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06/13/2008: A Call to Comedic Action


UPDATE: I have been informed (by two different Friends of the Blog), that the most prominent source for the "state your name" joke referenced here is the movie Animal House. So now we know!

Have you seen it yet? SciFi is running the Battlestar Galactica mid-season finale on their web site all day today. And of course it will be broadcast tonight. Tune in, okay? You need to see this. Seriously, one of the best hours of television ever. I cannot even articulate how proud I am to be involved with this show.

This episode was presented Wednesday night here in LA at a huge domed movie theater. It was incredible to see it on the big screen. There's nothing like hearing the reactions of a crowd moment-by-moment. You really can tell what's working and what isn't. (It all worked.)

Before the screening began, Ron Moore got up and made everyone promise to keep the secrets they were about to learn a full two days before the official broadcast. He had everyone raise their right hands and repeat an oath beginning, "I, state your name...". So everyone, of course, said, "I, state your name..." As he knew they would. It was a sweet moment of shared smart-assery, as Ron knew it would be.

It made me think about some things, that moment. How often does a crowd get a chance to be funny? Being funny as a group with no prior planning is ridiculously difficult. Perhaps a crowd, asked to repeat after their host, might refuse to stop repeating, but that's more bratty than funny. Perhaps a group of close friends, out for a nice dinner, might spontaneously mimic the gait of the host at a restaurant after he says "walk this way," but that's a much smaller group. (And impolite, especially in a nice restaurant. I can't recommend it.) The only other example of large-group whimsy that I can think of is The Wave, which is impressive, but hardly a reliable laugh-getter.

There's that trick of saying to a crowd, "Everyone turn to the person on your right..." but that's about making a crowd be foolish, not letting a crowd be funny.

So why does the "state your name" joke work? Because the audience knows the bit. I am not coming up with where exactly I've seen the bit before, but I certainly have. Taxi, perhaps? Perfect Strangers? Shows with someone with an amusingly incomplete mastery of English could easily use this joke. It would be a non-self-aware version of the joke, of course, in which the "swearer" makes a mistake. But, of course, it would also work on MASH or Cheers or even Welcome Back Kotter, in something more like its recent use: I mean, someone addressing a group of smart-alecks.

The group of smart-alecks is a great comedy configuration. The Marx Brothers, of course, are a spectacular example of this. There is something irresistible about scripted bits that capture the spirit I observed in that theater -- the feeling of more than one person simultaneously seizing on a comedic moment. If you've got a group like that in your script, playing around with this concept is definitely worth your while.

Anyway, in whatever form, and from whatever context, the audience knew the bit. It's so familiar, in fact, that it has crossed the line from "clam" to "classic."

Could this bit be on its way to this status?

MAN WITH MICROPHONE
Can you hear me?

AUDIENCE
WHAT?

It would work, I'm telling you. Now we just have to get the general populace organized.

Watch BATTLESTAR GALACTICA!

Lunch: leftover Koo Koo Roo chicken and a yam. Disappointingly tasteless yam. Sometimes you get a boring one.