possible reason.
This week, I reread an uplifting and enlightening book I picked up a long time ago, Comedy Writing Step by Step: How to Write and Sell Your Sense of Humor by Gene Perret who wrote jokes for Bob Hope and Phyllis Diller. I highly recommend this book.
The key: SEE, RECOGNIZE, and ACCEPT things as they are.
Anything can be turned into comedy: light bulbs, driveways, obesity, politics, trends, health issues, mother-in-laws, bad dates, and death. The trick is talking about the topic in a way that everyone can relate; you have to get outside of your own head and into those of your target audience.
Perret gives the example of balding.
He said, if you make a joke about balding to a guy who has not noticed he is balding and therefore certainly has not accepted it, he is going to be offended.
Whereas, on the other hand, if you make a joke about balding to someone who has seen and accepted it, you will get a laugh out of them.
When Perret had to attach a medical instrument to his body, but he was too hairy for the tape, his daughter told him to attach it to his head, where there was no hair. That got a laugh out of his whole family during a really tough time because Perret had already seen, recognized, and accepted his hairiness, balding, and health issue.
One-liners in public give you limited time to make your point, so you have to make sure you are coming from a commonly accepted place that everyone can understand.
You have to recognize what your audience sees, recognizes, and accepts, whether it is a creative executive who is reading your script or a drunk girl listening to your spiel at the bar, you must tailor your humor to a common ground that can be understood by someone who is not inside your head, not seeing what you have seen, not knowing what you know.
With writing, you have more time to build up a joke or a story, and you can edit as necessary. The length of a movie or a book allows you more freedom to be different and open a window to a new world. Still people need to be able to relate.
When you are live on the spot, maybe you only have 10 seconds to impress someone, you have to make sure that everyone is following your train of thought. You can’t just throw something out of the dark recesses of your brain and except everyone to know about what you are talking.
Every time I launch some random thought into the air, people assume the absolute opposite of what I intended; they come to a conclusion based on what is inside their head, not mine.
Instead of offending people, you want to relieve the tension of a person’s insecurities and frustrations; the similar things we suffer and enjoy are our common ground.
Laughter is a release of tension.
People who naturally know the common ground are generally well-loved. Understanding what is common ground is what makes a great comedian (or politician, for that matter). If you haven’t yet, check out The Deep Friar who is very good at writing funny things to which we can all relate.
Know your audience.
See, recognize, and accept the reality of what your audience sees, recognizes, and accepts.
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23 Responses to “Sunday Picture Post 24 / How to be Funny”
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TITLE: Clown: On My Luck
WORD: Bleaker Street? (sorry, two words)
SENTENCE: A clown walks into a (concrete) bar and…
PITCH: A clown launches a “man on the street” talk show in order to gain exposure and gets a lot more than he bargained for in the process.
* I took some time off from working on the script contest script to post this! :-)
Muzz — Laughing here. Good ones!
@Jaden
AIEEEEE!!! ….another Cirque-de-Soleil clown-type.
You’re doing this on purpose to tease me,right?
I know you are. :-)
Okay, this seems to be what I’m working on now!
Title: The Prince of Time
Being caught in both worlds and thrown into the present, Renaissance jestor Jacques begs for mercy.
Although Hollywood is no match for the theatre of kings and queens, Jacques manages to eek out a living with his lively jests.
Okay, that sucked, but it’s where I’m at right now.
If anyone knows anything about the pointed shoes, please enlighten.
@Ellen
They’re good for stomping on cockroaches in corners!
Friar — It’s the month of the clowns and topless sexy brunettes… It will be over soon …maybe.
Ellen — That did not suck at all. I really liked that one and would enjoy that movie very much; could be great for children and adults, a jester from the renaissance who comes to Hollywood to try to make it — love it! There can be lots of confusion because of word meanings. “Off with his head” is just a joke now, but he could worry they really are going to kill him, so he desperately tries to entertain, and they think he is crazy. The King can just be some showbiz guy, and not an actual king. Lots to play with on this idea.
Ellen, there would also be a lot of room for hilarity if this real jester ended up trying to fit in with the weekend renaissance fair folks! Can you imagine!
He could be a waiter in one of those renaissance theatrical performance restaurants?
@Jaden
The topless sexy brunettes can stay (It’s just the clowns I don’t like!) :-)
Friar – We need to find you a woman. With pointed shoes. I’ll add you to my screenplay. Your name fits.
Jaden & Muzz – Thanks! Great ideas there. I would never have thought of those. This is one thing I really like about screenplays, they are very collaborative.
Well, you know me. I’m not that good with comedy. I like the dark stuff. Actually dark comedy is pretty funny. Something about the contrast between funny and tragic. I probably would give the kids nightmares.
But of course you never know. I don’t like to pigeonhole myself. Or, for Friar, pigeon toe myself.
Funny that when I write fiction, it tends to be “serious” (though I’ve written funny stories). When I write scripts, they tend to head straight for comedy…may be because I gravitate toward funny movies (with or without happy endings.)
I kinda take pride in myself that I have a knack of having a natural sense of humor… but I’m stumped by this one. I’m tempted to throw out some pun about being a court jester being thrown out by the bailiff… I’m sure with time and thought, I could come up with a story arond such a character. But it already sounds like a movie for a Pauly Shore or Tom Green type actor.
I do admit, it’s not easy for me to write with my sense of humor. I’ve managed to translate it into poetry… sometimes. But normally it’s on the spot, improv-style stuff. I’m working on it though. So maybe the Court Jester isn’t lost just yet. Perhaps the insane lawyer will win a case after all with his crazy antics.
t.sterling — I’m with ya on all that and your jester ideas are funny.
My writing humor has improved by letting go of my real life personality and letting my characters’ fictional personalities take over. Well-written characters can drive themselves. It is an amazing thing.
Don’t you find that you have friends who help you to be funnier? I have a couple of these types in my life — luckily one of them is a fellow writer and we’ve been friends since we were ten years old. When two or more funny people get together it helps to loosen the funny muscles.
t.sterling – what movies do you find funny? that always cheer you up, no matter how many times you watch them…that’s my favorite resource…no matter how many times I watch “Crimes and Misdemeanors” (If it bends it’s funny, if it breaks…) I still laugh.
Is real life funny? Maybe this clown is hard to place…although lawyer -clown could be funny, I liked that a lot.
Hey, our shower wall collapsed this week as I was scrubbing it — it really wasn’t funny at the time, but even two days later, in retrospect, it’s hilarious to me. But it probably wouldn’t amuse a building inspector.
Has anyone seen the article about the results of a study about un-funny jokes…out on Earthlink’s web news this a.m.
[...] bookmarks tagged laconic Sunday Picture Post 24 / How to be Funny saved by 2 others kiralynn123 bookmarked on 08/22/08 | [...]
Muzz — Yes, definitely the jokes really roll with certain friends. I try to get my funnier friends to look at my scripts and punch it up. I also try to catch as many funny jokes in conversation and write them down. So much happens in the spur of the moment.
When people are being funny in person, I analyze it and ask myself: what makes that funny? And then reproduce in writing the way the jokes unfolded in conversation. Sometimes it is a play on words, like one word sounds like another word, or rhymes, or something like that. Sometimes it is being called out on something annoying a person does. Sometimes it is building absurdity upon absurdity, a fictitious ‘what if?’ scenario. Sometimes it is a misunderstanding, or like yours, a minor disaster, or physical body language comedy.
There are many types of situations that make something funny. So when you are with your friend, figure out what type of situation it is, why is it funny, then you can reproduce it with different jokes alone when you are writing.
Unfortunately, we don’t always have a friend around to help us. And what if one day you are hired for a writing job… alone!
Yes, real life is funny. Mother nature is very good at playing jokes on us. Just when you think it can’t get worse! To survive and bee happy, I think one must see the humor in the bad stuff. That is what comedy is all about, giving relief to the hard stuff.
Do you have a link to the “unfunny” jokes? I did a search, there are tons of them.
http://my.earthlink.net/track?id=1018002&add=1&url=/article/nat?guid=20080822/48ae39c0_3ca6_1552620080822-2011936986
is the link…sorry forgot to put it here.
t.sterling could think of the most serious movie ever made about lawyers and substitute clowns — instant parody?
Muzz– Asking me what movies I find funny is like asking me how I order pizza. And for the record, it varies and usually depends on my mood. I love comedies more than any other kind of genre. It’s not a movie (I hope they make it though) but I’m a huge Arrested Development fan. I love that humor an aspire to write jokes like that. I don’t watch a lot of TV, but another TV show I’m a huge fan of is Psych.
But we’re talking about movies. I’m going to say Ocean’s Eleven (Twelve) and Thirteen, because of their dialogue. It’s quick and witty. I love the characters. It may not be laugh out loud funny, but it always puts me in a good mood. As for comedies I’ve seen so many times that it still makes me laugh inside without cracking a smile outside– Airplane!, Naked Gun, Clue, Superbad… I’m just pulling out random titles in my collection. Any Marx Brothers movie.
Accidents are great sources for material. Just in relaying the story later to a friend of something happening to me, like how my back bumper flew off my car while I was driving in the fast lane.
Jaden– This is the very reason I carry around a little black notebook to write down these things people say or I hear that sounds funny. I used to do it all the time and I’d look back on it, trying to figure out why that was funny or what was said before. I have a new notebook now, I still haven’t written anything yet, but I really need to. But thank you for your advice, I actually allowed my characters to start speaking for themselves, so to speak. I have two brothers who are constantly insulting each other… which is actually a release for me because I’m not a mean person but I come up with very mean things to say to people which would come off as funny to everyone else, except that person. I only have one friend who doesn’t mind it, so I can be as sarcastic as I want. It’s when I’m acting nice does she get worried.
t.sterling — Yes, I love Airplane, it is so funny! There was a song in the 80s made with sound bites from that movie; it is super funny. I recorded it on cassette. Would have to go to a thrift store and get a cassette player if I ever wanted to hear it again.
Yes, lots of humor is just down right cruel, funny to everyone but the target.
Hi Jaden – I know what you mean. When I was a nurse a used to try to cheer patients up with one liners and I think I wound up offending a lot of people.
I’ll have a bash at this:
Title: The Last Drop Shop
One Word: Regret
Sentence: As the fifth security guard slammed the door behind him, Robert wondered if he would ever be capable if raising a laugh.
Pitch: Robert Casey is a stressed accountant. His job sucks, his wife has dumped him for a dancer and a former client he ripped off has bulldozed his house to the ground.
Things couldn’t get much worse. Or at least he thought they couldn’t – until he came across the Last Stop shop. The shop owner granted him one wish – he could choose just a single word to describe what he’d like more of in his life.
So Robert chose fun. Trouble was, waking up as a jester in a modern world wasn’t the sort of fun he’d been hoping for.
Muzz– The Firm and The Verdict. I actually had to watch The Verdict for a screenwriting class. I forget why. I know I didn’t like it and thought it was a rather dry movie. But Paul Newman’s lawyer as a clown? I’d buy a ticket for that.
I was going to include Philadelphia… but that’d just be weird. Plus I haven’t seen the movie, but I know the story.
[...] comes to writing and there are many ways to go about achieving humor. One aspect was covered on the August 16, Sunday Picture Post 24 about seeing, recognizing, and accepting the same things that your audience sees, recognizes, and [...]