Film Courage: John why do you say that comedy is both truth and pain?
John Vorhaus, Author/Speaker/Artist/Screenwriter: Comedy is truth and pain because in every human
moment if you are aware of it you can detect an underlying truth and pain of that moment. A joke
is something that looks at and explores the truth in pain and gives the audience an opportunity to
think about it in a slightly different way. Here's a classic, a fellow is falling from a skyscraper
and it gets down about the 33rd-34th floor and some guy leans out the window says “How's it going
it?” He says “Okay so far.” So the underlying truth in pain is here's a guy who's in peril
that's the truth. The pain is there's nothing he can do about it and his expression there,
“Okay so far” is an acknowledgment of the truth and pain but indirectly. If you look at any joke
you can think of you're going to find that it is an indirect acknowledgment of truth and pain.
Film Courage: By nature then are funny people cruel?
John: That's a great question. I like to say comedy is cruelty. A thing isn't funny
to the person it's happening to, it's funny to the people watching. It's not necessary that
you don't have to be cruel to make comedy but there is an element of cruelty in jokes
because the thing isn't funny to the person it's happening to. We derive our emotional
sustenance from experiencing vicariously the conflict or predicament or peril of somebody
else and being observing it but far enough away from it that it's not us that's what
gives us the emotional bond that makes us engage in the emotional separation that makes us laugh
further to that if I may when people are creating characters in a situation comedy or comic film for
example they often become caught up in the in the the sense of I'm hurting these characters
I don't want to hurt my characters this is in a sense conflict avoidance in real life
walking around the world a lot of us try to avoid conflict I do I don't like conflict as a writer I
don't have to engage in it I can just go home and write but when I am guiding characters through
story my emotional need to protect them from conflict fights against the need of the story
which is to put them under pressure so they can advance toward a new understanding of themselves
characters and stories like people in the real world will not undergo authentic change unless
they're forced to they'll stay in a status quo all stories in a sense put pressure and increasingly
more and more pressure on a character until the character is forced to enter an explosive new
truth the consequence of this is in order to help our characters achieve their growth we have to
burden them with opposition with conflict so the thing that we're afraid of giving them conflict
that's actually the thing they need can you explain how comedy begins with someone's suffering
the classic comic book comic moment we can think of is somebody slipping on a banana peel
if you're a five-year-old you're laughing at that why are you laughing at that somebody slipped on a
banana peel they might have gotten hurt but if you look at the person who slips on the banana peel
it's never an innocent person it's always somebody who in some sense deserves it somebody who is the
wrong attitude arrogant selfishness uh impatience clumsiness that's not exactly on target but if a
person with high status slips on a banana peel then the person with eye status is brought low
and the the fall from high status to low status for people who have low status is always very
funny and for most people in audience situations low status is kind of baked in they're in the
audience they're not their performers so if they see the high and mighty performers slip and fall
or otherwise suffer they get the first benefit of watching a funny thing happen to someone who's
not them the second benefit of seeing somebody some high and mighty person brought low and then
the third benefit of processing all of this more information more effectively because they have a
new way to think about it and experience it that guy was rushing he slipped on a banana peel fell
on his butt and I laughed but I also learned a lesson and the lesson is don't rush and also don't
be so high and mighty so there's a lot packed into a joke that looks like it's about the suffering
but it's really about triggering the laugh reflex which is a matter of giving the audience a puzzle
to solve and then letting them solve it what's going on here how is slipping on a banana field
and appeal impacting the situation what's the new result aha guy with status slipped on a banana
peel I'm laughing so let's say if I'm at an office party the office Christmas party and my good
friend comes from the bathroom she has lipstick on her teeth or forbid she has a pantyhose tucked in
the back I'm going to tell her but if it's Marge from accounting who I can't stand and who's who's
who's messed with my check I might laugh at that I think I think that's a great example because a
thing is important funny to the person that's happening to and that includes close allies
like if it's happening to me I feel it if it's happening to people I care about I feel it in a
different way than if it's happening to people I don't care about or hate through the example that
that you suggested I'm going to help my friend because this isn't a laughing situation I have
no vow I get no value out of making fun of my friends although some people do but I do get
value out of making fun of Marge from accounting who is deserving what she's getting at this moment
I'm reminded of something that my wife and I passed through early in our relationship being
a funny guy I would make jokes about anything and everything and some of those jokes were kind of at
her expense like my wife she doesn't know how she says she's so dumb she couldn't pass a blood test
as an example of a joke that doesn't do me or my relationship or my wife or our relationship
any good at all over time I learned that if I'm telling a joke at the expense of a loved
one I'm doing damage that I don't want to do and don't need to do you can consider stand-up
comic having the challenge how can I be on stage and talk about my family in a way that's funny
and in a way that gets the laughs and advances my career the way I suppose the way I wanted
to and speaks the truth that I want to speak without hurting the people around me
it's possible but it's it's a space that needs investigating but on the flip side we can we
can tear ourselves apart and it's actually funny and and in that you find the solution
to the problem how do I make fun of my family without hurting my family I make fun of myself
I don't say my family is so stupid they do X Y or Z I say I'm so stupid I don't understand why my
family does X Y or Z and that gets you out of the Trap I can give you a great example of this and
it's one that well we can reference because it's in the public domain or in the public sphere one
would say years ago I was in Russia running the Russian version of Married With Children like you
do and I happen to be there at the same time that Phil Romano the creator of Everybody Loves Raymond
was in Russia doing the pilot of Everybody Loves Raymond for Russian television and also doing a
documentary of his own experience now I was a fly on the wall and I saw how my Russian colleagues
wanted to close off to him they were afraid of him they were afraid that his documentary
would make fun of them that the whole point of the exercise was to mock the quaint and idiotic ways
of the Russian people but Phil Romano is much smarter than that the whole comic perspective
of the piece is there are things going around here that I do not understand and all the comic
energy is directed on what filter immuno does not understand not directed at the things he's
observing and would otherwise be tempted to make direct fun of and as a consequence the documentary
works for American audiences and Russian audiences because there's a generosity of spirit underneath
the whole thing it's the filmmaker's intention for everybody to have a good time the Russians who
are participating in the documentary the audience watching at home and he realizes his intention by
focusing all the comic energy on himself which is a hundred percent safe target all the time
as a coded to that story if you happen to watch that video watch very closely at the end there's
a wrap party for the documentary and the pilot and I'm in the background and you can see me for that
long great so before we leave Russia if I may yeah okay sort of ask and answer my own question we're
interested in the question of where do jokes come from what are they made of how do they work and
we've addressed one thing that's for sure comedy is truth and pain comedy is cruelty but here's
something else to look at and it's called defeat of expectation I'll tell you a joke and then we'll
deconstruct it a little bit this joke comes to mind because it's about Russian vodka I was in
Russia and I was given some Russian pepper vodka to try well pepper vodka very hot and I tasted it
and they asked me how was it I said well it starts like Tabasco and finishes like paint thinner
so now the defeat of expectation is found in the phrase and finishes like paint thinner
because the way I have set the joke up I'm describing the vodka as if I were an expert
like a wine expert it starts it starts with notes of cherry and finishes with oak or something like
that you and the audience are already putting the pieces of the puzzle together you're thinking oh
he sounds like a wine connoisseur he's identified a note in the vodka that I would expect to find
in a pepper vodka at this point the audience doesn't really know where the joke is going
they can expect that it's not going to go to it starts like Tabasco and finishes like
Frank's Louisiana hot sauce because there's no surprise there there's nothing interesting there
but if I say starts like Tabasco and finishes like paint thinner I have created a picture
in the mind of something that's ah horrible and completely destroyed the picture in the mind of
something that's being apprehended like a glass of fine wine and that destruction of one image
and it's instantaneous replacement with another that's a comic tool called defeat of expectation.