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IFH 725: Hidden Tools of Comedy for Screenwriters with Steve Kaplan · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

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  You are listening to the ifh podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to ifhpodcastnetwork dot com. Welcome to the Indie Film Huscle
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  to order it, just head over to www dot filmbiz book dot com.
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  That's film bizbook dot com. Enjoy today's episode with guest host Jason Buff.
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  Today we are talking with Steve Kaplan, author of the book The Hidden Tools
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  of Comedy. He's also the creator of the HBO Workspace, creator of the
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  HBO New Writers Program. So we'll be talking to Steve in just a second.
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  I really had a great talk with him, and we also add a
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  lot of fun little clips and things in there so that you can really get
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  a feel for the topics we're talking about. Here's my interview with Steve Kaplan
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  to Los Angeles. What were you did you immediately open up a theater company
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  or how that worked well? I actually came to Los Angeles first. In
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  New York, we did we were running this theater called Manhattan Punchline, and
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  we used to do a one act festival every year. So a bunch of
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  people wanted to bring a number of one acts out to Los Angeles, and
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  so that's what originally brought me out there. They I helped them put up
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  this evening of one Ax, and I knew I was going to stay,
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  So I came out. I did a little theater, but then I tried
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  to get a real, you know, big boy pants, grown up job,
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  and it took me a little bit of time, but eventually I hooked
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  up with Chris Albricks at HBO. I pitched him an idea and he ran
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  with it. And first we did the HBO New Writers Project and that ran
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  for a couple of years, and then he started the Aspen Comedy Festival,
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  and in support of that, with a couple of other people, we opened
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  up a performance space in Los Angeles called the HBO Workspace. It's now being
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  run by Comedy Central and what we did was we helped facilitate their search for
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  comedians and comics, and at the same time, we were producing shows and
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  showcasing people, both for HBO executives for them to take a look at and
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  also just uh to uh kind of be an asset and a service to the
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  community. So uh so that's what originally, that's what I originally did in
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  Los Angeles, and then I got involved in management, a talent management,
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  and I after doing that for a couple of years, I realized, Hey,
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  I'm no good at this because just did you tell your clients that one
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  day you're like, well, well either eventually eventually the clients that were left
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  to me, uh, you know, I I told. But the terrible
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  thing about I wasn't an agent. I was a manager. And the terrible
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  thing about being a manager, uh is that you're ye know, especially for
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  me, because I took everything very personally. So if somebody said this person's
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  not good for this job, oh, I don't think the script, I
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  felt devastated. It was like it was like getting broke up with by a
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  girl every every every week. Uh. And when a and when clients leave
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  left me, it was really like getting broke up with a girl, especially
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  when they started the conversation. You know, Steve, I like you as
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  a person. And I said, you know what I I I when I
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  was in my dating years, I used to hear that a lot. So
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  I realized that that wasn't that wasn't my metier. It was kind of a
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  zig when I should have zagged. Uh And along the way I had run
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  into a guy and uh uh and and the funny, you know, funny
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  story he was he was showcasing a show and and I happened to leave in
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  the middle of the show because it was it was not very good. And
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  and amazingly enough, years later he uh in touch with me to take a
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  look at a script. So I looked at a script and I gave him
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  notes and again I was more cruel than kind. And amazingly enough, a
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  couple of years later he said to me, and this is when I was
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  really I was. I was about to say this, this whole management thing
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  was a wrong move. And he said, I'm working with Robert McKay,
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  and I think you could do for comedy what Robert McKay does for story.
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  And he said, have you ever taught comedy to writers? And I said,
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  well, I started out teaching comedy to actors at my theater company,
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  and and I worked on a lot of scripts with a lot of playwrights,
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  and I assume I can this, this will translate over to writers and from
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  there it from that little feed a mighty oak crew. Now, I mean
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  it seems such a for for somebody who doesn't understand the concept of breaking up
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  comedy and you know, seeing what's going on and why it's working and why
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  people are are laughing at something. What what was kind of like that first
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  step into teaching comedy. What were the first kind of like obvious things that
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  that you found that people needed to to understand about comedy. Well, I
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  mean, well you should understand that the theater company that I was running,
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  UH, that I started with two other actors, Manhattan Punchline, was a
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  theater completely devoted to comedy. So that's all we did. We produced comedy
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  plays. We UH, we showcased improv groups. Michael Patrick King later went
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  on to write Sex in the City and Two Brooke Girls. Was was was
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  one of the leaders of this UH improv group along with you know, Don
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  Marrero who's now a very well known stand up comic. We produced late night
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  shows with stand ups, including Rita Rudner Jane Anderson, who's now a very
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  famous playwright. And so that's all we did. And the first thing I
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  noticed about comedy is that it's fucking hard and it's it's elusive. I would
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  be producing a show and I would be standing in the back of the audience,
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  and the show that was a riotous hit on Thursday was met with crickets
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  on Sunday, and the actors would come off stage and they would say,
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  what a terrible audience. But I was standing in the audience, and I
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  wasn't terrible, and I was prepared to enjoy it. I might not laugh
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  out loud as much as people hadn't seen the show. But I started noticing
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  differences. I started noticing that there was a different approach to the material,
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  a slight diferentiation in how the actors were meeting the material night by night.
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  And that's what started me on the on the exploration that that became a forty
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  week master class, which then became a weekend workshop, which then became a
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  book, which now translated into Chinese, because God knows you need some funnier
• 9:24
  Chinese. Well, you know, you've arrived, yes, uh and and
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  it's going to be translated into French. So so now we can be rude
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  when we're funny. Maybe I shouldn't say, finally the French will have commedy.
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  I'm super yeah, I'm really I'm supposed to be uh supposed to be
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  going to Paris in April. So so hopefully they will listen to that part
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  of the podcast. Well, I have a big French you know, listening
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  exactly. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now
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  back to the show. So so I started to notice that that there were
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  certain certain things that that were for the most part unrecognized or or not thought
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  to be uh important or or or vital uh. And these became what I
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  called the hidden tools of common I mean, all the actors and the playwrights
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  that I was working with, you know, they'd all gone to college or
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  conservatory, and they all knew Uda Hagen and Stanislavsky uh and and great uh
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  playwrighting techniques. But but there were certain things that they they were not aware
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  of that I started to become aware of only because I was standing in the
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  back and and oftentimes I was directing a play, and I would start to
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  notice that that there were things that they did that decreased the comedy and things
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  that they did that increased the comedy. So uh, I mean, for
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  instance, one of the things that that kills comedy is if if you know,
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  the actor knows too much, if the act you know, uh in
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  in acting class, is called anticipating, but what it really is is the
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  actor is too aware of what's happening, what's going on, too in fact,
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  too smart. Uh So. So one of the things that that I
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  started to realize that were there, there were these principles that had not been
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  taught anywhere, or for the most part, had not been taught, and
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  that great comics and comedians either picked up or new by by instinct, but
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  that could be analyzed and and uh and presented and taught uh to people who
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  hadn't spent their entire childhoods uh listening to all the George Carlin and and Richard
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  Pryor albums, for instance, Right, and and you would like to hear
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  one of these, Yeah, that would be h that would be helpfully yes,
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  okay, well this podcast, uh okay. Uh So, so there's
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  there's the there's the uh dynamic of straight line wavy line, and then that's
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  that's my terminology for it, which which basically means that rather than uh,
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  a straight man in a comic, everybody thinks that, you know, if
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  you see a duo, there's a comic, a funny person doing funny things
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  and a straight man who's just kind of or a straight woman who's just kind
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  of setting things up. And I came to realize that that dynamic is false.
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  That it's not about a funny guy doing funny things and other people just
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  kind of setting them up. It's really about uh, somebody who is blind
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  to the problem or creating the problem, and somebody who's struggling with the problem
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  but unable to solve it because they're they're flawed. They're they're just a flawed
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  human being. When when, for instance, when John Clee started Monty Python,
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  he said that when they started Monty Python, he thought that comedy was
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  watching somebody do something funny. What they came to realize is comedy is watching
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  somebody watch somebody do something funny. Rich One, it's you know, it's
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  a man's life in England's men in Scream. But I know that I've to
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  stop this sketch down, and if there's anymore of this, I'm going to
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  stop the whole program. I thought it was supposed to be about teeth anyway,
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  what I want to do something about teas? Go on, I must
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  I'm not sleeping with that producer again. Next comedy is the person who is
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  kind of like us, struggling with some idiot, so that if you put
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  Jerry Seinfeld and Kramer in a room, Yes, it looks like Kramer is
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  doing all the funny stuff, but without Jerry being a human being kind of
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  perplexed and amused and confused by Kramer, there's no comedy. See they'll quit
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  pop down. That's life on the Red Planet. It's a Dylan. I
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  can't eat, I can't sleep. All I can see is that giant red
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  sun in the shape of a chicken. Well, did you go down to
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  the Kenny Rodgers and complain, Oh, they gave me the heave hole.
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  You know, I don't think that Kenny Rodgers has any idea what's going on
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  down there? What are you doing? That's tomato juice that looked like milk
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  to men, Jerry, My rods and cones are all screwed out. I
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  am right, that's it. I gotta move in with you. Carry I
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  don't know, creamer us. My concern is that living together, after a
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  while, we I might start to get on each other's nerves a little.
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  And listen to me. I got a great idea. Now you're heavy sleeper,
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  right, why don't we just switch apartments? Or I can sleep in
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  the park. You can knock these walls down making an eight roll luxury,
• 15:41
  sweet Jerry. These are a load burying walls. They're not gonna come down.
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  Yeah, that's no good. Maybe I may have to drive that place
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  out of business. Why are you gonna do that like we did in the
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  sixties, taking it to the streets. That's one of the things that I,
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  you know, mentioning that I always remember. Like Conan O'Brien, one
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  of the things that makes his skit so funny is having something completely insane happening,
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  and then you don't really laugh until the camera cuts back to Conan's reaction
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  to it. Exactly. So if you if you start, if you watch
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  sitcoms, good sitcoms, you'll notice that that the the comedy, really the
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  comedy is the comedy circuit is completed when there's a reaction to the craziness,
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  not just the craziness. Uh so, uh so what seems to be the
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  east part. The straight mat really is essential to comedy. And if you
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  watch a good SNL sketch, and there aren't you know, not every SNL
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  sketches good, but a good SNL sketch is the comedy is the human being
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  in the equation. It's the it's the person who's being weirded out by the
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  weird stuff that's happening, and it's only underscored by the idiot who's not paying
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  any attention. Right, So there. I mean, just the other night
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  on SNL they were you know, Adam Driver was on him. Yeah.
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  I guess he didn't get such great reviews. Somebody said, well, it's
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  not trump SNL bad, but but there was a there was a there was
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  a great Aladdin sketch in which he's flying on the magic carpet and h and
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  the girl I can't remember. I think it's Cecily Strong. I think that's
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  who it was, is on the magic carpet and first a bird flies into
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  her and then a bomb drops in her because they're over Syria, and she
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  keeps on getting weirded out and then she keeps on trying to get back into
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  the romantic moment, and that is so human. Mh. And meanwhile,
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  Jeff, you know, Aladdin as played by Adam Driver, is completely oblivious.
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  So that's the perfect example of straight line wavy line. Somebody who's on
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  a straight track, like has blinders on, blind to the problem or creating
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  the problem, and somebody else who's struggling with the problem. But because they're
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  they're what we call a non hero, unable to solve the problem. And
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  a non hero is another is another thing that that or principle that that we
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  talk about in which it's not about being a ridiculous person, a clown,
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  you know, a silly clown. Uh, it's really just about somebody who
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  lacks some, if not all, the essential tools and skills with which to
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  win. So sometimes the most basic skill, uh, with which to win
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  is simply knowing. So so one of the best directions you can ever give
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  in comedy is don't know so much don't know, And what that means is
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  that if something happens, don't because you've read the script and you know what's
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  happening on this page, what's going to happen on the next page. Don't
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  react like you've got it, I understand it. Be confused, let there
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  be doubt. Doubt is the friend of comedy. Being unsure is the friend
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  of comedy, and being sure being certain about things is dramatic. It just
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  becomes being self reflective is a dramatic moment. And what we found out is
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  that these principles aren't just here's how you be funny. It's really about here's
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  how you can modulate the levels of comedy or drama in a scene. You
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  want a character to be more dramatic, make them, give them more skills,
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  make them more empathetic, We'll be right back after a word from our
• 19:56
  sponsor, and now back to the show. More sensitive, more kind,
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  more knowing, make them, make them less comic. Take away those skills.
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  Create a comedy, create a strong straight line wavy line relationship, create
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  a dramatic moment. Have everybody make you know, make eye contact and be
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  empathetic with each other, and have them have them share the scene. So
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  those those kinds of things don't apply just to comedy, but you can actually
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  modulate the amount of comedy and drama in a scene by increasing or decreasing these
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  principles when you're talking about you know, you would see one show and then
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  you'd see the same show and it wasn't funny for for whatever reason. Were
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  those improv shows or were they literally saying the same things in that In that
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  case, what's what's happening is the actors will subtly begin to adjust their performance
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  so they look less ridiculous, because nobody in the world wants to look like
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  an idiot. And so in a comedy, sometimes the characters are doing idiotic
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  things, but the actors will subtly, subtly, uh, just make an
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  adjustment so that it's a little bit more understandable, appropriate, logical, and
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  rational. And so sometimes that's why a script is sometimes the funniest the first
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  time the actors get around the table to read it, because the actors aren't
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  aware of how stupid they're going to sound when they say this line. Once
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  they understand how stupid they sound, they either make it sound stupid or and
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  again to put on a mask to protect themselves, or they make it sound
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  just slightly less stupid. Here here's an example. It's hard. It's hard
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  to think of a film or TV show where you can see somebody anticipating,
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  although you know they They used to talk about how they would have to trick
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  the three Stooges into not knowing when the pie is coming, because if they
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  knew when the pie was coming, it wouldn't be funny. So what they
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  would say is that, okay, we're gonna hit you on three, one,
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  two, and they would hit him on two. They would do everything
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  they could, and these guys were hit with thousands of pies, so they
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  would go to great lengths to try to fool them when the pie was coming,
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  because if they knew when the pie was coming, it wouldn't just be
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  that they would flinch. They would subtly react that, oh, I'm gonna
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  get hit. But a better example is like bad comedy, Like I'm not
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  a fan of late Jerry Lewis. I love early Jerry Lewis because if you
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  watch early Jerry Lewis like at Home in the Army, I think the first
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  movie he made with Dean Martin. He's so innocent, so sweet, so
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  unknowing. But later, when when you know the French have told him he's
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  a genius, he's he just twists himself into a pretzel, as though as
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  though to say if you just looked at me, you wouldn't see an idiot.
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  So I'm gonna have to pretend I'm an idiot. So, you know,
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  just think of any bad comedy, you know, something bad with Rob
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  Schneider, Grown Ups too, in which people are acting are pretending to be
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  idiots. And my point of view, what I always tell writers and actors
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  is that you don't have to pretend we are idiots. I mean, that's
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  who we are. We're human beings. We're you know, these stupid dufaices
• 23:41
  who are bumbling around this planet, you know, hurtling through space, you
• 23:45
  know, making up all sorts of reasons why, and we don't know,
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  We just don't know. So the art of comedy is actually the art of
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  telling the truth about what it's like to be a human. It seems like
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  like the moment somebody is trying to intentionally be funny or you see something like,
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  you know, you can kind of see that, oh, look they're
• 24:08
  trying to be funny right now, right is the moment that it just it's
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  not funny at all, you know. And you seem to see that in
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  a lot of these comedies that they're just like, especially let's say whatever Kevin
• 24:18
  James movie. You know, it's like, Okay, we're gonna have this
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  wacky thing and there, let's do all these situations where oh, he's going
• 24:26
  to be put into this situation, in that situation, and it's just like
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  it there's nothing funny about it. Maybe for like a five year old,
• 24:30
  but it just doesn't doesn't work. O. Well, I haven't seen Paul
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  Blart Mall Cop too. I have seen it. You have seen it?
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  Yeah? Was it great? It was so good? No, I mean
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  it's it's like I love I love watching bad movies as well as good movies
• 24:51
  because you get to kind of like put it together and and you know,
• 24:55
  I mean it just it has a couple of moments. But I mean ask
• 24:57
  you this. Have you not seen it? Have you seen Hitch? I've
• 25:02
  seen Hitches with Smith with what's the difference in Kevin James between Hitch and Paul
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  Blart Mall Cop two. He's got a slight accent and fake teeth, I
• 25:15
  think is the only difference. That's the only difference. Well, I don't
• 25:18
  really remember Hitch that well, he wasn't. I mean, he plays this
• 25:22
  sweaty guy who wants to marry who wants to get with a supermodel. Right,
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  And what I remember about Hitch is that he was recognizable. He he
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  was like one of us, and he was a little clumsy, but he
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  but he wasn't such an exaggerated clown that he was no longer recognizable as human,
• 25:49
  right, Whereas I'm guessing in Mall Cop two, uh, he does
• 25:57
  things that no, no an and human being would do because somebody thought wouldn't
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  be funny if right. Yeah, Well, you know, most of the
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  movie is that, you know, and a lot of things, all these
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  situations happen that aren't that really aren't, you know, believable. So I
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  think you're kind of watching it like, oh, that's kind of funny or
• 26:18
  whatever, but you don't you're not brought into the story. You don't actually
• 26:22
  believe any of these characters are real, right, you know. So if
• 26:26
  you look at a movie like The Other Guys with Will Farrell and Mark Wahlberg,
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  there's a moment in which in which they're walking away from a store and
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  the store explodes and then they're on the ground and Will Ferrell's going it hurts.
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  They can never tell you it hurts, and you just walk and that's
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  the comedy is noticing what's around you and being and being aware of the inconsistencies,
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  the absurdities. What Drothy Parker calls having a sharp eye and a wild
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  mind. I was closed at eleven am on a Tuesday. There's a ship
• 27:04
  home focus about I love bumps. I can't hear but blood blesses on her
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  hat? Oh my god, how walk away? And movies without Footsie would
• 27:23
  explos me eyes? And there's no wine look out bullshit on that. When
• 27:29
  they flew the body of Falcon outside of the Jest stop, it was fall
• 27:33
  by explosion. That was bullshit, don't you damn memo Star Wars that was
• 27:37
  no accurate ride. Got soft tissue, don't There's no way. I don't
• 27:47
  have soft tissue. I just want to go somewhere and breasted right now.
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  So so when a comic comes out in a club and says uh and says
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  hey you in the front row and starts to make a comment, and that's
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  the essence of comedy, which is noticing what's around you and not taking it
• 28:04
  for granted, and and seeing the absurdity in it, and and share and
• 28:10
  being confused by it, not necessarily knowing all about it. And being a
• 28:15
  dick about it, but but just kind of commenting on it in a way
• 28:21
  that both expresses what you feel and also questions it and and doesn't doesn't quite
• 28:26
  know what the answer is, which is why a comic is what about that?
• 28:33
  What's the deal with? It's a question, It's not a statement.
• 28:36
  Once you're making statements, you're you're you're a politician, A question is a
• 28:41
  as a comedian, so yeah, I mean, what what do you think
• 28:45
  is? I mean, do you feel like, for example, when I'm
• 28:48
  writing, I I you know, I'm also a writer of great by the
• 28:55
  way, I love it. It's golden the comedy for me, Like I
• 28:59
  grew up always seeing things as being comic, you know, And when I
• 29:02
  was in as early as I can remember, I would be in just situations
• 29:04
  and just start laughing, and people would even get mad at me because I
• 29:07
  would talk into somebody and just all their little quirks and things would just like
• 29:11
  something would come out of that and I'd start laughing and they'd be like,
• 29:14
  well, what, what's so funny, you know, and they'd get mad
• 29:17
  at me. Yeah, well, thank god. And when I when I
• 29:22
  write, it's like it's impossible even if I mean the stuff that I write
• 29:26
  is more kind of character driven stuff, but it's the humor just comes out
• 29:30
  of it. It's like I'm not even trying. And then once you have,
• 29:33
  once you really feel a character on the page, living and breathing,
• 29:36
  just the humor just comes out of it without even trying to do anything,
• 29:38
  just their actions. And I've never looked into it deeper to try and dissect
• 29:44
  why it's funny, but it just seems like that. It's like, I
• 29:45
  don't even know why it's funny, but it's funny when you have like a
• 29:48
  real character and they do something that you're just like, oh, that's you
• 29:52
  know, that's that character. You know, that's how they do stuff.
• 29:56
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to
• 30:03
  the show. Well, in the course, what I what I say is
• 30:07
  that the value of the course is not to take what you do and change
• 30:12
  it entirely. It's it's not a methodology. It's not here's how you make
• 30:17
  the sausage, but it's it's a toolbox, and you use tools when something
• 30:21
  is broken. So if you're writing and everything's working great, don't look at
• 30:26
  it, don't say, well, what is Blake Snyder and and Robert McKee
• 30:30
  and Steve Kaplan. No, just keep going. But when there's a scene
• 30:33
  that doesn't work, that's when you can use a tool. That's when you
• 30:37
  can try to figure out what we teach is what comedy is, how it
• 30:41
  works, why it works, what's going on when it's not working, and
• 30:45
  what can you do about it? So when you if you have anything that's
• 30:48
  not working, then you have some tools to try to figure out, and
• 30:52
  you want the scene to be comic, that's when you can figure out,
• 30:56
  well, what could I do here? Can I? Can I use a
• 30:59
  metaphorical relationship? Can I? Should there be a straight line wavy line relationship?
• 31:03
  Now, when you look at somebody like jud Appatoo and I just recently
• 31:07
  watched again this is forty, it just seems like so much of that we're
• 31:11
  always kind of riding this line between what's kind of going too far, what's
• 31:15
  going to be something to And you know, with a lot of the comedy
• 31:18
  podcast too, the comedy is not coming out of people trying to be funny.
• 31:22
  It's coming out of really difficult situations and people, you know, fighting
• 31:27
  about things and whatever. How do you look at that kind of comedy versus
• 31:32
  all these kind of stupid slapstick kind of you know, silly girl. Oh,
• 31:36
  I mean, my my favorite comedies are the comedies that tell the truth
• 31:38
  about about people. Now it could you could tell the truth in a fantastical
• 31:44
  situation like groundhog Day. One of my favorite comedies. But one of my
• 31:48
  other favorite comedies his forty year Old Virgin. And one of the reasons I
• 31:52
  love forty year old Virgin is because they don't make him a ridiculous character.
• 31:57
  You know, after the poker game, and you know, he's kind of
• 32:00
  ridiculous. He's he's riding a bike, he's never he's he's you know,
• 32:05
  he's frozen in this adolescence. But after the poker game, he's humiliated.
• 32:09
  Answer this question, are you a virgin? Are you a virgin? Yeah?
• 32:17
  Not since I was ten, it all makes sense. You're a virgin.
• 32:22
  I am shut up? How does that happen? He's a fucking virgin?
• 32:24
  All new it? That makes so much sense. Man, you guys
• 32:30
  are right, all right, don't be mean. I'm not being mean.
• 32:32
  I'm trying to help the now. I'm trying to say, I want to
• 32:35
  get you laid. Dude, I understand what's going on. Guys, I'm
• 32:37
  so up your asses. The mager said, come on, man, you're
• 32:52
  gonna do better than that. What's going on? Yes, you'll be fine.
• 33:10
  They don't even remember. Those guys are cool and you feel for him.
• 33:15
  It's not like it's not like some I don't know Rob Schneider. I
• 33:19
  assume he's a very talented guy. I'm just using Rob. If you were
• 33:23
  listening to this, I'm just using you as kind of an icon of not
• 33:27
  good comedy Without Rob. This is uh so. I mean, they're not
• 33:35
  just making him some idiot, they're humanizing him. And he goes he rides
• 33:40
  home. Uh, he has this primal scream and it's so in touch with
• 33:45
  true emotions, what we would all be going through. And then he goes
• 33:51
  back into work and he thinks, maybe I'll just maybe they won't remember it,
• 33:54
  and they say, Hi, how you do it? And all of
• 33:58
  a sudden, everybody's ragging on him and and and you know, let's get
• 34:04
  the virgin laid. And he's run out the store. And the thing that
• 34:07
  made me love the movie was was Paul running after him, trying to help
• 34:12
  him. Right, human, sweet and not ridiculous. So they never you
• 34:21
  know, Yes, there are some outlandish, very very broad things in that
• 34:25
  movie, but for the most part, it's grounded and in a human condition.
• 34:30
  In the In in What Would Happen to Us, Chris Rock was talking
• 34:36
  about his evolutionist as a filmmaker, and he was talking about that that he's
• 34:42
  learned a lot from Louis c. K and that now where's in the past,
• 34:45
  he would go for any joke possible, but now, especially with his
• 34:53
  I can't remember the name of the movie five Things or top Fine, Top
• 34:58
  five that he basically said, put somebody in a situation and say what would
• 35:04
  they do now? And to me, that's the best way to develop a
• 35:07
  comic premise is you come up with a with a fantastic premise, something that's
• 35:13
  impossible or implausible, and then put in, you know, our typical comedy
• 35:19
  comedy characters and then see what would they do now, what would happen now?
• 35:23
  And develop it, like you say, through character as opposed to plot.
• 35:30
  Yeah, it's it's interesting, you know, going back to the forty
• 35:32
  forty year old version. One of the things that people forget about that is
• 35:36
  if you go later in the film, once his relationship with Catherine Keener develops,
• 35:40
  it actually becomes a very like you know, it's still comic and everything,
• 35:45
  but it's more like it's a real heartwarming story, you know. And
• 35:50
  he's you know, showing the dealing with the daughter and all that stuff.
• 35:52
  You know what I mean. I love I love that seed where where he's
• 35:55
  like, you know, I speak sarcasm too, and he's got you know,
• 35:58
  he does a magic trick and she's like, do you walk around with
• 36:00
  the ear in your bucket? You know? I mean, I love those
• 36:04
  scenes, but they're not like you know, they're more of like a drama.
• 36:07
  You know, it's like a real story. It's and and because they
• 36:12
  because they don't feel the need to do a joke or a bit every ten
• 36:17
  seconds. That a favorite you her mind is when he takes the daughter to
• 36:22
  the planned parenthood the the uh the clinic. Now you're all here because you're
• 36:30
  interested in obtaining birth control. Any questions. Here's a cute story. I
• 36:35
  came home the other day and he is with his girlfriend in my marital bed
• 36:38
  doing things that are illegal in Alabama, sex acts, right, things that
• 36:44
  my wife won't do. Okay, did you have a question, how do
• 36:46
  I get my wife to do that. Does anybody else have a question?
• 36:50
  My daughter is or lack of a better word, dumb. How do I
• 36:55
  stop her minstrel cycle? You wanted to stop having a mental psych I want
• 37:00
  to stop it, maybe just for a few years. Yeah, I don't
• 37:02
  think that's a good idea. Does anybody else have a question? I have
• 37:07
  a question. I think some of the people here might be sexually inexperienced.
• 37:13
  Is it true that if you don't use it you lose it? Is that
• 37:16
  a serious question? No, it wasn't. Now, there are a lot
• 37:21
  of activities that you can engage in without having sex that are both fun and
• 37:25
  safe. What sort of activities I think everybody wants to know about the activities.
• 37:31
  Well, instead of having intercourse, you could have outer course? Outer
• 37:37
  course? What's that? Yeah? What is that? Well? Outer course
• 37:40
  is anything that isn't vaginal intercourse. I prefer a vaginal intercourse. It really
• 37:49
  does. Now, there are ways of having sex without intercourse. Let's see.
• 37:54
  There are things like body rubbing or dry humping. You could try hump
• 38:00
  masturbation, masturbation, play with yourself, mutual masturbation, play with a friend,
• 38:04
  deep kissing. There's erotic massage, Oh, that sounds like it would
• 38:09
  be nice oral sex play. Sounds like my Friday night upset. We went
• 38:14
  to temple. Okay, are there any virgins here who are thinking about having
• 38:17
  sex for the first time? Oh, well, so you're a virgin.
• 38:27
  I tapped that? Oh yeah, you tap that? Set? What do
• 38:30
  you think you're cool with your little jue fro? We don't say tap that?
• 38:34
  What it be talking about? Seth? You know what, I'm a
• 38:37
  virgin too. We're virgins too. Yeah. No, you know what.
• 38:45
  It's a it's it's a personal choice. And Okay, I can't listen to
• 38:50
  any more of this because it's making me sick. So bye. You can
• 38:53
  get this information on your website. All right? Oh yes, nice meeting
• 38:57
  everybody? Any other questions qub large condoms set? You've got a tiny penis,
• 39:02
  and he's asking more questions than anybody else. But then he's sitting around
• 39:07
  all these people, all these all the you know, the the kid who
• 39:10
  thinks he's hot stuff and and the guy who just wants, you know,
• 39:15
  his daughter to be Can we not? Can we make sure that she doesn't
• 39:20
  have any sex till she's thirty five? And then on the drive home,
• 39:25
  Uh, the daughter just turns to him and says, you're a virgin,
• 39:30
  right, and he's And rather than pretending, which which some some uh script
• 39:38
  teachers will tea will tell you that the key to comedy is deception. And
• 39:45
  you know that's such a uh yeah sometimes. But but if if you take
• 39:52
  that to its logical illogical, you know, to its logical conclusion, you
• 39:57
  never tell anybody the truth. And that's exhausting. We'll be right back after
• 40:02
  a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. It's exhausting.
• 40:12
  And what I love about the scene is he just says, yeah,
• 40:15
  but don't tell your mom. Okay, Well, what are you gonna do
• 40:19
  it? Well, I'm getting around to it. It's so I keep on
• 40:22
  going back to that word. It's human. It tells the truth about the
• 40:24
  human condition. Drama helps us dream about what we could be, but comedy
• 40:30
  helps us live with who we are. Comedy is the truth, Drama is
• 40:34
  the exaggeration. Drama is the ideal, idealization of life. Would that we
• 40:40
  were as tortured and as sensitive and as poetic and as intellectual as Hamlet.
• 40:47
  Right, we're watching Hamlet. Oh what he's going through? Have you ever
• 40:51
  seen a production of Hamlet. I've seen the movies. Okay, okay,
• 40:55
  you seen a movie of Hamlet? Have you ever seen in the movie?
• 40:58
  Did the Hamlet fart? Not in the ones I saw? Now, so
• 41:01
  what would what do you think would happen if Hamlet's going to be or not
• 41:05
  to be? I probably would enjoy it a lot more. And but yet
• 41:10
  people do fart, right, yeah, so so, but by making him
• 41:15
  more human, you make it immediately more comic. So I hate comedies that
• 41:21
  pretend or let me, let me put it this way. I hate comedies
• 41:24
  where every ten seconds they're going, wouldn't it be funny if this happened?
• 41:28
  Wouldn't it be funny if that happen? Because I'm more interested in what would
• 41:30
  happen if this really happened to these characters? What would they do? What
• 41:36
  would all these different characters do? Because you don't have to invent shit,
• 41:40
  you're going to make shit up. Put three people in a room, they're
• 41:45
  going to go in three different directions. Half the time, they're going to
• 41:46
  run into each other because that's who human beings are. So just let them.
• 41:52
  Let them deal with the situation in their own way. If you if
• 41:54
  you haven't duplicated characters. You're going to create your co inflict and your obstacles
• 42:00
  just because of the characters you have on screen or on stage. In that
• 42:06
  situation. I do an experiment in my workshops. We call it the classic,
• 42:13
  the classic problem of the three Lawyers. I have three people come up.
• 42:17
  I make sure that they're not actors or improvisers. I ask for writers
• 42:22
  who have never performed, and I tell them they're all three lawyers, and
• 42:27
  that the most important case of their careers began in a courthouse four blocks away,
• 42:31
  five minutes ago. And I say, if you through that door,
• 42:37
  whatever room that we're in, whatever meeting room or banquet room we're in,
• 42:40
  I say, through that door, is the court has four blocks away,
• 42:45
  you're five minutes late. And then I have two of them leave, and
• 42:49
  I tell each one separately that for some crazy reason, they have to be
• 42:54
  the second person out the door. I'll do that for everyone. I'll say,
• 43:00
  listen, this is gonna be do I'm gonna give everybody something different,
• 43:01
  but for you, I just want you to know that, for some crazy
• 43:05
  reason, you have to be the second person out the door. And then
• 43:08
  I'll bring all three of them back and I'll say start, and what will
• 43:12
  happen is most times that they'll run to the door and they'll stop, and
• 43:20
  the audience of course knows what's happening, and there there will be this great
• 43:24
  dance of trying to figure out how to get how to be the second person
• 43:30
  out the door if they're all trying to leave. And then I'll usually say
• 43:36
  to a shout out, you have my you have the permission to win,
• 43:39
  in which case I usually put two big guys in a small girl in the
• 43:45
  group, and you see you're anticipator, right, yeah, I'll say you,
• 43:51
  I give you the permission to win. And usually one of the big
• 43:53
  guys will pick up the small girl throw her out, and then he'll be
• 43:55
  the second guy to go. And it's usually a very scene. And when
• 44:00
  I did this at dream Works once with three animators who have never performed uh.
• 44:06
  The one animator was this tall, skinny guy and the two guys tried
• 44:09
  to throw him out of the room and he put one foot on one side
• 44:13
  of the door and one foot on the other side of the door, and
• 44:15
  he was like completely horizontal. It was it was amazing. I've never seen
• 44:19
  that before. And my point is that you don't need. You don't need
• 44:25
  clever dialogue, you don't even need you don't need directors, you don't even
• 44:30
  need writers. You just need characters, humans in a situation with a with
• 44:37
  something unusual or not easy, and see what happens and you and half the
• 44:43
  time's more than half the time, comedy work will occur. Now you raise
• 44:46
  an important important topic about characters and having two characters interacting. Do you feel
• 44:52
  like you need to have, for example, one guy who's going to be
• 44:57
  the straight man, one guy who's going to be the the you know,
• 45:00
  the comic part or whatever you want to say. I mean, when you're
• 45:02
  when you're creating comic moments, do you have to have that sort of conflict
• 45:06
  between your characters? U When when you're talking about characters, you don't.
• 45:08
  It's not so much the conflict, it's it's you want our typical character.
• 45:13
  If you think about any commedia troope, you would have the letrous old man,
• 45:19
  the wily, tricky, clever servant, the young, innocent, the
• 45:22
  fool and you. You just make sure that you have those artypical types in
• 45:30
  in your story. I mean, who is the think of you know,
• 45:35
  just in terms of winning the Pooh, who's your tigger? Who's your ere?
• 45:37
  You know who? Who's your who's your Pooh? Who's the tin man?
• 45:42
  Who? You know? This is Chris Soth who you know who talks
• 45:45
  about you know, the the Wizard of Oz method of character development? Who's
• 45:50
  the tin man? Who's the scarecrow? Who's the Who's the lion, the
• 45:54
  child, the the animal? Uh, the the thinker? So yeah,
• 45:59
  you's not. No one is a straight man. Paul Rudd is not a
• 46:04
  straight man in forty year Old Virgin, although he's more the voice of reason
• 46:08
  than anybody else. But he's got his own thing because he's pining for Mindy
• 46:14
  Kaling uh, And he's this he's this romantic who's who's all you know?
• 46:20
  Fucked up in his head? So so I don't think that the whole idea
• 46:23
  that there's a straight man is again is is a misnomer. And I think
• 46:30
  I think a false dynamic. Uh. If you take a look at the
• 46:32
  other guys at any one moment, one of them is insane and the other
• 46:39
  one is sane but not quite knowing what to do in this situation, When
• 46:44
  Will Farrell brings Mark Wahlberg home, he's married, to some hottie and all
• 46:49
  Mark Roberg can say, is is she really your wife? Hi? You
• 46:57
  must be Terry. I'm sorry I've been hiding, honey, but this in
• 47:00
  it was tricky for you. I'm doctor Sheila Gamble his wife. Come on,
• 47:06
  seriously, who is that his old lady? Sweetie? It's a workstation.
• 47:10
  You come in here dressed like a hobo. It's distracted. I know
• 47:15
  you're working. I'm so sorry. Come on, seriously, come on,
• 47:17
  what who is that? Old? He'll ball? Jay get over here?
• 47:25
  Not right now? Okay, Look, they're not all first round picks.
• 47:29
  Okay, come on, and you gotta tell me who that is? Are
• 47:31
  you really Allens live m? I know people are shocked because he's Episcopalian and
• 47:37
  I'm Catholic, but some hot works? Are you gonna change? I already
• 47:44
  did look really brillian? Nice, Terry. You don't have to be polite.
• 47:49
  Okay, she looks kind of shitty. Don't speak to her like that.
• 47:52
  Alan. Look, if I put that in my Cosmo Fashion app,
• 47:54
  you probably get a D minus. Oh. Alan and his apps, he
• 47:59
  loves them. He's designed three of his own. One of them. Can
• 48:01
  you tell them? One of them? You can take a page of anybody's
• 48:05
  face, and I'll tell you what the back of his head looks like.
• 48:08
  Faceback, face back. Got some orarible reviews coming out at the gate.
• 48:12
  It's gonna hit, It's gonna catch it. Why are you with Alan?
• 48:15
  I mean, that's not what I meant. I meant. How did you
• 48:19
  guys meet? It's a really typical how we met story, Terry, You're
• 48:22
  gonna be bored by it. I was a dancer for the nixt while finishing
• 48:25
  my residency at Columbia Hospital. Alan came into the er with poison I beyond
• 48:30
  his rectum, needless to say. I fell for him immediately. It's funny.
• 48:35
  It's look, it's like a scene from that one movie always forget the
• 48:37
  name of it with Meg Ryan. Yes, I don't remember a movie when
• 48:40
  me meets a guy with poison. I I'll think of it. I'll think
• 48:44
  of it. So what about you, Terry? Do you have a girl?
• 48:46
  I did? Yeah? I was supposed to get back, but she
• 48:50
  backed out. It's complicated, Terry shot Derek Peter, shut up, Ellen,
• 48:53
  this was before That's okay. Ah, she's got mail. That's the
• 48:57
  name of it. That's it, honey, that's all nice, right,
• 49:00
  And meg Ronner, he didn't have poison, yes, yeah, yeah,
• 49:05
  way up there. Well, Terry can't thank you enough for coming by a
• 49:08
  what a wonderful, lovely evening. Thank you so so nice meeting you,
• 49:13
  Terry. It was my pleasure. Thank you. Remember all I ask of
• 49:15
  you is you don't let him get hurt, Terry. She tells me that
• 49:19
  every day before I leave. Yep I do. I come downstairs and I
• 49:22
  make him his fresh cut strawberries, and I say, listen, my little
• 49:25
  sugar balls, whatever you do today, you just don't get hurt every morning.
• 49:30
  And then I show them my breast and I see these these are waiting
• 49:34
  for you when you get back home. You know, Terry. They're not
• 49:36
  the biggest press he's ever seen, but man, not by a long show,
• 49:39
  kirky. And they are firm, and they are yours, A nice
• 49:43
  lady. Thank you for coming. Detectives, hoycha amble detectives, hoiching gamble
• 49:50
  over go for wits. I found your red prius right, it's trying to
• 49:53
  vote for Ralph Nader. We'll be right back after a word from our spon,
• 50:00
  sir, and now back to the show. Come on, heay,
• 50:07
  sugar puls, this's en up. It's gonna be fingerprints in that car,
• 50:09
  and tomorrow we're gonna run those fingerprints through the system. If we get a
• 50:13
  hit, this case going to heat a faster than a junkie spoon. You
• 50:15
  do one thing when you wake up tomorrow, bring it. Thank you,
• 50:20
  We'll bring it. Good night, good night, Thank you, Sheila.
• 50:23
  Bye Terry, Bye Sheila. I'll never forget tonight. Bye Terry. All
• 50:28
  right now whatever, go inside, Bye Sheila, Terry, Bye Sheila.
• 50:37
  Who wish it's his? And it's hysterical because one of them, at any
• 50:44
  moment is aware of what's happening around him without having the complete, uh answer
• 50:50
  of what to do about it. One of the things I wanted to talk
• 50:52
  about too is going back through the history and talking about somebody like Buster Keaton.
• 50:58
  So for him, he's always been kind of an example for me of
• 51:01
  somebody for whom like for example, Uh, you know what happened with the
• 51:07
  Silent Films is he was hugely popular up there with chaplain and everything. In
• 51:09
  the moment he was asked to speak, it changed the dynamic of his comedy.
• 51:15
  Well, it can't be the great Stoneface and speak at the same time.
• 51:17
  Right, So I was curious about if you you know, went into
• 51:22
  any sort of thing like that that people have to be in the right kind
• 51:24
  of comedy for their kind of personality or whatever. Uh. Well, we
• 51:29
  we do talk about the history of comedy just in terms just in terms of
• 51:32
  the development of Western comedy that comes from these artypical characters that that you know
• 51:39
  was uh kind of codified in the committee, but really goes back all the
• 51:45
  way to the Greeks. Uh okay, where the the the new Greek comedy
• 51:50
  was all about our typical characters, cowardly braggett soldiers, Letcher's old men or
• 51:57
  miserly old men. And you see you see these characters in Shakespeare, you
• 52:00
  see them in Montyeer, you see them on sitcoms. Who's the idiot,
• 52:05
  who's the the wisecracker, who's the the the the space cadet. I mean
• 52:10
  that's I've just described friends. Uh So, so what you what you wanted,
• 52:19
  what you what you want to know is that is that these are typical
• 52:24
  characters appear and reappear and reappear in in dozens of movies. Uh, and
• 52:30
  they're there, They're there for a reason because those they embody certain aspects of
• 52:38
  the human condition, uh, personified, And it's a good idea to have
• 52:44
  a good mix of them. Do you need all of all of the different
• 52:45
  character types? No? But uh when I read scripts sometimes I'll say,
• 52:52
  you have three three best friends. You really need three best friends, and
• 52:55
  they're all exactly the same. Maybe maybe one should be different, or maybe
• 53:04
  they should maybe they should be different. For instance, here's here's a we
• 53:07
  do a comic premise exercise where where we have we break people up into groups
• 53:15
  and they they work on comic premises. Uh. So let me give you
• 53:20
  a premise. Okay, it's not a great movie, but this is something
• 53:22
  that actually that a group actually came up with. So here's the premise of
• 53:28
  this comedy movie. Uh. A college football team discovers that the only time
• 53:34
  that they can win is when they get the nerd laid. Now that's already
• 53:42
  a good start for a premise because it made you giggle. So tell me
• 53:45
  who's in this movie. You've got the jock, You've got okay, what
• 53:47
  you've got the best friend? Excuse me? What position is the jock?
• 53:51
  Quarterback? I guess quarterback? Who are his friends on the team. You
• 53:54
  got the big fat guy, You got the lineman. Okay, you have
• 53:59
  the bliman. Who else? See, but I don't know anything about football?
• 54:01
  You're you're already there? Okay, you have the lineman. And who
• 54:05
  else should be there? One of his friends is a big fat guy.
• 54:08
  Who's the who's the other friend? Gotta have the skinny guy? Okay,
• 54:12
  the skinny guys? Okay? Who? So you don't know anything about football?
• 54:15
  But but they the team can only win when they get the nerd late,
• 54:20
  So who else needs to be there? Well, you gotta have your
• 54:22
  nerd. You're the nerd. Okay. You gotta have the most attractive girl
• 54:25
  in the school girl? And what what position? What? What does she
• 54:29
  do? Uh? Cheerleader? Cheerleader? And then who's the who's the Uh?
• 54:32
  Then there's a coach, right okay? Sure? Okay? Uh?
• 54:36
  And how is the cheerleader connected to the coach daughter? Daughter? Okay?
• 54:42
  Because one of the things that Moliear teaches us is that comedy is a closed
• 54:46
  universe. Because the old guy who's wandering around in Act one olays turns out
• 54:52
  to be the uncle of the two orphans in Act five, So you have
• 54:55
  the quarterback, the linebacker, the wide receiver. That's the skinny guy,
• 55:00
  the nerd, the cheerleader, the coach, Okay Nerd, Steve Carell,
• 55:05
  quarterback, Paul Rutt, line big lineman, Seth Roken, skinny guys,
• 55:09
  Robiney, malco cheerleader, a young Katherine Keener, coach James. But you
• 55:14
  just give me the cast a forty year old virgin. Wow. There's a
• 55:19
  reason why these these these artypical characters appear and reappear and reappear because they tell
• 55:25
  stories. You can tell any story you want if you have all the right
• 55:30
  characters there. That was pretty mind blowing. I like that. That was
• 55:36
  our Ted Talk moment for the conversation. Well top Heed till Ted. I
• 55:39
  applied to Ted. They haven't gotten I thought it would be a great Ted
• 55:44
  talk. Well they listened to this, so you know, just just wait,
• 55:47
  it'll happen. So Ted listens as well as the French. Yes,
• 55:52
  and Rob Schneider and Rob Stier, Rob, I love you, copy guy.
• 55:58
  That was the best thing on SNL. So I want to talk for
• 56:04
  a second also about Ben Stiller, because you mentioned Ben Stiller in your your
• 56:07
  book and one of the things that I have skimmed the book. Unfortunately,
• 56:14
  my my credit card got had some problems at Amazon, so I had to
• 56:19
  go back and change some things and then buy it again. And then I
• 56:22
  was kind of the clock was against me. So I'm gonna yeah, but
• 56:27
  I do a lot of my stuff is from other podcasts and from you know,
• 56:30
  YouTube, so luckily there's a wealth of knowledge out there. Okay,
• 56:36
  So if any of my questions sound exactly the same as some other people,
• 56:39
  no, I don't. I don't think I ever insulted as many people on
• 56:45
  other podcasts as I have on yours. I am honored. Thank you.
• 56:49
  Well. I wanted to talk about Ben Stiller for a second, because you
• 56:52
  know, you talk about him, and one of the things that I remember
• 56:54
  when Ben was, you know, my buddy Ben first kind of was getting
• 57:00
  popularity, was that the kind of comedy that he was doing was so like
• 57:07
  not obvious. I guess you could say. It was just he was so
• 57:14
  much the character and so uncomfortable and so kind of, you know, different
• 57:19
  than what I had seen before. And there have probably been other people who
• 57:22
  had done that kind of comedy, you know, like there's something about Mary
• 57:25
  and stuff like that. But I just for some reason that just stayed in
• 57:29
  my mind. Is that being you know, why is that funny? Why
• 57:32
  is what he's doing funny? And you know why is just his nervousness or
• 57:37
  his like being in that situation making me laugh? And I had never really
• 57:40
  felt like that with anybody else, you know what I mean? Well,
• 57:44
  I think because one of the things that he does. Well, Now,
• 57:47
  he's a smart guy, right, I mean, he had his own sketch
• 57:51
  show on Fox when he was in his twenties. He's a smart guy,
• 57:54
  but he lets himself be seen as less than smart very well. Uh.
• 58:00
  And there's something about Mary. Uh. He's about to go on a date
• 58:04
  with Mary, and Chris Elliot's telling him, have you uh, you know,
• 58:07
  pulled pulled the pud? Have you you know, spanked the monkey?
• 58:10
  Uh? Have you flogged the dolphin? And and rather than Ben Stiller going
• 58:16
  what are you talking about? He goes, huh huh and what are great
• 58:22
  comedy lines? Because they see something they're just not quite sure what they're seeing.
• 58:28
  Uh. And he lets himself be talked into, you know, uh,
• 58:30
  masturbating just just before the date. Uh. And and it's it's ridiculous,
• 58:37
  it's you know, it's it's gross out humor. But there's something very
• 58:43
  vulnerable and uh and and and not in charge. Uh. That then,
• 58:52
  I think, appeals to all of us because that's how we feel. We
• 58:55
  feel that we're not completely in charge, that we're that we're less then,
• 59:01
  and he embodies less than in a very unforced way. He doesn't pretend to
• 59:08
  be less then, he just is. There's one of my favorite moments,
• 59:14
  and there's something about Mary, is when they do the flashback and he's about
• 59:19
  to ask take Mary out to the prom, and he's got these great braces
• 59:22
  on, and he's wearing this tope tuxedo. He goes to the door and
• 59:29
  David Keith, who I believe is playing the dad, comes out and David
• 59:32
  Keith is an African American. Mary, of course is Cameron Diaz, who's
• 59:37
  not African American, so he, you know, Ben Steeler looks at David
• 59:42
  Keith, looks up at the door number, Am I in the right place?
• 59:45
  Usually that gets the left just by not being sure. And then David
• 59:49
  Keith says, she's already gone gone to the problem with woogie. We'll be
• 59:54
  right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
• 1:00:04
  And he goes woogie, yeah, woogie, and then and you can't
• 1:00:08
  really see this over a podcast, but I'm kind of grinning sadly and go
• 1:00:15
  okay. And I usually when I do my workshops, by the way,
• 1:00:20
  I have a workshop coming up, uh at the end of January, which
• 1:00:23
  we'll talk about hopefully at the end of the podcast, I usually freeze frame
• 1:00:28
  on that and I say, if the movie ended, there hasn't has any
• 1:00:32
  broken your heart. That's the essence of comedy is. The essence of comedy
• 1:00:37
  is not to pretend that there's no pain. It's all silliness. The essence
• 1:00:42
  of comedy is We're always in pain. Life is a painful, painful deal.
• 1:00:45
  How are we going to deal with it? What are we going to
• 1:00:50
  do? The comedian is the courageous person who gets up in front of a
• 1:00:54
  group of strangers and and admits to being human and and basically says, you
• 1:00:59
  know, gives the shrug and says, you'll live. It's tough, you
• 1:01:02
  get kicked, but you'll live. And that's a very life affirming way of
• 1:01:08
  looking at the world. So if that was written as a drama and not
• 1:01:13
  a comedy, well, if it was red as a drama, Uh,
• 1:01:15
  he wouldn't be an idiot. He would know more. Uh, he would
• 1:01:20
  be good looking, he would be wearing braces. Like I said, if
• 1:01:23
  it was a drama, he would be something that we would aspire to as
• 1:01:29
  opposed to something who we can recognize as us. Look at the movie that
• 1:01:34
  I always saw, the Maze Runner or the Divergon. Those kids are gorgeous,
• 1:01:39
  you know in the Apocalypse, Are we all gonna look that good?
• 1:01:45
  I mean, of course, am I gonna have tapped teeth? You know,
• 1:01:50
  in a dystopian future? I wish, you know, that would be
• 1:01:52
  great? Told me the good Looking Survive. One of my favorite Ben still
• 1:01:59
  a performances is in Tropic Thunder Oh, one of my favorite movies, when
• 1:02:04
  he is you know, captured and they make him reenact his character simple Jack,
• 1:02:09
  Simple Jack. That to me is like the pinnacle of his career.
• 1:02:15
  But the moment that I love is when he and Robert Downey have the conversation
• 1:02:20
  about why he didn't get the oscar. Yeah, exactly. You know,
• 1:02:22
  there were times when I was doing Jack that I actually felt retarded, like
• 1:02:29
  really retarded. I mean, brush my teeth retarded. I rode bust retarded
• 1:02:34
  in a weird way. I had to sort of just free myself up to
• 1:02:37
  believe that it was okay to be stupid or dumb, to be mora yeah,
• 1:02:42
  to be moronical exactly, to be more an imbecile. Yeah, not
• 1:02:46
  the dumbest motherfucker devile. When I was funny of the character Wendy was secure.
• 1:02:51
  Yeah, I mean as Jack, definitely Jack, stupid ass Jack John.
• 1:02:55
  To come back from that in a weird way, it was almost like
• 1:02:58
  I had to sort of fool my mind into believing that it wasn't retarded.
• 1:03:02
  And by the end of the whole thing, I was like, wait a
• 1:03:06
  minute, you know, I flushed so much out. How am I gonna
• 1:03:09
  jump started up again? It's just like, yeah, yeah, right,
• 1:03:13
  he was farting in baptubes, lapping your ass off. Yeah yeah. But
• 1:03:17
  simple Jack thought he was smart, or rather didn't think he was retarded,
• 1:03:21
  So he can't afford to play retarded. Being a smart actor playing a guy
• 1:03:25
  who ain't smart but thinks he is. That's tricky. Tricky is that working
• 1:03:29
  for Mercury? It's high science. Man's odd for him? Yeah, you
• 1:03:32
  an artist, that's what we do, right, Yeah, Yeah, hats
• 1:03:37
  off of going there. Especially no nothing to cat me. It's about that
• 1:03:39
  shit. M hm about what it's seriously, don't know everybody knows you never
• 1:03:51
  got foot retired. What do you mean check it out? Doesn't Hoffman?
• 1:03:57
  Ray Man look retarded at retarded, not retarded. Catoo picks she had carts
• 1:04:01
  autistic show now retired. Tom Hanks forrest Gun said, oh, yes,
• 1:04:08
  retarded. Maybe braces own his lives. But he tied to pain his off
• 1:04:10
  next to them. They wont a pingpong competition. They hain't retaught it.
• 1:04:13
  And he was goddamn war hero, you know, and he retired war heroes.
• 1:04:18
  You went full retard man, They never go full retard. You don't
• 1:04:26
  buy that, yeas Sean Penn two thousand and one, I am saying,
• 1:04:29
  Memo went full retired. And that's such a beautiful moment because it's the first
• 1:04:34
  moment in the film where they're really just relating to each other and they're connecting,
• 1:04:39
  and they're not they've let their their rivalries go, and and Robert Downey
• 1:04:43
  goes, you don't know, you can't go full Todd. You went full
• 1:04:47
  Todd. You can so half Todd. You can't go full Todd. Great,
• 1:04:54
  great, I mean, those those human, simple human moments where people
• 1:05:00
  share what makes them vulnerable, what makes them silly, what makes them lost,
• 1:05:05
  what makes them human. And that's why in terms of straight line wavy
• 1:05:13
  line, you you know, Mark is funny, but you can't have Mork
• 1:05:16
  without mending. You got to have a human being in the equation at every
• 1:05:21
  moment. So even your silliest character can have a moment where they're human and
• 1:05:29
  they're having a human experience while everybody else is acting crazy around them. And
• 1:05:36
  that's why the division of funny guys straight man is incorrect, because everybody gets
• 1:05:42
  to has a chance to be funny. Everybody has a chance to be you
• 1:05:45
  know, the same one. Well, tell me if you had the same
• 1:05:50
  feeling as I did. But watching that, if you've got Robert Downey Junior,
• 1:05:54
  you've got Ben Stiller, and then you've got Jack Black, and Jack
• 1:05:57
  Black to me, like most of the stuff that he did in the film
• 1:06:00
  kind of fell flat. Though I don't know how you you kind of perceive
• 1:06:03
  that, but just seemed like one more person there that like didn't necessarily like
• 1:06:09
  add to it. I don't know, well, I mean I can see
• 1:06:12
  that point of view. I'm not going to argue that he's the best thing
• 1:06:15
  in the film. But he's there because you needed a primal character. Okay
• 1:06:19
  again and we go, we go back to to our typical characters, the
• 1:06:25
  archetypes, the cometia. You have your clever, tricky servant that's Robert Downey
• 1:06:30
  Junior. Uh. You have your nerdy guy that's Jay Barishal. You have
• 1:06:34
  your idiot that's uh, or your fool yet that's that's Ben Stiller. Uh.
• 1:06:40
  Then you have your primal character, you know, and he's got he's
• 1:06:44
  got primal needs. I need, I need my drugs uh and uh.
• 1:06:49
  And out of that mix comes comes the comes this disjointed uh dysfunctional family that
• 1:06:58
  all comedy aspires to. All comedy, especially telecomedy, aspires to create dysfunct
• 1:07:04
  large, dysfunctional families that that we can relate to and in some way,
• 1:07:12
  UH enjoy being with because they remind us of our dysfunctional families, only we
• 1:07:16
  don't have to be with them that much. So So yeah, so is
• 1:07:19
  Jack Black? You know? Is that an Oscar Oscar nominated performance. I'm
• 1:07:25
  not sure, but I see that I see the use for him, because
• 1:07:29
  you need that unbridled energy now, is that unbridled energy the best it could
• 1:07:34
  be? I don't know. I I I wasn't crazy about the about the
• 1:07:40
  blonde uh buzz cut, but you know, I mean I was just wondering
• 1:07:48
  if there was something we were not available, right, I mean that would
• 1:07:54
  be that would be John Belushi or John Candy or Chris Farley. That would
• 1:07:57
  be their role. That's what they would be there for. And maybe they
• 1:08:01
  would have brought a little bit more what I call the Shemp factor. You
• 1:08:05
  know. So Shemp was this stooge that made you care. So that's what
• 1:08:10
  John Candy and Chris Farley would do. They would make you care. And
• 1:08:14
  Jack Black, I guess, just make you care that much because Jack Black,
• 1:08:17
  if I'm going to analyze it from your point of view, Jack Black
• 1:08:24
  gave was too much a performance that he was outside of as opposed to owning
• 1:08:30
  it. He wasn't sharing his addiction. He was making this character's addiction the
• 1:08:36
  focus. And when you distance yourself from your character and you distance yourself from
• 1:08:42
  the audience, there's that distancing factor that doesn't work for some people. In
• 1:08:45
  five hundred BC, the first comedy written, the actor comes out and talks
• 1:08:51
  to the audience directly in a different way than they did in Greek tragedy.
• 1:08:56
  There's a connection that comics make with their audience. It's an actor centric art,
• 1:09:01
  and it's about telling the truth about what's happening right in front of all
• 1:09:05
  of us. I'm an actor, I'm on stage, you're watching me.
• 1:09:10
  Let's go and so there's truth there. And so you might be reacting to
• 1:09:15
  the fact that he wasn't as connected and as truthful as the other actors,
• 1:09:20
  that's my guess. But it didn't bother me as much. But I can
• 1:09:25
  see from your point of taking a look from your perspective, I can see
• 1:09:29
  what you're talking about. Yeah, I mean, it just kind of fell
• 1:09:30
  flat. Sometimes I'm going to he just was he fucking sucked? I mean
• 1:09:36
  it's kind of like late Jerry Lewis, like you're saying, it just felt
• 1:09:40
  like a performance, you know. Anyway, Right, I'll get off that.
• 1:09:44
  All right, we're at about an hour. I wanted to make sure
• 1:09:47
  that you discuss the things that are coming up with you and how people can
• 1:09:50
  get in touch and sign up for your classes. Do you want to talk
• 1:09:55
  about that a little bit? Uh? Yeah, I'm Libra, I'm lonelys.
• 1:10:00
  I like long walk long walks on the beach. We'll be right back
• 1:10:04
  after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show. I'm months
• 1:10:13
  no, no, no no, I'm happily married. But you can you
• 1:10:18
  can tweet met at skcomedy. That's SK comedy comedy with a C. Because
• 1:10:27
  I'm not a hack. I don't do that comedy K thing. My website
• 1:10:30
  is Kaplancomedy one word dot com and you can email me at Steve at Kaplancomedy
• 1:10:36
  dot com. And right now, in January thirtieth and thirty first, in
• 1:10:42
  Los Angeles, we're having a workshop at the Marriott Burbank and you can register
• 1:10:47
  for it online. And if you're in Ireland, we're going to be in
• 1:10:53
  Ireland in early June, London the week later. I think we're going to
• 1:10:58
  be in Paris in April, and we're going to be in Denver in October.
• 1:11:02
  And you should read my book The Hidden Tools of Comedy. It's translated
• 1:11:06
  into Russian, Chinese and French. But for you for the Indie Film Academy
• 1:11:12
  podcast listeners, we have it for you in English and it's available on Kindle.
• 1:11:18
  You can download it, but make sure that your credit card doesn't get
• 1:11:23
  screwed up like Jason's. And it's also available through Amazon, and you can
• 1:11:30
  also buy it on our website for an autographed copy. I want to thank
• 1:11:34
  Jason so much for doing such an amazing job with this episode. If you
• 1:11:39
  want to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, head over
• 1:11:41
  to the show notes at innifilmuscle dot com Forward slash seven five. If you
• 1:11:45
  have it already, please head over to Filmmaking podcast dot com. Subscribe and
• 1:11:50
  leave a good review for the show. It really helps us out a lot,
• 1:11:55
  guys. Thank you again so much for listening. Guys, as always,
• 1:11:58
  keep that hustle going, keep that dream lite, stay safe out there,
• 1:12:00
  and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Indie Film
• 1:12:03
  Hustle Podcast at indiefilm hustle dot com. That's I N D I E F
• 1:12:09
  I L M h U S T l E dot com.