Finding the Point of Comedy: Expectations, Sub-Genres and Silly Crap

"What's funny?" is one of the hardest questions to answer simply because it's different for everyone. What one person may find hilarious another may find just silly, or worse, stupid. For instance I find fecal humor to be too gross to be funny. My prime example is Stifler's scene from American Wedding... it was just a little too over the top for me -- but most people had the intended "Awwww, ha ha ha" reaction, uncomfortable laughter indicating "I'm glad that's not me!" Another prime example is that men love The Three Stooges... women don't. I know there's the exception to the rule at all times, but I speak in general terms since movies are for general audiences. When you write for too specific an audience you're going to fall flat.

Now the fun thing is that you can take just about any premise and make it a comedy. Comedy, traditionally speaking, is making fun of (or satirizing) an established convention. That's why there are so many sub-genres; if you take the expected results and flip them over to something absurd, you've made a funny.

Example: A bank robber is trying to open the safe in the back room of the bank. He sets up the plastic explosive and primes the charge, with a countdown of ten seconds so he can get to safety... only his sleeve is caught! In a serious movie, he would explode and be dead. In a comedy, it would blow up and depending on the sub-genre would:

A) Blow him into the police station
B) Leave a sooty mess on him
C) Not explode at all
D) Blow up and not open the safe
E) Blow up and not open the safe... but the safe wasn't locked in the first place
F) He frees himself, the safe blows open only to reveal another safe inside

or my personal favorite

G) Kill him anyway, but the janitor finds the open safe and has a decision to make

And so on and so forth depending on whatever mood the writer was in that day. This is of course a simple example, but that's the essence of comedy. Take what you except to happen and run the other way with it.

I just finished writing the outline to my comedy spec. I've written my characters into some humorous situations but it's the approach to the humorous situations that I need to narrow down before first draft writing commences. There's no point in switching comedy styles halfway through, you've established an action/reaction standard and the audience expects that prevail. I also personally hate going to a comedy and winding up in another genre entirely ("Man of the Year" anyone?) that just sets the movie up for failure because of false expectations, but that's a discussion for another day.

There are several schools of comedy before it comes to the sub-genre, they are: Fantasy, Observational, Irony, Satire, Slapstick and Tragicomedy. They are very broad so sub-genres came about to further differentiate between the schools themselves, and most comedies can be lumped into a few sub-genres, but for the most part it's easy to differentiate.

So let's look at our sub-genres: Black (not African-American, but that's one too), Criminal, Mocumentary, Farce, Horror, Family (for, Domestic is about), War, Musical, Parody/Spoof, Romantic, Satire, School, Slapstick, Sports, Teen and Urban. I don't think that's all of them... but that's all I can think of off-hand.

All sub-genres have built in audiences. If you want women to come to your film, make it a romantic comedy. If you want teenagers, make it a teen or school comedy (or just put in nudity). If you want to appeal to weirdos like me, you make a black comedy. Again, I'm speaking in generalities, but these hold true regardless.

Now, all comedies are satirizing or parodying some established convention (be it an actual institution or a belief) so those are umbrella terms, but it is in the way the humor is presented that would narrow that comedy into the sub-genre of satire (Zoolander, Anchorman, Idiocracy, Dr. Strangelove, Dogma) or parody (Blazing Saddles, Walk Hard, Scary/Epic/Super Movie). I hate lumping in Blazing Saddles with Epic Movie, but it's essentially the same thing, just one is presented way better than the other.

To put that into specific film terms: the protagonist is in conflict with the antagonist with unintended consequences, whether those consequences are surprising, ironic, weird or whatever is up to the writer.

Comedies winning the academy award are almost unheard of, the only ones doing so being It Happened One Night (1934), You Can't Take It With You (1938), Going My Way (1944), Tom Jones (1963), The Sting (1973), and Annie Hall (1977). There were a few hybrid comedies that won (and these were all comedies with dramatic elements, "sophisticated" comedies) but these were the only comedies that fell directly in the "comedy" genre umbrella. Recently though, comedies have been up for Best Picture, the first time in quite awhile, so that really opens the door to making sophisticated comedies once again.

That's where I'm trying to come in. I'm not talking about a high-brow masterpiece or anything, merely a comedy that also makes you think, examine life in general, and question the conventions of thought that society has given us. Sounds like heady stuff, sure, but my first goal is to make you laugh, then later, think about why you were laughing.

If I had to narrow down the sub-genres of my comedy I really would not be able to do it. This may be going against my aforementioned audience expectation caveat but the establishment of the tone and theme of the film in the first five minutes will alleviate that problem. As long as I maintain the same feel for the entire film, that is what's important and that's what comedies need to do.

A good comedy does this: in Annie Hall Woody Allen came right out and said that love sucks but you do it anyway, and he spent the rest of the movie showing us why, and it was great. American Pie let is know that it was going to be about the awkwardness of sex in the first two minutes and spent the rest of the movie showing us how, and it was funny. I could go on with all the comedies that I love, but I think I've made my point.

Then again I may have just rambled on, but I feel more focused anyway. On to the treatment!

NYTVF Comedy Script Contest and Other Happenings

Hey folks, I've been pretty busy with some new developments. I've been going around looking for contests for "Behind Suburbia" .... thus far I've entered it into Shriekfest and Red Inkworks with plans to put it into Final Draft Big Break, Screamfest, Script Savvy, and Slamdance. I want to get it out there as much as possible... quite unfortunate how quickly these add up though. Anyone want to sponsor me? I'll split my imagined winnings :p

At any rate, I found a really cool contest a few weeks ago, the NYTVF Comedy Script Contest ... Fox Broadcasting is sponsoring a contest wherein the winner receives $25,000 and a development deal. Hello! It's even free to enter, the only catch is that they're only accepting 1500 entries, so you can be sure I'll be clicking madly when entries finally DO open.

I'm already on the third draft of my spec pilot, an animated series. I actually came up with this idea a few years ago and wrote the majority of the first season, it was something I worked on in my spare time between feature length scripts, helping me to keep my writing fresh while working on the prep work for the features. The show has slowly evolved into what it is now, thanks to the development ideas of Shawn and Sean (I wish they spelled it the same way, then I could say "The 2 Shawns" ... maybe I can just say "The 2 S's") and it's really come a long way.

The pilot itself has had several versions, the latest incorporating all of the things I've learned in the past year. I was able to take a few of the ideas from the previous pilot and upgrade them, so to speak, really making a strong, funny story. In my opinion anyway.

Bearing in mind my chronic cynicism we're actually going to be ever so slowly working on creating the pilot ourselves. I would love to get it into a festival or two and have it noticed, I mean, that's how Seth MacFarlane got started, isn't it? Even so, I think this show would be better compared to a "Friends plus Seinfeld with the weirdness that animation allows" than the current animated shows on television. I've been trying to make the show more intelligent (so to speak) while still allowing for the anything can happen feel of an animated series.

I don't expect to see the pilot anytime soon but forward progress never hurt. In the meantime I'm also still working on my outlines for my sci-fi and comedy spec features. Hopefully "Behind Suburbia" will do decently in the contests, just so long as it does BETTER than "perfect ending" I'll know I've made progress as a writer, and that's what counts. I think.

Behind Suburbia finished (in theory) and Moving On

I've completed my version 5 (tenth rewrite, approximately) of Behind Suburbia and finally submitted it to a few contests. I got the notes back from Script Pimp but I did not find them nearly as helpful as the previous set. I saw that I did solve all of the previous problems except for one though (which version 5 rectified) ... but I still received a "pass" rating because of it. Aside from that one helpful hint the rest of the notes were something along the lines of "you need more horror movie conventions but don't make this a conventional horror movie."

All righty.

Needless to say I did not follow them as closely this round and now it's time to see what some contest judges have to say about it. I submitted to the PAGE Awards and something else I can't quite remember off-hand. Regardless, if this places better than "perfect ending" I'll know that I've improved and will feel pretty good about myself. If I won I'd feel awesome... but anyway, I'm happy with the script.

I'll be sending out some query letters soon to get some feelers out there to try and find a producer or an agent. I have two solid scripts and several more in the works so I'm building a decent base to work from. Hopefully I'll get some decent responses and I'll write an entry about query letters soon.

In the meanwhile I've had two good ideas come to the surface. One is a reworking of a comedy script I wrote when I first got interested in screenwriting. I enjoy that version but the overhaul I'm envisioning would have me start over from scratch. The second idea was a modern-day sci-fi movie, i.e. takes place now but has futuristic elements the common populace is not aware of. I've already started the character backgrounds and the outline, and I think it has a lot of potential. I'm just tired of being so serious.

My first set of notes compared my dialogue to Woody Allen and Kevin Smith. Not to toot my own horn but I have a knack for observational and conversational humor, and I really want to do something where I don't have to kill off a bunch of characters. I know, what fun would a slasher flick or murder mystery be without the dead bodies... and the premise of my sci-fi film would require some killing. Not a lot, mind you, but a few. Plus it would be a serious film.

The comedy would be fun, so I'm actually thinking about working on both at the same time. Then I can alternate my entries between comedy and sci-fi genre conventions and explore two things at the same time. Mind you that would entail me watching a ton more movies to cover both genres, but hey, I think it's a task I'm willing to undertake. I don't think I'd be able to WRITE both of them at the same time, but I can certainly do all of my outlining and pre-planning.

So, that's fun. I'll keep you all updated as things move forward. If anyone is curious to read "Behind Suburbia" feel free to e-mail me. Especially if you are a producer looking for a writer/director ... I'd really be up for that.