My Family

My Family

I can't confess to being a fan of this show, but season eight (season eight!) started last night so I felt obliged to watch.
The previous season had its critics. James Donaghy, writing for the Guardian Unlimited Arts Blog, suggested:
... Yet still too many episodes fell flat and the gags written to pump up ailing scenes felt forced in with little concern for situation or character. They replicated the technical aspects of the American shows without capturing their spirit. They could not escape the fundamental play-it-safe conservatism of the plotting nor avoid plumping for the fail-safe comedy archetypes of useless husband and nagging wife.

My Family always reminds me of the time I met my first steady girlfriend's father (this is me now, not James). He took me to one side and we talked about motorways and then he admitted to fancying Zoe Wanamaker, describing her as 'elfin'.
Anyhoo, last night's episode demonstrated the perfect example of 'topping the gag'.
Here's the set up:

Susan is mother to the teenage Michael. Michael's new girlfriend, Nikki, has been kicked out of her parents' house and Susan has agreed to allow her to stay under her roof for a time.

Susan: Nikki, I'll show you up to Michael's room.
Nikki: Oh, that's okay ...
(a beat: audience is given just enough time to predict the punchline)
... I know where it is.

Then Michael tops the gag:
Michael: Oh, actually that was my parents' room; mine's down the hall.

One more noteworthy point from the episode:
Sunset Bickham discusses the importance of exaggerating character. Time and again, he suggests that the audience needs a constant stream of clear and (almost patronizingly) obvious clues in order to quickly understand character and motivation and the like. He laments his students' stubborn attachment to subtlety. It's a common and fundamental mistake made by us rookies: we assume too much; we fear being obvious. We fear being obvious.

So consider Nikki's father, Mister Baker. We are instantly and repeatedly encouraged to see him in a certain light:
He enters the house carrying a bible and, on several occasions, he taps the bible whilst quoting from it.
Furthermore, when Ben exclaims 'Oh God yes', Mister Baker responds with 'There's no need for blasphemy thank you.'

As I watched, I did wonder if this characterisation was laboured; I wondered how many Christians wander around with bibles in their hand, tapping it each time they chastise the non-believers with a quote from Psalms or Matthew. I wondered if this was jumping stoutly on the toes of cliché and stereotype. Or, as James Donaghy proposes, the archetype.
But the point was made (and this point was important as it set-up the episode's major twist). Or, put another way, if this point was not made, the contrast that the major twist relied on would not have been created, and the twist would have lost its potency.
Better safe than sorry eh?

The episode is on iPlayer for six more days ...

Off

Larry David and Jeff Garlin

It's a tranquil and snowy Easter Saturday, and I have worries. And not just worries for my high-chocolate diet and self-unbuttoning jeans. (Damn those puny buttons.)
Nor are these continuing worries on the self-unbuttoning state of spelling in this country. (I'd love to go round every Facebook profile and online dating profile and correct the 'your's and 'you're's [I'd ignore the 'ur's for the time being] and 'there's and 'their's and 'there're's, and even the 'thier's, but I have a suspicion that I'd score low in the online popularity stakes.)

But why offend random online people with my anality when I can offend everyone with episode one of my sitcom? As my commitment to its future continues to waver, I find myself in need of some form of closure before I can move on; and so I treated myself to a six-and-a-half hour Larry David extravanganza: ten half-hour episodes from season one of Curb Your Enthusiasm, a one-hour pilot, and a thirty-or-so minute interview.
As the interviewer observed, Larry doesn't pull punches, making gags about incest survivors, the size of a boy's penis, porn stars, the disabled, racial differences ...
I was only a few episodes in when I became acutely aware of a tight knot in my stomach. It was tension.

Larry likens gags to diving: you should score highly for accomplishing a difficult dive.
I felt very much that what he was doing was creating high levels of tension, thereby setting up a high level of release. Tension and release - the key components of humour!
Of course, therein lies the risk (and risk is another word that Larry uses often): one is more likely to fail on a difficult dive; if one fails to release that high tension, one is highly screwed.

Check out this clip, in which Larry joins forces with a Tourette's sufferer, and soon everyone in the restaurant finds release through profanity. It's easy to see how very wrong this scene could have gone, and how brave Larry was to run with it. Note the comedic music that Larry chose as a safety net to make everything right again at the end of each episode. Be warned: you might find the language in this clip offensive!

We know the score: no writer ever made a living writing about some dull man who did some mundane things and wasn't really happy and wasn't really sad and didn't feel much for the universe. Plenty of writers, however, have made a living writing about love and anger and revenge and friendship - writing about the extremes of humanity, both good and bad, but never indifferent.

I felt this way after writing my Summer of Love short story: I had nothing to measure the degree of risk with. I felt that the child abuse theme might be contentious, and I tried to pitch it at the right level. Ironically, more people were offended by my mention of God. Go figure.

And now I have offended several people (six I think) with my apparently uncompromising approach, and here's the rub ... every one of those offendees found a different theme offensive! We're not discussing death threats here - more, friendly advice along the lines of 'You'll find yourself getting into difficulties with x.' Furthermore, I'm not likening myself to Larry David: I have no delusions about my lowly status and mediocre ability. And if I was offered a gig on the condition that I remove the adolescent boobs/smoking/fisting/Kashmiri killer/Scientologists/old woman tumbling over cliff/disabled man/cross-dressing/anal sex/bestiality, etc. gags, then I wouldn't hesitate.
Jack Bickham sympathizes with that very typical writer who fears making a fool of himself (something that Larry David confesses to). No-one wants to send out weak work; we want to shine. But Jack is adamant: Keep sending that work out.

Technically, I have as many bases covered as I am capable of: I have the character mix, the premise-driven gags, the character arcs and relationships, the invisible shown-not-told exposition, the clear and emotionally-driven motivations/goals, the inexorable forward momentum, the swaps in polarity, a coherent style and consistent type of humour, a shunning of clichés and avoidance of first-level consciousness ...

But I find it impossible to guage the likely success or failure of the humour on any objective level and, with utterly inconsistent feedback, the usually semi-reliable feedback route hasn't much alleviated my dilemma.

As I structure a new potential project, I find myself worrying about my religious protagonist, and hear Maria's words in my head: You can only go a little way with the God angle, and you have to tread very carefully. So I have prepared a foil - a non-religious love interest - thereby balancing the tone. And this overruling of my convictions in favour of a perceived response unsettles me. Is it wisdom, prudence, or cowardice?

All this said and done, there is only one certainty: the writer whose fear prevents him from sending out work will not make a living from the writing. Oh, and a second certainty: if you're a writer, you're not the first to experience these worries!

NB. If you have an online dating profile, please observe that my use of the word 'you're' is a contraction of the words 'you' and 'are', with the apostrophe replacing the discarded 'a' in 'are'. And please don't send me photos of yourself on all fours with a ball-gag in your mouth. Those photos should be sent to: es@gypsylover.co.uk

Tension

Looking a little more at the idea of tension: last night I watched a dvd of comedy classics. It struck me that many of the greatest comedy payoffs are resultant through the initial creation of incredible tension, or stress. Or high stakes if you will.

Victor Meldrew is lying in a hospital bed in a private room. In walks a male nurse. They chat a little as the nurse lowers Victor's blankets, smears shaving cream over his nether region, and then pulls out a cutthroat razor.
Eek! Stakes are certainly high - there's much to be lost!
This is compounded by the gradual revelation that this male nurse is not all he seems. His conversation turns from the mundane to the cost of properties on the moon and the problems with moon bricks.
The door opens and a doctor peers in and tries to persuade this imposter to return to his bed.

So the tension evolves from nothing into critical mass. High stakes.

Another classic is the Only Fools and Horses sketch in which Del, Rodney and Grandpa are taking down a priceless chandelier in order to clean it. Grandpa goes upstairs to remove the floorboards and unscrew the fixture. Meanwhile, Del and Rodney have erected two step ladders and hold a blanket with which to catch the chandelier.
So the stakes are once again high and tension prevails: there is a priceless chandelier; there are step ladders from which one might fall; there is the heavy chandelier vs the flimsy blanket. There are any number of terrible fates all established.
When Grandpa releases the wrong chandelier and it smashes upon the floor, the tension peaks and is subsequently released as the trio hurry away in the three-wheeler.

The pic above is to mark the earthquake that made me soil my pyjamas last night. Which, coincidentally, occurred as the result of tension and relief (both the quake and the soiling).

Squeeze

Maine Squeeze

I must confess, it never occurred to me how intensely gags are squeezed into a thirty minute comedy show. The rule of thumb is three gags per page (that's around ninety gags per thirty minute episode). Perhaps unsurprisingly, a large proportion of comedy techniques are geared towards squeezing every ounce of humour from those pages. So, going into the final (before submission) edit, I'm looking at every word in every line, making every word count.
Here're a few cool ways of mining that last diamond:

Topping the joke
A quick google comes up trumps.
Stan Laurel has an accident with a dump truck which leaves Ollie sat in his 'practically new' car, neck deep in sand (Blockheads). Super. Now they could move on to the next gag ... or, they could top the joke and add another punchline.
Stan begins digging out Ollie with his hands.
Given that all exposition - all set-ups - are expensive (and, as such, need to be blended seamlessly and amusingly into the forward momentum, such that they become indistinct from the other gags), it makes sense to get all the hits possible from them.

Repetition
Once we have seen Father Ted phone his friend Father Larry Duff with hilarious consequences, we learn that, each time Ted picks up the phone to call Larry, we're in for a wonderful gag. We're conditioned, and the gag is set-up by the merest touch of the phone and mention of Larry's name. Here are some of the consequences that befall Larry - the results of Ted's distracting calls:
(From Wikipedia)
These events include car and skiing accidents, an avalanche, a disastrous donkey derby, a very painful mishap with a stapler, an unlucky incident with a knife-thrower, being ravaged by a dozen Rottweiler dogs, and losing out on a £10,000 prize.
Moreover, it's basic good writing to reuse existing characters and props and the like.

Malapropisms
John Sullivan squeezed so much humour from potentially expositional/functional lines by having Del Boy remark 'Good to be back on the old terracotta'. And so on. I imagine that it's possible to imbue every single line of dialogue with an incongruity in this manner.

drop your trousers here for best results

Engrish

I was sat with a work colleague on bus#2 this morning. He was recounting several stories about previous jobs, and concluded with the tale of his run in with a horrible manager.
My friend lamented:
I really wish I'd told him to shove his cock up his arse.
To which I sympathetically replied:
Isn't that every man's dream!

There then followed a pregnant pause (a beat) as we both mulled over the double meaning of my response, before bursting into laughter.
This has also given me a much stronger line for the scene in which MC1 has a run in with his own manager-from-Hell.

This is a super type of gag, and invariably requires every single word to be perfectly positioned in the sentence, and in the narrative.

Here are some classic newspaper headlines that contain double meanings (incongruities):

March Planned For Next August
Patient At Death's Door - Doctors Pull Him Through
Queen Mary Having Bottom Scraped
Prostitutes Appeal to Pope
Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant
Killer Sentenced to Die for Second Time in 10 Years
Never Withhold Herpes Infection From Loved One

And more:

Include Your Children When Baking Cookies
Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers
Drunks Get Nine Months in Violin Case
Iraqi Head Seeks Arms
Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over
Clinton Wins Budget; More Lies Ahead
Miners Refuse to Work After Death
Stolen Painting Found by Tree
Two Sisters Reunited after 18 Years in Checkout Counter
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group
Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Space
Kids Make Nutritious Snacks
Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half

Check out these hotel signs too, for such classics as:

You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid.

(N.B. The heading of this post was allegedly seen in a Bangkok Dry Cleaners.)

And, if you've never typed 'Engrish' into google, now's the time!

What Happened Next?

What happened next?

Homer Simpson:
I saw this movie about a bus that had to SPEED around a city, keeping its SPEED over fifty, and if its SPEED dropped, it would explode. I think it was called 'The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down'.

Just as in novel-writing, the creation and exploitation of expectations plays a crucial role in comedy. Moreover, much humour is created by the subversion of that expectation. As I tidy away episode one of my brilliantly funny sitcom (oh, if only subjectivity and objectivity were the same thing!), it's worth having a look at the many lessons I have learnt, beginning with humour created from the subversion of expectations.

In the gag above, expectation is created from the viewer's awareness of the basic plot of the movie Speed. The Simpsons writers, in this instance, rely on the audience's knowledge of pop culture. Without this knowledge, the gag loses its power. It's a risky approach.

A less risky approach is to present a pattern, usually through repetition.
I saw some tv advert for some fun run thing the other day. It begins with a man wearing a red tracksuit, jogging through a park. He jogs out of shot, and we see that he is pursued by a woman, also wearing a red tracksuit.
My brain went - ah, I'm expecting this trend to continue, ultimately presenting a funny twist.
And then, following the woman, four kids jogged by - the tallest at the front, the smallest at the rear. My brain went - ah, there's a size thing going on here (which I hadn't noticed from just the man and the woman) - size and family (I hadn't initially sussed that the woman was the man's wife either). And red tracksuits. Ergo, there'll be a dog wearing a red tracksuit next.
I was right! But the shot didn't end as the dog dog-jogged by and my brain went - ah, there's something else coming. Think ... I guess ... a tortoise!
It was a hamster in its plastic exercise ball. In a red tracksuit.
Very quickly and very effortlessly, this pattern hung out with my brain and they got on just fine.
However, it wasn't really funny because my expectation was pretty much fulfilled. Only the incongruity of a hamster wearing a tracksuit gave me any pleasure.

So Homer Simpson, in desperate need of some way of reaching the top of a huge glass dome (The Simpsons Movie), breaks into a toolshop. Dominating the centre of the shot, a jetpack hangs on the wall. Here, the expectation relies on very little knowledge (certainly, my son was expecting Homer to choose the jetpack) and is actively thrust into the viewer's face.
Homer walks up to the shelf next to the jetpack, takes a tube of glue, and smears the glue onto the palms of his hands.
Expectation followed by subversion.
An incongruity is created, and incongruities are key components of comedy (so says Evan S. Smith, author of Writing Television Sitcoms, who describes humour in terms of tension and release, before devoting the remainder of his book to explaining why comedy writers must go live in LA).

What I particularly love about this type of humour is that it absolutely relies on the writer's imagination - the writer's shunning of clichés.
Take this line:

Homer Simpson:
I'm not gonna lie to you Marge ...

The set-up is complete, and the viewer's brain fervently predicts the punchline (remember, Hitchcock conducted his audience, allowing them to indulge in their little predictions, before ripping those predictions to shreds).
The writer needs to stay one step ahead of the viewer.
And here's the gag with its punchline:

Homer Simpson:
I'm not gonna lie to you Marge. See ya soon!

On a final note, it is the incongruity of the subversion that creates the mirth.
On my way home this evening, my second bus broke down.
My expectation was simple: Get on bus; go home; maybe encounter a gibbering oddball.
My expectation was confounded. But I didn't find myself in fits of giggles as, fifteen minutes later, I boarded another bus - a bus smelling of vomit. Not simply because this was happening to me and not to some other poor fool, but because there was no incongruity: this unexpected twist bore little surprise and no amusing juxtaposition.

Funny to think that it wasn't so many years ago when I found the reader's assumptions frustrating, and now I thrive on them. It feels a bit like revenge! Ha!

P.S. Whilst looking for a 'What Happened Next?' video on YouTube, I encountered a clip of some deer grazing in a field. I watched for a minute and a half, wondering if a bear was going to attack, or maybe a parachutist would land in the tree ...
I think the comments sum up my ironic hysterics:

Commenter: What happened next ... Not a darned thing!

Vid Poster: there was another video...we put down deer corn...what happened next is that the deer came.

Unskilled and Unaware

Suspect.

Following up from my Two-faced post, here's a fascinating paper written by Justin Kruger and David Dunning. It opens:
---
People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to recognize it.
---

Well worth a read, if only for the bit about the bank-robber who believed he could render himself invisible to security cameras by rubbing lemon juice into his skin.

Two-faced

The Queen was most displeased with the new 2p design.

A change is as good as a rest, they say, although sounds like nonsense to me: just as busy as ever.
Lots of interesting differences between writing a narrative comedy and writing a fiction novel.
The first thing that hit me was how obsolete all those literary techniques become. There's no call for devices of sound and word palettes and pulse.
Instead, one is compelled to focus on the raw material of character and situation.
Having spent some time watching and analyzing classic comedy shows (whilst I wait on my next Amazon delivery of 'how to write' books [because I still haven't got a clue]), I've found a good deal of recurring themes and techniques.

Let's begin by looking at obsession and the enormous gulf between how the character perceives himself, and how the character is perceived by others.

Examples:
Jeremy (Peep Show) is convinced he is a stud. 'I'm James Bond!' he muses. Of course, the viewer and the other characters see his lust, but none of Bond's class. He also believes he is a 'musical genius', and is horrified to find Mark and Toni in fits of laughter as they listen to one of his tracks. (Compare with Father Ted's Eurovision entry.)

And consider David Brent (The Office): Just how far removed is he from the brilliant orator, philosopher, entertainer, dancer, musician, alpha male that he believes himself to be?

There was a super Mitchell and Webb made-for-radio sketch in which character A reveals to hapless character B that he has a piece of ham stuck to his face, and that it has been stuck to his face for some twenty years. As realisation dawns, character B confesses that he had always been aware of a hammy smell.

Characters are driven by a motivation (goal, obstacles, means!). Comedic characters are more susceptible to extremes (because, in part, these lead to contrasts, and contrast is at the root of much humour), and tend to be motivated by obsession. An example used by Robert McKee is Michael Palin's character Ken in A Fish Called Wanda. Ken's obsession is animals: he adores animals and would hate for any harm to befall one.

Here we see how an armada of contrasts are lined up:

Tasked with assassinating an elderly woman, Ken arranges all manner of deaths for the woman. However, each assassination attempt fails to kill the woman - instead, he picks off her dogs one-by-one, drawing him deeper into despair.

And if you were to torture Ken? Remove a fish from his tank and swallow it. Repeat.

Ken loves animals => Through his actions, Ken directly or indirectly causes the death of animals.

Director Charles Crichton filmed a second version in which entrails laced the pavement. Test audiences were not amused.

Comedy can be distilled from characters with blind obsessions - from characters who are not who they believe themselves to be and who will never become that person. Therein lies a special kind of pathotic tragedy which pervades many of the greatest comedy moments.