Yesterday I listened to Charlie Kaufman’s Bafta podcast on
screenwriting. You can listen to his talk here.
His talk is inspiring, lyrical and reassuringly laden with artistic
integrity.
But what I took from it was Kaufman’s insistence that we shouldn’t be
obsessed with being an expert in our craft. With being technically perfect.
Technical obsession
produces work that is mechanical, sterile, samey, unoriginal, clinical. The
main reason why this is the case is that cold theory crowds out you. You are
what makes your art unique. You filter the world through your eyes, and your
work must be an expression of this unique point of view. This is important in
producing original artistic work, but is also an excellent marketing point: how
can you stand out? Use your own factory of novelty: be yourself. Technical
perfection often leads to dull work: your flaws are what makes you interesting.
Flaws create difference and unpredictability, and therefore character and
excitement. You don’t want perfection in people, or indeed anything.
It’s important to say that you
need to know enough technical theory to allow the quality of your work to shine
through: for example, if you have no clue about plot structure your screenplay
will basically be unreadable. But the point is that you should focus on knowing
enough technique, and then improvise around it. It is only a loose framework in
which you should play, not your number one priority. Kaufman says craft should
not come first, meaning should: the truth about the world you are trying to
communicate. Write from the soul rather than according to a manual. You need to
be willing to be naked.
In the world of stand-up you see
a lot of people who aren’t willing to be naked. Whether it be because of fear,
comedy course orthodoxy, or simply because they don’t know who they are and
what they want to say yet. Having something to “say” isn’t necessarily to be
political, but it is to have an authored point of view, a distinctive way of
filtering reality, a unique perception. And this perception only comes from
writing, writing, writing. Explore yourself and your ideas, don’t substitute inspiration
and insight for structural excellence. The more authored your view the more
watchable you are as a comic: people start to love you and not your jokes. They
just want to find out more and more about how you see the world. They can develop
a kind-of friendship with you because you are presenting a humanity to them,
rather than a polished robotic act. This is the reason one liner comics often
struggle to remain interesting for longer than 20 minutes: it gets samey, and
you feel an emotional distance to them. Jimmy Carr is probably the exception,
in my experience. But that is because he takes care to do a lot of crowd work
in his show to break up the one-line jokes, and me get to know him through his
interactions with real people. Otherwise it is just an 80 minute presentation
of comedic equations.
I’ve struggled with this in my
career, but I am getting better. And awareness is the first step to learning. I
am now consciously incompetent. I’ve been criticised for not putting enough of
me in my set, and for failing to develop momentum due to the fact that I have
been known to flit from funny bit to funny bit without developing the emotional
connection that comes from the audience getting to know you. When they like
you, their good will sweeps you along and adds pace to the show, as laughs
become consistent waves, a blowing wind, rather than short sharp claps of
thunder. This is quite a tough thing to describe, but the type of laughter I am
talking about is similar to the fits of giggles you might have when having
drinks with a group of friends.
I’ve learnt that there may be a
reason to keep things in which aren’t necessarily the funniest thing that could
be in that space in your set or show. The key is this: don’t judge each moment
of content on a consequentialist basis, but judge the piece’s impact
holistically. It may make the piece unpredictable, varied, textured and
uniquely you. This is an important realisation: people don’t judge your show,
film (or whatever) like judges judge a boxing match: scoring it round by round,
on a scene by scene basis, or joke by joke. They don’t remember specifics, but
they do remember their emotional reaction to the whole experience. On this
subject, I have just a read an AA Gill Review of Mark Hix’s new restaurant in
the Sunday Times. Hix is a famous British chef but Gill marks him out for
special praise because “Hix is one of the few people who realise that
hospitality is the main ingredient in catering”. Gill’s point is that food is
only one element in the whole dining out experience. If our general emotional
response to the whole evening is that we’ve had a great time, the fact that the
dessert was a bit crap is irrelevant. I’ve worked in pubs and restaurants where
managers haven’t understood this, they think if the service is efficient and
the beer is delicious then the customers will be happy. No: they just want to
leave feeling like they’ve had a great time, and that is a more complex dynamic
best understood looking at the totality of their experience.
I have had similar issues with a sitcom
script I am developing with a funny writer/performer called Amy Hoggart. We
have talking to a well-know production company about it, and the feedback we
have received is that it is very funny, but not necessarily a great script. It
is not a great script because it lacks a bit of warmth, and the characters
perhaps lack some depth. This is because we took a consequentialist approach to
the writing. The funniest line may not be the best line, because a good sitcom script
has a broader range of qualifying criteria than simply “funny”.
In comedy films you are supposed
to have a love plot for the main character/s. This is because it raises the
stakes, they have more to lose, jeopardy increases and this improves the impact
of the jokes. The love scenes aren’t funny, but they are essential to making
the script work. The increased impact comes from the variety: we habituate to
jokes and so mixing then up with something else makes the remaining gags
funnier. And we also care about the characters if we get to know them, see
their flaws, see them fail and then try again: which makes them funnier.
The idea of variety increasing
impact of jokes reminds me of a debate in the world of cricket about what is
the more entertaining format: Test cricket (which lasts 5 days), or 20/20
cricket (which lasts 2 hours). In 20/20 you get a binge of excitement: there
are lots of 4s and 6s hit by the batsmen, run-outs, lots of wickets fall
quickly. But is it more entertaining game than Test cricket which takes longer?
I would argue no because it lacks the jeopardy of Test cricket: if you have
invested 5 days into something you have more to lose, and the matches (and
victories) are rarer. Further, because boundaries for the batsmen, and wickets
for the bowlers, are harder to come by and rarer you value them more and they
are more exciting: we do not habituate to them, there is a great anticipation
for the next one, and it is a greater contrast against the relatively dull
monotony of the rest of the match. Now, I am not saying your script (or stand-up
set) should be dull and monotonous! But it should be varied. Richard Herring
says he likes to keep the crap bits in his podcasts, because the good bits have
more impact. Normality is boring, whatever the nature of it. If every line is a
funny joke, then it feels samey and is (perversely) boring. This is, it should
be noted, not possible in our 5 minute long comedy culture. This same phenomena
is audible in modern music: the biggest difference between great music and pop
pap is the variety within the songs, the assortments of breakdowns.
Tony Allen, regarded as the godfather of alternative comedy,
has written one of the few good books about the art of stand-up. He says it is
all about attitude and juxtaposition of attitude. You have to be a
contradiction, a hypocrite, inconsistent, drenched in irony, infuriating. Your
set needs paradoxes, light and shade, changes of pace, variety, texture. This
allows work to feel authored, and emotionally compelling. It gives a feeling of
momentum and movement because you are oscillating between different emotional
charges. He writes that there should be a feel of risk: that this might get
uncomfortable, that this could be a disaster. This adds jeopardy and also an
alternative point on the emotional spectrum for the audience to enjoy. Your set should be a kaleidoscope. That is
why the best comedies have love stories at their heart, and why the darkest
dramas have comic moments. Audience interaction, breaking down the fourth wall
is a great way to do this: risk adds weight to the laugh. A tool used
brilliantly in the current West End sensation “One Man, Two Guvnors” where the
performers obliterate the 4th wall interacting with the audience and
getting them on stage in the play.
Allen writes that Lenny Bruce’s most important contribution
to stand-up comedy has less to do with breaking taboos around choice of
language and subject matter, and more to do with his be-bop jazz technique:
improvising with attitude, jumping from light to shade and back again in all
it’s different textures. “Lenny Bruce delivered his witty insights and opinions
in a spectrum of personal voices all in close attendance, but none getting to
solo for more than a few seconds.” This should be your ambition. He goes on to
write: “What made Bill Hicks such a compelling performer was this ability to
get the audience bristling, to deliberately unsettle them, and from there to
proceed to make them laugh. The particular nature of that tension, and the
quality of the focus that it creates, is unique to live stand-up comedy and
Bill, like Keith Allen a few years before him, explored it thoroughly.” Both
Hicks and Bruce had standard club routines that they would mix in with their
riskier stuff, and would play the room carefully to win people back if they
were losing them. The point is: they had a big range of gears they could go
through, take themselves and their audience through a huge emotional range,
whereas the standard club act is one paced.
Stewart Lee is probably the modern master at juxtaposing
content and pace. He talks a lot about building and exploiting tension in the
audience, then the laugh can feel like a release for them. In “How I Escaped My
Certain Fate” he writes: “One of the exciting things about stand-up is the
genuine possibility of failure...you want to lose them for a bit and then have
to win them back”. He loves the feeling, audiences love the feeling, that you
are teetering on the brink of losing a room. Safety is boring. He goes on to
comment on his routine: “I was quite happy for it to die, as it opened up
enormous possibilities for improvising around its failure...I really enjoy this
aspect of stand-up-how failure creates opportunities to create subsequent victories-and
increasingly I build pseudo-failures into the shows to give myself and the
audience the thrill of a struggle.”
So, in short: don’t be a utilitarian. Be you.
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