Do you practice making stories?
I can't turn off. Seriously. Monday at Spanish class we were looking at this picture of a man buying a train ticket from some woman at the station and the teacher asked "What do you think is going on in this picture?"
"She's suing him for sexual harassment," I said. Everybody laughed. I've become the class clown because I can't shut myself up. Give me an opportunity to say something witty and I consider it my duty to come up with the most creative response possible. I consider myself a failure if I don't get a laugh.
Today I was making a joke about the nightmare of putting a condom on a banana in health class.
"I want to hear that story," someone said.
So I made up a story about crushing a banana with my bare hands while the other students in the class threw pencils at me.
The other people listening to the story all believed me.
I felt pretty awesome about that. There's a sense of vindication you get from making people laugh. I get up every day and spend about five hours trying to make teenagers laugh, and when they don't it freaks me out.
Yet I don't write comedy.
I met another writer last Saturday night who was a) Adorable as hell and b) super funny and quick witted, but doesn't write comedy either. So I'm thinking this may be a common thing. Even if you're not funny on paper you feel pissed if you don't manage to pull out the best joke on the spot.
I think, though, that this is strictly a screenwriting thing. Novel writers tend to be pretty emo.
I spent a weekend with Ken Levine this summer - I took his two-day sitcom course.
ReplyDeleteFunniest. Human. Ever.
He had us bent over half the weekend, and not because we had food poisoning. I think the level of funny produced (in person) by a pro comedy writer is higher than an average funny person who can make people crack up from time to time. I've been around a few pro comedy writers and it's like being part of a stand up routine at all times.
For the next four weeks at my local newspaper, The Signal (in Santa Clarita), I've been appointed as the interim editor of the weekend Escape section (though I don't make that known in the staff box of Escape. There, I listed myself as "Escape Editor," because I've been in one aspect of journalism or another for nine years and I've earned it). There's already been someone hired to take over not only as Escape editor, but also editor of the opinion pages (as Escape is now considered a part-time job), but he has to give his notice to the paper he's working for in San Diego as an entertainment editor.
ReplyDeleteToday, in filling one of the many holes to fill in the section, I found a picture of an old couple having voted, and the woman had the "I Voted!" sticker on her nose and the man had it on his forehead.
I wrote this:
"The Palmdale Senior Center's field trip to vote for the candidate that most resembles FDR was so successful that they celebrated with stickers. Seen here are Mrs. Teasdale, who mistakenly thought the sticker was a Breath Right strip, and Mr. Jimerine, who thought the sticker gives psychic powers to anyone who wears it."
That took me less than five minutes. And there are some parts that are probably different from what I wrote because I don't remember the exact wording, but yeah.
And I asked Tom, the guy who designs the section, why it takes me so little time to write something like that and yet when I'm writing movie reviews for Escape, I fret over every little part. He said that it's probably because I'm not as invested in the photo as I am with my reviews.
Then came the front page of the section which, under the Escape logo, used to say: "Alienating the community, one person at a time." But being that my 30-year-experienced editor was leaving (he moves his desk out tomorrow, as it belonged to Ruth Newhall, one of the legends in the valley who also edited the paper), we had to change it, especially because it didn't sound like me.
So I told Tom to give me a few minutes to think about it. Suddenly, my head started zinging and I told him to type this under Escape:
"Working to entertain you when you're not working."
Just like that. Yet as mentioned, I don't write as fast when I'm working on my own reviews and projects. I'd like to apply that free feeling to that work, but would it ever take some time.
You could probably write the funny if you want to, and I'd bet there's funny in your scripts . . . isn't there?
ReplyDeleteI'm known for my comedies in theatre, but my screenplays are mostly dark stuff . . . with humor, but dark action, dark comedy, dark thrillers . . .
That's more because of the movies I like, which tend toward action and thrillers . . .
So if your movie taste tends to run like that, that's may be why you haven't written comedies . . . it's really just finding the right story for you, that you like which IS a comedy.
I bought Ken Levine lunch when he was in New York, he is a funny human, heh-heh.
There's different kinds of funny, IMO.
ReplyDeleteIt's one kind to be able to respond to and riff on events happening around-- reactive humor, in a sense.
It's a slightly different kind to sit there staring at a blinking cursor and a blank screen and say "OK, I will now forge a Universe wherein funny shit is happening."
There's usually a lot of overlap in the memberships of the folks skilled in these areas, but sometimes I'll bump into someone who WRITES funny but who can't wise in real time to save their lives-- they have to have the time and space to sit down and plot it out.
Not assigning you to either group -- just thinking aloud.
Brilliant responce, Brett. Thanks for the insight into your life, Rory. It's always nice to get a little background on what fellow bloggers lives are really like.
ReplyDeleteEmily, I can't tell a joke to save my life, but for some reason I am able to integrate SOME comedy into my writing (zanny wierd stuff mostly, though I do aspire to achieve Monte Python like gags). Yours and my approach to "finding what's funny" is polarly different. Your humor, like your own personality, is more on the line of, "grip it and rip it," hence you're a good stand-up commic. Whereas my approach to humor comes from suppression. I feel like a VERY SUPRESSED person. If you knew the types of people I have to deal with on a day-to-day basis, you'd probebly go postal. I think, in my case, hummor is attempt coping with all the injustice I feel, and precive to be in the world.
- E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA
You're reading the wrong novels then
ReplyDeleteTry the movie INTERSTATE 60. It's the first comedy in a long while that I've laughed through most of. I think you'll like it also, and it will give you ideas for the kind of comedy that would appeal to you in a script. It's witty, but with an edge.
ReplyDeleteI don't have problems with comedy in my script. I was only pointing out how odd it is that I find the need to make jokes at every opportunity but I don't actually write comedy.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to write comedy.
Also, Ken Levine should do standup.
ReplyDelete