Silent P and I wrote and directed an indie feature a looooong time ago. It had to do with a ragtag group of comedic rebels in a world where humor was forbidden. If you want to see it, simply dig up the tapes, edit the film and post it somewhere so I can watch it too. Other than the raw sh*t questionable production value, making a comedy proved to be harder than we imagined. Okay, it reamed our asses silly. So now that we seem to find ourselves working on (supposedly) comedic scripts, I have to wonder what we've gotten ourselves into...
I've been busy actually screenwriting lately, so I've been slacking on Uber. I started this blog last week with the intention of polishing it off this weekend. So I created and named this post before a tragedy went down in my building where someone actually died doing a relatively simple task. Then, it turned out there was a wild connection to my world that is basically astounding. I don't really feel now is the time to write about it. However, the whole incident does, unfortunately, dovetail into the topic of this post.
Drama is somewhat circumstantial. Put together some people, kick the chairs out from under them and you have a story. To put it another way, here's a two-second experiment:
An infant is abandoned.
Did you have a reaction to that? I hope so. Because the human condition dictates that some things just hit us in the gut - no matter how many times they happen, no matter how commonplace they we know are. As a result, the dramatic work I've done (that you've never seen) has seemed fundamentally easier than comedy.
Let me unleash my pop science explanation for the genesis of humor (in order to justify my struggle with it). Way back when response to unexpected stimuli was simple - fight or flight. But as humanoid social interaction developed, shades of gray were needed. I mean if some cavedude jokingly spooked you and you reacted by smashing his skull in with rock in it would be...embarrassing. So laughter spawned as a benevolent way to release the tension. That's why it is so contagious. When faced with a threat that turned out to be false, some prehistoric guy would start chuckling and it would work it's way through the pack, "Hey, that's not a deadly t-rex, it's a yummy brontosaurus!!! Ha. Ha. Ha."
What I find interesting is the same mechanism that explains why "ball in groin" is funny, also covers off word play. It's as if our minds are so wired to create order, that even the slightest variance requires a pressure valve. But, it is the inherent intricacy of this process that creates the challenge in developing comedic material.
Comedy is executional. It's a matter a timing and subversion of expectation. If you see it coming, it doesn't work. Sure, there are the lowest common denominator stand-byes (physical, scatological, shock), but if you want to be funny otherwise, you have to think that sh*t through.
So we are. And it takes time. Plus you run into the inevitable issue that it's hard to judge the comedic value of your own work since you know the punchline going in. And when you write a whole script full of them, it's almost impossible not to second-guess yourself. Sure, you can get second opinions, but in the end you have to somehow know that the humor on the page works, even though you now think it's as funny as AIDS...
Synchronistic occurrences are quite the phenomenon, yes? That dying quote is pretty funny and all of that caveman information is as well. Today in class, we were talking about failing banks and the prof asked if we knew what a certain CEO did recently to let shareholders have an inclination of the bank's decline. I guessed he withdrew his funds, someone said he sold his shares, but he said "He took a gun to his head." I sort of gasped, but then started laughing and he was like "don't laugh, it is not funny." He was kind of smiling when he said it, but I didn't feel my laughter was wildly inappropriate. Does that make me morbid? People in my class probably think so. Anyway, splendid writing like always...
You morbid? Hardly. In terms of the banks and such, I'm amazed at how rapidly things can decline these days. Eternal-seeming institutions can evaporate just like that. I wonder how this sense of impermanence impacts people? Granted most times in history have been transitional, so maybe it's a rite of passage.
I didn't really think that the ball in the groin was funny it was the the zooming camera job, and how nobody really helped him that made me laugh. lol.
i wanna make a short movie. I wish I still had the ones me and my friends made in high school. actually... lol, I have one on youtube.. it's more of a music video. a fucked up music video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDBzqYULrMs I was sleeping and my friends shot some stuff with my camera, and I put the movie together... I don't know what they had in mind while they were filming it, but that's how it ended up... no drugs involved either... Must be something in our water.
This was a nice post, I can't write for shit.
I hope things are alright with whatever happened? peace.
Welcome to the interweb zone's dopest gangsta screenwriting site (whateva that means) - set in Brooklyn, starring me, Silent P and yo mamma. Dig it. <3g
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