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! Watch the interview here.
Dying Is Easy. Comedy Is Hard.
Being funny in books, on the big screen, and on the little screens too.Browsing Posts in Being Funny
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 [...]
Ecclesiastes is the book of the Holy Bible most frequently quoted in popular culture and used as the source for titles of books and movies. Its verses are an absolute treasure trove of beautifully written, insightful, and pithy statements. “The Sun Also Rises,” and “The House of Mirth” are two that stand out. But when [...]
Third degree jokes deal with reversal of scale–something little made big, or something of great value trivialized. The most persistent example I have in my head is from when David Letterman first had a night time talk show, he had a running bit one week with a really large doorknob. It was about three feet [...]
Continuing my earlier post regarding the Five Degrees of Jokes, here now is a brief discussion of second degree jokes. Second degree jokes juxtapose the sacred with the profane. This is fairly easy to explain because it can be shocking, and the shock to the system is what raises tension and elicits laughter. If the [...]
First degree jokes are puns, wordplay, and overly literal use of words. I breathe these kind of jokes because they are mostly innocent, playful, or silly, and I have raised two children to their teen years, and first degree jokes were fairly safe.If my daughter asks me how my day went, I might reply, “fine.” [...]
Hearing him discuss jokes in this methodical, analytical method gave to me one of the greatest zen-like moments of my life. Suddenly, all the reasons something I said had been funny made sense.
John Cleese mentioned that he subscribed to the Henri Bergson theory of laughter.
I went to see “MacGruber”, the recent movie that spoofs the 80s icon TV show “MacGyver”, and hated it. It was deeply flawed. It was almost to the point of my wanting to gouge my eyes out, but not quite that bad. I did walk out because I didn’t give a rat’s ass how it [...]
During Kaplan’s Comedy Intensive, Steve breaks down scenes from movies–those that work and those that don’t– and together with the class he discusses ways in which the tools might have helped the funny bits work in the situation. What he generally believes to be wrong in most romantic comedies is that they portray beautiful people doing foolish things which have little hope of helping their situation.
