This freeze frame video is punch the world in the face awesome. I think only a FakeGrimlock could be more awesome about it. Watch it.
Dying Is Easy. Comedy Is Hard.
Being funny in books, on the big screen, and on the little screens too.Steve Kaplan has posted an interview he gave to a German magazine–and God knows that the German’s need help with comedy. We all should pay attention!
I think it’d be very cool if “Broad Comedies” referred to a movie with dames and chicks in the cast, but broad refers to the thematic style of humor employed in the storytelling. In fact, it means pretty much any joke, gag, or tom-foolery may be used, so be aware.
This is a list of some of my favorites:
- Addams Family Values
- Animal House
- Back to School
- Beetle Juice
- Caddy Shack
- Easy Money
- George of the Jungle
- The Quest for the Holy Grail
“Our Idiot Brother” is a movie chock-full of good looking people. I went to see it, in spite of a mediocre review by the local paper, because Paul Rudd is funny, and Zooey Deschanel is beautiful and funny, and Elizabeth Banks is beautiful and funny, and Rashida Jones et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You get the picture.
I was worried because movies with beautiful people have a challenge in that sometimes it’s hard to feel sorry for the really good looking people because, regardless of circumstances, they’re probably going to be good looking. So the filmmakers did a clever thing in keeping total success slightly out of their reach.
I was relieved to see that Paul Rudd’s character makes his own mess. In my book, that leads to better humor. If there’s a true flaw, it’s that he isn’t actively working on achieving something, except maybe getting along with his family. That’s fine, but it isn’t made clear until the third act.
In my mind, it falls into the same place I store “Little Miss Sunshine” and “The Fisher King” for the type of jokes, and the style of delivery. In terms of structure, I think when Paul’s character goes back to prison, it’s in the same place as when Alan Arkin’s character dies of an overdose in “Little Miss Sunshine,” or Robin Williams’s character goes back to the asylum in “The Fisher King.” I think they could have elevated the tension a bit with Paul’s character in prison, and landed a few more jokes. It wasn’t bad–far from it–but I think they might have left some money on the table.
And I have to say that Steve Coogan was funny naked.
I recently saw “30 Minutes or Less” and what I really liked were the performances. I have been a mad Fred Ward fan ever since “Miami Blues”, and that movie is a good gauge of what “30 Minutes or Less” probably aspired to be. Like “Miami Blues”, “30 Minutes or Less” is anchored by strong performances. The cast, however, is chock full of comedians. Funny guys, too. I went to the movie just to see Aziz Ansari (and I’m writing this blog post to hopefully remember which is his first name, and which is his last).
The premise is dark, but the capricious manner in which the bad guys approach their task reminds me of similar characters on the animated TV show “Boondocks” in which a young man of privilege uses his wealth and life of leisure to pursue para-military hobbies, leading to mayhem.
The reviews I read mentioned that Aziz stole most of the scenes with his nervous manners and frantic delivery of lines, and they were right. He brought energy and enjoyment to the role. I wonder if the picture might have been better if Aziz wor. the strap-on, and Jesse Eisenberg provided the nervous, hyporchondriac-styled support.
The magic worked best for me when the two victims rob a bank, and the ensemble they encounter deliver several funny moments (but I’m a sucker for jokes in a business setting). I so thoroughly enjoyed the man in the bank who was shot that I really wanted to see the main character explode. That wish is almost granted in the end during the minor but gruesome blood bath of the climax. It was kind of like seducing a meat grinder: you may be held in suspense as whether or not you’re going to score, but there’s no doubt that the money-shot will be messy.
Nothing earth shattering here, but a line to a fine online resource about formatting a screenplay.
Trilane.com makes their screenplay formatting reference available here.
I have read several books on the subject, and read a number of screenplays, but I still falter every once in a while, and my brain won’t let it go until I verify what is acceptable. I’m adding a montage to my current script, and I needed this page.
I saw Bridesmaids and laughed a lot. It is chock full of funny bits. Ilt opens with fornicating and it was, by far, funnier fornicating than the fornicating in MacGruber. The vomiting was somewhere between “Animal House” and “The Exorcist”. And the defecating scenes was funnier than the poop-in-your-pants scene in the “Sex and the City” movie.
I only see a few minor areas for improvement and I will preface them with explaining my authority for making any suggestions. I am working on a script and have struggled to correct the very same type of problems, and by expounding on them here I hope to better understand the struggle itself. I would not deign to criticize Kristen Wiig. I would pay to watch her read the phonebook.
Kristen’s character is a failed baker of cakes, and I so very much wanted it to be one of her own cakes that poisoned the other women. Baking a poisonous cake tightens the connections between your characters, and heightens the intensity of emotions.
Steve Kaplan, among others, suggests that the hero should not be heroic, and Kristen got that right. A bunch of bad things happen to her, but only some of those things were done to benefit her cause. In fact, everything that happens to the main character in a comedy should be the direct result of that main character trying to accomplish their goal. So when Kristen’s character gets whacked out on the plane from valium and scotch, it would have been better had she taken them to achieve something else, rather than being victimized.
Melissa McCarthy’s Megan is a brilliant, comedic character, and draws her humor from being oblivious to the world as she pursues her own desires. As funny as Kristen and Maya are, Melissa was with them step for step.
“Source Code” was a technology-based movie that successfully ducks every technical aspect of how the laws of nature were manipulated for the good of the story. And that’s just fine with me. I think “The Matrix” lost its soul in trying to explain it in the sequels. “Source Code” was closer to “Groundhog Day”, and rightfully so. Once I have accepted the fact that a certain eight minutes of time can be replayed, I am more intrigued by those possibilities than I am in the technology.
I was expecting a more cliche ending with an extra chase scene and some kind of a countdown to the bomb exploding, as happened in “Speed” but, thank goodness, it didn’t come. In fact, the ending is as gentle and caring for the audience as it was for the main character.
What if you could relive a moment in time, over and over again, using your brain to work out various possibilities, correct errors, and solve a problem. I do that most days with my own version of OCD that worries about the mistakes, slights, and social faux pas I commit and suffer in turn as I wander through my world. It’s awful. It takes all my focus to let those things go, and get on with life.
In spite of laughing at almost everything, I worry that others might take stuff too seriously, and plot revenge againts me. Well, maybe it’s not that bad. But to have the option of actually living a certain event over again, rather than just worry about it, would be a blessing.
I’d like to start with the dumb thing I said to the cute girl in the cafe at lunch today. It’s bad enough I’m a goof, but do I also have to be a dork?
The best and most effective jokes reveal some inner truth about the joke’s target. In the context of a story, the wonderful part is that they also advance the story, and the audience hardly has a reason to notice it is a “joke” except that they are laughing. These are fifth degree jokes.
Fifth degree jokes are almost always also fourth degree jokes in that they make things worse for the target, and it happens accidentally. Of course, it is by accident because otherwise it would seem like the character is bragging or being cruel, but is certainly not funny.
It becomes easy later in a story to set up and unleash those jokes once the characters are established. A great comedic character does not understand their own nature, even if the audience does. Revealing that nature in the form of jokes defines the character, advances the story, and entertains the audience. Assuming, of course, that the joke is funny.
The master of this form is 30 Rock. Each of the characters takes turns revealing things about themselves and the writers, God bless them, ensure it’s relevant to the story they happen to be telling. They are absurd, they use puns and reverse double entendre, and they make use of every bizarre element at their disposal, but, above all, their jokes advance the story they are telling.
To quote Eric Cartman from South Park, “When I make jokes, they are inherent to a story! Deep, situational and emotional jokes based on what is relevant and has a POINT!”
30 Rock is also good at satirizing our culture, our beliefs, and our American way of life, which every decent joke must somehow do.
But this article is more about Fifth Degree jokes rather than 30 Rock. What makes the jokes work is the commitment to developing the characters in the story. Because 30 Rock invests time in establishing the limits of a character’s personality, it makes it easier to go over those limits and, thereby, make a joke. We know how Liz feels about sex, and how Jack feels about Democrats, so the jokes need little set up, and they can deliver them as part of the story, rather than as a joke sequence. It all adds up to a brilliant experience for the audience.
The other shows I regularly watch that do this so well are Modern Family, Community, and The Office. The common formula in each has strong character development, elaborate plots that are carefully constructed, and, finally, jokes that reveal character as they drive the story.
Elvis and Annabelle is a cute, quirky film that is worth tracking down. It’s an indie that got made, most likely, because Joe Montegna liked the script, and wanted to play the pleasantly demented golfer whose son covers for him in their funeral parlor. It won some awards at the Newport Beach Film Festival.
Elvis, the son, feels trapped in his life, working in a decaying building in what seems to be a ghost town. The only glimmer of hope comes in the form of a beautiful but not quite dead corpse. The tension of the film turns on his odd habit of photographing the corpses, and the unlucky coincidence that he accidentally takes a picture of himself kissing Annabelle’s full and still-pouting lips.
Had she been blue and reeking of death, the picture wouldn’t have worked. Instead, it’s no weirder than Prince Charming locking lips with Sleeping Beauty who is laid to rest above ground in the forest, and guarded by seven bachelor dwarves.
Annabelle has a few annoying qualities, but the picture adds up in the end, and you should watch it if only to see Joe Montegna die in the muck.
