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IFH 707: The Hidden Tools of Comedy with Steve Kaplan · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

• 0:03
  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to IFH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Indie
• 0:13
  Filmhustle Podcast, Episode number seven, Go seven. Life is a tragedy when
• 0:17
  you see it close up, but a comedy is a long shot. Charlie
• 0:21
  Chaplin broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood. It's the Indie Film Hustle Podcast,
• 0:28
  where we show you how to survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker in
• 0:32
  the jungles of the film biz. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari.
• 0:38
  Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast. I am
• 0:41
  your humble host Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored by Rise of the Film
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  Entrepreneur How to turn your independent film into a profitable business. It's harder today
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  than ever before for independent filmmakers to make money with their films from predatory film
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  distributors ripping them off to huckster film aggregators who prey upon them. The odds
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  are stacked against the indie filmmaker. The old distribution model of making money with
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  your film is broken, and there needs to be a change. The future
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  of independent filmmaking is the entrepreneurial filmmaker or the film entrepreneur. In Rise of
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  the Film Entrepreneur, I break down how to actually make money with your film
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  With case studies examining successes and failures. This book shows you the step by
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  step method to turn your passion into a profitable career. If you're making a
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  feature film, series, or any other kind of video content, the Film
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  Entrepreneur method will set you up for success. The book is available in paperback,
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  ebook, and of course audiobook. If you want to order it,
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  just head over to www dot film bizbook dot com. That's film bizbook dot
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  com. Now today on the show, we have Steve Kaplan. Steve is
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  the author of The Hidden Tools of Comedy and The Comic Hero's Journey, a
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  serious story structure for fabulously funny films. Steve has been in the business for
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  decades and he is one of the most renowned comedy consultants in the business.
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  He's worked with companies like HBO, DreamWorks, Disney, Sony Pictures, and
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  many many more. He is a very sought after private consultant and coach,
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  and has performed comedy intensive workshops around the world in London, Toronto, Athens,
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  Paris, Tel Aviv, Sydney, New Zealand, and many many more
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  places he gets around. Let's just put it that way now, this episode
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  is fairly epic. Steve and I get deep into the weeds of what is
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  funny, what makes stories funny, What writers can do to make their stories
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  funnier, even if you're not writing a specific comedy, What you can do
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  to certain characters, certain plots, certain scenes, or you know, situations
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  that can help your story have little touches of comedy, even if you're not
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  just writing a full blown comedy. We really break things down a lot in
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  this episode. So if you want to know about funny, this is the
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  episode for you. So, without any further ado, please enjoy my funny
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  conversation with Steve Kaplan. I'd like to welcome to the show Steve Kaplan Man.
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  Thank you so much for jumping on the show today. My pleasure.
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  Thank you man. I've been I've been wanting to get you on the show
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  for a long time and as you've, like I said earlier, off off
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  off airs like I've seen your work fly through my feed so many times,
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  and it's just like, I gotta reach out to Steve one of these days.
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  I gotta reach out to see what they says. Just everything get caught
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  up. But I finally have you here to talk comedy. We're both excited.
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  Good. So you have a long and illustrious career in the business.
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  How did you get started in the business. I started out as a as
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  a bad actor or mediocre actor, and a and a kind of a frustrated
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  comic. Uh. I was. I was not very good as a comic.
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  Places asked me never to come back, like not even as a customer,
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  and and I was. I had two friends who were actors and I
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  had started doing some directing and they they said, well, you know,
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  we can't get We want to control our own careers, so we want to
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  start a theater company in New York. And I said, great, let
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  me think about it for a second. So I came back to a meeting
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  with them, and I said, let's do something that no one else is
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  doing. Everybody else does you know? Serious theater? And they do productions
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  of check off Internalnecks and UH and expressionistic abstract place and I said, let's
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  let's be different, Let's do comedy. Let's be a theater company that's devoted
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  only to comedy. And they thought about it for a second and they realized
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  that it at the time in New York, it kind of filled a niche
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  that no one else was filling. So we started this, this theater company.
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  We called it Manhattan Punchline. It wasn't a comedy club. It we
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  did plays, we did, but we did stand up nights, We did
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  improv, and a lot of great people came out of it. We had
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  David Crane who went on to do a little thing called Friends, and Oliver
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  Platt, who's great actor. And we had people who later went on like
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  Steve Scrovan and David Furry. They later went on to be executive producers in
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  television. Michael Patrick King who did Sex in the City and Two Broke Girls.
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  He was the He was in our improv group. So a lot of
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  great people came out of it. And as as a young man, in
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  the arrogance of youth, I thought I knew everything there was to know about
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  comedy. Of course, I was fascinated by comedy as a kid. I
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  watched all the old Bing, Crosby, Bob Hope, Road Movies, Laurel
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  and Hardy, I'll Know It In Costello. I thought I knew everything there
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  was to know about comedy. But after producing and directing for a couple of
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  years, I thought to myself, Okay, I don't know everything, but
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  I know it's not funny. God damn it. And shortly thereafter I thought
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  to myself, how the frick does this stuff work? Why is something funny
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  on a Thursday no longer funning on a Sunday? Why? Why is a
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  script sometimes the funniest the first time you get some actors around a table to
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  read it, and after that as when you're working on it, the more
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  you work on it, the more you rehearse it, the less funny it
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  becomes. So what was going on? So I started doing experiments. I
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  started I was teaching an improv class to actors, and I started creating and
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  designing improv games and exercises to try to understand what comedy is, why it
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  works, what's happening when it doesn't work, and how can you fix it?
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  And out of that twenty five year exploration came this book, The Hidden
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  Tools of Comedy, and I did that because when I came to Los Angeles,
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  a guy who had been working with Robert McKay of course, right,
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  story, yes, story, And he said to me, he said,
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  you know, you could do for comedy what Robert McKee does for story.
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  And I thought, oh, that's interesting because up to then I had just
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  been a theater director. I had worked with actors, I had taught acting
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  and improv and so then I started to work with writers and do workshops for
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  writers and that kind of snowball and and pretty soon I was being flown out
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  to Singapore, to London, to New York, to Australia, and pretty
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  soon I'm traveling around the world and uh and doing comedy. And it all
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  came out of the fact that I was this frustrated performer who tried to get
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  his class to laugh unsuccessfully. I was, you know, most people are
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  class clowns. I was a failed class clown. And well, yeah,
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  no, no, no, it's interesting that you say that, because you
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  know, I find it that there are people who are innately funny, like
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  they could just you throw them in front of a room and they could just
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  make the crowd laugh. And then there's people who can write funny but you
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  throw them in front of a crowd, they just they just won't be able
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  to do it. And and sometimes and then sometimes you get the magic of
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  both. You get someone who's an amazing writer and I'm amazing performer. But
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  it sounds like you were more of the writing style as opposed to actually actually
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  I was. I was more of the if you get me in a room
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  at a party, put a couple of drinks in me, maybe uh,
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  you know, maybe a cigarette or too, you know, and and I
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  can be pretty funny. But but it was getting up in front of strangers
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  and and writing materials. So what I found was my my skill or or
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  my uh my gift was was not in creating material, but in working on
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  other people's material. And that's that That's why I was a good director.
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  And I became a very and I am a very uh accomplished story analysts and
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  story consultant. So I do a lot of script consulting, uh for writers
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  and and and producers and production companies. You know what I when when when
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  analyzing comedy, because I love comedies. I've been I've followed comedies online and
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  you know, even every every part of the kind of work I do as
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  a director or as a writer. We'll be right back after a word for
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  our sponsor, and now back to the show. I always have some sort
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  of comedic element into It's just it's innate in me. And I've been fortunate
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  or unfortunate to know many stand up comics in my lifetime and worked with many
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  stand up comics over the years, which are generally the saddest people. They
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  are, they are, they are are broken, broken people. Ray Romano
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  once said that if he had been hugged once as a child, he'd been
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  accountant exactly. And they're you know, they're filling they're you know, even
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  more than than actors. Comics are trying to fill uh in an unfillable hole
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  that can never be never be completed. Doesn't doesn't mean that every comic is
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  depressed or has to be depressed, but well adjusted people do not go into
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  stand up comedy, Amen, sir, Amen. So no, what I
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  what I find funny is like growing up in the you know, I'm an
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  eighties kid, and I you know a lot of the comedies from the eighties
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  and even from the seventies, Lamel Brooks, Stuff, Spaceballs, Blazing Saddle,
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  silent movie history, of the world. Some of that stuff still still
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  like Young Frankenstein. You can watch Young Frankenstein today and it holds. It
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  holds. Frankenstein holds up. High Anxiety does not correct. Yeah, there's
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  certain there's certain things that do. So in your opinion, why I think
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  the difference is Young Frankenstein, even though it's full of gags, about is
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  a story about a guy trying to create a relationship and trying to figure out
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  his place in the world, whereas High Anxiety is simply a series of polities
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  on Hitchcock with a disposable story that you you know, if you think about
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  it, you can't really believe in it. You don't really believe in the
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  relationship. So to me, comedy that that sustains and that that that holds
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  up over time, even if it's as silly as Airplane, it's always is,
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  always about characters in crisis, as opposed to Scary Movie four, which
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  has which has as many gags permitted as Airplane does. But you don't care
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  about those characters. You're you're they never asked you to take them seriously,
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  they never ask you to care about them, to empathize with them. So
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  that's to me that's the big difference Airplane is is it's on my top top
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  ten comedies of all time. I mean, it's just just a brilliant thing.
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  And those kind of films, though, they do hold over time sex.
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  You watch even something like It Hot. You watch something like it hot,
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  that's really and that thing it's like it's like a Swiss Swiss clock.
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  It is just hitting boom and a boom and a boom, and it's and
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  it holds. And how old is that? My wasn't from the fifties.
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  Yeah, so that I mean, that movie is over half a you know,
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  a decade on that decade and a half a century old, and and
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  it's still holds. Hey hey, hey, don't be as hey hey hey
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  hey, you know, like okay, no, no, no, but
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  it's still no but like you know, because obviously obviously, but but there's
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  a lot of things that even from the nineties don't hold and from this in
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  early two thousands that were might have made a noise when it came out,
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  but you go back and watch it now you're just like like Borat, which
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  I still find I couldn't believe Borat was made. I went back and watched
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  it a little bit it doesn't. I mean, I know all the jokes
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  coming, so it doesn't hold as much as it did when it first came
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  out, you know, when it did in that kind of comedy, but
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  it was very it's just very interesting what makes things hold and what doesn't make
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  you know, and you're saying, it's more story, my characters, it's
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  character. Uh, it's it's a it's the great combination of character, premise,
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  and theme. So that so that even something as silly as Airplane Again
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  has all those three things. Whereas you know, uh, Deuce Bigelow American
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  gigolo does not uh for me, uh when when people ask me what's my
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  favorite comedy, Uh, I have many favorites. It's like asking what's your
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  favorite kid? But for me, one of my favorite comedies of all time
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  is groundhog Day because I think it's it's an amazing combination of comedy, you
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  know, just pure laughs, great performance by Andy McDowell and Bill Murray.
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  But it's also about about something. It's about what do you do with if
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  you had a million lifetimes, what would you do with it? How would
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  you spend it? How would how how would you spend your day? How
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  should how should you be a mention in the world. And mench is a
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  Yiddish word that means mensch, that means that means a good man, that
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  means a person. Uh and and so so to me, it it hits
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  on all those cylinders, and so I look for a film for me.
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  Comedies have to uh tell something true about being human, has to tell something
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  true about what humans you know, struggle with and deal with in their lives.
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  Has to has to be based on some incredible impossibility or implausibility, so
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  that it doesn't have to be a fantasy like groundhog Day. It can be
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  something as simple as that movie with James Gandalfie and Julie Louis Dreyfuss. Enough
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  said, right, which is just this really cool, you know, simple
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  quiet story about a massuse. You know, it's kind of struggling. She
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  meets a guy, maybe he's going to be her new boyfriend. At the
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  same time, she meets a client who becomes a best friend. And the
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  client is the ex wife of the new boyfriend, who hates James Gandelfini and
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  keeps on saying terrible things about him, which starts to affect her relationship.
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  Now, is that impossible? No, but it's improbable. Yeah, so
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  you take you take an improbable or impossible situation and then you let it develop.
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  That's the only time that you can lie in a narrative, and then
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  you let it develop honestly and organically. So a movie like Big, he
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  has one lie in it. A kid makes a wish on a fortune telling
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  machine. He wakes up, he's the thirty year old man. Could that
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  ever happen? No? But if it did happen, what would happen then?
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  And every step of that movie develops organically and honestly out of that premise.
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  Now, some people might say, yeah, but how does he get
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  a job at a computer at a toy company? And the answer to that
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  is because that's the theme. The theme of Big is what's the connection between
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  adulthood and childhood? So of course you want him to meet some guy who
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  works in that field, in that area. What would be the point of
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  him meeting a guy who who owns a gas station, so he ends up
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  working at a gas station. You could do it, but it has nothing
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  to do with the theme of the movie. So that, to me are
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  those three elements that make a great comedy. Character, premise, and theme.
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  Now, can you talk a little bit about what are the keys to
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  making a good comedic lead character, because there's there's you know, there's normal
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  lead leading and or leading woman, but a comed a good comedic leading character.
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  What are some of the keys for that? I think the I think
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  the main key is the ability to to not only not take yourself seriously,
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  but make fun of yourself. A great example of that is John Hamm who
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  arguably, you know, did a great dramatic job in Magnet, but he's
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  able to make fun of himself. He's able to let himself be seen in
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  a ridiculous or negative light and and not pretend that he's that he's pretending to
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  be that guy. He owns it. So that it's the ability to take
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  the pie in the face and not pretend it's somebody else. But that's that's
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  one more of an actor. But I'm talking about, like on an actual
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  character. On a writing standpoint, what makes a good leading character, comedic
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  leading character in a story yourself yourself or your your your mom or your dad.
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  So, in other words, when you're writing a character, rather than
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  trying to make this character the stupidest guy you've ever seen, or the or
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  the or the clumsiest guy you've ever seen. Uh, just tell the truth
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  about yourself. All all narrative, all fiction is actually an autobiography. You're
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  you're you're writing about the world that you see, your perceptions, your take,
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  and so when you create a character, just make him as human as
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  you are. People like to say, yeah, but my you know,
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  but my my character is is not that smart. And my answer to that
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  is, so what makes you a genius? M We'll be right back after
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  a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. I mean,
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  uh, you know, what I'd like to say is, you know,
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  people are not as smart as they'd like to think they are. On
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  the other hand, they're not as stupid as they as they fear they are.
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  They're just still men, right, Uh you you. My best examples
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  are the classic uh sitcoms All in the Family and Everybody Loves Raymond. Yes,
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  the character of Archie Bunker. How did they come up with that character?
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  Now? It was it was based on a a British sitcom Till Death
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  Us Do Part, in which a bigoted, uh British guy was always always
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  in battle with his liberal son in law. But when Norman Lear wrote that
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  he didn't give two things for this British guy. He wrote his father.
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  He put his father in the in the character of Archie Bunker. Archie Bunker
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  always used to say stifle when he wanted Edith to stop talking. That wasn't
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  an invention. That's what his father said to her. His father would say
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  to his mother's stifle. One of the in one of the first episodes,
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  Archie says to Meathead. He says, uh, you are the laziest white
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  man around. Uh and uh. And Meathead says that's racist. Well then
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  you're the you know, And then he makes something else And it's exactly what
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  his father said to Norman Lear. He just took it from life and the
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  same thing in terms of everybody loves Raymond. You know, Ray Romano's Italian.
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  But Phil Rosenthal, who wrote the pilot and was the executive producer,
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  is Jewish. That mother, it's his mother. That father is his father.
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  Yes, they they He used some of the autobiographical elements from Ray Romano's
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  comedy. But he does live in in in Ray Romano's skin. He doesn't
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  walk in his shoes, he's he lives in his own skin. And so
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  he offered his own family, as the as the grist for that comedy mill.
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  So how do you create a great character? Look in the mirror,
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  and and and and if you if your mirror isn't wide enough, then go
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  home, go home for Christmas or Thanksgiving and look in the mirror. But
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  take a selfie with all those people behind. Look when we get together at
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  family gatherings with our cousins, what are we laughing at. We're laughing at
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  our family. We're laughing at our uncles and ads and and how crazy they
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  are. Just just own it, just share it. The hardest thing in
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  the world is to give up the veneer of respectability and normalcy. Yes,
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  I mean, you know, we all want to appear smart and capable and
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  this and that, and we know deep in our heart of hearts how truly
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  messed up and how broken and how crazy we are, but we want to
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  hide that at all times. In comedy we don't hide anymore. We just
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  we just let it out. And it's being You have to be authentic,
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  is what you're saying, And be vulnerable as a as a writer. Yeah,
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  and as George Burns one said, the secret of success and show business
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  is authenticity. And the minute you learn how to fake it. You've got
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  it made very true, very true. I know, I heard a quote
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  I actually used in one of my podcasts the other days, like your best
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  the best friend you have in Hollywood is someone who stabs you in the face.
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  And I was like, wow, that's that was such a great line.
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  As I had to use it, it was a great, great line.
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  Now, now let me ask you, how does comedy structure differ from
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  dramatic structure? Because we were beaten in with the you know this dramatic structure,
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  but there isn't a lot of talk about how comedic structure is different.
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  Well, when you're talking about structure, you're talking about a three act structure
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  or Michael Hay has his six turning points, it's not what's what's different about
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  the comic hero's journey as it were from the hero's journey. And I use
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  that term only because you have a book called the Comics Comics Hero's Journey,
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  which my friend Chris Fokler wrote the Writer's Journey, and I called him up
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  and I said, Chris, I'm I'm ripping you off, but it's with
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  love. I'm I'm I'm taking your title and I'm making fun of it,
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  but out of love and so so I think one of the differences is when
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  creating When creating a structure in a comedy, like I say, is that
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  you get to make up crap, make up ship once and then you have
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  to play it, play it straight, and play it honestly. So if
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  this weird thing really happened, if I'm in this weird situation, what would
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  happen then? So, so, rather than thinking about a plot, you're
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  thinking about character. You're following the character through the narrative, as opposed to
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  and let's throw this at the character and that at the character. So,
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  in one sense, traumatic structure is a character. You know, heroes have
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  to be thrown obstacles otherwise they'll just win. Right, But think about us,
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  Think about people. We can't even you know, we can't even get
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  out of the house on time, let alone have an optacle thrown at us.
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  You're right, you're like not being able to You get the cup of
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  coffee, and it's nice. There's no one. So I didn't ask for
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  swing. I asked for whole milk. Ah, the whole day's gone,
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  right, So so, so rather than thinking in terms of okay, we've
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  got to throw this obstacle at them. We have to have this villain.
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  What you notice from watching a lot of comedies is that you don't need villains.
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  You don't need antagonists in comedies. Sometimes there are simply because of the
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  structure of the story, but you don't need them. Who's the antagonist in
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  Ground Talk Day, It's himself. He has to he has to evolve from
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  himself. Who's the antagonist in forty year Old Virgin there is none. No
• 26:42
  one's trying to stop him from getting laid right. He has he has a
• 26:47
  breakthrough his own in fact, in fact, everybody has hell bent tried to
• 26:53
  help him. Right. So, so so there's there's a number of daferences
• 27:00
  in a dramatic structure. You have a hero who has all the skills they
• 27:07
  need to do whatever they need to do. Bruce Willis and die Hard.
• 27:11
  No, he walks on glass with no shoes, and he kills all he
• 27:17
  kills like eight dozen bad guys, and and he's and he has wives cracks
• 27:22
  all the way throughout. He's got all the skills in the world. And
• 27:26
  so you have to keep on figuring out how how can I make it harder
• 27:32
  on him? And harder on him, whereas in a comic structure, your
• 27:37
  hero starts off with a minus, a negative. They're broken. They have
• 27:42
  a hole inside them that they don't know, they're not aware of. So
• 27:48
  in the beginning of a comic story, your character thinks that they're fine.
• 27:53
  We and the audience can tell well, that guy Phil Connors and Groundhog Day,
• 27:57
  he's a jerk. That guy Andy in Forty Year Old Virgin, he's
• 28:03
  a dweep. He needs to meet a girl. But they think everything's going
• 28:07
  okay. They don't want to rock the boat. And when something happens to
• 28:12
  rock their boat, the first thing they try to do is they go into
• 28:17
  denial it's not happening, or they or they desperately want to go back to
• 28:21
  the normal world that they think is working for them, that we that we
• 28:25
  see is not. And then what happens over the course of the structure as
• 28:30
  they as these broken people who start their stories off with damaged or absent relationships,
• 28:37
  they gather families around themselves, and so and so everybody, every character,
• 28:47
  every hero character in a comedy, is forming a kind of dysfunctional family
• 28:52
  around themselves to help them through their transformation. As and when they get to
• 28:59
  the A and uh they there's usually a a segment in which there is and
• 29:07
  this. This is similar in dramas, there's an all is lost moment,
• 29:12
  right. But what's what's why that's so important for comedy is that people sometimes
• 29:18
  forget that the most important moment in a comedy is the pain, is the
• 29:25
  loss, is how characters deal with that pain and that loss, as opposed
• 29:30
  to, well let's just make it funny. Well here's another funny thing.
• 29:33
  Well here's another funny thing. Wouldn't it be funny if we do this?
• 29:37
  Or wouldn't it be funny if we do that? So we'll be right back
• 29:41
  after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. So
• 29:48
  part of the part of the difference of the structure is that in the hero's
• 29:55
  journey, the hero goes off into the unknown world and brings back in a
• 30:00
  lickxir that will heal the world right. In the comic hero's journey, the
• 30:07
  comic hero is thrown inadvertently or against their better judgment or against their will,
• 30:15
  into a world they don't want to be in, and as a result have
• 30:19
  to transform and thereby heal themselves to be able to be able to be better,
• 30:26
  able to be a person, a mensch in the world. So they're
• 30:30
  not really changing the world as much as they're changing themselves. So all comedy
• 30:33
  is transformational. That makes amazing sense. Character in a comedy doesn't realize that
• 30:41
  they have to change, but they have to change because the world as they
• 30:45
  knew it is taken away from them. They're they're in ows, or they're
• 30:52
  they're a thirty year old men when they're really twelve years old, or they're
• 30:55
  living the same day over and over again, or they just find themselves in
• 31:00
  a weird situation and what do they have to do. They have to they
• 31:06
  have to become different, even though they don't want to become different, and
• 31:10
  over the course. So another difference in structure is that in a dramatic structure,
• 31:18
  your hero has a goal in the beginning of the movie, I'm going
• 31:19
  to catch the killer, or I'm going to solve this mystery, or I'm
• 31:25
  going you know, what does Luke say in the beginning Star Wars? He
• 31:27
  says, I want to I want to be a pilot, I want to
• 31:30
  join the rebellion. So what happens by the end of Star Wars he saves
• 31:34
  the Rebellion, he's a pilot and he joints to the Belgon. But in
• 31:41
  a comedy, your hero has a short sighted goal. Their initial goal is
• 31:47
  wrongheaded or short sighted. What is what does the kid in Big One?
• 31:53
  He just wants to be big enough to ride on a ride at a carnival
• 31:57
  to be with the girl of his dream. What does Phil Connors want?
• 32:01
  He just wants to get a job. Well, he just wants no in
• 32:06
  the beginning, he just wants to get a better job at a bigger news
• 32:10
  station where he can be a weatherman in a bigger station, a bigger net.
• 32:16
  In forty year old Virgin, what does Andy want? All he wants
• 32:20
  is to be left alone because his days are filled. He's you know,
• 32:23
  he's playing Halo, he's practicing the tuba, he's painting his little figurines.
• 32:31
  He's happy. He thinks he's happy. So, so what happens in a
• 32:37
  comedy is that your characters have a discovered goal, a goal that wasn't apparent
• 32:43
  to them or us in the audience at the beginning of the movie that later
• 32:46
  becomes something they discover as they're transforming. And so midway or half you know,
• 32:54
  three quarters of the way through or forty percent of the way through,
• 32:58
  they discover that they want something else, they want something new, and then
• 33:02
  they put all their attention and focused to try to get that discovered goal.
• 33:08
  That's yes, that's a great, great, great answer, sir, to
• 33:13
  a to a question. Yes, the heroes, the comic serials, Journey,
• 33:16
  it's it's quite, it's it's all there, it's all there, it's
• 33:19
  all in here. It's all in here, available on Amazon, Kindle.
• 33:24
  Do you have the audiobook yet? No? No, I'm uh, even
• 33:30
  though I have a face that's ready. That's great for radio, I'm not
• 33:37
  audio books are. People have asked me about audio books, but what they
• 33:39
  don't realize is that you have to pay. Unless you're James Comey and somebody's
• 33:46
  asked you to make one, you have to pay to make an audio book,
• 33:51
  and then your publisher has to flog it. It's it's not it's it's
• 33:54
  actually it's a thing, not as not as easy as people like to think
• 33:59
  it. Also, having to stay in a studio and read this entire freaking
• 34:04
  thing. Oh man, I'm going through. Yeah, I know, I
• 34:07
  know. He's doing the audio version of your book. I am doing the
• 34:09
  audio version of my book. But I'm a podcaster and I've been podcasting for
• 34:14
  a long time and I have the gear, so I'm doing it. But
• 34:16
  it is it's not like this voice when I'm reading the book. It's not
• 34:21
  like, hey, guys, how you doing. It's not that. It's
• 34:23
  and today. So I have my my audiobook voice, which is you're you're
• 34:28
  like the NPR girls on the SNL sketch today. We have balls today,
• 34:36
  So it's it's similar to that, but not completely but sweaty balls. What
• 34:39
  a great what a great bit. No. I wanted to also, I
• 34:44
  wanted to touch upon a genre of comedy which uh and I just want to
• 34:49
  hear your thoughts on it. Fish out of Water, which is such a
• 34:52
  great comedic world to be thrown into, like the crocodile, Dundee's, Beverly
• 34:57
  Hills Cops, you know those kind of things. Any tips on what what
• 35:02
  writers can do to do because I haven't seen a good Fish out of Water
• 35:07
  comedy in a long time. Honestly, it was the last good one you
• 35:08
  saw. Well, I mean there's there's there's been a dearth of great a
• 35:15
  great film comedy, most almost everything that's really good or a lot of everything
• 35:21
  that's really good is happening on TV or streaming. Yeah, yeah, that's
• 35:25
  very true. Yeah, thereat that Grayson Grayson Frankie's of the world and I
• 35:30
  guess, I guess, you know, spy with Melissa McCarthy, she was
• 35:34
  a fish out of water. That would be a Yeah, that was funny
• 35:37
  as hell to you know for me. For me, we are all fish
• 35:44
  out of water. We're swimming around, it's everything seems great and then we're
• 35:50
  forced as as as Amy Sherman Palladino wrote, we're forced out through a through
• 35:57
  a hole that's smaller than a lady's purse, and we're thrust into a world
• 36:02
  we didn't make, we didn't ask for, and we don't know how the
• 36:07
  hell we got there. We can't do anything. We are fish out of
• 36:10
  water. Our our whole lives are fish out of water. We we like
• 36:15
  to pretend that we're in water, you know, we're swimming in our waters,
• 36:22
  but for the most part, uh, everybody is a tail of a
• 36:27
  fish out of water. In fact, that's why that's why comedians who are
• 36:31
  outsiders in their culture are are so successful. That's why Canadians are so in
• 36:39
  America, Right, yeah, because because they're they're you know, uh perspective,
• 36:45
  can't they can't fight the you know, the encroaching American culture. But
• 36:51
  they're they're kind of outsiders to it. African Americans, Jews, you know,
• 36:55
  all the all the ethnic comedians who came up in the twenties and thirties
• 37:00
  and forties, they're they're in a way outsiders, h and so and so
• 37:07
  in that way, everybody's story is a fish out of water. Very true.
• 37:13
  Now, there's an when you when you when you take a situation,
• 37:15
  a situation in which you tear somebody away from what his normal world is,
• 37:22
  you create a fish out of water. Bill Murray's a fish out of water
• 37:27
  is living the same day over and over again. The character Big is a
• 37:30
  fish out of water. So a fish out of water doesn't mean a nerd
• 37:38
  gets caught in a space capsule and has to be the world's first astronaut.
• 37:44
  Right. I mean, they've actually made that moving. But that's not the
• 37:47
  only way to that's not the only way to tell that story. Got it?
• 37:51
  Got it? So, so you what you're saying, because I'm I'm
• 37:54
  calling it more of like when I say fish out of water. It is
• 37:55
  more like the Beverly Hills Cops. Literally the Troy cop in Beverly Hills completely
• 38:00
  out of out of his place. But you're saying that there's elements of that
• 38:02
  in almost every story in one way, shape or form, almost especially in
• 38:07
  kigs Well. In a comedy, once the characters have experienced what I call
• 38:15
  the WTF moment, they are in fact fish out of water who at first
• 38:22
  desperately try to swim back to h to more familiar, more familiar waters.
• 38:30
  Tropic thunder. You have a bunch of you have a bunch of actors pretending
• 38:36
  to be in Vietnam. The director is literally getting punched out by the studio
• 38:43
  head, and he gets this idea given to him by by Nick Nolty to
• 38:51
  bring everybody out into country to have them experienced what it would be like if
• 38:57
  they were really in country in Vietnam. And two minutes in he gets blown
• 39:01
  up and they're they're stranded and they have to make their way back to the
• 39:07
  extraction point to get back to their hotels. They're automatically fish out of water,
• 39:14
  right. They're forced to be soldiers when they don't want to be soldiers.
• 39:17
  They're actors. And and only one of them, Jay Barrishell, only
• 39:22
  one of them has actually read the manual, so he knows how to read
• 39:27
  a map. So it would be hard for me to think of a movie
• 39:31
  in which your character isn't a fish out of water at some point. That's
• 39:37
  a very good analogy. Very good. Now, romantic comedies, which is
• 39:43
  a whole other sub genre of what we're talking about. That's a whole other
• 39:46
  beast in your opinion, what makes good romantic comedies work? Because when it's
• 39:52
  good, it's really good. We'll be right back after a word from our
• 39:58
  sponsor, and now back to the show. You know when when Harry met
• 40:07
  Sally Sleepless of Seattle, you know Annie Hall Uh? Those I mean,
• 40:13
  when they work, they are just hitting on all pistons. But there's been
• 40:16
  a lot of bad ones too. Well, the I remembering, I can't
• 40:22
  remember the name, but but they all have Catherine Hagel and oh and the
• 40:30
  guy, the guy from three hundred. What's they Yeah, yeah, Jared,
• 40:34
  JARRYD Butler, Jerald Barker, they all they all feature Hathern Hegel and
• 40:38
  Cheryl Butler. And I remember watching this movie and about fifteen minutes in She's
• 40:45
  up a tree spying on him, and I'm thinking, oh, that'll happen
• 40:54
  here. Here's here's the problem with bad romantic comedy movies. They think that
• 41:00
  romantic comedy is about getting two people who are destined to be together, and
• 41:06
  then because they're destined to be together, you have to come up with ways
• 41:10
  of keeping them apart. Let's just come up with ways of keeping them apart.
• 41:15
  But that's not really the problem that people have in relationships. People don't
• 41:20
  have the problem of keeping your apart. The problem is how do you stay
• 41:23
  together and not kill each other? Yes? Absolutely so. The so the
• 41:30
  really good romantic comedies are, you know, I guess I would put Sleepers
• 41:37
  in Seattle as an exception, because that's that's really a romantic comedy in which
• 41:43
  two faded people who are apart figure out a way to get together. Right.
• 41:49
  But but you know, but they start off on opposite ends of the
• 41:52
  country. You don't have to create an artificial obstacle to keep them apart.
• 42:00
  But but movies like When Harry met Sally pretty well, pretty well, you
• 42:06
  know, pretty woman, I I to me, that's not really a great
• 42:10
  example of the genre. I'm I'm thinking more like five hundred days of Summer.
• 42:15
  Yes, uh, of course, Annie Hall even even about a boy,
• 42:23
  which is not a not a romantic comedy insofar as Hugh Grant is going
• 42:29
  to be romantically involved with that boy. But it is a romantic comedy because
• 42:34
  it's about him connecting with somebody else besides himself or not in Hill or not
• 42:40
  Hill. And it's all about not how do you overcome these artificial obstacles,
• 42:49
  it's how do you figure out how to stay together with the obstacles that are
• 42:54
  there? To begin with, your two different human beings, You're you're,
• 42:59
  you're different DNA. Your molecules rotate and vibrate at different frequencies. You know.
• 43:08
  The real problem in relationships is once we figure out how to swipe right
• 43:14
  and swipe left, you know, is then when we meet, how do
• 43:20
  you how do you stay together? I mean because fifty percent of all marriages
• 43:23
  end in divorce. So that's so staying together is not easy. You don't
• 43:28
  have to create an obstacle. You have to figure out how do we stay
• 43:31
  together? How do we figure out how to be one in a pair as
• 43:37
  opposed to the one that we know. So so that's that's what I think
• 43:43
  a good romantic comedy is a good romantic comedy explores how we are in relationships
• 43:50
  and what we do in relationships and why we're so bad at relationships, as
• 43:54
  opposed to, well, these two people are just going to love each other
• 43:58
  unless we put some kind of wall between them. They're just going to break
• 44:00
  through that wall and rut like animals. No, No, they're you know,
• 44:07
  people, people have a hard time being in the same room with each
• 44:10
  other. How do you get past that? I mean when Harry Matzal is
• 44:15
  a really great example of that. Yeah, that whole exploration was summing.
• 44:17
  Nora Afron was probably one of the geniuses in the genre, without question,
• 44:22
  and even not in Hill. It's about it's not they have obstacles, but
• 44:25
  the obstacles are just what pack, what baggage they bring, each each of
• 44:30
  them bring to the to the relationship. Julia Roberts is a movie star,
• 44:34
  he's a book he's a book. Oh, store owner, How are we
• 44:37
  going to make this work? We love each other, but how are we
• 44:38
  going to stay? And it's about how do we stay together? Exactly as
• 44:43
  opposed to how do we get them together? You know, how do we
• 44:46
  keep them apart for ninety minutes right. One of the examples that I use
• 44:52
  in my workshops when people ask me this question, I showed them a couple
• 44:57
  of scenes from Dan in Real Life, which was yeah, Steve Carrell and
• 45:02
  and Dan in real life. This Steve Kerrelso a widower. He's been depressed
• 45:09
  for two years. He meets this wonderful woman, Julie Banosh in a bookstore
• 45:15
  and they chat and they talk, uh, and he goes back to because
• 45:19
  they're having like a family reunion at this you know, unbelievable uh, perfect
• 45:25
  house with the perfect family and the perfect everything. And he goes back and
• 45:30
  and everybody can tell that he's kind of hepped up about something, and they
• 45:34
  say what happened? He says, I might have met a girl. And
• 45:37
  then his brother, who's Dane Cook. And by the way, when you're
• 45:42
  in a movie, Dane Cook is out acting you, you're in trouble.
• 45:45
  I just want to say that. Dane Cook introduces his fiance and it turns
• 45:52
  out to be Julie Banos from the bookstore, and at that moment the movie
• 45:55
  goes wrong. At that moment, Steve Rall lies and says, oh,
• 46:02
  Hi, what's your name. Okay, here's the result of that later on
• 46:09
  in the movie, about forty minutes later, because they're trying to pretend that
• 46:15
  they don't know each other, he ends up fully clothed in a shower pretending
• 46:22
  to take a shower. If your character ends up in a shower fully clothed,
• 46:27
  you've made a wrong turn. People don't do that. It doesn't happen
• 46:32
  in real life. Here's what would have been a better turn for them.
• 46:37
  She comes in the door and he says, well, we actually know each
• 46:43
  other. Well, she's the girl I met in the bookstore, and she
• 46:47
  might be embarrassed for a second, and then he would say, no,
• 46:52
  no, but now I can see Dane cook while you love her because she's
• 46:55
  great. Congratulations my brother. And so the movie comes, how long can
• 47:01
  you fool yourself into thinking that you're happy for your brother as opposed to really
• 47:08
  wanting her for yourself? And that becomes, to my mind much more a
• 47:13
  much more interesting movie than winding up in a shower, fully clothed, getting
• 47:17
  wet. Because wouldn't it be funny if I had to protect, if I
• 47:22
  had to hide? Why is he hiding? Right? So he's talking to
• 47:27
  his brother's fiance. Why is he hiding in a in a shower and somebody
• 47:30
  turns the shower on. And it's interesting because they a lot of times when
• 47:35
  when I feel like when writers and directors, uh, and even actors and
• 47:38
  performers, when they they they don't have that that hold on story structure or
• 47:45
  story or like what you're talking about, or or characters exactly what would be
• 47:50
  believable for the character? Right, They then automatically lean on slapstick. They
• 47:54
  lean they lean on like, how can we get a gag out here?
• 47:58
  Like, Oh, wouldn't it be funny? Wouldn't it be funny? If
• 48:00
  wouldn't it be funny? If there's there's a great story about the making of
• 48:07
  Groundhog Day. And in one of the earlier drafts in Groundhog Day, when
• 48:13
  he wakes up and it's the third day and it's the third time in a
• 48:15
  row, and he's is it really happening? Am I going crazy? And
• 48:20
  in the script they have him shaving his head into a mohawk, destroying the
• 48:27
  room, setting fire to half the room, painting the other room and day
• 48:30
  cloud colors. He goes to sleep six o'clock sunny and share are on the
• 48:35
  radio. He wakes up the same day, and they looked at that.
• 48:38
  They looked at those rushes and Harold raymus and I'm I'm guessing Bill Murray or
• 48:46
  the producers looked at the looked at each other and said, why would he
• 48:52
  cut his hair into a mohawk? Why would he do that? I mean
• 48:57
  visually, visually it's funny, but it doesn't work well, how does it
• 49:00
  help? It doesn't mean this? Why would this character do that? And
• 49:04
  so, at great expense they reshot the scene, and all that happens in
• 49:08
  the scene, if you remember, is he breaks a pencil. He puts
• 49:15
  one down on the floor, and he puts one on the nightstand, and
• 49:19
  he wakes up the next morning and the pencils hole, and he knows it's
• 49:22
  happening, right, And it's so really simple, simple, honest and direct,
• 49:30
  as opposed to wouldn't it be funny if? And from that point on,
• 49:35
  and Steve Tablowski, who has his own podcast, relates that from that
• 49:40
  moment on, the question always was what would they really do? What would
• 49:45
  really happen? In fact, at the end of Groundhog Day, there was
• 49:50
  this whole debate. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 49:59
  And now back to the show because he Andy McDowell wins him in the bachelor
• 50:07
  auction and takes him home, and there was this whole debate on how the
• 50:10
  last scene should go. Did did they have sex? What happened? Did
• 50:15
  you know? Would he wake up like naked? Would he wake up?
• 50:20
  And they they, rather than thinking well, wouldn't it be funny if we
• 50:23
  did this, they put it to a vote. The entire cast and crew
• 50:29
  got to vote on what would happen that night? What would happen with these
• 50:34
  two characters, because they were no longer fictional characters, they were real,
• 50:37
  they were human beings, and what would these two human beings do? And
• 50:40
  that's why uh spoiler uh At the next day, it turns out that all
• 50:45
  he did was to fall asleep, and she, you know, Andy McDowell
• 50:49
  says, he just fell asleep, and he says it was the end of
• 50:52
  a really long day. So really it's brilliants And the song is the song
• 51:00
  is different pop songs. It was, it was. It was great.
• 51:02
  Oh it's such a I gotta watch that movie again. It's so great.
• 51:07
  I do want to also touch upon dark comedies. Yes, specifically one of
• 51:14
  my favorite dark comedies Heathers, which was arguably a comedy, but it is
• 51:22
  it is funny as hell, and you can't make that movie today, Like
• 51:24
  that movie would never in a million years be made today. Why can't.
• 51:30
  I think there's a lot of PC stuff that wouldn't get through, Like I
• 51:32
  mean, like when I saw Blazing just killing just killing, uh the school
• 51:38
  in the school, killings with a gun in the school. I mean,
• 51:42
  there's a lot of stuff that just wouldn't fly today. Well, like when
• 51:45
  I saw Blazing Saddles for the first time, I was like, well,
• 51:49
  there's never there's no way in hell that movie could be made today, Like
• 51:52
  it just it's just not gonna happen. And I saw this years ago,
• 51:54
  but even then, uh, and then Borat showed up, I was like,
• 51:57
  well, okay, apparently everything's out the But but with Heather specifically that
• 52:02
  film, which is a it's a it's a it's a genius piece of work
• 52:07
  in my opinion. How, what are tips that you could give writers on
• 52:10
  how to write good dark comedies, because again, I haven't seen a lot
• 52:14
  of good dark comedies lately either. I mean, when was the last good
• 52:17
  dark comedy you saw? It's a rarity in the genre. Now I'm guessing,
• 52:24
  uh, I'm thinking about things like Wag the Dog years ago. Yeah,
• 52:32
  Doctor Strange Love, of course. I think I think the the key
• 52:40
  I mean, listen, Breaking Bad is a dark comedy in so many ways
• 52:45
  it is it was mad Men is a dark comedy, and TV and TV
• 52:50
  there is more of these exists. The Sopranos is a dark comedy. I
• 52:54
  think. I think the besides the fact that that, you know, it's
• 53:00
  one thing to make a television episode for two point three million dollars, and
• 53:07
  it's another thing to make a movie for forty to two hundred million dollars.
• 53:14
  But I think the thing you have to do is you have to know what
• 53:19
  who you're making fun of and what you're making fun of, and you have
• 53:22
  to punch up, don't punch down. That's why Heathers was so smart.
• 53:28
  It punched so up above the genre of high school right comedy. Well,
• 53:34
  it's it's also it's also you're there, You're you're not making Listen. We
• 53:40
  are all living in a dark comedy, aren't We're all we're all whistling.
• 53:45
  No, but not just today's political situations. We're all whistling past the graveyard.
• 53:50
  That's what all that's what all black comedy is. Oh I guess this
• 53:53
  is also twenty years ago. A fish called Wanda is kind of a dark
• 53:58
  come d Yeah yeah yea uh And And what it all comes down to is,
• 54:04
  as we're whistling past the graveyard, we're trying to make fun of the
• 54:07
  things that terrify us. So, to me, the way to make a
• 54:13
  dark comedy is to focus on how the people are coping with it? How
• 54:19
  are they coping with it? Because in a metaphorical sense, we're all struggling
• 54:24
  in a dark comedy, and the end of all our dark comedies is not
• 54:30
  too funny. You know, none of us, as they say, none
• 54:32
  of us get out of this alive, so or or as Clint Eastwood says
• 54:39
  in The Unforgiven, you know, we all get what's coming to us.
• 54:44
  Yeah so so so. The the idea is that you're you're not pretending when
• 54:51
  you say that there's death and dismemberment out there waiting for you. How are
• 54:57
  you? How do people deal with that? How did they react to that?
• 55:02
  What happens to the living people as they grapple with these issues of death
• 55:09
  and destruction and extinction. So that so that if you're if you're making a
• 55:15
  dark comedy, honestly, you're just finding what's ridiculous and absurd in what in
• 55:23
  what we're doing to deal with the fact that we're living. You know,
• 55:29
  we're on this blue cinder spinning through a void. We don't know where we
• 55:35
  came from, we don't know where we're going to. And yet we're going
• 55:37
  to wake up tomorrow and have frozen yogurt because frozen yogurt at least make it
• 55:44
  a little better. You know, we are the only creature on the planet
• 55:47
  that knows that we will not be here eventually, right, and what do
• 55:51
  we do based on that? Do we all sit home weeping softly writing haiku?
• 55:55
  No, we wake up and we say tie Thai foodie. I'll do
• 56:02
  it today. I think tie tie or or like dark chocolate, dark chocolate.
• 56:09
  Of course, Starbucks. Everyday, Starbucks. I'm going to spend three
• 56:15
  twenty five because Starbucks will make my eventual descent into death and and and entropy.
• 56:22
  You'll make it a little bit more worth. That's great, that's amazing.
• 56:30
  Now, another question I have for you is, and I'm curious to
• 56:34
  hear your answer on this the difference between comedy and funny, because there is
• 56:38
  a difference. There is a major difference. Absolutely. I start a lot
• 56:45
  of my workshops workshops off with a comedy perception test. I give them seven
• 56:50
  different versions of a man slipping on a banana peel, man slipping on a
• 56:53
  banana peel, man in top hat slipping, man slipping on a banana peel
• 56:58
  after you're kicking a dog, then slipping on a banana peel after losing his
• 57:02
  job, blind man slipping on a banana peel, blind man's dog slipping on
• 57:07
  the banana peel, man slipping on a banana peel, and dying. And
• 57:10
  then I asked them, okay, select which one you think is the funniest,
• 57:14
  the least funniest, the most comic, and the least comic. And
• 57:17
  they'll go somebody will go, well, what's the difference, And I'll go,
• 57:21
  excellent question. I'm glad you ask select which one you think is the
• 57:24
  funniest, the least funniest, the most comic, in the least comic.
• 57:28
  I don't answer the question. I just say, select which one you think
• 57:30
  They could be the different, they could be the same. And so then
• 57:34
  we'll start with Okay, how many of you here, whether it's twenty people
• 57:39
  or three hundred people, how many of you here thought a man slipping on
• 57:44
  a banana pele was the funny? Is? How many people thought d man
• 57:45
  slipping on a banana peel after losing his job was the funniest. And so
• 57:50
  we'll go through all of that, and then at the end, I'll go
• 57:53
  and I'll say, so here's the answer to which one of these is the
• 57:59
  funniest. You're all right, You're all correct. You know. It's like
• 58:04
  it's like, uh, don't you feel affirmed. It's like the sixies,
• 58:07
  good bye, y'all, we all got a participation trophy. Because funny is
• 58:15
  subjective completely what you think is funny, it's different from what you think is
• 58:20
  funny. And you're both right. But comedy is not subjective. Comedy is
• 58:25
  the art of telling what's true, and specifically telling what's true about human beings.
• 58:31
  So that so that even if I'm even if I'm creating a moment with
• 58:37
  a character that you are not laughing at, if I'm telling the truth about
• 58:42
  a human being without whitewashing them or without just ignoring some of their defects,
• 58:51
  it's comedy, even though you might not laugh at the end of Doctor Strange
• 58:55
  Love when he's when Slim Pickens is writing the bomb down to what we know
• 59:01
  is our entire extinction. Talk about black comedy. There some people in the
• 59:08
  audience laugh, there's a nervous titter. Many people don't. But it's not
• 59:14
  a dramatic moment as he's going to give right. It's a comedic moment even
• 59:21
  if you're not laughing. So there's a difference between comedy and funny. Funny
• 59:25
  is what makes you laugh, and it's different for everybody. But comedy is
• 59:30
  telling the truth, telling the truthful story of a less than perfect person struggling
• 59:36
  against insurmountable odds without many of the required skills and tools with which to win,
• 59:40
  yet never giving a hope. And because of that, what I try
• 59:46
  to tell writers and directors and performers and executives is don't chase funny. We'll
• 59:54
  be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the
• 1:00:01
  show, because because you're chasing a fraction of the audience. If if it
• 1:00:08
  works, people will laugh. If it doesn't work, people won't laugh,
• 1:00:12
  then then then change it after your previews, but tell the truth, tell
• 1:00:17
  the truth in a truthful way, in an unexpected and yet and yet ultimately,
• 1:00:23
  uh ultimately keep way authentic way. Thanks, and comedy will occur.
• 1:00:34
  Also make yourself laugh. I mean, you're a human being. So if
• 1:00:38
  you're not laughing, right chances, don't try to outthink the audience. Don't
• 1:00:44
  try to think what will they find funny? Well, wouldn't it be funny
• 1:00:46
  if I did this? Use your own sense of humor only guided, only
• 1:00:52
  kind of limited by telling the story honestly and truthfully through character and theme.
• 1:01:00
  I'm going to ask you a deeper question here when you say, and I
• 1:01:02
  think this is a this is a question that will go through all all all
• 1:01:07
  writing, all storytelling, all art in general. Is the ability to be
• 1:01:13
  honest, be authentic, be truthful? And what stops an artist from doing
• 1:01:19
  so? Because as an artist myself and the work that I do, you
• 1:01:23
  know, one of the reasons why this podcast is done as well as it
• 1:01:27
  has over the years is because I'm completely authentic and I ask authentic questions and
• 1:01:31
  I want truth, and that's why people gravitated towards it. What stops the
• 1:01:38
  artists from doing so? Is it just pure fear? Of people making fun
• 1:01:43
  of them, or of you know, things like that. But I've always
• 1:01:45
  found that when I'm honest about my work, whether it be my writing,
• 1:01:50
  whether it be like my new book, which is as honest as I could
• 1:01:53
  possibly be, a film that I direct, when I'm honest about it,
• 1:01:59
  that's when that's when the magic is. But it's scarier. Well, I'm
• 1:02:02
  not sure that there's one answer to that, but I think part of that
• 1:02:06
  answer is is not trusting that your story is good enough, that that you
• 1:02:16
  that your point of view is good enough, worrying that other people won't enjoy
• 1:02:27
  it, worrying that somebody who really knows finances but doesn't know art is telling
• 1:02:35
  you I don't think it's funny. Okay, then then I'll look for somebody
• 1:02:40
  who does. And you won't produce it, or you won't you won't be
• 1:02:44
  my agent. But but but I think it's it comes out of fear is
• 1:02:49
  part of it, But it comes out of the sense that that there's the
• 1:02:52
  sense that I'm not enough for me. A perfect example is the I'm going
• 1:03:00
  to pronounce her name wrong, it's the director who directed Enough said friends with
• 1:03:07
  Money, please give Nicole hole of Sin her I don't know. I think
• 1:03:14
  I'm I think I'm mispronouncing her name. She she uh, she makes she
• 1:03:21
  makes these beautifully crafted, beautiful movies, comic movies, and there's very little
• 1:03:30
  slapstick. There's there's no there's there's no big gags, there's no you know,
• 1:03:37
  there's not a lot of sex scenes. Uh, you know, thirteen
• 1:03:42
  year olds are not drawn to her movies, and yet her movies are wonderful,
• 1:03:46
  but it's it has a kind of a limited viewership so far, and
• 1:03:54
  I think people are worried that if they don't put in the big dick joke,
• 1:04:00
  that that they won't make money, or they or they won't sell or
• 1:04:04
  or or the studio will be disappointed. So there's there's fear, and sometimes
• 1:04:11
  it's a justified fear, because I mean, how many five star restaurants are
• 1:04:16
  there out there, and how many McDonald's are there out there? So if
• 1:04:21
  you're if you're studying to be a chef, should you go to McDonald's and
• 1:04:26
  see what's made them so successful? Different, different model, different everything.
• 1:04:31
  Yeah, I mean you you you have to strive towards your own sense of
• 1:04:38
  excellence and know that that doesn't translate into uh, into an economic model necessarily.
• 1:04:48
  Wow, You've just honestly, you've kind of blown my mind a little
• 1:04:51
  bit because it just there was that light bulb that just went off in my
• 1:04:54
  head when you said, if you're you're if you're trying to be a chef,
• 1:04:58
  if you're training to be a chef, why would you go to McDonald's
• 1:05:00
  to see how Because they're very successful. Yeah, but it's a different kind
• 1:05:04
  of success as opposed to why wouldn't you go to a Gordon Ramsey restaurant and
• 1:05:09
  and see how he's doing it? And why or fine dining restaurant that has
• 1:05:13
  the five stars. Let's not say Gordon Ramsey because I don't think that's fair
• 1:05:15
  enough. It's selled at, it's fair enough. It's one of the few
• 1:05:19
  chefs I know, the wolf Gang exactly. But but I think one of
• 1:05:27
  the issues with with Hollywood is generalist. So many people go to watch studio
• 1:05:32
  movies that are our financial vehicles. They're made for money, They're not made
• 1:05:39
  particularly for story. Every once in a while, someone sticks sneaks in a
• 1:05:43
  story. Every once in a while you get one of these, you know,
• 1:05:46
  that has money behind it, has big stars, and has a story
• 1:05:49
  but they're becoming rare and rare, much rare. But you know what the
• 1:05:54
  studio system does so well is taking stories that already work and visualizing them.
• 1:06:00
  That's why, that's why the Marvel movies do so well, because those stories
• 1:06:06
  were great when they were ten cent comics, and these great craftsmen and technicians
• 1:06:15
  and great actors visualize them for us. But the story's already there, the
• 1:06:20
  characters are already there. And to give them credit, they don't screw the
• 1:06:27
  characters up. The Marvel characters were screwed up human beings to start off with
• 1:06:31
  when they were ten and twelve cent comics, and they're still screwed up human
• 1:06:34
  beings. All the movies did was honor that, as opposed to the DC
• 1:06:42
  movies, in which they can't figure out. The stories came out of We're
• 1:06:47
  we do right. We're the Justice League. We do right because that's the
• 1:06:51
  right thing to do. Guys, not enough really really, and so they
• 1:06:58
  kind of er veer between I mean, let's go as dark as possible and
• 1:07:01
  let's or let's have lots of wise cracks. They still have. I haven't
• 1:07:05
  seen Aquaman. I understand Aquaman is a little bit better than well, wonder
• 1:07:10
  Woman was wonderful. I thought wonder Woman was wonderful. Wonder Woman was good
• 1:07:14
  from the DC world, that is, from the from the DC world.
• 1:07:17
  I mean it was it was female empowerment, and it was uh in a
• 1:07:23
  in a period, Uh that wasn't the modern day. So I think they
• 1:07:28
  they they kind of solved it, uh in a good way. But you
• 1:07:32
  know, I think what what what movies do so well is take existing stories
• 1:07:40
  and and help us see them for who they are, like Lord of the
• 1:07:44
  Rings. Whereas if you want to see a really good movie, take a
• 1:07:46
  look at an Independence, see what's coming out of Sun Dance. See see
• 1:07:50
  what somebody has made that wasn't made through the studio system, but made because
• 1:07:57
  this is the story I want to tell, like eighth grade. Yeah,
• 1:08:00
  I haven't seen it yet, but I hear it's amazing. It's so good
• 1:08:04
  and and it obviously or maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm totally wrong about this,
• 1:08:10
  but but to me, it obviously wasn't made. After a story conference
• 1:08:15
  at Sowning, No, I'm almost positive it wasn't. Not, says One
• 1:08:19
  of your books is called The Hidden Tools of Comedy. Can you give us
• 1:08:23
  a few hidden tools. Well, I've already given you a couple. We
• 1:08:28
  start off with the paradigm what I call the comedy equation. Comedy's about an
• 1:08:33
  ordinary guy or gal. Jackie Gleeson used to call them a moke, struggling
• 1:08:39
  against insurmountable odds without many of the required skills and tools with which to win,
• 1:08:44
  yet never giving up hope. Now from that paradigm we draw usable practical
• 1:08:50
  tools. The tool of winning. Comedy gives your characters the permission to win.
• 1:08:57
  Not that they're trying to be funny, but they're trying to win.
• 1:09:00
  I do. I do an exercise in my in my workshop, I ask
• 1:09:04
  three people who I make sure are not performers, and I tell them that
• 1:09:11
  they're lawyers and the most important court case in the in their careers began in
• 1:09:15
  a courthouse four blocks away, five minutes ago. I tell them, I
• 1:09:21
  say to them, what would what should you do to solve the problem?
• 1:09:27
  And they are people in the audience say they should run there. And I'll
• 1:09:31
  ask them what would actors do? And they say actors would talk about it,
• 1:09:34
  they'd create dialogue. So then I tell them, okay, for muscle
• 1:09:39
  memory, just run out the door. You're three lawyers, you're five minutes
• 1:09:43
  late, four blocks away, run out the door. So they run out
• 1:09:45
  the door. Then I bring them each an individually and I say, okay,
• 1:09:48
  here's the crazy thing. For some crazy reason, we'll be right back
• 1:09:54
  after a word from our sponsor, out back to the show. You have
• 1:10:02
  to be the second person out the door. Don't tell the others. I'll
• 1:10:05
  bring each of the three in. I'll tell them you have to be second.
• 1:10:10
  I'll bring them all in. Now, these are not performers. I
• 1:10:14
  bring them all in and I say, most important case of the three lawyers.
• 1:10:19
  Most important case happened starting five minutes ago, started five minutes ago.
• 1:10:24
  And a court has four blocks away go and what will happen is they'll rush
• 1:10:28
  the door and then begin this odd little dance of trying to trying to get
• 1:10:35
  through the door. And occasionally somebody will figure it out, but most often
• 1:10:40
  I'll have to side coach and say I give you the permission to do what
• 1:10:44
  you need to do in order to win. And what I usually do is
• 1:10:47
  I usually pick two big guys and a tiny girl, and at some point
• 1:10:54
  one of the big guys gets the idea, oh, I don't have to
• 1:10:57
  be a gentleman picks up the girl throws her outside leaves so he can be
• 1:11:00
  second. It's an experiment. It doesn't work the same way all the time.
• 1:11:05
  It doesn't work all the time, but invariably the audience laughs. And
• 1:11:10
  I'll bring the people back out and I'll say who directed that? And they'll
• 1:11:15
  say no one. And I'll say to the audience, I'm sorry, directors,
• 1:11:17
  I'm sorry, we don't need directors. And I'll say who wrote that
• 1:11:21
  scene and they'll say no one. Oh, they'll say, you did,
• 1:11:25
  mister Kaplan, Because now I said, I didn't write it. I just
• 1:11:27
  set up this situation. What happened at the door, that was you.
• 1:11:31
  And so I'll say, you don't need you don't need directors, you don't
• 1:11:35
  even need writers. You just need characters who are given the permission to do
• 1:11:41
  what they need to do in order to win. Because when they were doing
• 1:11:44
  that weird dance at the door, they weren't trying to be funny. They
• 1:11:47
  were simply trying to solve a problem, an unsolvable problem, as it turns
• 1:11:53
  out, but simply trying to solve a problem. So, rather than trying
• 1:11:57
  to be funny, characters are given the permission to do what they need to
• 1:12:00
  do in order to win, which is why when Woody Allen is arguing with
• 1:12:04
  some guy at a movie on the line at a movie, he's able to
• 1:12:10
  drag Marshall mcluan out from behind a poster in any hall to win his arguments.
• 1:12:15
  Brilliant. That was such a brilliant movie. I love that be caught
• 1:12:17
  now. Although now that I find out that Woody Allen is really a creepy
• 1:12:23
  covert, you know that's unfortunately not all the best people are are great artists,
• 1:12:30
  and he one of the not great people, but but so so winning.
• 1:12:35
  The idea that comedy gives you the permission to win is one of the
• 1:12:40
  tools. Non hero, not not comic. He're not a fool, not
• 1:12:45
  a ridiculous person, but simply somebody who lacks, if not all, the
• 1:12:48
  essential skills and tools with which to win. Straight line wavy line. Most
• 1:12:54
  people think of comedians comics is funny people, and then they're the straight man,
• 1:13:00
  the straight men who kind of just set the funny people up to do
• 1:13:03
  something funny. And what the tool of straight line wavy line does is it
• 1:13:11
  recognizes the fact that that's a false dynamic. John Police one said that when
• 1:13:15
  they started Monty Python, they thought that comedy was watching somebody do something silly.
• 1:13:20
  They later came to realize that comedy is watching somebody watch somebody do something
• 1:13:27
  silly, watching somebody watch somebody do something silly. So that in a in
• 1:13:34
  a comic dynamic, you have somebody who's blind to a problem or creating the
• 1:13:42
  problem, like Cramer, and somebody who's struggling with the problem, but because
• 1:13:46
  they were a non hero, they can't solve the problem, like Jerry.
• 1:13:49
  So if you look at comedy, if you look at sitcoms, you're always
• 1:13:54
  seeing a straight line, somebody who's kind of blind to who they are or
• 1:14:00
  what they're doing, like Joey, It's friends, and somebody who kind of
• 1:14:04
  notices it but doesn't quite know exactly how to deal with it or what to
• 1:14:08
  say to it, like Chandler Uh. And so you have this dynamic,
• 1:14:15
  and and the dynamic can switch because it's not about character, it's about focus.
• 1:14:20
  Who is the story about at that moment, who's in focus? And
• 1:14:25
  so so those are some of the tools in the hidden tools of comedy,
• 1:14:29
  along with art types, comic premise, metaphoric relationships two hundred and eighty pages
• 1:14:35
  of genius and so obviously obviously sir, now you have mentioned it a few
• 1:14:40
  times, but let's talk about you two books that you have out, the
• 1:14:43
  Hidden two book comedy. You mean this book, yes, and this book?
• 1:14:47
  Yes, those two books. Yes, you should mention that tell us
• 1:14:51
  about you. Your your older book is uh. For the book I first
• 1:14:57
  came out was The Hidden Tools of Comedy, which is done very very well.
• 1:15:00
  So tell us a little bit about that. Well, like I said,
• 1:15:03
  it's it basically talks about the things that are not taught at AFI or
• 1:15:10
  USC or NYU because people still think comedy as well, let's do something funny,
• 1:15:16
  let's do some gags, and it talks about the things that actually create,
• 1:15:24
  increase or decrease the comedic elements in a scene and what you can do.
• 1:15:30
  Because it's not about well, you're just born funny. It's about if
• 1:15:33
  you give a character skills, if you have them be a hero, you're
• 1:15:38
  creating a dramatic moment. And a skill could be something as simple as awareness
• 1:15:45
  kind of soone a character is aware of his situation that could depress him,
• 1:15:49
  that's a dramatic moment. But if a character isn't aware it is kind of
• 1:15:55
  blithely just going along, not realizing how screwed up they are and how hopefully
• 1:16:00
  their situation is. That's a comedic moment. So you can actually increase or
• 1:16:03
  decrease the comedic elements in a scene or the dramatic elements in a scene simply
• 1:16:09
  by giving or taking away skills for your character. Got it. And then
• 1:16:14
  now your new book, The Comedic Hero's Journey, we've kind of touched upon
• 1:16:16
  a lot of those elements that that basically, uh it kind of is a
• 1:16:21
  riff on the on the hero's journey uh and talks about so what happens in
• 1:16:28
  the comic hero's journey, what what differences are there, what tweaks you have
• 1:16:32
  to make, and how is that journey different, either either in a great
• 1:16:38
  way or in a subtle way, different from the dramatic hero's journey. And
• 1:16:43
  it's it's as I say, it's serious story structure or fabulously funny films.
• 1:16:49
  Now, I also heard you had a few works apps coming up. Yeah.
• 1:16:55
  One of the things I do is I go around uh and do these
• 1:17:00
  for the most part, their two day workshops, and you can find out
• 1:17:04
  all about them on my website Kaplan Comedy dot com. That's Kaplan with a
• 1:17:10
  K comedy with a C, because if I spelled comedy with a K,
• 1:17:13
  that would make me a hack. So it's got to be Kaplin Comedy all
• 1:17:16
  one word dot com. So we're doing one in Belgium in Brussels on February
• 1:17:25
  sixteenth and seventeen. I don't speak Belgium, but they speak comedy, so
• 1:17:30
  I think we'll be okay. And then I'm in Los Angeles in March March
• 1:17:35
  two and third, and I'm in London on April twenty seventh and twenty eighth,
• 1:17:41
  and I think I might be going to New York and San Francisco later
• 1:17:45
  in the year, but those still have to be worked out. That's that's
• 1:17:47
  amazing. And because you've mentioned Belgium on Brussels, what how does comedy Because
• 1:17:55
  comedy doesn't travel well. What's funny in one country is not funny in another?
• 1:18:00
  It does. But if you but funny doesn't, but comedy does,
• 1:18:03
  right it You know what? The language may may may be different. I've
• 1:18:11
  I've taught these workshops in Singapore, in Melbourne, in Paris, in Kiev.
• 1:18:17
  The language may be different, culture, customs, government may be different,
• 1:18:23
  but people are the same. We all we're all born, we all
• 1:18:28
  go to school. We all have secrets from our parents. Our parents have
• 1:18:32
  secrets from us. We all want to fall in love or or or get
• 1:18:38
  as much love however we define it anyway. We can. We have relationships
• 1:18:44
  or married. We have kids. Uh, we have parents, we have
• 1:18:47
  uncles. Human beings are the same all over the world, even though we
• 1:18:51
  might use different words for different objects, even though some customs might be different.
• 1:19:00
  But but people are the people stay the same. And what I've noticed
• 1:19:02
  going around the world is that I can show a clip from an American movie
• 1:19:08
  or or a American television show, and people laugh because they understand what's happening
• 1:19:14
  to those people in that situation, and and and so so there's people all
• 1:19:19
  over the world can laugh at groundhog Day, even if they don't speak English
• 1:19:24
  as the first language. Fair enough, And I'm gonna ask you a few
• 1:19:27
  questions. Last questions I ask all my guests. Okay, what advice?
• 1:19:30
  I'm a libra. I was in colors blue, I was a long walks
• 1:19:34
  on the beach. I was born a small child. Uh, I was
• 1:19:39
  born at a very early age. That's great. That was Actually, that's
• 1:19:43
  a great lie. That's a great lie. That's that's my that's from my
• 1:19:48
  palm reading bit. I see you were born at a very early age.
• 1:19:55
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to
• 1:20:01
  the show. I have to tell you, I will steal that for parties.
• 1:20:05
  Okay. Now, what advice would you give a screenwriter or a comedic
• 1:20:12
  writer wanted to break into the business today? Okay, I would recommend three
• 1:20:17
  things by adverse buy your books. Obviously that's actually not my recommendation, but
• 1:20:21
  thank you for me, thank you for putting that out there. I would
• 1:20:25
  recommend three things. One, take an improv class, even if you don't
• 1:20:30
  want to perform, even if you're not looking to be on SNL or part
• 1:20:34
  of UCB. Comedy is an actor centric art form. It's about the character.
• 1:20:42
  So the some of the best training you can get is to be is
• 1:20:45
  to be in a class where you pretend you practice being a character, seeing
• 1:20:50
  through a character's eyes, hearing through a character's ears. So that's the first
• 1:20:56
  thing. The second thing I would say is that as you're writing, and
• 1:20:59
  we're talking about screenwriters, right, yes, hear your stuff right out loud.
• 1:21:04
  You cannot figure out what's going what's happening, just based upon you and
• 1:21:10
  your screen or you and your your legal pad. You have to get people
• 1:21:15
  in a room, half of them reading parts, half of them just listening
• 1:21:19
  tape it because you're gonna go into a coma at certain parts where it's not
• 1:21:25
  working, and listen to what is happening when human beings say your words in
• 1:21:31
  context. I also I also suggest that you have wine and cheese, much
• 1:21:40
  wine, and plenty of wine, plenty of plenty of wine. But you
• 1:21:43
  have to you have to hear it read out loud, because comedy doesn't exist
• 1:21:46
  in your head or in a vacuum. And the third thing is is that
• 1:21:51
  no one ever got a job because they have they have a great resume with
• 1:21:58
  a great font. It's it's all about who you know and who you have
• 1:22:04
  gone to college with or went to summer camp with. So one of the
• 1:22:10
  things I tell people to do is is all the stories that they've heard about
• 1:22:15
  about some guy who who went to a dentist and the dentist also did the
• 1:22:20
  teeth of Jim Carrey and they got a s Those things are obnoxious, but
• 1:22:26
  something like that does happen. So that so that what you need to do
• 1:22:30
  is you need to make a list of everybody who you've ever known, or
• 1:22:33
  might have known, or student back of a ligne at Starbucks, and you
• 1:22:38
  want to make sure that you maintain those connections. And you want to you
• 1:22:43
  want to know that. You have no idea where your next job is coming
• 1:22:46
  from. So your job is to be out there in the universe. Say
• 1:22:50
  yes to the universe. I don't want to go to the screen and go
• 1:22:54
  you don't know who you're going to mean. I don't want to take this
• 1:22:56
  class take it. You don't know who you're going to mean, because your
• 1:22:59
  next job is going to come from somebody who knows you. And that's not
• 1:23:03
  networking, just networking for networking sake, Like you know that when you're at
• 1:23:08
  a party and somebody's looking over your shoulder to see who else came in the
• 1:23:11
  door, because you don't have any idea who's going to help you. And
• 1:23:17
  the best way to figure out who's going to help you is for you to
• 1:23:19
  help other people. Be on a film crew, ye help out, be
• 1:23:27
  part of a reading. Uh you know, d hold a microphone, hold
• 1:23:32
  a boom and see where it leads you because there are a million ways to
• 1:23:40
  break into the business, but you can't break into the business. Sitting at
• 1:23:43
  home wondering how am I going to break into the business. I was talking
• 1:23:47
  to H. Daniel Knoff, the creator of Carnival and and he said,
• 1:23:54
  it's like ours the only business that has larceny in it. How do you
• 1:23:57
  break into the business? How do you? And he's like, it's true,
• 1:24:00
  like you know, like how do I break into the cookie business?
• 1:24:01
  Like no one says that people always want to break in or you know,
• 1:24:08
  how do I break through the door? It's always larceny involved in breaking into
• 1:24:12
  this business. Well, I'll say, I'll say there's one other thing there
• 1:24:16
  there. It's really simple, But there are and there are only two rules.
• 1:24:23
  Rule one. Number one, be brilliant, yes, Rule number two.
• 1:24:29
  Let people know about it. That's it, man, that's it.
• 1:24:33
  If you've got a story and you've written a script and nobody wants it,
• 1:24:40
  turn it into a novel, make it a make it a podcast, write
• 1:24:44
  a blog, get it out there. Let people know about it, because
• 1:24:46
  you don't know what's going to happen. I had a client, a guy
• 1:24:53
  I worked with on a trip to Australia through through Screen Australia and Film Victoria.
• 1:25:00
  And he wrote this wonderful script about a guy on the Asperger's Spectrum who
• 1:25:05
  was who came up with a way of getting a relationship for himself, and
• 1:25:11
  he wrote the script. I thought the script was funny. Nobody wanted it,
• 1:25:15
  especially Australia is the kind of place where you get government funding, and
• 1:25:20
  the government doesn't want to fund silly comedies. They want to fund serious works
• 1:25:26
  about itinerant, inarticulate sheep herders who are on a on a lighthouse in Tasmania,
• 1:25:32
  who haven't talked to anybody in ten years, that they'll fund. Yes,
• 1:25:35
  yes, yes, so I So what he did was he said,
• 1:25:41
  f this. I think it's a great story. I'm not getting anywhere.
• 1:25:45
  I'm not a young I'm not a spring chicken. I've I've made the bad
• 1:25:50
  decision to be over fifty. So I'm going to write this as a novel.
• 1:25:56
  So he wrote it as a novel. It got published and it optioned
• 1:26:00
  by the same people who turned down his screenplay, and as part of his
• 1:26:03
  option he gets to write the first screenplay. So so, so there's there's
• 1:26:10
  more than one way to skin a cat. When I was doing a project
• 1:26:14
  for HBO, they had this performance space in Hollywood, I think now it's
• 1:26:19
  gotten taken over by Comedy Central, and we we had this one actress who
• 1:26:25
  did did a show and she was pretty funny, but she for some reason,
• 1:26:30
  she wasn't getting any jobs. So she wrote a one person show for
• 1:26:33
  herself. Uh. And she did it at the at the HBO workspace,
• 1:26:39
  which no longer is there, so don't don't ask me to to get you
• 1:26:44
  an into the HBO because they're no longer there. And we did it and
• 1:26:49
  people from HBO came to see it, and people laughed it, they loved
• 1:26:53
  it. Nothing happened. She didn't just say, well, I guess I'll
• 1:26:57
  just have to work at Starbucks now for the rest of my life. She
• 1:27:00
  rented a theater on Melrose and ran it one night a week for like a
• 1:27:05
  year, and she went to the kind of groups that she thought would come
• 1:27:11
  to see it. She sold tickets one night a woman named Rita Wilson King.
• 1:27:16
  Rita Wilson is Tom hanks wife. And because Rita Wilson was intrigued by
• 1:27:23
  her title, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and she saw it, and
• 1:27:29
  she saw near Vardallas do this one person show, and she brought Tom Hanks
• 1:27:33
  the next week and Playtone made it and it was the highest grossing independent romantic
• 1:27:40
  comedy ever made. Because she had something brilliant, she wouldn't take no for
• 1:27:45
  an answer. She didn't just send the script, you know, to the
• 1:27:51
  same person over and over again. She said, if they don't want this,
• 1:27:55
  I'm just going to keep showing it till somebody comes along who does want
• 1:27:58
  it. So so brill be brilliant, let people know about it. And
• 1:28:06
  and while you're not taking no for an answer, figure out a way to
• 1:28:10
  not live on your credit card exactly. Please, that'll shit come back.
• 1:28:15
  That'll shit will come back to bite you in the ass. Oh, and
• 1:28:16
  then some, my friend, and then some. Now, can you tell
• 1:28:19
  me what book had the biggest impact in your life a career besides your owns?
• 1:28:24
  Obviously? Wow, I guess, uh, I guess I would.
• 1:28:39
  I would have to say Lord of the Rings. Okay, I read that.
• 1:28:43
  I read that when I was a kid, and it took me to
• 1:28:45
  a different world and took me to a different world when I was I was
• 1:28:51
  not a very happy kid, and it's it showed me the power of the
• 1:28:56
  amount of imagination. So I knew. I knew, even if my world
• 1:29:00
  wasn't working out for me, a world in my imagination could. So maybe
• 1:29:05
  that's what Maybe that's where I should go. Now, what is the lesson
• 1:29:10
  that took you the longest to learn, whether in the film business or in
• 1:29:13
  life. Yeah, you can't force funny, Amen, not, it's funny.
• 1:29:30
  Now. What are three of your favorite films of all time? H
• 1:29:36
  Godfather, ground Hog, Groundhog's Day, and I have a three way tie
• 1:29:48
  between It's a wonderful life. Meet me in Saint Louis. We'll be right
• 1:29:57
  back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.
• 1:30:04
  And uh, oh, god damn it, Gene Kelly dancing in the Rain,
• 1:30:14
  Okay, singing in the rain, Singing in the ring, singing in
• 1:30:16
  the rain, and then uh, just for you sting. Oh, such
• 1:30:26
  a great film. I love this thing. You see. That's a movie
• 1:30:29
  that holds, that holds still to this day. It's such a start.
• 1:30:32
  It starts with loss. Yeah, no, it starts it starts to death.
• 1:30:36
  Ye. And there's death. There's death near the near the end,
• 1:30:40
  there's sadness and death now and I normally don't ask this question, but I
• 1:30:44
  have to ask you three of your favorite screenplays of all time that when you
• 1:30:48
  wrote, you know, comedic stuff that you read and you're like, Jesus,
• 1:30:51
  this is good groundhog Day, but the Finnish script not. Not uh
• 1:31:00
  right, unfortunately, Annie Hall. Yes, I look, I know,
• 1:31:04
  Look, we all apologize for it. It is still a brilliant He ruined
• 1:31:08
  it, he really he ruined it, but it's still a brilliant piece of
• 1:31:12
  art, regardless of the artist. And uh, every Billy Wilder screenplay ever
• 1:31:23
  written, pretty much absolutely anyone listening. If you guys don't not know who
• 1:31:28
  Billy Wilder is, please do yourself a favor. How could you not know
• 1:31:30
  who Billy Wallder? Know? There's look, there's a lot of Look,
• 1:31:34
  there's a lot of young uns listening or watching this. Please go watch something
• 1:31:40
  like a Hot Hot Sun Sat Boulevard. Please please go go go read a
• 1:31:47
  bit. Now, where can people find you and your work? Sir?
• 1:31:50
  They can find me at Kaplan Comedy dot com Uh that my Twitter handle is
• 1:32:00
  sk comedy. Uh. You can find me on Facebook Kaplan Comedy, or
• 1:32:05
  you can friend me. Uh. Now, I have three thousand odd and
• 1:32:10
  and they are they are odd. When I have three thousand odd friends,
• 1:32:15
  your Facebook cuts you off in five thousand, so another two thousand come in.
• 1:32:19
  I'm stuck. On the other hand, Facebook will steal all your information
• 1:32:24
  and sell it to other people, so maybe don't fair enough. Uh and
• 1:32:30
  uh and all and my books are on Amazon, although although you can you
• 1:32:36
  can if you're in the United States, you can order it directly from me
• 1:32:40
  and get an autograph copy. There you go, Steve, which which in
• 1:32:45
  some markets increases value and others decreases value. Ste If, it has been
• 1:32:50
  an epic, epic interview and conversation, my friend. Thank you so much
• 1:32:55
  for for dropping some knowledge bombs on the on the tribe today. And anybody
• 1:33:00
  ever told you that you remind me of Lynden Manuel Miranda. No, that's
• 1:33:03
  the first one. I appreciate that, thank you very much. But I've
• 1:33:06
  not I've never once gotten Lynn murd run if if you if you've spoken Cockney
• 1:33:13
  a little bit, I think Harry Poppins return, I listen. I'm a
• 1:33:16
  very I'm a big fan of Hamilton, so take that. I'd take that
• 1:33:19
  with a great, great compliment. Thank you, sir, A pleasure talking
• 1:33:23
  to you, sir. Thank you same here. I want to thank Steve
• 1:33:28
  for coming on and dropping some major major comedy knowledge bombs on the tribe today
• 1:33:32
  and I highly highly recommend his two books, The Hidden Tools of Comedy and
• 1:33:36
  The Comic Hero's Journey. If you want to get links to anything we talked
• 1:33:40
  about in this episode, head over to the show notes at any film muscle
• 1:33:44
  dot com. Forward slash seven seven. Thank you again so much for listening
• 1:33:47
  to guys as always, keep that also going, keep that dream alive,
• 1:33:50
  Stay safe out there, and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening
• 1:33:54
  to the Indie Film Hustle podcast at Indie film hustle dot com. That's I
• 1:33:59
  N D I E F I L M h U S T l E dot com.