I wrote a thriller about a pyschic reporter hot on the trail of a serial killer who turns out to be himself. Wow. Cool stuff. I love cool stuff. Silence of the Lambs had just won the Oscar so I figured I would exploit that cash cow and make my way into the business. Juliet (my wife) was a script reader at the newly formed Tribeca Studios in New York City. She was making connections. She was making friends. She got someone to read my script. Art Linson’s company was in the same building. He made The Untouchables. It was a perfect fit. My script was submitted and I got a great meeting with the development exec, Jill, who sat me down and gave me the most honest notes ever given to me: She called my script derivative.
And she was right. The thriller wasn’t in me. It was not part of my D.N.A. I liked to laugh at the world. Not kill people in it. So I tried writing a comedy and that kind of worked out for me.
In my classes people always ask me — can you teach me to be funny?
Ouch.
That’s a hard task.
The comedian Larry Miller is purported to have said the following: Here is how you write a joke. You write a joke. You tell the joke. If people laugh, it’s funny. If they don’t, rewrite the joke.
Seems simple.
Can I really teach you how to write funny? That is an incredibly difficult question to answer: Laughter is not universal. What I find funny might not be funny to you.
Here’s what I can teach you — how to think like a comedy writer for motion pictures and long-form television. I can teach you how to be a writer, but not how to write. Kind of like the old Bible quotation: “Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man how to fish, he’s going to spend a lot of time away from his wife.”
A comedy writer needs to be reading funny, thinking funny, writing funny, and watching funny.
The first thing is to write down: What makes you laugh? Is there a particular comic strip you love? Are you more of a New Yorker kind of person? Do you like farce? Spoof?
HOW TO READ FUNNY
Write down five authors who make you laugh — or at least have made you smile. Read them. Reread them.
HOW TO THINK FUNNY
Surround yourself with funny people. Simple as that. Join a comedy improv group or take a class. You will meet other funny people. Try stand-up, or start going to stand-up clubs. There are a lot of comedy writing teams out there. You know why? If you can make the other person in the room laugh, chances are it’s going to be funny on the page.
WRITE FUNNY
This book is designed to guide you through the creation of your comedy blockbuster. But like anything else, practice makes perfect. You write and then you rewrite. Think of it like baseball. If a hitter in baseball fails seven out of ten times, he’s a very good player. You need to start thinking the same way. Failure is an option. The more you do it, the easier it is going to get. You will develop a set of comic muscles.
THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR WRITING EVERY DAY!
Chances are, if you do that, you will succeed. Your work will improve dramatically. Wait, I mean improve comically!
HOW TO WATCH FUNNY
What’s funny? Or, more importantly: What’s a funny movie? My first advice is: You should have a decent idea of what is funny before setting off on a journey to write a comedy blockbuster.
I always implore (yes, I’m good at imploring my students) to KNOW THEIR GENRE.
What does this mean?
If you’re writing a thriller, you should know the work of Alfred Hitchcock or even Fritz Lang.
If you’re writing a western, I hope you’ve see Shane. And the films of John Ford. And you better check out The Unforgiven.
The same is true for comedy. Too often I have students who don’t know enough about movies.
Now, I don’t expect you to stop reading now and start watching every comedy out there from the beginning of celluloid.
But you need to have comedic references from which to draw. I am a big believer that if nothing’s going in, nothing’s going out.
Comedies tend to be topical. They deal with a situation, a mood, something in the zeitgeist. It might be an antiwar comedy like M.A.S.H. or a comedy about the birth control pill. Yes, there was one made. Check it out. It starred David Niven. It was called Prudence and the Pill.
So now, I wish to present to you:
A CRIMINALLY BRIEF HISTORY OF FILM COMEDY
THE SILENTS
Before it was a cable channel, Nickelodeon was a place people would go to watch movies. Little shorts. Little silent movies. Do you remember the names of the great dramatic actors of the silent era? Okay, go to the front of the class if you said Douglas Fairbanks or Rudolph Valentino. Chances are you said Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. Yes, these guys ruled the day in terms of film comedy.
THE SCREENING ROOM
Charlie Chaplin’s Mutual Films, The Kid, The Gold RushBuster Keaton, The General, Sherlock Jr.
There was a great Woody Allen movie, years ago, called The Purple Rose of Cairo. A character from a movie walks off the screen and becomes real. Woody Allen cited Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. as one of his inspirations. Borat has moments where the Borat character seems like a direct descendent of Chaplin’s Tramp character.
THE SCREWBALL COMEDIES
The Depression hit America in 1929. Money was out. Laughter was in. Many film scholars regard the 1930s as the golden age of film comedy. It was the age of “screwball.” Screwball comedy was defined by mistaken identities, frenetic pacing, fast-talking woman not afraid to flaunt their moxie and sexuality, and great leading men not afraid to be the butt of jokes.
Screwball comedy also has great peripheral characters. Other characters in the story are often as funny and zany as the leads. If you want to write film comedy, you need to watch some screwball comedies of the 1930s. There is no wasted space.
Plus, screwball is about something. We’ll talk more about this later when we get to Hilarity and Heart. The writers of these stories had something to say about the human condition.
The comedy directors of that time were Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, Leo McCarey, Ernest Lubitsch, and Preston Sturges.
The writers were Ben Hecht, Charles McArthur, Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges, and Robert Riskin.
The screwball era continued past the 1930s but it was at its absolute peak when It Happened One Night won the grand slam at the Academy Awards in 1934 by taking home Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director and, of course, Best Screenplay.
THE SCREENING ROOM
There are a lot of screwball comedies you should watch. I suggest you start with these five:
It Happened One Night Sullivan’s
