Today I talk about how to be funny, dammit!
Genre: TV Pilot (comedy sci-fi)
Premise: A support group whose members believe they’ve been abducted by aliens is furious when a journalist makes fun of them in an article. The only problem is, the journalist begins to think he may have been abducted as well.
About: Writer David Jenkins has been writing scripts for a good ten years now. I know he won a couple of smaller screenplay contests back in 2005, and has been steadily working his way up the ladder since. This project was picked up by TBS last month.
Writer: David Jenkins
Details: 39 pages
I’m going to cut to the chase today. I thought The Group was okay.
But I noticed my mind wandering and exploring a bigger question during the read: “How do you make funny?”
Because funny is dying on the big screen. Unless you can mix your comedy into a bigger genre (sci-fi, horror, action, adventure), comedy is a tough animal to sell overseas. And since that’s all studios care about these days, they’re making less and less lol for us to rotfl at.
I asked someone the other night: “What was the last great comedy you saw?” The answers I got were “22 Jump Street” and “Horrible Bosses 2.” Whoa. If this is what passes for great comedy, we might run out of laughs before the end of the decade.
But then I realized that this golden age of television is providing a new venue for comedy. So much has been made of the gritty dramas that have come out of this new era, but what’s been lost is that some pretty cool off-beat comedies that never would’ve been put on the air ten years ago are now gracing our flat screens.
Which brings us back to our question of the day: “How do you make funny?”
Obviously, there are a lot of ways to make people laugh so I’m not going to claim I know the definitive answer. Comedy is too subjective.
But what bothered me about The Group was that it depended too much on the “wily cast of characters” comedy approach.
This approach was popularized by Community. Put a bunch of wacky people in a room and let them be wacky. I think that works to an extent if you’re as talented as Dan Harmon. But it’s not an approach you want to depend on. Cause most comedy is situational. You need to put people in weird, intense, or awkward situations and then watch how they react. That’s where most good comedy comes from.
I’m going to use another offbeat comedy to make my point here. The awesome Fox show, “The Last Man On Earth.”
This is that Will Forte show where he plays Phil, the last man on earth. After spending two years without seeing a single human being, Phil meets Carol, the last woman on earth. He’s beyond thrilled. He can’t believe that he finally has someone to talk to, to share a life with.
There’s one small problem. Carol is the most annoying person ever. And even with the two being the last man and last woman on earth, Phil STILL cringes at the thought of marrying this woman.
But after a lot of soul searching (who else is he going to marry??), he reluctantly ties the knot, and no less than five minutes later, they run into Melissa (the gorgeous January Jones). This is the most beautiful person in the universe. And Phil could’ve had her had he waited just five more minutes.
The reason this show is so funny is because it uses the “goal-obstacle” technique to get laughs. This technique works by giving your character something he REALLY REALLY wants (his goal). Then you place a series of obstacles in his path to prevent him from achieving that goal.
If you do this right, you have an endless supply of laughs.
So in The Last Man on Earth, Phil is desperately in love with and wants to be with Melissa (goal). But he can’t have her because he’s married (obstacle). So he has to come up with a solution to the problem (these are the “situations” in the term “situational comedy” you’ll now put your character in).
One of the scenes that follows, then, is Phil sitting Carol down, and benignly suggesting the idea that, if they’re going to repopulate the earth, they can’t have their babies having sex with one another. Phil, despite how horrid it’s going to be, will probably need to have sex with Melissa as well.
The scene’s funny because we know what Phil’s up to and we’re wondering if Carol’s going to buy it.
Through a lot of deft maneuvering, Phil actually convinces Carol and Melissa that multiple pregnancies need to be done for the good of mankind. After some hemming and hawing, they agree. He is the only man left in the world. There’s no way around it.
So Phil goes through this over-the-top preparation for his first night with Melissa (another “situational scene”). He can’t believe his luck and that he’s going to have sex with this stunning creature. Then, just a couple of minutes before the deed, a car shows up and “Todd” steps out, the 300 pound nicest guy in the world.
All of a sudden, Phil is no longer the last man on the planet, and so, Carol and Melissa point out, he no longer needs to procreate with both Carol and Melissa. Just like that, we’ve rebooted the goal-obstacle. Phil wants Melissa (goal) but now Todd is in the way (obstacle).
What follows are further situational scenes where Phil points out to Melissa how overweight and unattractive Todd is, and, quite frankly, the last person’s DNA you’d want to repopulate the earth with. Ironically, this only drives Melissa further way, making Phil’s goal even more difficult.
You can just keep doing this over and over but there’s a critical component to making it work. The character with the goal must DESPERATELY WANT IT. The more they want it, the funnier it is when they don’t get it.
Going back to The Group, I couldn’t get past the over-dependence on the “wily personality” aspect. The characters were kind of funny but there wasn’t enough “situational” humor. And I think that’s what you should be looking for in comedy – whether it’s using the goal-obstacle technique or one of the many other techniques to get laughs (hey, some people like projectile vomit jokes!).
Try to put your characters in tough situations that force them to act. If you’re just going to try and be funny with dialogue, it’s probably not going to work unless you’re a dialogue ninja master (which some writers are).
I liked that The Group was different. I liked that it’s mining humor from a science-fiction idea instead of giving us yet another wacky family sit-com. And some of its faults are no doubt due to the fact that it needs to set up its story. I just didn’t see the construction of a single comedic situation here. It was more characters talking and being weird around each other. And that left me wanting more.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The end of the pilot “mini-bible.” While I haven’t seen this in many pilots I’ve read, I wish more writers did it. A pilot, unlike a feature, isn’t the end. It’s the first 1% of the story. To not know what’s coming next just seems odd. On the flip side, I don’t want to read some giant 30 page boring show bible. So this one page “mini-bible” at the end of The Group was a nice compromise. Jenkins broke down (in Cambria font, not Courier), what we should expect from the rest of the series. It was just enough to make me curious about future episodes. I’d suggest throwing a mini-bible final page on your pilot script and also having a larger bible ready should a network/company request it.
