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I think you should listen to an episode of This American Life called Tough Room that includes a fascinating visit to the offices of The Onion, including an actual
session in the room, and lots of discussion about which jokes work and which don’t.

I recommend that you listen to this segment. This room feels very similar to some comedy rooms I’ve been in and very different from others, but even if you’re just sitting at home writing jokes to put into your spec script, I think you’ll find it useful for jump-starting your own thinking about what makes a joke work.

I particularly enjoy the discussion of the joke “Thirsty Mayor Drinks Town’s Entire Water Supply.” The hypothesis is that the joke works because it’s actually not randomly silly, but is instead a silly version of a story about misappropriation of public resources. The joke works because it means something.

There is also a wonderful discussion of why the proposed headline, “Nation’s Girlfriends Complain about Lack Of Quality Time,” feels tired, while “Local Man Complains Girlfriend Always Wanting to do Stuff” works, even though they appear to be the same joke.

The answer is that the first version is nothing more than a very old observation about women’s demands while in relationships, while the second version is a less-used joke about a very specific kind of man who prefers not to go out and engage in activities. Yes. That sounds like the right analysis to me — I love it when logic agrees with instinct.

Follow the link. You’ll get room experience just from listening.

Lunch: the “Mexican Scramble” at Jerry’s Deli

I made reference, in my most recent post, to a joke feeling “written.” This can happen when a joke relies on very specific wording or a specific structure. The reason that Senator Clinton’s joke “that’s not change you can believe in, that’s change you can Xerox” fell so very flat during last night’s presidential debate had a lot to do with its “written”-sounding parallel structure. This was particularly deadly in a joke whose point was supposed to be to praise spontaneity.

The reason that jokes like this are so tempting is often because when they’re pitched in a room, they aren’t written. Yet. Someone thinks it up and says it out loud, and in that moment it feels spontaneous because it is. And it’s hilarious. In fact, the more structured and elaborate and perfect it is, the more hilarious it is when someone just opens their mouth and produces it. Problem is, it’s only spontaneous once. Every single time it’s said after that, it’s going to sound canned, unless it’s delivered by a very skilled actor who can somehow make you believe they’re finding it on the fly. The classic Friends line: “You’re over me? When were you under me?” might’ve sounded written except that it was so perfectly delivered. From Frasier, Niles’ line “My brother is too kind – he was already eminent while my eminence was merely imminent,” sounds completely written but was delivered with the joy of a pedant realizing he’s just come up with a good one.

Traditional sitcoms provide a natural habitat for this kind of joke. When married with character, they can be the kind of sharp precise jokes — hard jokes — that work perfectly in that heightened world. I’m not putting down this kind of joke. They’re little gems — hard and sparkly.

But, if you’re writing for a single-camera half-hour or a funny hour, you’re usually better off sticking to “soft” jokes that rely on character without relying so heavily on the perfect string of words. Certainly that’s what you should do if you’re trying to make a point about the value of off-the-cuffedness.

Lunch: ceviche from Ralph’s supermarket. It sounds unwise, but it was good.

I’m not done yet with that two-part joke from The Onion that I mentioned in my last post. I think I need to talk a bit now about the joke’s content as opposed to its construction. The joke is based, obviously, on the idea that two participants can have very different views of the same situation. We might call it a mini-Rashomon.

I was trying to think of examples in which this joke has been used in scripts. The most famous example, I suspect, is this instance from Annie Hall in which Alvy and Annie are talking to their therapists at the same time on a split screen. Both therapists ask about their client’s sex life, and the answers come back:

Alvy Singer: Hardly ever. Maybe three times a week.
Annie Hall: Constantly. I’d say three times a week.

Often this joke is done with two characters speaking at once. Someone asks “how did it go?” and someone says “it was fantastic” at the same time that someone else says “it was hellish.”

By the way, this joke has a tendency to feel a little written. So you might want to make it a little less precise… make the characters explicitly react to each other, perhaps, instead of speaking exactly simultaneously.

Despite this one reservation, however, I think that in general this is a very good type of joke since it comes out of character. In fact, it comes out of two characters, revealing a lot about both of themselves in one economical package. If you’ve got characters with contrasting views of the world (and I bet you do), see if you can’t mine humor out of their first-blush reactions to different situations.

Lunch: penne alfredo with spinach and extra parmesan

There’s something very funny in the latest (Feb. 14) issue of The Onion. There’s a small front-page article titled “Conference Call Going Awesome.” It’s funny in the Onion “ordinary events reported as news” mold. Then, inside the paper, there is a second item, tucked into the “News in Brief” section titled, “Employees On Other End Of Conference Call Just Want It To Be Over.”

Hee! Brilliant.

One huge reason that this works is that the first part stands alone. I once had some bosses who told me that they loved it when they saw network executives start to criticize a weak joke, only to pull back when they discovered that there were funny callbacks to that joke later in the script. It always seemed to me that it would be much better if the first joke WASN’T weak! Wouldn’t you love it MORE if the execs had no call to worry about that first joke? It should stand on its own, the way the front-page Onion piece does.

Callbacks, jokes which reference an earlier joke, can only bear the strength of being funny on their own. They can’t retroactively fix the first joke.

A clue that this is happening in your script is that you find yourself reading faster to get to the callback. Be aware of it.

Lunch: spaghetti with marinara

Guess where I’ve been these last two days? Obviously, I, and all my co-workers, have been back at work in the Battlestar Galactica writers’ room. Fun! It’s all rush-rush-rush as we hurry to catch back up with our own brains.

The first thing we did was indulge in a film festival. We watched all the episodes that have been filmed so far. Not only did this remind us of the events of the season so far, but it immersed us in the world of the show: the rhythms of the story-telling and the texture of the scenes. I also found that, especially with the added time, I was better able to judge what worked and what didn’t work in the episodes I wrote. I learn something about the show every day, and I only regret that we’ll be finished with the run of the show before I achieve the level of competence I really want to have.

When you’re writing a spec script for an already-existing show, you should immerse yourself in it as much as possible — both reading and watching produced episodes. And if your spec pilot is similar in tone to an existing show, I would recommend doing the same thing with your doppelgangshow. We watched seven episodes in a row the other day, and when you watch something with focused attention for that long, it’s like being exposed to an intensive language course or to chocolate — you’re going to take it in.

Lunch: veggie sandwich from the commissary. No cheese, extra avocado.

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