Writing comedy

Hello and welcome to the second part of the Comedy section of this course, held on Thursday the 19^th of March, this time about writing comedy.

Question: What, in terms of film genres, makes something a comedy?

“In comedy, laughter settles all arguments.” – Robert McKee

What do you think is funny?

Task: Take 10 minutes to find something you think is funny and add it to this Padlet page. It can be anything: a scene from a film or TV show, an image, a news story…

Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared (Pelling & Sloan, 2011)

 Four Lions (Morris, 2010)

Idealism in comedy

“Comedy is at heart, an angry, antisocial art. To solve the problem of weak comedy, therefore, the writer first asks: What am I angry about?” – Robert McKee

Question: What are you angry about?

The need for drama in Comedy

Melinda and Melinda (Allen, 2005)

Friends (NBC, 1994 - 2004)

Question: What’s the real drama in these scenes from Friends?

Writing comedy characters

Inelasticity is the essence of comedy character - Bergson

Bean (Smith, 1997)

Question: What is the difference between character development in short and feature films?

Writing comedy dialogue

“In comedy in particular, script is everything because it’s hard to get a great comedy performance without a good script. In a way the screenwriter has already done 80% of the creative work of the director.” – Harold Ramis

There are two ways that dialogue can be funny: because of what someone is saying and because of how they are saying it. - Bergson

Comic structure

“In drama, the audience continually grabs handfuls of the future, pulling themselves through, wanting to know the outcome. But Comedy allows the writer to halt Narrative Drive, the forward projecting mind of the audience, and interpolate into the telling a scene with no story purpose. It’s there just for the yuks."                       – Robert McKee

Louie (FX, 2010-)

Question: Do you agree with McKee’s position?

Task for next time

Write a two minute (two-page) comedy short.

The story should involve as few characters as possible and only one setting.

Consider what we’ve spoken about in terms of what kind of humour you want to use, how you want to use it and what effect you want to create with it.

Also think about what you are angry about, if that helps give you some motivation in some direction.

NB: Bring a paper copy of your script with you next Wednesday and also email it to me before class on Wednesday, in PDF format. My email: smithchris1804 (at) gmail.com