“Stories are about fucked up people.” – Judd Apatow
When I first started writing scripts, in the early ’90s, I was really into Buster Keaton and The Marx Brothers. Which is great from a comedy history/geek perspective, but not so much when it comes to screenwriting.
Keaton’s philosophy was figure out the beginning, and the end, and the middle will take care of itself. Spoiler alert, it will if you’re Buster Keaton. The Marx Brothers on the other hand, used story as a springboard for their shenanigans. The story would stop for Chico to play the piano, Harpo to play the Harp and chase women, and would stop for Groucho to be Groucho.
So I had to learn how to write a screenplay for the present day.
But I think there can still be room for a little comedic detour, as mentioned in my last post.
I think it depends on the style of comedy.
I think ones that require stronger character development tend not to have jokes that interrupt the plot, but instead are borne out of it.
A cartoon-y comedy (early Will Ferrell and early Adam Sandler), can have jokes that interrupt the plot.
From what I’ve read (I forget the source right now) Broadly, you need a minimum of 1 joke per page.
And then there’s the comedy set pieces. The definition of a set piece:
“a sequence or scene with escalated stakes, and production values, appropriate to the genre”.
Here are notes I took from interviews with Tim Dowling (Pixels, Role Models, Just Go With It) & Joe Nussbaum (dir. American Pie Presents: Naked Mile).
They suggest 3-6 major set pieces.
Douglas J. Eboch (Sweet Home Alabama story writer) suggests 5-8 set pieces.
Judd Apatow (writer, director, and producer of Knocked Up, etc) suggests every 10 minutes or 10 pages.
John Hamburg (Meet the Parents franchise) doesn’t focus on set pieces. He just writes the scene. He also doesn’t believe in plot points having to be on specific pages. But that’s a post for another day.
Whichever way you look at it, it’s all about how the comedy continuously builds. E.g.: Meet the Parents (dinner/urn), There’s Something About Mary (zipper), American Pie (pie scene).
But, again, for screenplays that require stronger character development, the set pieces don’t interrupt the plot.
This then make me wonder if a comedy screenplay should have frequent jokes per page and set pieces, how would I, or another screenwriter ensure the humor remains fresh and doesn’t become repetitive?
I guess these aren’t strict rules, they’re more of a guideline. As I said, John Hamburg doesn’t follow these rules.
Perhaps a way to think about it is the frequent joke suggestion is an average. So maybe in reality, there can be 3 jokes on a page, and 1 on the next. That way you can break up the rhythm and the audience doesn’t come to expect it.
It can also be varied by the type of jokes. Not everyone is going to be strong. Like stand-up, you need to open strong and end strong. And then the middle can vary, like music.
Sometimes, a character could make a sarcastic quip, or say something out of place, or the joke could be visual, or maybe physical. It all depends on the character and plot.
For example, in The Hangover, the sarcastic asshole comments Bradley Cooper’s character says, wouldn’t work coming out of Zach Galifianakis’s character’s mouth. They’re two different archetypes. Cooper is the leader/straight man, Galifianakis is more of the comic role, from a traditional double act, sometimes described as a cloud-cuckoo lander. Although they are (minus Doug) a comic trio similar to The Marx Brothers or The Three Stooges.
