The Hidden Tools of Comedy: The Serious Business of Being Funny

by Steve Kaplan

Comedy is the art of telling the truth about what it’s like to be human.

Basic definition. Congruent with Vorhaus.

Drama helps us dream about what we could be, but comedy helps us live with who we are.

Comedy is the art of telling the truth about being human.

The truth is: We all have flaws We’re all stupid sometimes We all have weaknesses We all fuck up. . . . Drama whitewashes some of these flaws, edits others out, glorifies a few, and justifies the rest. In drama, any flaw that would make the dramatic Hero seem coarse or ridiculous is excised out.

The genius of comedy is that it loves humanity without necessarily forgiving it.

“We continue working in hope and good faith toward a tomorrow that may never come — and one day, it won’t. This is the human condition.”

the more skills your character has, the less comic and the more dramatic the character is.

“Comedy gives you the permission to win . . .

Comedy gives your character in the narrative the permission to win. Comedy gives them the permission to do what they need to do in a moment of crisis, even if it makes them look like a bad guy or an idiot. And once they have that permission, you can stop trying to be “funny.”

If given the permission to win, but not necessarily the guarantee of winning and not the skills to win, a character’s actions will be comedic.

The most important question I ask writers, as a script consultant or as a director, more often than not is “What does the character want?” The question of what “wins” for the character is at the heart of getting past “funny” to arrive at comedy.

Simply accepting the premise, ridiculous as it may be, and attempting to solve an unsolvable, insane problem, creates comic energy, creates a comic moment.

All you really need are characters who want something and are willing to do whatever it takes to get what they want, given the limitations of who they are. No matter how nutty it is, no matter how stupid it makes them look, comedy gives them the permission to win!

Breaking the fourth wall is a technique that has been a staple of comic performance since 5th century B.C. Athens, and is emblematic of the permission comic characters enjoy in comedy. To achieve their ends, they are allowed almost anything — including enlisting the aid and succor of the audience attending the performance. Breaking the fourth wall is the acknowledgement of both the artificiality and the reality of performance and is at the heart of the immediacy and directness of comedy.

Winning relieves your characters of the obligation to do what they “should.” And by allowing your characters to win, no matter how silly or stupid or bad they might appear to be, you begin to organically create characters that are comic without trying to be funny.

The lie is that life is logical, rational, and appropriate. But comedy tells the truth; that many of us live lives that are occasionally illogical, irrational, or inappropriate, or sometimes all three simultaneously. We just hope that no one notices. And even if for the moment we are rational, logical, and appropriate, the reality we’re facing rarely is.

What wins for your character? Your character is given the permission to win. But if you put in something because it would be funny instead of simply following what the character would do, you risk character behavior that’s ultimately alienating to the audience. If you follow the character, the character’s going to come up with something as good if not better than your joke or gag. Characters need to take actions which are true to who they are, and nothing else.

he’s the Hero because the writers and producers have given his character EVERY SKILL NECESSARY TO WIN

without struggle there is no comedy.

Someone trying to solve a problem that he or she doesn’t know how to solve, without giving up hope — that creates comedy.

The more skills you give your character, the less comic the character is. The fewer skills you give your character, the more comic he/she is.

In this definition of a “Hero,” you don’t necessarily need to do something heroic or extraordinary. Simply behaving appropriately is, in many ways, a skill. Doing what you should do, knowing what is the appropriate thing to do, is a skill many comic characters lack. The Comic Hero does not know what to do, and his actions are often ill-advised and inappropriate, albeit with all the best of intentions (hope). Accurately seeing something, and behaving appropriately afterwards, is Hero, or skilled, behavior.

A Non-Hero doesn’t need to try to be funny — just to not know.

In many sitcoms, the characters who are the most verbal, who seem the most sure of themselves, who seem to have all the information turn out, like Kramer in Seinfeld, to be idiots. And they don’t know they’re idiots. The characters who are most like us, like Jerry, are often confused or at the very least are unsure that they are right. When confronted with idiocy, even if they don’t buy it, they’re Non-Hero enough to at least consider the bad idea.

The more the characters know, the less comic it is, because that gives them more skills. Rather than worrying about the next clever thing your character says, the primary thing is that your characters are always navigating the confounding gap between expectations and reality.

Comedy exists in the gap between expectation and reality, and it’s the “not knowing” of the character that creates that gap.

All that’s necessary are characters who are unsure and struggling with expectations that have come up hard against an absurd or unexpected reality.