The Art of Funny
Renowned US comedy teacher and consultant Steve Kaplan discussed the mechanics behind the laughs at the Script to Screen Writer’s Room in June.
“Comedy is truth and that truth is that people are flawed.”
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Script to Screen Chair Kath Akuhata-Brown welcomed international guest US comedy expert Steve Kaplan to the June Writer’s Room, thanking him for his ‘spirit of generosity to our industry’ and acknowledging him as one of the many international professionals who visit New Zealand ‘with open minds and open hearts’ to share their knowledge and experience.
MC Nick Ward was also clearly honoured to be in discussion with Steve, telling the audience, “Here is a man who can bring out the best in the people around him – and he’s about to share some of this with you. Many of us keep this close to our chest but he will share … so listen carefully!”
Steve Kaplan is the most highly sought after comedy expert in the US. He has taught at UCLA, NYU, Yale and other universities, created the HBO Workspace, the HBO New Writers Program and was co-founder and Artistic Director of the Manhattan Punch Line Theatre.
Steve has worked as a consultant and script doctor for such companies as DreamWorks, Disney, HBO, Paramount and Touchstone and many writers have benefited from his experience and skill including Peter Tolan (Analyse This, Finding Amanda), writer and producer David Crane (Friends, Joey, The Class), Michael Patrick King (The Comeback, Sex and the City, Will and Grace) and Will Scheffer (Big Love).
In New Zealand to conduct two comedy seminars (Auckland 2/3 July and Christchurch 4 July), Steve arrived in Auckland from an Australian teaching tour and was rushed from the airport to the Classic stage to share some tips and insights with an eager Writer’s Room audience.
Nick began the evening by asking Steve how he got into this ‘crazy business.’
“I started as a theatre producer and director at Manhattan Punch Line, a small theatre in the worst area, what we used to call a knife’s throw from the Port Authority. We wanted to differentiate ourselves from all the others who were doing theatre in New York. In the arrogance of youth I thought I knew everything there was to know about comedy but I really didn’t know how it worked. Why is something funny on a Thursday but not on a Saturday? Same actors, same material but the actors would come off stage at the end and say, ‘Wow, what a tough crowd, a bad audience.’”
Kaplan began to experiment with actors and material, trying to determine how good comedy works, what makes it good and, perhaps more importantly, what processes are not being fulfilled when it goes bad. He developed an acclaimed training seminar for writers which he has taken from the US to London, Singapore, Australia and to New Zealand.
Nick described New Zealand writers as having a ‘hit and miss’ relationship with comedy. “We’re almost afraid to touch it as writers. It’s easier to do something dark and moody!” He asked Steven where a writer should start if he or she wishes to create good comedy. Are there vital ingredients for a sure-to-rise recipe to make great comedy?
“Come up with an amazing premise, add some great characters and then the story will write itself,” said Steve.
“You imagine what could happen and how things might go without plotting it out. A common mistake is having too many premises in the same story.”
Steve used Groundhog Day as an example of a film with a great premise that works brilliantly. “It’s one of the best written comedies of the last 25 years. The lead character lives the same day over and over and it illustrates a good technique: have the character tell the absolute truth, say what’s on his mind, whatever he wants and then he has the chance to rectify it all the next day. A great premise will explode the story in your imagination and it’ll start to write itself. In my workshops, I break participants into groups and have them think up their own premises.”
Some people love Groundhog Day but others find nothing ‘funny’ in the film. “People confuse ‘funny’ with comedy. Some people say they don’t find Groundhog Day funny but it’s not about being ‘funny.’ Funny is subjective. It doesn’t matter if people aren’t laughing here or there; it’s more about the character, who they are and what they want and a great premise will let the characters go. Character based comedy is the toughest of all but Groundhog Day pulls it off.”
A clip from Woody Allen’s Annie Hall illustrated that there is nothing wrong with stealing characters and that comedy gives the writer permission to use techniques specific to the genre.
“Allen always said how much he admired Bob Hope, the fast paced repartee and the shifty character, so he based his character on Hope, the cowardly womaniser. He’s the plain guy who wants the girl but always seems to get into a fight.”
In the clip, Allen is arguing with a stranger in a movie line. To win the argument, he pulls a learned Professor into the scene, a character who just happens to be behind a pillar. “Allen works out his problems by speaking to passers-by on the street and they seem to know what he’s on about. Comedy gives him permission to do this, just as it does with the Professor behind the pillar.”
The discussion moved on to 'types’ of characters in comedy and Steve said the classic comedy ‘archetypes’ can be traced back to ancient Roman comedy.
“The tricky servant, the befuddled older man and the prostitute with the heart of gold. We can see this in Seinfeld; he is rather like the tricky servant and Elaine is a combination of the prostitute and a kind of aggressive, lower class character who is a bit pushy and aggressive. These same types of characters are used over and over in comedy and we begin to get a sense of how they all work in relation to each other. The characters in Seinfeld are not exactly likeable but they are watchable and relatable.”
A clip from Seinfeld provided another example of comedy technique: ‘the straight line/wavy line.’
“A lot of people think comedy is bad if there’s a funny guy and then there’s someone throwing straight lines. Comedy isn’t about watching someone do something silly. It’s really about watching someone watching something silly. In the Seinfeld clip, George is the wavy line; he sees something funny and he’s the only one who does. The other two characters in the scene don’t see it; they’re the straight lines. Comedy is created by focussing on one character at a time and that character may be seeing something in the environment that the others aren’t paying any attention to.”
However Steve was quick to add that if the writing is flowing, going back to use all the rules can be detrimental.
“That’s the last thing you should do. If it’s working, don’t mess it up by applying a formula like the ‘straight line/wavy line.’ If something isn’t working, that’s when you apply acquired principles, rules and tools to identify what’s wrong and fix it.”
And if comedy isn’t working, how do you diagnose the problem?
“You ask questions,” said Steve. “What does this character want? Why aren’t you, the writer, letting him do that? Who actually wants or needs this: the character, or me, the writer? If you write and develop from the character’s point of view, you’ll make fewer mistakes than if you write from the top down, mixing things up like chess pieces.” Another common pitfall is the writer forcing a character to move the story along. “If the character is not solving a problem or if they’re talking about people who aren’t there, cut it.”
Different rules apply to comedy than to other genres. “You want characters to be truthful but you don’t want them to know too much,” said Steve. “Comedy is truth and that truth is that people are flawed.”
Steve confessed that he was ‘a mediocre actor’ and a ‘bad stand up comedian’ but as a director, he knows that actors often do not want to look stupid or silly on stage or screen.
“It’s the gravity of actors. They want to look good. Even if the character is stupid they don’t want to look stupid. Their desire to look good stops them from sharing how stupid they are unless they are very talented in comedy. If they do let themselves look stupid then they’ll walk away with the scene and it’ll be memorable.”
Steve used the film It’s Complicated as an example. “Meryl Streep laughs at everything she says, she laughs at her own stupidity – as an actress, she knows too much, whereas Alec Baldwin offers a Masterclass in comic performance. He allows the character to be as stupid as it needs to be and he is truthful.”
Nick invited questions from the audience and the first drew upon the happy marriages at the end of Shakespearian comedies – is the ‘happily ever after’ ending true with comedy today?
“Romantic comedies usually have a happy ending,” said Steve. “Everybody wins and there’s hope. As a species, we all try to make each day as good as we can. If it’s not so good we have another beer and maybe that’ll make it better. Comedy acknowledges that no matter how messed up things are, we live each day in hope and guesses, so comedies end on a hopeful note.”
When asked what he thought about the TV series Black Adder, Steve replied, “It’s an acquired taste I haven’t quite acquired. The problem with Rowan Atkinson is he doesn’t have to try hard to be unattractive to me. Funny is subjective but for my subjective taste I like something that is not so forced. You don’t have to make that face and pretend you’re this dipshit. Comedy is subjective. There is no one way to make people laugh or to be funny. There are general principles that you can use in a practical sense when you’re working on a script; you can have actors read it and identify parts that just aren’t working. Blaming the actors is a time honoured skill but you want to be able to do something other than say, ‘If only that actor was better!’”
When asked to name his current comedy of choice, Steve said he liked Modern Family. “They have a great collection of characters that drive those stories. The Daily Show is the best satire in the US right now. They’re not making fun of politicians but they’re making fun of the people who report on the politicians.”
Peter Sellers starred in the original Pink Panther films and the question was asked why he was so funny and later Panther films with Steve Martin were not.
“Peter Sellers was a comic genius. Steve Martin was not funny. As the Pink Panther series went on it became less and less funny. That first character creation was inspired. It hadn’t been done before and Sellers was trying to do it right. Steve Martin was not trying to do his best. Everyone was trying to make him trip up. Our best each day is a series of trips ups that we are trying to cover up. We start the day going into a room and hope that no one sees, hears or smells. Normal is the lie but sane and logical is the lie that we want to put over on everyone. It’s wrong to think you need to make comedy wild. Just tell the truth. Drama helps us dream of who we can be and comedy helps us understand who we are.”
Written for Script to Screen by Jane Bissell
