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ОглавлениеCHAPTER ONE
HOW TO BUST A GUT
OR COMEDY COLLEGE 101
Everyone thinks he or she is funny. And you’ve met enough people to know that not everyone is funny. We’re going to go forth and attempt to analyze comedy. As E. B. White once put it, “Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.”
Let’s kill some frogs.
I started killing frogs at New York University. I was in the Graduate Film School for Film and Television. I made a very grandiose mafia epic called Wedding Day. Nothin’ funny about grandiose mafia epics that last twenty minutes. During the screenings of the film in class, I would crack a joke or have a witty comeback. My professor said, “You should put some of that humor in your films.”
So my next film was a very grandiose comedy. I loved Robert Zemeckis films, so I tried to make one. It turned out okay. Not great. Okay. Wasn’t as funny as I had hoped. But I found out what I loved.
When it was time to write my first feature, 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 Travels His Girl Friday* The Philadelphia Story Bringing Up Baby
*Hollywood has always loved remakes. His Girl Friday had been filmed before. It is based on the play The Front Page. The original story is about two male reporters. Hawks decided to change one of the leads to a woman, and played the whole script with rapid-fire dialogue.
SIDE NOTE: SO YOU REALLY WANT TO DIRECT?
Then write some funny scripts and say you want to direct them! It’s that easy, no? Chances are if executives think you’re funny on the page, you might be funny behind the camera. Plus there is a precedent that extends for almost a hundred years.
Preston Sturges was the pioneer for the comedy writer/director. After working on five features, he sold his screenplay The Great McGinty to Paramount for $1 with the agreement that he would direct it. He not only directed the movie, but he also won the Oscar for Best Screenplay.
Billy Wilder was the co-writer (with Charles Brackett) on the classic screwball comedies Ninotchka and Ball of Fire & Midnight. He began his illustrious directing career with the movie The Major and the Minor.
Woody Allen emerged as a writer/director in 1969 with the “mockumentary” (see genres) Take the Money and Run. A few years later, Annie Hall became one of the rare comedies to win the Oscar for Best Picture.
John Hughes parlayed his success in writing the screenplay for National Lampoon’s Vacation into becoming the king of 1980s teen comedies beginning in 1984 with Sixteen Candles.
James L. Brooks went from the small screen to the big screen directing the dramatic adaptation of Terms of Endearment (1983), following it up four years later with Broadcast News (1987). Prior to that he had written the romantic comedy Starting Over.
The Farrelly Brothers had never directed a movie before Dumb and Dumber in 1994. The legend is they were tired of not seeing their material made so they decided to direct it themselves. No one ever asked them if they had directed before.
In 2005, Judd Apatow scored with The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
FILM COMEDY IN THE 1940S
In the 1940s the screwball era was slowing down and audiences became focused on World War II. While Citizen Kane came out in 1941 and would go on to be regarded as one of the greatest movies of all time, the box office was dominated by the comedy stylings of vaudeville and radio stars Abbott and Costello in Buck Privates, a comedic take on life in the army. They would go on to star in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, and Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer. The horror comedy was born!
Meanwhile, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby were breaking the fourth wall with their “road” movies: Road to Morocco, Road to Utopia, and Road to Rio. Bob Hope would also star on his own in My Favorite Blonde and My Favorite Brunette. Hollywood has always loved sequels.
The decade nears the end with the battle of the sexes comedy Adam’s Rib (1949) starring Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn.
THE SCREENING ROOM
I Married A Witch
Miracle on 34th Street
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
Adam’s Rib
1950S: GO BIG
In the 1950s television found a home in America’s living room. The TV dinner was invented. I Love Lucy ruled the day. Comedy played very well on television. Sid Caesar was just as big. How could he not be? His writing staff was crammed with future comedy screenwriters: Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, and Neil Simon. To combat the small screen, Hollywood went big. Big, as in Charlton Heston Big. Large event movies like The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, and Giant ruled the box office.
The decade began with Spencer Tracy in Father of the Bride. The Battle of the Sexes continued on the screen with movies like Pat and Mike. Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin starred in many unmemorable movies. Lewis would break up with Martin and come into his own in the 1960s.
Billy Wilder put Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in drag in 1959 in Some Like it Hot. Ten years prior, Cary Grant was in drag for I Was A Male War Bride. Grant would continue to be box office gold, appearing in Monkey Business, House Boat, and Operation Petticoat. Rock Hudson would be deemed the next Cary Grant. His comic timing was wonderfully displayed in the Academy Award-winning Pillow Talk. Hmm, a Pillow Talk update with Twitter?
Remember how I said that comedy is topical — how it’s very in the now? Pillow Talk is a movie about party lines. That is, when you used a phone someone else in your building might be using the same telephone line. They might even listen in on your phone call.
THE SCREENING ROOM
Father of the Bride
Some Like It Hot
Pillow Talk
THE SWINGING 1960S
It was called the “Swinging Sixties” for a reason. As the world went through tumultuous, defining cultural shifts, so did the movies. A generation battled in living rooms across America; the same was happening on the big screen. Studios pumped out Doris Day comedies (Lover Come Back, That Touch of Mink, The Glass Bottom Boat) and large ensemble old-fashioned comedies like It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and The Great Race. They were old-fashioned. They didn’t really deal with any topical issues. In an era of civil rights, free love, and disenfranchised youth, some comedies became edgier. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is a comedy about a young white woman who brings her black boyfriend home to dinner to meet her very white dad. The seminal comedy of the 1960s might be The Graduate (1967) in which young Ben has an affair with Mrs. Robinson and then woos her daughter.
Jerry Lewis enjoyed box office success as a triple threat writer/star/director with movies like Cinderfella, The Errand Boy, and The Nutty Professor. Underappreciated, Jerry Lewis also invented the video assist so directors could see what was being filmed as it was filmed and he taught filmmaking at University of Southern California film school where, allegedly, George Lucas was one of his students. Maybe this explains Jar-Jar Binks.
One year later, the ratings system created the R-Rating and thus introduced the world to the R-Rated Comedy. Comedy censorship that had been governed by the Hays Code since 1930 was stripped away.
THE SCREENING ROOM
That Touch of Mink
The Graduate
1970S: PUSHING THE ENVELOPE
On television, Saturday Night Live premiered, and tomorrow’s comedy movie stars were born: Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtain, and Gilda Radner. The pattern of comedy stars emerging from SNL continues to this day, with Tina Fey and Kristin Wiig leading the current generation.
Another comedy star to emerge from television was Goldie Hawn. Hawn made the jump from Laugh In to box office star with There’s a Girl in My Soup with Peter Sellars of Pink Panther fame, Shampoo, and Foul Play.
Meanwhile, the rating code allowed film comedy to become broader and naughtier, with more F-Bombs, nudity, and raunchiness. M.A.S.H. was an edgy comedy set against the backdrop of the Korean war and featured guys peeping on the girls’ shower. Shampoo was a political comedy set against the backdrop of the Nixon election and featured a hairdresser pretending to be gay. National Lampoon’s Animal House helped college enrollment and informed America about how to throw a good toga party. Everything was fair game in the movies. Lots of tops came off.
Remember those TV writers from the 1950s? They come of age in the 1970s.
Carl Reiner directs Steve Martin in The Jerk. He directs Oh, God!
Mel Brooks writes and directs Young Frankenstein. He is nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
Neil Simon, the amazingly successful playwright of The Odd Couple, is nominated for an Oscar for his best original screenplay for The Goodbye Girl.
Larry Gelbart is nominated for an Oscar for his adapted screenplay for Oh, God!
Woody Allen owned the 1970s: From the broad futuristic Sleeper and winning Best Picture with Annie Hall to Manhattan.
THE SCREENING ROOM
Monty Python and the Holy Grail!
The Jerk
American Graffiti
The In-Laws
A New Leaf
MATERIALISTIC 1980S: LOOSEN UP YUPPIES!
The age of the yuppie! Money was made. Money was lost. And most of the time characters on the screen were making or losing it. Paul Mazursky remakes the classic French film Boudu Saved From Drowning, turning it into a contemporary indictment of the rich with Down and Out in Beverly Hills.
In Trading Places, a rich man (Dan Aykroyd) and a poor man (Eddie Murphy) are forced to switch places. In the end, they team up and turn the tables to bankrupt the greedy billionaires who put them in this mess.
Risky Business was Tom Cruise’s break-out movie. He played a teenager who turns his home into a brothel. Not only did he get the girl, but he also got the money to fix his dad’s car and buy back his family’s “egg” — and he gets into Princeton!
John Hughes wrote and directed the classic Planes, Trains and Automobiles, in which an uptight yuppie played by Steve Martin is stuck on the road with a crazy salesman played by the late, great John Candy. Years later, Due Date would mine this same comic river.
John Hughes was also responsible for the rise of the teen comedies. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off touches on the idea that money can’t buy you happiness, but most of the teen comedies dealt with real teen issues — love, alienation, cliques. From Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink to The Breakfast Club. During his free time, Hughes was able to write National Lampoon’s Vacation and National Lampoon’s European Vacation.
The romantic comedy began its resurgence toward the end of the decade with Moonstruck and When Harry Met Sally. This trend would continue into the 1990s.
THE SCREENING ROOM
Back to the Future
Bull Durham
Ghostbusters
Airplane!
Splash
1990S COMEDIES — GROSS!
Cable explodes. The Internet expands. The gross-out comedy comes into vogue. A remake of The Shop Around the Corner, You’ve Got Mail is the iconic AOL email greeting and a movie with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Meg Ryan is America’s sweetheart, with Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, I.Q., and French Kiss.
Julia Roberts will run neck and neck as box office champion with her string of rom-coms: Pretty Woman, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Notting Hill, and Runaway Bride.
Saturday Night Live continues to produce lower ratings on television but huge stars on the big screen. Adam Sandler hits it big with Wedding Singer. Bill Murray stars in What About Bob? and the now-appreciated Groundhog Day. Dana Carvey and Mike Myers will turn Wayne’s World, a Saturday Night Live sketch, into a successful franchise.
Jim Carrey becomes the champion of big, broad, outlandish comedies. Beginning with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Carrey enjoys a decade of success as America’s box office champ with The Mask, Dumb & Dumber, Liar, Liar, and his portrayal of comedian Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon.
Behind the camera, the Farrelly Brothers proved just as funny — and even more outrageous! Never ones to shy away from a disgusting, over-the-top, laugh-invoking sight gag (zipper scene anyone?), the Farrelly Brothers will write and direct Dumb & Dumber, the underappreciated Kingpin, and the classic There’s Something About Mary.
The four quadrant movie hits. Four quadrant movies are designed to appeal to men and women over and under twenty-five years old. I think of them as movies that parents as well as their kids will enjoy. Home Alone becomes one of the biggest comedy blockbusters of all time.
THE SCREENING ROOM
City Slickers
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Office Space
The Big Lebowski
Y2K: WHO LET THE BOYS OUT?
The ladies got off to a good lead in the early 2000s. Reese Witherspoon burst onto the scene with Legally Blonde and continued the rom-com success with Sweet Home Alabama. Sandra Bullock, who had success in the 1990s with While You Were Sleeping, rebounds with Miss Congeniality. But then the boys began to rule the day. The romantic comedy shifts to the man’s point of view. Helped by a strong crew of male comic actors and their frat-like determination to help each other succeed, the man-com is born.
From Meet the Parents, Wedding Crashers, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall to Knocked Up — the question is: Will the man grow up? Will he find love?
The comedies of the male-driven late 2000s featured a group of male comedians appearing in each others’ movies, most of the time R-Rated comedies.
• Jack Black in School of Rock
• Jack Black, Robert Downey, Jr., and Ben Stiller in Tropic Thunder
• Ben Stiller in Meet the Parents with Owen Wilson
• Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn in Dodgeball
• Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson in Wedding Crashers
• Vince Vaughn, Luke Wilson, and Will Ferrell in Old School
• Will Ferrell in Anchorman with Steve Carrell and Paul Rudd
• Steve Carell in The 40-Year-Old Virgin with Paul Rudd and Seth Rogan
• Seth Rogan in Knocked Up with Jason Segal
• Jason Segel in I Love You, Man with Paul Rudd
• Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall with Jonah Hill and Russell Brand
• Jonah Hill and Russell Brand in Get Him to the Greek
But the ultimate box office, R-Rated comedy, the winner and still champ (sorry, Mike Tyson) featured none of those guys: It was The Hangover.
So what comes after the man-child? Well, lots of femaledriven R-Rated comedies have sold. (See “The R-Rated Woman”). Girls want to prove they can be as raunchy as boys.
Or, chances are, it’s something that hasn’t been written yet. At least not until you finish this book.
THE SCREENING ROOM
Night at the Museum
Bruce Almighty
The Break-Up
The Proposal
Due Date
YES, BUT WHAT KIND OF COMEDY?
You’re at a party. You tell someone you’re writing a comedy. Great, that’s all you need to tell them. But you need to be a little more specific in your writing.
Comedy is really how you see the world. Woody Allen made an interesting film in 2004 entitled Melinda and Melinda. Here’s the premise: A group of writers hear the same story and one decides it’s a drama, the other sees it as a comedy.
You see everything as a comedy.
Hollywood has, too. It has taken every genre and turned it on its head. As you begin thinking about your comedy blockbuster, think about what subgenre it might exist in. Here’s a few to get you started:
THE SUBGENRES OF COMEDY
FARCE
Farce is defined as a light, humorous play in which the plot depends upon a skillfully exploited situation rather than upon the development of character. So we’re not talking anything deep. Farce is weaker on character development. It is superficial — but it can be very funny.
Some classic farce movies include Woody Allen’s Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask). This film of the early seventies, featuring a giant rampaging boob, was actually based on a nonfiction sexual reference book written by Dr. David Reuben.
Mel Brooks is a filmmaker who specialized in farce. From skewering Westerns in Blazing Saddles (and breaking down the fourth wall) to having Frankenstein dance — in one of the most famous scenes in film history in the classic Young Frankenstein.
The Scary Movie franchise was a farce loosely based on the Scream movie franchise. Airplane!, the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker Brothers classic, was a farce based on a movie called Zero Hour.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: Duck Soup, Blazing Saddles, Hot Shots!
SEX COMEDY
Sex sells. Sex comedies became more in vogue and more popular with the emergence of the rating code. But sex comedies are not just about naked foreplay. They always are, as comedies are, reflective of the time and the environment around them.
One of the first sex comedies was the 1969 Paul Mazursky film, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, in which close friends decide to go to Vegas to have an orgy. Judd Apatow and Steve Carell’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin is a must-see sex comedy. The character was born on the improv stage.
Please note: Both these movies have very mature endings. The protagonists realize there is more to life than the pursuit of sex and find this funny little thing called love in the end. Both movies end in song. Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice ends with “What the World Needs Now” (is love sweet love). The 40-Year-Old Virgin ends with Andy (Carell) singing “The Age of Aquarius.”
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: 10, The Sure Thing, Superbad
TEEN COMEDY
Teen comedies have been a mainstay of comedy since Mickey and Judy wanted to put on a show, or Frankie and Annette hung out in Beach Blanket Bingo. A recent addition is American Pie, which follows the adventures of three teens determined to lose their virginity. Even more recently, Superbad follows the adventures of teens with the same goal.
But it’s not always about sex. Regardless of what parents believe their teens are thinking about — it’s not always about sex. They are dealing with real issues — identity, expectations, the social hierarchy in high school. And no one was ever better at talking to a generation than the late, great John Hughes. In 1985, he made The Breakfast Club, a film about five teens from very different cliques — stoner, jock, brain, princess, and social misfit — who are sentenced to detention on a Saturday and learn (as we do) that there is much more going on than we realize.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Girl Next Door
ROMANTIC COMEDY
Romantic comedies (or Rom-Coms) have been the heart and soul of comedy blockbusters. They are the perfect date night movie. A couple goes to see a movie about a couple falling in love — along the way they bicker, argue, break-up, and (most of the time) get back together.
Annie Hall with Woody Allen and Diane Keaton is a romantic comedy where the couples do not wind up together. Almost thirty years later, The Break-Up explored similar thematic territory with Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston.
From It Happened One Night and Roman Holiday to The Proposal, men and woman have long been going at it on the screen so they can go at it in the bedroom. Each has a clear point of view that grates on the other, but they are still attracted to each other.
Pretty Woman was one of the break-out comedies of the 1990s. It made Julia Roberts into a star. It was your typical rich-man-hires-hooker-and-falls-in-love movie. Sure doesn’t sound like comedic material. Originally it wasn’t. The script by J. F. Lawton was entitled 3,000. It was dark and gritty and ended with the rich man tossing the hooker back onto the street. Legend has it that studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg decided it could be a comedy. He was right.
Traditionally, romantic comedies were told from the woman’s point of view. That has changed in the Age of Apatow (Judd, that is) as we see in movies like Knocked Up.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: When Harry Met Sally, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Four Weddings and a Funeral
ACTION COMEDY
Lights. Action. Comedy! Guns. Explosions. Spies. Things that go boom can blow up in laughter. James Cameron of Avatar and Terminator did all these things for laughs in True Lies, a remake of the French action comedy La Totale.
Midnight Run was about an accountant and bounty hunter on the run from the mob.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie took the battle of the sexes to new heights as the married assassins tried to kill each other. Talk about thematic!
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: Tropic Thunder, Beverly Hills Cop, Smoky and the Bandit
SPORTS COMEDY
Guys love sports. Guys love comedy. It’s a total peanut butterand-chocolate moment. Perfect together ever since Harold Lloyd ran for a touchdown in The Freshman.
Do you have a Bad News Bears in you? If you want realism in sports comedies, take a look at the movies of Ron Shelton. Shelton actually played minor league baseball. It sure shows in Bull Durham, although his comedic realism was also on display in Tin Cup and White Men Can’t Jump.
Paul Newman’s foray into comedy — and you just thought he would be remembered for serious fare and salad dressing — was the classic hockey comedy Slapshot.
Caddyshack is a classic comedy about golf! Dodgeball is a comedy about dodgeball! The Mighty Ducks is the Bad News Bears on ice!
What sport do you love? Did you play field hockey, rugby, lacrosse, Ultimate Frisbee? Is there a movie there?
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: Major League, Kingpin, The Longest Yard
BOY’S CLUB
Comedies will sometimes center around a group of guys and the trouble they get themselves into. Boy’s club movies give us a view into the psyche of the male mind. Boys will be boys. They will drink. Avoid commitment. Fight.
Barry Levinson’s Diner offers a nostalgic look at the 1950s and features an amazing cast of male stars. National Lampoon’s Animal House is the ultimate boy’s club as we witness life inside the worst fraternity ever to be shown on screen. Years later, Old School will feature three men who yearn for their “Animal House” days, so they start a fraternity.
Swingers was the breakout movie for Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn, and Doug Liman. It’s about a group of guys hanging in Los Angeles chasing honeys.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: The Hangover, Boys Night Out, Stripes
GIRL’S CLUB
In recent years the girls have been knocking on the door — loudly. And audiences are letting them. Girls love to have fun, too. Where the Boys Are is a classic comedy about four girls heading down to Florida for spring break. The Sex in The City franchise is the ultimate girl’s club. What does a movie need to be a girl’s club movie? It needs to be a movie from the female point of view, like Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion or Boys On the Side. Bridesmaids just took the prize!
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: The Banger Sisters, Outrageous Fortune, The Sweetest Thing.
MOCKUMENTARY
Ah, the Beatles. Those amazing boys from Liverpool were not just musicians — they were actors, comedic actors inspired by the Marx Brothers. Under director Richard Lester’s tutelage, the Beatles played themselves in their debut movie, A Hard Day’s Night. The plot of the movie follows four days in the life of the Beatles. And thus, the mockumentary was born. But it really grew up five years later when Woody Allen wrote and directed a fictional documentary about a small-time criminal entitled Take the Money and Run. A mockumentary treats its subject matter as if it is real; it often has a voice over, and gives the audience members an overview of the lives or events of their generation. And, of course, the subject of the mockumentary is absurd.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: This is Spinal Tap, Borat, Best in Show, CB4
STONER COMEDIES
Reefer Madness is not a stoner comedy, though it plays like one. Made in the 1950s, this B film shows the terrible effects of marijuana. Stoner comedies show the comical effects of marijuana. They came of age in the 1970s. It was time for that free love, hippie generation to make it on the screen. The Stoner Comedy godfathers were the comedians Cheech Martin and Tommy Chong. In 1978, they rolled across America in their car made of pot in Up in Smoke. Drugs have always been prevalent in comedies — but stoner comedies tend to be about the pursuit of drugs or guys and gals on drugs in the pursuit of something else — say a White Castle Hamburger in Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. For a while, Hollywood became very conservative and stoner comedies were no longer being made. It was more acceptable to make movies about very stupid people (Dumb & Dumber) than very stoned people.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: Pineapple Express, Up In Smoke, Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle
FANTASY/MAGIC
Magic can be funny. From the time Fredric March had to tangle with a witch in I Married A Witch, magic and fantasy have been major components of film comedy.
A studio exec will always ask: What are the rules? What is the device that causes the magic? A recurring theme of this subgenre is “Be careful what you wish for.”
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: Big, Groundhog Day.
GOD COMEDIES
Anything to do with God and heaven and angels falls into the category of God Comedies. From the original Heaven Can Wait, entitled Here Comes Mr. Jordan, to Clarence in It’s A Wonderful Life to Nora Ephron’s Michael, angels are often sent to Earth to interact with characters in need of spirituality. And if that isn’t enough, sometimes God interacts.
In the 1970s, George Burns got to play God in the hit movie Oh, God! in which he comes to Earth and asks poor John Denver to deliver his message. Years later, Jim Carrey got very angry at God and thought he could do a better job, so God (Morgan Freeman) gave him a shot in the movie Bruce Almighty.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: It’s A Wonderful Life, We’re No Angels
CRIME
Stick ’em up! Reach for the skies! Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? America has been laughing at crime since movies began. Crime movies might be about losers or the desperate trying to pull off a crime (Bottle Rocket, Small Town Crooks) or criminals dealing with an unseen complication in their criminal plans (The Lady Killers). 48 Hours was a buddy crime movie about a cop and a criminal teamed up for 48 hours. It is a “must see” movie for witnessing the arrival of Eddie Murphy as the new sheriff in town.
A Fish Called Wanda is a crime caper. Complications ensue when Jamie Lee Curtis falls in love with barrister Archibald Leach (John Cleese.) Side note: Archibald Leach is Cary Grant’s real name.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: Lavender Hill Mob, Bad Boys, Beverly Hills Cop, Take the Money and Run
MOB COMEDY
Americans love to laugh at the Mafia’s expense… at least in the safety of their own home or in a darkened theater. We are either focusing on the fish out of water who gets involved with the mob (Analyze This), or the mob that gets involved in the very ordinary world (Get Shorty, Bullets over Broadway). Though Some Like It Hot featured a major mob plot device and antagonist (played by George Raft, who allegedly had a real criminal background), most mob comedies appeared post-The Godfather.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: The Whole Nine Yards, Married to the Mob, Prizzi’s Honor
WAR
War is hell. And it is never played just for laughs. But war is also absurd. And movie comedies have shown us how absurd it can be. From Catch-22 to Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, war comedies show us either how insane war is or how people cope with war.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: M.A.S.H, Good Morning, Vietnam
BIOGRAPHY A.K.A BIO-COMS
In recent years, screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski have owned the bio-com. It might be because they invented it. From Ed Wood to Man on the Moon, Alexander and Karasewski have found real-life characters who border on the absurd.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: Man On The Moon, Private Parts, Ed Wood
CULTURE COMS
The success of Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It opened the door for African-American-centric comedies. Ranging from the broad (Booty Call) and Tyler Perry’s movies to movies like The Wood or Just Wright, these comedies are defined by their very specific cultural points of view. In the same way, Moonstruck is a comedy about the Italian-American culture and way of life and Tortilla Soup is a comedy about Latino culture, these films provide a comedic window onto their specific worlds.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: Lottery Ticket, My Big Fat Greek Wedding
ALT-COMS — COMEDIES ABOUT ALT LIFESTYLES
Hollywood is always late to the party. Despite the fact that Hollywood is an industry that is very open to different lifestyles, independent filmmakers broke the mold on comedies about alternative lifestyle choices. Ang Lee would go on to direct the mainstream, Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain, but he started with the independent and critically received comedy The Wedding Banquet. In the 1990s, after years of independent movies, Alt-Coms went mainstream with alternative lifestyles at the center of the story with In & Out, in which Kevin Kline plays a high school drama teacher about to be married who is outed on national TV; and The Birdcage, a remake of the Veber French classic, La Cage aux Folles.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: Kissing Jessica Stein, Billy Hollywood’s Screen Test, Kiss Me, Guido
HORROR
Ever since Bob Hope battled ghosts in Ghostbreakers, audiences have loved a good laugh and a good scream. This hybrid has made fun of Dracula (Love at First Bite), werewolves (Teen Wolf), zombies (Shaun of the Dead), and more ghosts (Ghostbusters)
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: American Werewolf in London, Young Frankenstein, Witches of Eastwick.
SATIRE
How does one define satire? It’s a genre that takes a dark, comical look at a serious but absurd subject. It uses irony and sarcasm to denounce a situation or a view. It can be about politics, the news media, war, or even marriage. Satire always seems very grounded in reality. In the classic movie Being There, Peter Sellers plays a dim-witted gardener who becomes a political confidant and possibly the next President of the United States. Everyone interprets what he says as metaphor. The audience is in on the joke but the characters in the movie simply don’t get it. Wag the Dog satirizes the news media’s coverage of wars. Paddy Chayefsky skewered the outrageousness of network news reporting in 1976 in the classic movie Network. Unfortunately, what he was condemning is even more prevalent today.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: Thank You For Smoking, To Die For, War of the Roses
MUSICAL COMEDY
A tradition on Broadway, the original musical comedy left the screen for a while. For a primer on what makes people laugh, see the 1952 musical Singin’ in the Rain. Hollywood tends to film what worked on Broadway (The Producers). There is hope on the smaller screen; on the Internet Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog became a huge hit.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: Grease, The Producers, A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum
Sidenote: Remember those TV writers who succeeded on the big screen? Well, The Producers was written by Mel Brooks and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum was written for the stage by the late, great Larry Gelbart.
SCIENCE FICTION
Do you want to take jokes where no jokes have gone before? Comedies have been out of this world since movies began. From Abbott and Costello Go to Mars to Men in Black, comedies have combined the high adventure of speculative fiction with out-and-out belly aches.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: Galaxy Quest, Men in Black
EXERCISE: BEG, STEAL, OR BORROW
We have just gone through the history of film comedy. Start making a list of your TOP TEN favorite comedies of all time.
Write them down.
Write down what makes you laugh. Which scene? Which character? Which particular piece of dialogue?
Don’t over-analyze. We are working from a gut level here.
Now think about those films. Are there any similiarities? Do they take place in the same setting? Is romance involved? Are they by the same writer? The same director?
Now rent the three movies that have some things in common.
Watch them again. We want to find out what makes you laugh.
