CONCEPTO Y CARACTERÍSTICAS

These are tools. When you go to your living room to turn on your TV, do you use a wrench or pair of pliers? No, you simply turn it on with a remote. My point is, if it’s not broken, you don’t need this tool.

Tools are meant to be used when things don’t work.

Here’s the thing that I do know. You’ve written stuff or you’ve performed in stuff and it’s been brilliant

— right? When you’re working, and everything’s golden, and it’s all flowing. You don’t want it to stop.

The last thing in the world I want you to do is go, “Whoa, wait a second. What did Steve Kaplan say? Let me put this through the Kaplan sausage grinder.” No! What I want you to do is trust yourself. Let it flow. If it doesn’t work — when it doesn’t work — that’s when you need a tool. These are tools you can use to identify what’s not working, and tools you can use to fix it.

You don’t apply Metaphorical Relationship to every scene you have. Some scenes are just expositional or are fine the way they are. If it’s working, don’t mess it up by applying a formula like the Straight Line/Wavy Line.

It’s when things are flat or don’t work or something is un-dramatized that tools are necessary. If something isn’t working, that’s when you apply acquired principles, rules, and techniques to identify what is wrong and fix it. That’s why there are tools as opposed to a method. Trust yourself and your own way of seeing the world.

AFTERWORD

“I wasn’t always a comic. Before I did this, I was a house painter for five years. Five years — I didn’t think I’d ever finish that house.”

— John Fox So much comedy. So little time.

There have been 3,000 years of theatrical comedy, from Aristophanes, to burlesque, to the improv and sketch troupe performing in a basement or comedy club near you. There have been more than 100 years of comedy film, 85 years of comedy on radio and television, and now comedy on the Internet. All of it — good, bad, and indifferent — has something to teach us. It’s certainly taught me everything I know, and it’s been my great pleasure to share the little I know with you.

So what have we learned?

We’ve learned that comedy tells the truth about people — that character is everything. Winning and Non-Hero: comedy gives characters the permission to win, and characters, like we humans, are flawed, fumbling, and flummoxed, yet continually live in hope. Metaphorical Relationship: each character sees the world in his or her own unique way. Positive Action: every action a character takes is taken in the selfish, hopeful belief that it will get him or her closer to what they want. Straight Line/Wavy Line:

being silly is not as funny as watching someone else being silly. We’ve learned that mugging, exaggeration, the letter “K,” threes, and louder-faster-funnier are not the keys to the comedy kingdom.

We’ve learned that telling the honest, unvarnished, sometimes excruciatingly embarrassing truth about our lives is more important than the number of jokes on the page or the number of dick jokes in a script.

Archetypes lets us access the entire 3,000-year history of comic characters, while Comic Premise gives us the tools to create a fantastic lie in order to tell a deeper truth.

Most of all, I hope you’ve learned that you have everything you need to go out and write (or direct, or act) your comedy film or spec script; you’re a real human being who’s living in a sometimes absurd world, dealing with absurd friends, family, co-workers and employers, and maybe you are just a little bit absurd yourself.

So go out. Write. Direct. Act. And I hope you find the thrill, satisfaction, and joy (and, yes, the money) that others have found in the job of being funny.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author gratefully acknowledges the invaluable help of Rhonda Hayter, who along with my wife Kathrin cast a sharp and loving eye over every word in this book. I’m also indebted to Barbara Caplan-Bennett, Paul Caplan-Bennett, Charles Zucker, Ann Slichter, and Brian Rose, who read early chapters and who were always there with encouragement and assistance; to Chris Albrecht for helping me bring a bit of New York to L.A. and HBO; to Derek Christopher, who started me on this latest part of the journey; to Mitch McGuire and Faith Catlin, who co-founded, and totally funded, the Manhattan Punch Line Theater, where many of the concepts in this book first emerged; to the actors of the Comedy Corps, for allowing me to experiment on them with my untried and perhaps cock-eyed theories; to Brad Bellamy, who told me I had to write this book I-don’t-want-to-admit-how-many years ago; to all the actors, directors, designers, playwrights, screenwriters, and producers that I’ve worked with and, frankly, learned from over the years; and finally I have to acknowledge the help and unwavering support of parents Moe and Dorothy, sister Deena, and my amazing brother Michael and sister-in-law Alicia — because home is where they have to take you in, no matter what.