Laughing Out Loud Page 11
This is definitely not easy comedy to write, for it means you have to develop strong characters, each of whom is interesting enough to hold our attention. Then there is the need to hit that balance between mutual compatibility and mutual antagonism. Northern Exposure, for instance, while technically labeled a "drama" series, nevertheless had us laughing each week with its ensemble of eccentrics all living in a never-never land called Alaska. What worked so well in shows such as Cheers, Northern Exposure and M*A*S*H was that the writers allowed each character his or her space to be an eccentric and for the group to ultimately embrace that eccentricity.
And yet acceptance does not translate as harmony, for that would be too easy. As John Vorhaus rightly says, "The trick to making ensemble comedy work is to layer in sufficient lines of conflict within the group to make the story worth watching. It's not enough to have a bunch of scientists battling a Japanese monster-you want them at each other's throats as well" (68).
Variation #2: Animation
Animation has long ruled the children's market, not only in Disney's features but on Saturday-morning television. The Simpsons, however, completely rewrote the rules for a crossover sitcom, reaching both children and adults, as we shall examine in chapter io. And more recently, King of the Hill proved that an animated family-Bobby, Hank and Peggy-could draw a wide audience without the overthe-top surrealistic exaggeration of The Simpsons. Animation will surely prove to have staying power with other series to come, and the bottom line is this: with animation you can literally do anything you wish to do.
Think how well animation is suited to build both on stand-up comedy and on sitcoms and to shape a show or episode or film to the particular talents of a given comedian. Review just one sequence: in Disney's Aladdin (1992), Robin Williams, perfectly cast as the Genie, pulls off a tour de force "routine" once he is liberated from the lamp for the first time, aided by the imaginative visuals of the animators, who are able to give form to Williams's carnival of voices, acts, accents, personas and parodies.
I do have one piece of advice for writers hoping to break into the animation market. Try sitting through a whole Saturday morning's worth of children's shows to see how lame most animation has become. And then check your nearest specialty video shop to watch the experimental animation, claymation and stopmotion object-centered "animations" that have been produced in Eastern and Central Europe over the years. Pay particular attention to Czech, Zagreb (Croatian and Yugoslav) and Polish animators to see how imaginative animation can be.
Above all, be well and cheerful.
Louka to Kolya in Kolya
As an American, I am very aware that it is close to ridiculous to speak of "foreign" humor, for Hollywood and even American independent cinema and television are the beneficiaries of so many comic traditions from abroad. Chaplin came from Britain, Frank Capra from Italy; Preston Sturges was raised as much in France as in the States; Billy Wilder emigrated from Austria; and the list goes on. Yet there are distinct traits and talents that each culture offers, and this chapter is dedicated to "viva the difference."
This chapter is a vote for renting a number of other-than-American comedies to expand our horizons beyond the borders we usually inhabit, geographically, spiritually and creatively as writers.
Britain
EccentricAnarchists: Peter Sellers, Monty Python, The Full Monty, and Beyond
The British have their own brand of humor that celebrates and satirizes eccentricity. In its outrageous forms the pattern is clearly anarchistic, and in its milder species, British comedy as seen by those outside the British Isles is, well, simply odd or wryly understated in ways American comedy misses. The tradition runs from the early Ealing Studio comedies of the 19505 such as Charles Crichton's The Lavender Hill Mob (1950) and Passport to Pimlico (1949) down to the Ealinglike nutty humor of Crichton's highly successful A Fish Called Wanda (1989) and even the in-your-face dark humor of Trainspotting (1996), in which characters swimming inside a toilet bowl make the drug world of Scotland come to terrifying life, and the off-the-wall humor of the claymation television series of Wallace and Gromit.
Peter Cattaneo's The Full Monty, written by a rookie screenwriter, Simon Beaufoy, was the surprise comedy hit of 1997, winding up as the largest-grossing (and the word is playfully used too!) British film ever, pulling in over $ioo million by 1998. Any film that does that well deserves our full attention. We will briefly chart several layers of British humor in this section, but clearly The Full Monty represents a strong vein of working-class British humor that has a long history, especially as it also intertwined in the 196os with the "angry young man" films and dramas of the day.
Described as the "world's first full-frontal fairy tale" (Essex, i6), The Full Monty is an anarchistic ensemble comedy with a warm emotional center and sociopolitical echoes. Propelling this comedy is Gaz's (Robert Carlyle) idea to save himself and his unemployed steelworking mates by creating a male strip review, a ludicrous parody of male hunk reviews such as the Chippendales. Beaufoy's script never looks down on these misfits at the bottom of the British social ladder. In fact, a large part of the success of the script is that each character is given his own identity, space and place, walking that very thin line between parody (and thus caricature) and fully rounded character development. Thus we come to enjoy Dave, Lamper, Gerald, Horse and Guy and the women who try to cope with them. At the center of the whole carnivalesque show, however, is a simple father-son tale about Gaz's broken marriage and his growing son, Nathan, who idolizes his dad no matter what.
The emotional resonance of this carnival thus arises as the sum of the personal tales coming together in a glorious finale, but it is also a result of the socioeconomic situation the characters find themselves in. The opening "documentary," which represents Sheffield, England, in the 196os as a dynamic place and the steel capital of Britain, simply and forcefully sets up the contrast with the present case of almost total unemployment and social decay. Within this context, the film has done what powerful comedies have succeeded in doing since Aristophanes: striking a chord within its audiences worldwide and evoking laughter at a subject that is absolutely not funny. The final dance sequence, as this motley Monty troupe performs to an old Randy Newman tune, is not one of Aristophanes' total fantasy triumphs, but it is a heart-warming case of personal victory for each Monty member. Do we feel cheated by the rear-view final shot instead of a literal "full Monty"? Absolutely not, say all women and men I have interviewed. As one British female friend put it, "A real full Monty at the end would completely destroy the comedy, for they would be, well, so inadequate! Better to keep the illusion of their triumph!"
The second most popular British film ever was Mike Newell's ensemble screwball romantic comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994). If traditional romantic comedy suggests a couple should aim for marriage as a fitting conclusion, this comedy, penned by New Zealander Richard Curtis, winks at us, tracking an engaging but hapless Hugh Grant as a kind of holy fool who has no flair for relationships until he meets a restless soul mate in Andie MacDowell, an American who is uneasy about marrying into British society. As in The Full Monty, the script creates a variety of finely etched characters, given full life by such talented comic actors as Kristin Scott Thomas, Simon Callow, Rowan Atkinson, James Fleet and John Hannah. Curtis's script manages a wry balance between parody and affirmation, as shots are taken at various levels of British society and all levels of relationships. The ending, in which Grant and MacDowell exchange vows that they have no intention of every marrying, simply caps the fun of turning romantic comedy inside out and yet upholding the basic fabric of the genre. The funeral is aptly placed and even manages to make a beautiful W. H. Auden poem quite moving, thus creating an emotional counterbalance to the rest of the film.
Focus now on two great British comics, Sir Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers, both of whom proved throughout their long careers that they could play a wide range of characters, from the purely farcical to truly dramatic and emotionall
y moving figures. Guinness got started in Ealing comedies, especially Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) and The Man in the White Suit (1951), and in more than thirty features played roles as varied as the commander in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), an officer in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and even the "force is with you" guru in Star Wars. But what he did best in his finest comedies was to show us how simple characters could easily take on other lives and completely cut loose, allowing that wilder, fun-loving creature inside to run free, given the opportunity. We are, once more, speaking of an anarchistic streak.
One example worth revisiting? Anthony Kimmin's The Captain's Paradise (1953). Guinness is a ship's captain on a run between the conservative, Britishdominated port town of Gibraltar, where he lives a boring and regulated life with his British wife (Celia Johnson), and Morocco, where he lives it up each time he's in port with a spicy cabaret gal (Yvonne De Carlo). The structure is absolutely simple, for we know the inevitable will happen-that the two women will meet, compare notes and not believe they are speaking of the same man.
To Americans, Peter Sellers was the irrepressible bumbling Inspector Clouseau in Blake Edwards's hit series, but this well-loved comic made roughly twentyfour comedies before The Pink Panther (1964). Also an Ealing studio star, Sellers was much more comfortable with farce and caricature roles than Guinness, as shown in a string of fine British films such as The Ladykillers (1955), The Mouse That Roared and I'm Alright, Jack (both 1959), and Two Way Stretch (1960). For writers of comedy, I recommend a close viewing of Jack Arnold's The Mouse That Roared, scripted by Roger Macdougall and Stanley Mann from the popular novel by Leonard Wibberly. If the recent American satire Wag the Dog (1997) involves America going to war with a small unknown country (Albania), Arnold's comedy is the reverse: a postage-stamp-size nation headed by Peter Sellers declares war on the USA. And wins. Sellers plays three roles, suggesting the full carnival range of his talent. The eccentric anarchist trait is clearly in view: how dare a nowhere country invade America! Finally, from his American films with strong comic streaks, we should not forget George Roy Hill's delightful The World of Henry Ori ent (1964) and the touching pathos of his role in Hal Ashby's darkly comic parable Being There (1979), made as Sellers was close to death from cancer.
Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, and Michael Palin are the full Monty ... Python. This over-the-top British ensemble represents anarchy with a capital "A" with a circle drawn around it, a la graffiti seen around the world. In totally farcical comedies such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Life of Brian (1979), and Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983), they do what few Hollywood comedies dare to do: cast story and character development to the wind in favor of skits, routines, free-ranging farce, satire, parody and outrageous irreverence. In short, they are both Aristophanic and even further out than the Marx Brothers, a group whose roots echo British vaudeville (pantomime).
For the Python, less is definitely not more. The group has made the world laugh by the sheer outlandishness of its concepts and the degree to which each zany idea is followed. The "Every Sperm Is Sacred" sequence in The Meaning of Life remains a classic, going so far beyond any coherent satire of Catholic doctrine that it becomes pure farce on a grand scale. Countless children dance and sing, while babies drop from mothers as they sing, all capped by the rigid Church of England couple that recount they too have made babies, each of the two times in their lives they have made love.
In Python we find the carnivalesque taken as far as it appears it can go in feature comedy. The group exercises a joyful sense of total freedom that Hollywood comedy in particular would never tolerate. And as Terry Jones once told me, they have always been aware that they are taking chances: "When we're good, we can be great, but when we're off, look out!" (personal interview, January 1996). Note that Python is also an example of what I would call process comic writing. Such a talented group working together over the years means that the "writing" represents both individual and group effort, pitching, revision, polishing and riffing. Their weakest film? The Holy Grail. The problem? They were trying a bit too hard, for Pythons that is, to adhere to a story. Stories, for true anarchists, can spell something worse than death: boredom!
Spain and Mexico
The Surrealist Humor of Luis Bunuel
Take just one moment in one Luis Bunuel film, Simon of the Desert (1965). Very loosely based on the life and mythology surrounding Simon, an early saint from Syria who spent over thirty years sitting upon a tall pillar to be closer to his God, this film is full of Bunuel's irreverent anarchistic humor. In this scene, Simon has temporarily stepped down from his pillar and is besieged by the poor, the sick, the afflicted, all looking for miracles from the saint. Simon blesses a peasant who has no hands, and a miracle happens: two perfectly healthy hands appear. There is a problem, however. One of his children is pestering his father, and so in the peasant's first action with his new limbs, he slaps the hell out of his son! Every time I've seen the film the audience, strong churchgoers or not, bursts into immediate hearty laughter.
That's Luis Bunuel. Born into a very Catholic and conservative area of rural Spain in 19oo, in what he called a medieval world, he grew to become a filmmaker in France and Mexico. Bunuel studied in Madrid with the likes of the poet Lorca and became best friends with Salvador Dali. When he moved to Paris as a young man in the 1920s, he naturally became a part of the artistic scenes of the day, mixing with Picasso, poets, writers and, best of all, filmmakers. He and Dali established themselves as surrealists immediately with their joint first short film, Andalusian Dog (1929), full of shockingly witty shots and moments of humorous parody of religious and social norms. Bunuel, who claims he was influenced in part by American silent comedy, especially Keaton, ends the film much like Keaton's College: in Bunuel's film the last shot is of the young lovers not united in an embrace, as romantic comedy would suggest, but as two corpses with their heads sticking out of the sand by the seashore.
Every Bunuel film is full of familiar motifs for those who know his work, but unexpected surprises for those who don't. We began this book with a Bunuel quotation taken from his highly readable autobiography, My Last Sigh, and we can state strongly here that whenever you are tired of the safe and predictable comedies that surround you, rent a Bunuel! His films are good for your comic soul's good health!
Five Easy Lessons to Learn from Bunuel about Writing Comedy
i. Tap into your dreams, fantasies and the unconscious in general for all of its humor, sense of liberation and striking energy and originality. Surrealism as a movement was founded on such a premise, which leads to familiar objects taking on unfamiliar functions. For Bunuel, this often meant narrative structures that suggested dreams within dreams or fantasies within fantasies.
2. It is great fun to be irreverent and disrespectful. Bunuel thumbs his playful nose at the Church (and for him that means Catholic!) and the high middle class. Every time you see an old man in a Bunuel film walking down a street with a cane or on crutches, you just know someone will kick the crutch from underneath him. In perhaps his most irreverent shot of all, he parodies the Last Supper in Viridiana (1961) with drunken beggars taking over a Spanish farm mansion and posing in mockery of Christ's final meal.
3. Enjoy the pleasure of turning social expectations upside down. In The Phantom of Liberty (1974), upper-class guests arrive at a mansion for a dinner party. As they sit around the empty table, we realize the seats are actually toilets, and they lift their gowns and pull down their tuxes as they sit facing each other, chatting, only to leave from time to time to go to a small room in order to eat in privacy.
4. Go for a loose picaresque plot that allows you to take any side trip you wish. In The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) each episode stands on its own, but they are loosely connected as a story of a group of upper-middle-class folk trying to have a dinner that never happens. The dominant visual image becomes a shot that recurs from ti
me to time of the group simply walking down a highway. The picaresque, as for Aristophanes, is particularly useful to anarchistic humor, for it allows one the complete freedom to combine the most unlikely of stories and characters within your tale.
5. Do not preach; keep your spirit of carnival as pure a form of anarchy as possible. After brief flirtations Bunuel dropped out of the Communist Party, for he realized that in his humor and filmmaking he was not putting forth agendas for social change. He was, rather, making fun of value systems and institutions he did not wish to destroy but merely parody and satirize.
Italy
Love andAnarchy Italian Style in Boccaccio, Dante, Fellini, and Cinema Paradiso
We have covered early Italian romantic comedy (chapter 3) and the long and hilarious tradition of Italian farce, commedia dell'arte (chapter 4). While Italian filmmakers also echo other influences, in the main this double base in farce and romantic comedy holds true for most Italian film comedy. But to mention Italian film comedy is also to look back to the great Italian spinner of prose (as opposed to verse) tales, Boccaccio and his Decameron (1349-53), which we discussed in chapter 3.
We see much of this spirit in the work of Federico Fellini, whose films mix passion, sex, innocent love and the decadence and ego of artists attempting to create or find their identities in an Italy that appears to have lost most of its traditional values. La Dolce Vita (1960), with a script by Fellini, Ennino Flaiano and Tullio Pinelli, echoes the whole Italian tradition and Boccaccio in particular. Marcello Mastroianni is the pop journalist who comes to realize the emptiness of his life. The times Fellini inhabits are definitely modern, even postmodern, but the texture and conclusion are clearly in a tradition of Boccaccio and even Dante, as Fellini ends his film on a beach at dawn. As the all-night revelers from Rome are wander ing down a beach, Mastroianni wanders off by himself and suddenly views a sweet girl of about fourteen smiling and gesturing to him from a distance. They exchange gestures, Mastroianni looking very much like a sad clown. The moment is touching, amusing and sad, but it is finally, as in Dante and Boccaccio, triumphant. Fellini's images suggest that Mastroianni is not completely lost if, at dawn, he can make contact with such innocence, smile, and go on about his life as the camera lingers on the girl's clear, happy face. Her face not only appears in contrast to the shallowness of the noise and confusion of the trendy party lovers we have followed through the film but transforms the meaninglessness of what has gone before, leaving us with an image of hope rather than confusion, despair, triviality.