WRITING FOR TV
Lesson 5
Last time we looked at the similarities between suspense and comedy. This week I want to talk mainly about comedy – and its dumb and dumber brother: farce – but let’s quickly refresh the old memory with something Hollywood master Alfred Hitchcock said about suspense and comedy:
Picture this silly film scene: Four people are playing cards in a room. They talk about everyday matters, so boring members of the audience start leaving the cinema. After five minutes of this nonsense a bomb suddenly goes off, killing all four of them. Audience reacts for about ten seconds with shock and horror. That’s the dumb scriptwriter’s pay-off for five minutes of film wasted. Now picture the clever version of virtually the same film scene: As four people start playing cards, the camera shows the audience a bomb with a timer attached to the underside of the table they’re playing at. The timer shows us the bomb is set to explode in five minutes. The four people discuss everyday boring matters, but I give you my word not a single member of the audience will now get up and leave. This is how a clever scriptwriter creates tension.
The same goes for comedy, using virtually the same film scene: Four people playing cards, discussing boring subjects. After five terrible minutes of this the door opens and a deliciously drunk Santa Claus enters with a heavy bag of gifts. Audience might laugh for a few seconds. Now picture the scene in the hands of a clever scriptwriter: As four people start playing cards in a room, the audience learns from their talk that they’re waiting for a friend with a drinking problem who has gone to his first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. They have full confidence in their friend because he swore he would buy each of them a Christmas gift if he didn’t go to the meeting, and they know him as a stingy guy who never ever buys gifts. And then, five minutes into this, the door opens and their friend staggers in, a drunken Santa Clause with a bag of gifts: “Ho ho ho, I come bearing gifts!” This is actually a scene from a comedy play successfully staged in London and on Broadway, and it always received a huge laugh from the audience.
Sorry, that was a long quote from Hitchcock, but I believe he makes an important point. So let’s take a closer look at
Comedy and farce
The excellent point that Hitchcock makes is simple but striking: If the screenwriter wants to provoke a proper response, he or she should keep the CHARACTERS rather than the VIEWERS in the dark. Information helps you entertain a viewer.
That’s why writing farce is basically easier than writing comedy. Every form of entertainment deserves its place in the sun, farce has its own lovely quirks; but it’s easier to write SUDDENLY SOMEONE HITS MAIN CHARACTER IN THE FACE WITH CREAM PIE than the same scene where viewers there’s going to be a cream pie but VIEWERS HAVE TO GUESS WHICH CHARACTER IN THE SCENE will be to be the target of the cream pie.
That doesn’t mean you should avoid writing a farce. It’s a successful form of TV entertainment. Just remember farce is more about shock tactics than suspense, more about being illy funny than funny clever. And with comedy more time is needed, the scene must develop through a clever build-up of tension to that moment when the cream pie explodes in a particular face.
Okay, fine, it’s easy to talk about a clever build-up of tension, it is particularly difficult to write. I’ve tried it many times on television and I wonder if I got it a hundred percent right in thirty percent of the scenes.
Why is it so difficult? Well, the writer’s timing and dialogue must be right in the first place. Secondly, the characters should be played by actors with excellent timing when it comes to comedy. And thirdly, a good screenplay and great acting helps you exactly zilch when you’re stuck with a director and camera crew who screw up the filming of the scene or edit it badly later.
I get nervous at the mere thought of the right timing. It’s hard. How long will it take for that cream pie to hit that face? When does it happen too soon? When does it take too long? If you don’t quite get what I mean, think of people telling jokes. You get a monkey who drags out a good joke too long and then it falls flat, or you get another monkey who leaves out much-needed information and then tells the joke too fast…with the same result: nobody laughs.
Dialogue timing is monstrously important. Here the writer is partly at the mercy of casting. If the actors don’t understand timing in dialogue, you and your comedy are seriously stuffed. I’ve said somewhere else I don’t like solo monologues – characters talking to themselves with no-one else present – because it’s very dangerous, usually goes wrong very quickly. But the late great Walter Matthau, one of Hollywood comedy’s masters of timing, was so good at it scriptwriters would deliberately write scenes where a drunk Walter talks to a coat hanging on a peg because he thinks it’s his disapproving wife, or a scared Walter tries to smooth talk a kitten out of eating him because a trick of shadows convinces him the kitty is a tiger.
Comedy is, quite frankly, the hardest genre to write for.
For me there is only one solution that works: Play the scene. Get family or friends to help. Use them as actors, run the scene a few times and triple check if there should be more or less dialogue and action before cream pie hits face. Some of my best comedy moments I had to workshop like this before writing my final version of the scene.
Another important point: Ordinary human dialogue. What the characters say while the viewers hold their breath to see who will get said cream pie between the eyes are of immense importance. By this I don’t mean it must be dialogue about important matters, it can be about absolutely nothing but in a funny way. And guess what it should rather not be about? Yes! Cream pie! Always avoid the elephant in the room.
Of course, since this is about the frustrating mysteries of comedy, I have to immediately contradict myself: Unless the elephant in the room is discussed in such a way that only the viewers know it is about the elephant in the room, then this could make the comic effect even stronger. Hey, don’t look at me like that: Now do you understand why I personally wrote more television dramas than comedies? It’s easier for me – I’m lying now, easier isn’t always easy – to write a drama series like Konings than to create a Vetkoekpaleis. In drama you also get your moments of comedy, but the dramatic structure is of such a nature that it is not breathtakingly important that the comedy absolutely has to work.
And now, the big question: Where does one get the right material for a successful comedy?
The answer, friends, is the same as for any type of story, drama, thriller, farce, whatever: Life. Look through the scrapbook of your own life, your own family and friends.
Example from my own life: A friend invites me to a braai at her parents’ house for the first time. I’m ready to be spectacular and witty. But oops, no one speaks a single word to me. Even worse – they don’t talk to each other either, they all growl or gesture like cave dwellers who haven’t mastered communication yet. It makes me so tense and nervous I want to burst out laughing, but I manage to keep it in. After the braai my angry and very upset friend apologizes to me, last night she begged her family to please not talk about her parents’ imminent divorce in front of me, but as I may have noticed that’s all the bastards did the entire braai!
One last tip: What is tragic to me might be hilarious to someone else. Comedy is suspense. Think about it.
See you in two weeks.