More misery is caused in this world by bad jokes than by anything else important. Except maybe, politics, war, famine, and the like; but just in listing them I’ve made a bad joke—-and probably made you start out this essay on comedy thinking before it is over you are going to be miserable. My point is made.
It is astonishingly hard to write good comedy, especially in a visual format like screenwriting. (And don’t kid yourself; from the first line of mise-en-scene description, screenwriting is visual.) The sheer number of writers who try to master it has always therefore astounded me. In the end, most of us are left with at best with a bunch of jokes whose punchlines read “ . . . comedy is hard.”
Scared yet? There are, however, at least a few rules. They are not so different from Drama, Adventure, or Romance. But the key difference with comedy is delivery. Without it, you have nothing. You have face-plant uncomfortable-silence “I-don’t-get-it” awkward pauses. Without proper delivery you have sitcoms like “The Nanny.” I’ll get back to delivery in more detail after we go over the rules.
Number One: Comedy Comes From Truth. Closely related to the old standard for all writing, “Write what you know.” I’ve heard people say, when something really tragic or embarrassing happens to a friend, “Man, that would be funny if it wasn’t true.” And I say, "No! Turn it around! It’s funny because it IS true." Consider this example from “Play it Again, Sam” (1972):
DICK
What? You got into a fight?
ALLAN
Yep.
DICK
With who?
ALLAN
Some guys were getting tough with Julie.
I had to teach them a lesson.
DICK
Are you all right?
ALLAN
Yeah, I'm fine. I snapped my chin
down onto some guy's fist and hit
another one in the knee with my nose.
The way Allan, played by Woody Allen, chose to describe his experience “teaching a lesson” to the guys getting tough with Julie, makes the comedy. I can’t help but giggle. (A third character played by Diane Keaton is not mentioned here, but she does just that.) Anybody can say they got beat up. What we hear from Allan is the actual experience of the humiliation of being beat up when you were trying to do the right thing and protect the girl. The beauty of well-communicated truth. Even funnier is that we never learn exactly what happened to the girl.
Number Two: Comedy Comes In Threes. It’s a cliché, but it is true. Little jokes have their A-B-C Setup- Kicker-Punchlines. Scenes have their beginning, middle, ends; even conversations within scenes have a structure. Just look back at the Woody Allen exchange. It is the third line by his character that delivers the punchline. As an example of how this works in a whole scene, here’s an excerpt from my script “Three Days” (I know, shameless, but it’s my article) where Kevin is trying to patch up a marital spat he is having with his wife, Grace. Grace is staying at a friend’s house. It is important to know for this scene that the friends have a pet pig, named
Mimi:
INT/EXT. PLOT'S HOUSE: FRONT PORCH - DAY
Making an awful lot of noise, KEVIN and BOGART slide up the
sidewalk. Bogart leaps up the porch stairs; Kevin,
naturally, trips over them.
KEVIN
Steve! Is Grace--?
STEVE puts a juicy finger to his lips. He steps out onto the
porch and CLOSES the front door.
STEVE
(Through his food)
I'm notd sobbust tdo letd you ind.
KEVIN
C'mon man, you know I need to see
her. This is nuts.
STEVE
(Swallows)
I know that, but she needs time to
figure it out on her own. Trust me,
bud, you don't tell your wife how
to feel in these situations.
KEVIN
Where is she?
STEVE
Upstairs, with Jenn.
KEVIN
What're they doing?
STEVE
Jenn's telling her how to feel.
KEVIN
So how come she can do that, but I
can't?
Steve SHRUGS.
EXT. PLOT'S HOUSE: FRONT PORCH/LAWN – DAY
KEVIN, still holding BOGART and the flowers, steps down from
the porch and moves onto the lawn to get a good look at the
upstairs window.
KEVIN
Hey Grace! GRAAAAACE!
JENNIFER opens the window and sticks her head out.
JENNIFER
Who's asking?
KEVIN
Hi, Jenn, can I talk to Grace,
please?
She pops her head in.
INT. PLOT'S HOUSE: UPSTAIRS BEDROOM – DAY
JENNIFER
What do you think?
GRACE is lying on the bed.
GRACE
Let him squirm just a little.
JENNIFER sticks her head back out.
EXT. PLOT'S HOUSE: FRONT PORCH/LAWN – DAY
JENNIFER
Who were you, again?
KEVIN
Oh, come on, Jenn, I'm not here to
play games. Look--
KEVIN holds up the flowers.
KEVIN (CONT'D)
I've got flowers, her favorite dog--
He rattles Bogart's leash. BOGART sits in the snow.
KEVIN (CONT'D)
I'm here to make up with my wife.
INT. PLOT'S HOUSE: UPSTAIRS BEDROOM – DAY
GRACE comes to the window.
GRACE
Make up?
EXT. PLOT'S HOUSE: FRONT PORCH/LAWN – DAY
GRACE
You think an affair is something you
just "make up" from?
KEVIN
I wasn't having an affair! I've
never had an affair! I'm never
going to have an affair.
STEVE has sat down on the porch steps. BOGART pulls the
leash toward Steve, so Kevin unclips the leash and lets
Bogart go.
GRACE
Are the words "I love you" something
that you get from all your clients?
KEVIN
From the satisfied ones, yeah!
GRACE rolls her eyes and moves back inside.
KEVIN (CONT'D)
No, wait!
Grace waits.
KEVIN (CONT'D)
Can we please talk about this
somewhere else? It's a little
embarrassing playing to Steve &
Jenn's neighbors.
Grace gives him a look with just a hint of pity in it, then
she ducks back inside.
Steve reads his magazine and scratches Bogart on the head.
Kevin begins pacing, mashing a circle in the snow.
INT. PLOT'S HOUSE: UPSTAIRS BEDROOM – DAY
JENNIFER
No! You can't go down there. You've
got him on the ropes.
GRACE
I don't want him on the ropes. He
wants to talk.
JENNIFER
Give it a little more time, honey.
He can't just give you a few flowers
and expect it to be all better.
GRACE
So what would you do?
EXT. PLOT'S HOUSE: FRONT PORCH/LAWN – DAY
KEVIN has a good flat patch walked out of the lawn. He's
almost to the grass.
BOGART rests on a porch bench.
KEVIN
(To Steve)
She hasn't come out in a while.
That's a good sign, right? Does
that mean she's on her way down?
Steve SHRUGS again. "What are you asking me for?"
PLOP! An old blanket lands on top of Kevin. It SMELLS.
Bogart sits up.
KEVIN (CONT'D)
What the--? WHEW! *COUGH* *GAG*
This thing smells like . . .
Bogart has already started GROWLING.
STEVE
Mimi?
KEVIN
(Pulling it off)
Yeah. What is that? Don't you ever
bathe her?
STEVE
Do you know how hard it is to keep a
pig clean?
Bogart BARKS and GROWLS. Kevin stops and looks at his dog,
realization building.
KEVIN
Oh. Hey, Bogart. How's it going?
Bogart BARKS again. His GROWL slides into a SNARL. Kevin
puts the blanket down, SLOWLY.
Steve looks at Kevin, then up at the girls in the window
(JENN is smiling, GRACE is concerned), then at Bogart.
STEVE
(To Kevin)
I don't think that's going to work,
you're the moving target now.
Kevin moves one foot behind the other, stepping back
CAREFULLY.
Steve stands up, folds his magazine, and turns to Bogart.
STEVE (CONT'D)
It's okay, Bogart. It's just Kevin.
He inches toward the dog, arms spread.
Bogart stops, looks at Steve, and WHIMPERS.
KEVIN
Yeah, buddy, it's me.
Bogart looks at Kevin. The SNARL returns.
STEVE
*SIGH* Guess you better run.
In a single impressive move, Bogart LEAPS off the couch, over
the porch railing, and onto the front lawn.
Kevin runs down the street, screaming:
KEVIN
It's me! It's ME Bogart!
Bogart gives chase.
Jennifer LAUGHS from the window.
GRACE
(Concerned, smiling)
That was awful.
Steve gets off the porch, pulling a set of keys from his
pocket.
BOGART (O.S.)
BARK! *SNARL*
KEVIN (O.S.)
(Fading)
It's me!
In that example there were several conversations that were A-B-C (From “Don’t tell your wife how to feel,” to “how hard is it to keep a pig clean”) and the scene itself had a beginning middle and end (Kevin arrives, offers flowers, waits, is chased off). This heightens the comedy within the scene. Plus, I just hope it is plain funny.
Number 3: Comedy is True—-But Unexpected. Here comedy has a certain kinship with the horror genre, and I think with the human desire for (and love of) surprise. Sample any horror flick theater nowadays, and you’ll find half the audience laughing while the other half is screaming their heads off. There was a certain “car commercial” working its way around the email system a few years ago that blended this trend beautifully, and I won’t ruin it for you if you haven’t seen it, but if you have you understand what I mean. In the example from “Three Days,” you know that Kevin will be foiled in trying to make up with his wife, at least initially. HOW that happens is where the creativity and the comedy come in. (Let me just pull out my own horn here, *Toot* *Toot*) Being wrapped in a smelly pig blanket that makes his own dog chase him off was not (hopefully) what the audience was expecting.
Here’s another example from Dumb & Dumber (1994):
LLOYD
What are the chances of a guy like you
and a girl like me . . . ending up
together?
MARY
Not good.
LLOYD
Not good like one out of a hundred?
MARY
I'd say more like one in a million.
Sorry.
LLOYD
So you're telling me there's a
chance. I hear ya!
This emotional train wreck kept coming for poor Mary (and the audience loves it while squirming at the same time) because of Lloyd’s talent for saying exactly the wrong things at exactly the right moment. The pieces of emotional truth that we all identify with—-but that none of us would be stupid enough to actually let linger—-he throws out there. Unexpected Truth.
Now, none of those rules for writing comedy matter without proper delivery. In comedy, delivery is everything. There is an old “Simpsons” episode, where Principal Skinner is fired and Ned Flanders is hired to replace him. On the day of his introduction to the students, in his famous Flanders style, he stands up and promises to put the “Pal” back in “Principal.” All the kids laugh! He’s a hit! School Superintendent Chaumers follows him up with a promise to put the “Super” back in “Superintendent” and gets nothing but one polite cough. Same exact joke—-as he petulantly points out. It was his delivery.
For screenwriters, delivery is also the journey to the screen. A screenwriter has to rely on the director and actor down the road to understand the vision he had and get it off the page. Face it, most of us will never be Charlie Kaufman fielding personal calls from Jim Carrey because he is so worried about getting our material right, so we have to use tricks of the trade to make sure they see what we see. Here are a few of my own:
1. Remember that screenwriting is poetry, not prose. Cut it down—-Especially the descriptions! At one minute per page it has to move.
2. Talk about
individual objects or movements if you want close-up or tracking shots of them. This makes the director think he thought of it.
3. In Action, you end on Action. In Comedy, you end on Comedy, whether that is the bad guy getting hit by a bus, a one-liner, or something else, end on the “high note” in almost every scene after the end of the first act in order to keep the pace moving forward.
Ultimately, comedy is about personal style and practice, practice, practice. I know that sounds like a cop-out after all those rules and examples, but you have to find your own pace and comfort level. As with anything, start by writing what sounds funny to you, and then test it with an audience. A friend. A family member. A trusted member of a writing club maybe, or an agent you know personally but who will do you a favor and won't take it personally if you "suck."
With time, as you confidence grows, you’ll know what’s funny almost without even asking. You’ll want people to read your stuff not to find out if it’s funny, but because you want to make ‘em laugh.
A version of this article was first written in 2005.
