Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 299: Hidden Tools of Comedy for Screenwriters with Steve Kaplan

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BPS 299: Hidden Tools of Comedy for Screenwriters with Steve Kaplan · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

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