OK, guys, so here’s the deal, and I mean to say this in the politest of ways and as gently (and emphatically) as is humanly possible:
Do not try to be funny.
Don’t. Just don’t. Ever. Because I assure you that it won’t work, for A, and, for B, your doing so is bound to make an entire room of people dually uncomfortable and pissed-off.
When you’re trying to be funny, it behooves absolutely no one.
I understand that this might sound crazy coming from me, a chick who has recently enrolled in Improv classes in an attempt to better learn the art of ‘funny’. “What the shit are you getting at, Angela? Stop not making sense.”
OK. Well, thing is that there is a distinct difference between ‘actual funny’ and ‘funny that is forced’. According to Merriam Webster (… … …):
actual funny (n): the end result of having taken an actual real life situation and releasing the absolute truth of it, thereby revealing the comedy within it (i.e: anything on Cheers or Modern Family, anything to have ever come out of Mitch Hedberg’s mouth)
forced funny (n): the end result of having taken an idea that you think is hilarious and is, in fact, not to anyone older than eight years of age, and running with it (i.e: those nine guys you saw doing stand-up/begging for therapy in the basement of a coffee house in Prospect Heights, anything to have ever come out of Seann William Scott’s mouth)
Makes sense, right?
I can talk to you like an expert on this because I have ample experience in both funnies.
…
Once upon a time when I was in undergrad, I was cast in a production of Neil Simon’s Rumors (…it’s cool, fellow theatre nerds, you can chuckle/shake your head in dismay). I played Cookie. If you are playing someone by the name of “Cookie”, you can easily assume that bitch be crazy and, in fact, she is, bitch is crayyyy and, in fact, you only really need to stick to the truthfulness of the script and legitimately engage with the people onstage with you in order to reveal just how crazy she is.
That’s it. Just do what’s obvious and work with what’s in front of you.
…
WELL, that was not enough for 20 year-old Me. I wanted her to be more than that. I wanted our audiences to walk away saying “That was bitch wasn’t just crazy, she was crazy and hilarious!” And I knew I could make that happen, and I knew just what to do…
…ADD SOME SHIT!!!!
I busted out every zany voice and warble I had in my back pocket and used them, all of them, every single performance. I milked every punch-line so hard so that the audience could not only better hear how hilariously I was saying every single word, but so that they had more opportunity to see the various hilarious expressions on my face as well. While everyone else was running all over the stage like chickens with their heads cut off (because that’s what you’re supposed to do in a farce…), I was taking my time to glide through the space like an oafish grand dame, metaphorically winking at the audience, thinking Yessssssss. Love me, bitches. I am the funniest damn woman in the universe and I’m gonna make you look at me. …You like that? Do ya? Do ya?!
‘Twas a disaster. I looked goddamned bonkers.
Shortly after our run, I had an intelligent conversation with my friend who had played Claire (and was, incidentally, hi-fucking-larious):
It was weird, I don’t really feel like I ever found my groove in the play, and I don’t get why I wasn’t funnier.
“Well. I mean, you were never really playing with us.“
What?! Nuh-uh! Yes I was.
“I mean, no, not really. You were always doing your own thing.”
Oh. …Huh.
Rule #1 in ‘Funny’:
--Actively play with whom and whatever is in the scene with you; don’t just do your own thing. (Slash ‘Don’t be a jerk’.)
Great.
So then in grad school, we did an honest-to-goodness unit on clowning.
…OK, OK, look, I know that some people are afraid of clowns, and with good reason. But, in their defense, not all of them are Tim Curry from It and not all of them drive around rusty old vans scoping out the neighborhood kids. Most of them are just wonderfully weird and wear red noses.
And they’re supposed to make you laugh.
For five weeks, we explored what it meant to be a clown, what it took to get the audience wrapped around your finger and how to turn a simple little act into something totally engaging to watch.
(Brief Sidebar: I love that this is how I earned my Master’s degree.)
We also had time to discover and flesh-out our inner clowns, figure out some idea of whom and what our weirdest inner funny might be. Some of us were silent stalker-like clowns in Batman-costumes, some of us were bossy manipulativey-types like Lucy from Peanuts. While working on his clown a year later, my boyfriend discovered that his was a chap named Syrup: a bossy prick with Mel-Gibson-in-Lethal-Weapon-hair who spoke like the ringmaster at a circus and dressed as if he had just beaten-up an 11 year-old girl and stolen her clothes. (Draw that picture for yourself. Come on. Do it.)
He was. The sexiest. And every time I looked at him, I peed my pants and died. And let’s be honest with ourselves, if you can make yourself into an honest-to-goodness sight gag, that is in itself a comedic achievement. PROPS TO THAT GUY I DATE!!!!
I had Bumpy.
Bumpy was an ambiguously-gendered 8 year-old who had a perpetual cold in its nose and pseudo masturbation problem. Its hands were always sneaking down towards the crotch of its footy pajamas (a dingy gray pair of footy pajamas with these lumps all over them—Were they sleeping polar bears? Were they mounds of yellowish snow? Who knows!—and the words WILD! & RUGGED! scattered everywhere) which were tucked into a pair of ivory kitten heels. There was a sequined mint green bowtie, there was a huge hulking black and red striped stocking cap…I looked like a cross between a GloWorm and a fucking sausage.
It was awesome.
Bumpy wasn’t the world’s most talkative clown and so when it did speak, I felt that the words needed to be special. I was having the worst time figuring out what that something special was, and I was spending so much time thinking about what Bumpy could potentially say, that I wasn’t taking the time to figure out what it was that Bumpy actually did.
So, then this terrifying day in class came around when our instructor gathered all of the clowns in a circle and said:
“OK. One by one, you’re going to go to the middle of the circle and you’re going to be funny for us. Get up there, do something funny, and make us laugh. The rest of you: no sympathy laughs are allowed.”
…DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW POSITIVELY TERRIFYING THAT IS?!?!?! TERRIFYING!!!!! “Go be funny. We’ll just be over here, cold as ice.” WHAT?! We all looked around the room at each other; there were seven of us, seven clowns, and seven examples of impending epic failure.
Not a one of us had any idea what to actually do. We all had an at least decent idea as to who we were, but had determined absolutely nothing beyond that. Henceforth, we all just picked random activities that we thought could be maybe (rather ‘hopefully but most likely not’) funny. Or, at the very least, almost cute.
Some people tried to pick their nose, some people tried to tell a joke, some people tried putting their ankles behind their head when their bodies were anything but flexible…all without any rhyme or reason as to why, but just to do something.
Me: I just stood there with my hands in my crotch, waiting for enlightenment. Story of my life.
We were bloody disastrous.
Rule #2 in ‘Funny’:
--You have to actively do something, and you have to be actively doing something that makes sense in regards to who you are in the scene. (Slash ‘Don’t lack a purpose.’)
There are about a zillion and a half other “do nots” in this regard. I have been yelled at for countless of them and over time, I have thankfully amended some of my ways and managed to transform a good chunk of my comedic blunders into absolute triumph and SHEER GENIUS. (Too much? Maybe “Mediocre Awesome” is more apt.) However. I am delighted to report that I have never been a culprit to the following gruesome act of comedic injustice:
…
Now. Any and everyone who has ever taken any kind of Improv class will tell you that there will be one guy, at least one guy in the room who will think that he’s hilarious and will have signed-up for the class for no other reason than to prove as much to everyone there. Somehow, we won’t be able to stop talking about his jokes, his wise-cracks, his razor-sharp wit, his pizzazz, his Je ne sais quoi, and he will be undoubtedly skyrocketed towards stardom a week into the class. This guy believes this.
This guy is horribly and shamefully wrong.
I really did not want to believe that such a person existed but, indeed, they do, and indeed, he is in my class.
For the sake of anonymity, we will refer to this guy as “Creepy Leibowitz”, Glary BigHead’s uber slimey Jewish cousin. He was like the odd man out at their family reunions, left by himself to play Magic the Gathering while the adults were gossiping over G & Ts and Glary BigHead was off rolling her eyes and puking…somewhere.
Similarly to his cousin, Creepy Leibowitz is not one to take direction well. Or listen…at all. Rather, Creepy Leibowitz already knows that he’s funny (HILARIOUS) and doesn’t need your help in the matter. He just wants you to stand by and watch him weave some comedic magic.
Instructor: “Creepy Leibowitz, who are you in this scene right now?”
Creepy: “Um, uh, yeah, well, you know, I’m uh…I’m my Grandfather, who’s an extractor of vampire DNA.”
Instructor: “Ummm…”
(Creepy Leibowitz just smiles at him.)
Instructor: “I don’t know your Grandfather, but I feel like he probably isn’t actually…that. That’s not a real thing.”
Creepy: “Oh, um…my Grandfather, and maybe he does taxidermy on babies?”
Instructor: “No. Nope. Try again.”
Creepy: “Oh! Oh right, no questions, we’re not, uh….we don’t ask questions in Improv. … I am my Grandfather, and he does taxidermy on babies.”
(Creepy Leibowitz smiles at this triumph, we cringe)
Welcome to my fucking nightmare.
Creepy: “Hey there…Georgie…Georgie-boy, HEY there! Why don’t we, uh…why don’t we take a stroll and look at some houses together?”
Nice Quirky Guy: “Francis, I don’t know why you have to take us on this walk around our neighborhood every Sunday to do this, it’s gotten really old.”
Creepy: “That’s ‘cause your house is so bad.”
(Creepy Leibowitz does a take out to the class, smiles)
Instructor: “Don’t break the scene.”
Creepy: “Oh. OK. So…hey there. Hey. Look, uh, look at that house, it’s so small and….awww, it’s crazy looking, with all of the…you know. Stuff. That’s awful, only a group of Asians could possibly live there.”
(smile-take to us, we all gasp…including the girl form Beijing in the front row)
Instructor: “O. K. Subtle racism—well, all racism has absolutely no place in this room, alright? So. Let’s agree to not to go to that kind of place, no matter how, uh….funny it may be.”
(…and Creepy Leibowitz hasn’t flinched, hasn’t stopped smiling, hasn’t flinched)
Instructor: “Creepy Leibowitz?”
Creepy: “What?”
Great.
These creepshows? No one wants to work with these creepshows. We have had four sessions and already, everyone in class is avoiding working with him like the plague. It’d be one thing if he just didn’t get it—obviously, OBVIOUSLY there are plenty of things that I don’t get—but he’s stubbornly sticking to his own shit, his own shit which is AWful and polarizing everyone in the room by doing so.
Instructor: “Creepy Leibowitz.”
Creepy: “Yeah?”
Instructor: “So. Your best friend really work in an office like he did in this scene?”
Creepy: “Yeah. Yeah, he does, he’s in charge of, uh…of…like…”
Instructor: “Does he really have slaves like you said? Like you said in the scene?”
Creepy: “Well, uh, you know. Sorta…like…”
Instructor: “No. Really. Does he?”
Creepy: “Uhhh… … …”
Instructor: “And has he really ever used anyone as an ottoman? Like you said, in the scene?”
Creepy: “Oh. Oh, yeah, you know, just uh…just like on your average ordinary Tuesday.”
(Creepy Leibowitz smiles. Proud of himself.)
DON’T BE THAT GUY!!!!!
Rules #3/#46/#722 in ‘Funny’: DON’T! BE! THAT! GUY!
It sucks. He sucks, that guy just sucks and he sucks both the life and the funny out of the room. So DON’T!!!!
And listen: If you’re funny, really funny, truly honestly funny, then god bless ya. I mean it.
If you’re not: look at the people who are (Kristen Wiig), look at the shit that is (vajazzling), and learn from all of it.
Stop trying so hard and just be open to…everything. (Pot-kettle-black.)
But ABOVE ALL:
--Don’t be a jerk.
--Don’t lack a purpose.
--… & Don’t be that guy.
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