Film Courage: What does it mean to be funny?
Steve Kaplan, Author/Instructor/Script Consultant: Everybody's funny. I mean there's no there's no
one way to be funny or one definition of funding I think that there's a difference between funny and
comic is is one of the things that we talk about in my first book The Hidden tools of Comedy we
talk about the fact that anytime anybody makes somebody laugh they're funny but but comic is
is kind of an art form and it's the way of it's the art of telling the truth and specifically
it's about telling the truth about human beings so that when people are I think when people are funny
if we're talking about in terms of of writers directors actors I think what they're doing is
they're they're seeing what what we see from a specific angle from a unique angle it's like
somebody once said that fish don't see the water because it's all around them and so comic fish
are they're going around into saying hey it's all wet around here have you noticed that you notice
the thing about water so that's if there was a stand-up fish so I think I think a comedian is
somebody who is slightly off-center to where the majority are but what he says isn't off-center
it's dead center it it totally makes sense in retrospect so when a comedian makes a joke at
for at first the audience he takes the audience where they don't know they're going to go but
when they get there they go oh of course so it's it's both surprising and inevitable the punchline
of a joke is surprising and inevitable so if you ask me what's funny or who's funny I think
I think we all have the capacity to enjoy humor to to make jokes I mean we we just
had our Thanksgiving dinner right and and and we were around the table and people were making
jokes and then away from the table people were ranking jokes about the people around the table
so that so that we we all have the capacity to enjoy humor to create humor but some of us have
the capacity to see the world in in a unique way and then share that Vision in a way that is both
surprising and yet inevitable what is the comedy perception test ah okay when I first started
doing workshops and trying to talk to people about the difference between funny and comic
what we what I did was I created what I called the comedy perception test and it was all variations
on a man slipping on a banana because a man slipping on a banana is the is kind of the
The Ground Zero of of of of a comic joke so it was just a man slipping on a banana and man slipping
on banana after kicking a dog and man in Top Hat slipping on banana and if I can remember all the
ones man slipping on a banana after losing his job blind man slipping on a banana Blind Man's dog
slipping on a banana and finally man slipping on a banana and dying and I would these were the seven
seven word word pictures and then I would ask the people in the workshop choose which one you
think is the funniest the least funniest the most comic and the least comic and
somebody would invariably ask me well what's the difference between funny and comedy and I would
not answer them but I would just say listen it's whatever you think maybe maybe they're all equally
funny maybe they're all equally not funny just choose which one you think is the funniest the
least funniest the most comic the least comic they could you the two of them could be the same
and so then we start with well how many people thought a was the funniest how many people thought
B was the funniest and after the end of that we totaled them up and and we'd say you're all right
because funny is subjective if you think something's funny if you're laughing at something
to you it's funny but how useful is that in terms of creating narrative either as a
director or as a writer or as an actor because if you're chasing funny by definition you're
chasing a fraction a subset of the audience because some people thought that man slipping
on a banana peel was the funniest some people thought that man slipping on a
banana peeling dying was the funniest and and those people thought the other person was wrong
so if you're creating a script and you're trying to make it funny by definition you're excluding
a portion of the audience because I mean here let me see if I if I can show you this oh great
hereI have a niece she's now a a teenager which is causing my brother and sister-in-law no amount
of pain but when she was a little kid I would be able to shake my keys and make her laugh
I can make Karen laugh too yeah look at the keys look at the keys and and so the question is
my niece is laughing Karen's laughing so is this comedy I mean would you spend six months
of your life developing this as a feature you're laughing so there's the thought is
that there's a difference between funny and comic and comic as I said before is the art
of telling the truth about human beings the art of telling the truth about human beings because
basically what we're doing when we're writing comedy is where Illuminating exposing that which
is both wonderful and ridiculous glorious and absurd about what it's like to to be here on
this planet as us and at this point somebody will say well isn't that true about drama
and and my response to that is usually yeah drama's great drama is great
nobody's saying that trauma isn't great but drama helps us dream about what we could be
wood that I were as eloquent and as good looking and had as much hair as some of those people in
those traumatic films and those action films so drama helps us dream about what we could be
but comedy helps us live with Who We Are comedy helps us live with who we are and it's it's not
incorrect to state that you can watch a dramatic film in which there's really not a lot of humor
not a lot of intentional humor but you can't watch a comedy without without
moments of pain loss regret failure hurt so for me and I guess I guess because I teach
comedy and comedy writing and I've spent my whole life doing that I've written two books about that
I'm prejudiced but to me comedy is the art form that really gets at what it's like
to be human and and at the same times make you laugh so it has that going forward too
one of your two books you have can we just see the the cover there because
you have the banana peel which how did that become synonymous with comedy well I think
you knowI actually am not sure these and there's somebody probably out there in in the world of the
internet probably will tell me that give me the exact time and date that somebody slipped on a
banana peel but I think it really was this in the silent films when when you had a car you you had
no sound so it was all physical comedy so you had somebody slipping on something and that was that
was an easy joke and so when we were trying to figure out what would be a good cover for this
there were all sorts of suggestions and somebody said a gorilla playing playing baseball and I
thought well I'm not sure if a gorilla playing baseball is you're really really defines what I'm
talking about so we we my brother who's actually was in advertising actually found this image for
me and and and he sent it to me so soI have my my brother Michael to thank for the cover
thank you which was yeah because it's this beautiful lovely banana ready to be stepped
on right and for someone to fall and for somebody to fall and and the thing is is that
some people think that there's the superiority theory of comedy in which the theory is is that we
like to look down at people and we laugh at their Misfortune Mel Brooks once said that uh tragedy is
if I get a paper cut comedy is if you fall down a sewer and die and that's that's a funny that's
a funny joke butI I think that that's really not how it works I think if you don't like somebody
or you really look down on them it's probably a a television show or a movie that you that you
if you're streaming and you turn off because you're not engaged my my take on it is that
you're identifying with them that you they're suffering the the ignominy I think I hope I'm
pronouncing correctly that's a new one that that we that we hope we can avoid that we hope
that no one will find out about right the time that we gave a big speech in our fly was open
so when the comic does that when the comic actor does that we're we're not ho ho ho that idiot
we're we're kind of going oh my God there I was but and or or thank God I wasn't there and I think
that you're identifying with characters which is why when producers or Executives tell a writer to
make a character likeable they're they're actually making an error because it's not about making a
character likeable it's making them identifiable making you empathetic to that character even if
that character is a jerk like Ricky Gervais in the office or like John Cleese in Faulty Towers Danny
DeVito and taxi we we don't those characters are not likable but we kind of understand them maybe
we've worked for somebody like them maybe your dad was somebody like them and the the power of Comedy
is that it's it's life-affirming because ultimately the comic is basically saying
you're okay it's okay so you slipped on a banana peel so a pie hit you in the face
so you you were humiliated so you were you failed at that and you you screwed that up
you're still you'll live you're still alive you'll be okay and if and if you're not
living then you have nothing else to worry about so the comedy is ultimately the art of
hope because it even though our characters slip on a banana peel there's always the hope that they'll
get up and and something better will happen and if you look at almost any comic film that's
what happens our characters start off as flawed individuals who are who are usually blind to their
own flaws and over the course of two hours they they they go through a transformation not that
everything's going to be better not that they're going to change not that they're going to be super
men or super women but there's the hope at the end of it that the world is going to be better.