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Comedy Can Be Taught

Let’s begin this book by discussing the “Elephant in the Room.” The Elephant in the Room, as you know, is that obvious, imposing item that no one can ignore, yet no one wants to acknowledge or discuss. Let’s discuss it. That elephant is this question: Can comedy be taught or is it a talent you’re born with?

This is an important question to resolve because a necessary attribute for any aspiring writer—for anyone aspiring to anything, in fact—is enthusiasm. An eager student learns more readily and more quickly. Passion can overcome many faults. Also, exuberance can keep a student striving, forging ahead despite difficulties. Only with that sort of perseverance can you gain the knowledge and the experience that you will need to become a seasoned professional.

A joke made the rounds of the schoolyards when I was a youngster. It went something like this: What has four legs, barks, and is filled with cement? That riddle puzzled everyone so the normal response was “I don’t know. What?” The jokester would say, “A dog.” Then, of course, someone would ask, “What does cement have to do with it?” The jokester would say, “Nothing. I just threw that in to make it hard.”

That’s sort of what happens when we question whether comedy can be taught or not. It makes the pursuit harder, if not impossible. It’s difficult to maintain enthusiasm for an unreachable goal. If one subscribes to the theory that comedy can’t be taught, then it becomes unteachable. Why bother to attempt to teach yourself something, if you believe that the attempt is predestined to fail?

Obviously, this book believes that comedy can be taught. We’ll discuss that further in this chapter; then the book will guide you in teaching yourself to write comedy in the chapters that follow.

Before we get to that, though, let’s discuss the second part of the elephant question: Is comedy a talent you’re born with? To be fair, this book will admit that there may be some truth to that. I suppose there is some truth to that regardless of which talents you’re speaking of. You probably must have a certain inborn athletic skill to become a great basketball player, baseball player, skier, skater, or whatever. But then the question becomes: How do you know what talents a person is born with? Can anyone look at a newborn and say with certainty that that child is a gifted pianist? Can anyone see a toddler and recognize in him or her Olympic gymnastic ability? Can you look at a child who can’t yet speak and declare that he or she will most certainly be a world-renowned sports broadcaster?

We don’t know what skills we’re born with until we attempt them. No one grows up to be a world-class figure skater without first lacing up a pair of skates and falling on his or her bottom a few times. No one becomes a piano virtuoso without signing up for that first music lesson. You have to play “Chopsticks” before you can be ready to tackle Chopin.

Some of the skills that we believe are God-given are really acquired through dedicated study and practice. Joshua Foer wrote a book in 2012 called Moonwalking with Einstein. In this book he tells how he covered the USA Memory Championship as a science journalist. The USA Memory Championship is a contest held each year in New York City for people who can perform incredible feats of memory. In the competition contestants must remember the names of people; memorize the order of playing cards and random digits; and perform all sorts of recall feats that seem impossible. Foer admits that he thought he would be dealing with memory savants, people with inborn memory talents that were entirely beyond normal people with ordinary recall. Yet when he spoke to the contestants, they all confessed that they weren’t gifted with superior memories at all. What seemed like incredible feats were just tricks. The contestants all used various gimmicks to aid them in memorizing.

Foer was skeptical, but the contestants all insisted that they worked hard, practiced, and learned how to use their memories more effectively. So Foer challenged them. If that was true, then couldn’t they teach him those same tricks? One expert accepted that challenge and worked with Foer as his mentor.

Josh Foer returned to the USA Memory Championship a year later—as a contestant—and won!

Intuitively we think of memory as a gift. We tend to think that you can’t learn memory; you must be born with it. Foer’s experience proved otherwise. In fact, he claims that he learned from this experiment that a person—with study, training, practice, and dedication—can acquire expertise in almost any endeavor.

So whether you’re born with a skill or must acquire it is practically irrelevant. Even inborn talent requires nurturing. There are no world-class champions in anything who didn’t receive some sort of training. All of them had to learn the basics and then work hard to develop their art or sport or craft. In fact, being gifted is even more of an obligation to study and improve. It would be a shame to waste a blessing. But even the greatest gift, if it’s not nourished with good coaches, mentors, or teachers, can wither. Very few skills are delivered to an individual full-blown. That sort of blessing doesn’t exist, except perhaps in a very few savants.

I was quite impressed and influenced by an incident that happened when I was working on a television musical variety show. I was having lunch with one of the musicians in the show’s band. He was one of the most respected musicians in the business. He rushed through lunch and excused himself. I said, “Where are you running off to?” I was enjoying his company and was disappointed that he was leaving. He said, “I have to leave now. I’m late for my music lesson.”

Here was a man who had achieved great success in music, yet he still studied his craft. Was he born with musical proficiency? Did he develop his talents? It didn’t matter. He still had to rush off to his music lesson. Whether his gifts came from above or from hard work here below, they still required more hard work. Still, some people will argue that certain talents are not “teachable,” are not “learnable.” They believe certain abilities are so special that no amount of training will help. You’ve often heard the expression “I couldn’t draw a straight line to save my soul.” In other words, art is an aptitude that can’t be taught. Either you’re born an artist or you’re not. Yet highly respected art schools are all over the nation—all over the globe, in fact. Why do they go to the trouble and expense of opening art schools, if art cannot be taught?

Many things that people are convinced can’t be taught can, in fact, be taught. Josh Foer proved that an incredible memory could be acquired if the right tricks were taught to him by the right person. They say that memory can’t be learned, but going from a skeptical spectator to the USA Memory Championship, competing against the absolute best in that particular activity, must indicate that Josh Foer learned something.

There are many other skills that we feel can’t be improved. For example, speed. A person can run only so fast and no faster. Doesn’t that seem like a reasonable and accurate statement? Nevertheless, baseball teams have coaches who are devoted to teaching their players to get from first base to second base faster. Track coaches in high school and college train their charges to improve their times. What does that mean? It means they are teaching them to run faster. How is that possible?

Here’s an even more bizarre example. A person is only so tall. If you’re 5 foot 11, no one can make you any taller. If you’re 6 foot 3, that’s how big you are. Now depending on your age, of course, you may naturally grow taller, but there comes a time when you reach your maximum. There’s no way anyone can stretch you beyond your natural height. But wait a minute—I’ve read in the sports pages that certain basketball players and coaches work exclusively with “big men.” They teach them to play taller. In effect, they are making them taller than they are. Again, how is that possible?

It’s possible because there are many different aspects of learning. We all begin any new endeavor by learning the basics. In our early years we learn the ABCs so that we can read and write. At our first piano lesson we learn where middle C is on the piano and where it is on the music sheet. We learn to equate the notes on the page to the keys on the piano. Josh Foer had to learn some of the basic techniques to aid his memory. We all build on the fundamentals. Yet no one questions whether a child has inborn reading and writing abilities. It’s not important. That youngster still should learn to read and write. It’s not necessary for the toddler to show signs of piano virtuosity to learn to play “I Am Mr. Middle C.”

Next we learn to fine-tune our skills. The child who has learned to read and write now wants to become a novelist. He or she studies writing techniques, story construction, and character development. Again, you don’t have to be a proven literary genius to study these things. No, you study them. You learn them. You practice them. You perfect them. Then you become a competent novelist or a recognized genius. The same progression applies to piano playing and memory competitions.

Even then, your education is not complete. I have a friend who is recognized as one of the greatest instrumentalists in the world. He plays with a symphony orchestra, but he also teaches at a university. When I asked him about it, he said each of his students was a world-class musician. What then did they have to learn? I wondered. They learned nuances and improved techniques. Although they were already accomplished and established, they learned to become more accomplished.

If you’ve ever watched golf tournaments on TV, you see some of the most astounding golfers in the world. They do things with the club and the ball that we weekend golfers—even the outstanding ones—are amazed at. But you also see that all of them have a professional golf trainer with them. They have incredible skills, but they want to have even more incredible skills. They are still learning.

Even at that level there is more to learn. Once I sat with Glen Campbell as he noodled on his guitar. He played a neat riff and I commented on it. He said, “Yeah. Jerry Reed taught me that.” There are flourishes and tricks in every profession that the experts can and do learn from one another. I know from working with many legendary comedians that they had gimmicks that they could employ to generate laughter or to help it build.

If you’ve ever seen Jack Benny perform, you would note quickly that he had a magnificent laugh generator. If someone did a put-down line aimed at him, the gag would get a laugh from the audience. Jack, though, would then get his own laugh by putting his hand to his cheek and looking out toward the audience with a hurt expression on his face. It worked every time, and any comic watching that could learn from it. (Johnny Carson often used a variation of that when he worked on his show with animals.)

Here’s how this book will acknowledge the Elephant in the Room and dismiss it. Comedy can be taught. If you’re blessed with natural comedic ability, accept it gratefully. If you don’t feel you are, accept that gracefully, too. In either case, though, you can and should learn about comedy—at all levels. You can not only be a good student, but you can also be a good teacher. The rest of this book will encourage you to be both.