Thats the thing though.I find Metalocalypse hilarious as well.
So is it that I have a varying sense of humor?
Comedy and Why You Suck At It
- Thread starter Steerpike
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Thats the thing though.I find Metalocalypse hilarious as well.
So is it that I have a varying sense of humor?
I find MST3K to be one of the best shows ever. I find it funny because I understand the references that they make in that show. Back on topic comedy is not hard. Good comedy is. It's all about connections, timing, audience and subtlety.
100% of all comedy is scripted. Even the stuff that seems totally improve is scripted to a point. I believe Darwin Ortiz talked about this in Strong Magic. Saying that even guys like Lenny Bruce who was known as the best Improve guy around, scripted pretty much his entire act and maybe had like 5 min worth of scripted improve as well.
The trick to being is simply good scripting. Somebody says a funny line during a performance. You remember, write it down, and then just rinse and repeat this procedure and every so often go over the script and use those lines when the time comes.
The trick to being is simply good scripting. Somebody says a funny line during a performance. You remember, write it down, and then just rinse and repeat this procedure and every so often go over the script and use those lines when the time comes.
I would love to know how long you have "studdied" comedy and what your experiece is that makes you an expert on the subject. I agree that jokes need to be crafted and well written. In my opinion stand-up comedy is one of the hardest of the performing arts. Your take on improv however is rather off base and seems to come from a lack of experience. A large part of comedy is the suprize in the puchline or the unexpected accident. Good Improv is built from the unexpected and there is something in that spontaneity that can't be crafted by a script. I am not saying that Improv is more effective than something scripted. Most improv starts with an idea or basic "script" of where it needs to go. I am saying that I think you're selling it short.
And if you only know one naturally funny person you need to get out more or get new friends.
Cheers!
I think that some Demetri Martin jokes are funny, but some are just stupid. My favorite comedians are Steven Wright and Mitch Hedberg. It's weird, some people say you have to be very intelligent to get their jokes, others say you have to be either stupid or drunk. I don't know which. Anyway, I hate Napolean Dynomite. I thought it was really stupid, unfunny, and immature. I've never seen Juno
I was literally just writing a thread called "Your Comedy routine is a joke" when I saw this and cant believe it. Mine was inspired by a terrible act I recently witnessed on a cruise ship. The canned jokes continued through the entire routine as the cheesy magic finally exhausted itself after 50 long minutes. Of course, on the way out the door the magician asked how I liked the show.
A lot of magicians I see confuse the fact that the emotional reaction from the comedy is different from the desired reaction of their effects.
Do you really want people to be laughing at what your doing or are you performing for other reasons? My routines are mostly reaching for a different emotion and I don't try to blend the two. Comedy is an art in itself. I'm sticking to what I practice and what I know I'm strong at and spare my spectators the grief of weakness in my act. Hey, at least I admit it.
A lot of magicians I see confuse the fact that the emotional reaction from the comedy is different from the desired reaction of their effects.
Do you really want people to be laughing at what your doing or are you performing for other reasons? My routines are mostly reaching for a different emotion and I don't try to blend the two. Comedy is an art in itself. I'm sticking to what I practice and what I know I'm strong at and spare my spectators the grief of weakness in my act. Hey, at least I admit it.
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I never actually said I was an expert.
No argument here.
That's the thing. You're talking about good improv. I'm talking about the bad. The legions of would-be funnymen trying to imitate Christopher Guest's approach to mockumentaries without either his experience, wit, on intelligence and then passing it off as "pure" or something similarly inane.
Which is my whole point. Neither one is inherently better, but they both require a lot of work on the part of the writer/performer. The cast of Spinal Tap put in just as much effort crafting their characters and understanding their personalities, history, and motivation as Mae West put into rehearsing and writing any of her own movies.
If you want to be funny, there is no shortcut. And it gets a bur under my saddle that there is a generation of performers lauding improv like it was the second coming of Christ, but they have no idea what it actually entails to make it good, nor are they doing any of the associated work. They're just lazy and making up bad excuses for their own failure to do an ounce of real training in a complex skill set.
They then go on to denigrate the work that myself and many others do in scripting and rehearsing our acts so that we're prepared for an off-the-cuff one-liner when the opportunity comes up. They dismiss the practice of scripting as stifling, fake, and inferior to their approach. It's unbelievably arrogant, and frankly I find it just as painful to listen to as the guys telling canned cheese in lieu of anything fresh, clever, or witty.
Let me qualify that a little better. I know only one guy who is consistently funny off the cuff, who could actually make a living at it whether writing or performing because it comes so easily to him and it's something he thoroughly enjoys.
Sure most of us can learn to be funny. It's a skill set. This guy has more natural talent for it than anyone else I know. He is a natural-born comedian, and you just don't get many of those.
Hey man, I usually agree with your posts, but this one seems to get under my skin.
The true essence of improv is being unscripted and unprepared, and definitely not rehearsed.
I've studied improv for a few years now, and have never prepared anything before a performance, it's not like someone can walk up to me a few days before a scene and tell me what character I'm going to be. It's made up on the fly.
Of course, when your post is taken into the area of magic, it makes a little more sense. You can prepare for performances you know you will do, but you can't prepare for performances that pop up out of nowhere, when someone just asks you to show them something.
Thanks for reading, and I do respect your opinion
But that's the thing. You already have a coherent style that took hours of work. I'm assuming some people here have watched Whose Line Is It Anyway? No matter what the game, each comedian has their own distinctive style. That's what makes them good. The improvisation comes easily to them because they already did most of the work.
And for magicians, if you've scripted your routine already, you can effectively improv because you don't have to worry about what move is coming next. You can go on autopilot and think on the fly.
I think that's the clearest and most explicit explanation you'll get. I very much agree with what Steerpike's been saying in this thread, and although comedy isn't something I usually work into my routines, I feel I've benefited greatly by reading the posts here.
Great stuff.
-Sam H
Perhaps you're mixing up Stand Up Comedy and Improv.
Improvisation: a creation spoken or written or composed extemporaneously (without prior preparation)
Look at jazz improvisation. It involves making up notes on the spot with only chords to look at. Or the show "Whose line is it anyway." That's what improvisation is
The very definition of improvisation implies no scripting. If there is scripting, it isn't improv. It's just comedy. Now I do agree that some of the gags that magicians have scripted out do ensure a great comedic performance, however, you can't call the clever, witty gags that magicians pull improvisation.
So don't mix up comedic performances with improvisation.
-Kevin
I think steer meant that you need a practiced and mastered character before you perform no matter what you are doing. Improv means no scripting, but it does mean you need a character, or at least training and practice of the skill.
kevin
kevin
But in jazz improv, you already have to know the scales, what key you're playing in, what modes are appropriate over what chords, and what meter and tempo you're playing in.
That's what I'm getting at. That's my point. To be good at improv you have to understand comedy and your subject material way ahead of time. Colin on Whose Line... is hilarious. But he didn't just wake up and decide to be funny. He's been honing his craft for years.
No we're not going to do a bloody 20 minute free form jazz odyssey.
enough spinal tap references from me for now.
Right, you cannot not improvise something without previous knowledge on what it is you are improvising. When I'm playing a show, sometimes we'll do some improv jamming. - I play in a metal band, ska band and used to play in a jazz band. You have to be able to feel what is happening and sense what will happen, and such skills only come after time and practice.
Spinal Tap still stands as an excellent example of improv comedy done well. Christopher Guest and crew pounded out a basic storyline and their characters and ran with it. They were also experienced actors, which is something that very few magicians are ever able to claim.
Seriously, magicians love quoting Robert-Houdin. "We are not conjurers, but actors pretending to be conjurers." Be honest. How many of you have ever taken even a single acting class in your friggin' lives? How many of you have even read Stanislovski? If I get more than half a dozen honest people saying yes they have, I will be deeply surprised.
How arrogant do you have to be to believe that you're good at either scripting or improv when you never lifted a finger to find out how to write or act?
I'm taking acting classes at school right now. I highly reccommend that every magician takes them. David Blaine took them, look where he is now.
I agree 100% with Steerpike's assessment of how improv works. The work isn't happening in front of the audience, you're just seeing the result of years of work perfecting the craft. What we have to remember is that we, most of us, are laymen to the world of acting and comedy. If some guy who told us he was an expert magician based on the fact that he's played poker before, we can see that would be the height of arrogance. People train and study long and hard learning how to write, construct jokes, deliver jokes and improvise. In the same way that we build up an arsenal of sleights and techniques before we consider ourselves competent magicians, surely we must do the same thing in our pursuit of comedy and acting. If you think you can do these things naturally, that just means you know so little about them that you can't even see how little you know.
