Order Steve Kaplan's book from Michael Wiese Productions here. Visit Steve's website for more information and upcoming workshops. This interview was originally broadcast July 15, 2016.
Dave Watson: Like the title of your book. Why are so many tools of comedy hidden, subliminal, or hard to pin down?
Steve Kaplan: They’re called hidden for a reason. There’s been a lot of myths and tired tropes when dealing with comedy. The rule of three, the sound of “K,” etc. Most people think that some people are just born funny. Woody Allen said you can’t teach comedy. But comedy, like any art, can be taught.
The first thing to realize is that there’s a difference between funny and comedy. Funny is whatever makes you laugh. If you’re laughing at it, it’s funny to you; if you’re not laughing, it’s not. But shaking keys at my little niece makes her laugh, but you wouldn’t consider a set of shaken keys to be the basis of great comedy. Comedy is the art of telling the truth about people, and the “Hidden Tools” are an attempt to understand the hidden workings of comedy—what my friend Brian Rose, now a professor at a New York university, used to call the physics of comedy.
DW: I want to go back a second. What is the rule of three, and why is the “K” sound thought to be funny?
SK: It’s one of the basic tropes: when you list a series of things, the third one can be the absurd, or ”funny” one. In Annie Hall, Woody Allen is describing an annoying guy trying to impress a girl on a date. He describes the ad the guy probably posted, "Thirtyish academic wishes to meet woman who's interested in Mozart, James Joyce, and sodomy." In a not-well-written sitcom though, the rhythms are so familiar that you find yourself anticipating it, and so there’s no longer a reveal.
To many people, the letter “K” just sounds funny, like when W.C. Fields would say, “Cucamonga.” In English, frictives and plosives are linguistic percussion, and sometimes the mere use of them is like a rimshot at the end of a joke.
DW: At one point you discuss the non-hero. This character seems to have been around for decades if not centuries before our entertainment mediums. Why does this character or archetype endure?
SK: The character’s that have been around for thousands of years are archetypes. They were the main characters in the Commedia dell’Arte during the Renaissance, and the recognizable characters in many sitcoms: There’s the innocent fool, the clever-tricky servant. However, the Non-Hero is a tool to heighten comic effect. When a character lacks skills—is unsure, confused, awkward—it creates a comic moment. But giving that same character later in the film sensitivity, compassion, awareness creates more of a dramatic moment. In that way, you can add comedy to drama, and add dramatic moments to comedies.
DW: I think of Homer Simpson.
SK: Absolutely! He’s often a perfect Non-Hero, but at the end of an episode, when he’s a little bit more caring and self-aware, his character can help create a tender moment. At the same time, he’s the classic archetypical fool—the idiot who, in his own mind, never fails. All these archetypes were developed thousands of years ago, as characters in Greek folk plays. Then these characters got organized, codified. In the Middle Ages, roaming troupes of players used these archetypes to propel endless narratives.
DW: Now this almost sounds formulaic.
SK: It’s actually not. The characters convey universal archetypes, but they also have the ability to change. Homer Simpson surprises you. Think of him as your crazy uncle. You might have him over around the holidays and he doesn’t change, you expect a certain behavior from him, but he still might surprise you. Archetypes make comedy clear, and still have the capacity to grow, as opposed to stereotypes. All comedy is transformational. One prototype is the story starts off with a broken person, and they grow. Think of Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. With sitcoms it will happen, too. Look at the Big Bang Theory. In the beginning no one had girlfriends, and now some are married, Sheldon actually kissed a girl.
DW: It’s often been said, most famously I think by Roger Ebert, that the hardest movie to make is a really funny comedy. Do you agree? Why?
SK: I’d say yes, because everybody’s definition of comedy is different. Sometimes executives will look at an actor and say, “Adam Sandler is funny. Grownups has a funny premise,” and so on. I’m sure it made a lot of money, and some thought it was funny, and others, okay, many others, thought it wasn’t. Here’s a key: don’t try to guess what others will laugh at. Write what makes you laugh. The worst movies is where there’s no story, no characters, it’s just there to be funny.
SK: I just finished re-watching Bringing Up Baby and the guy who directed it…
DW: Howard Hawks.
SK: Right: he said the one thing he would’ve changed was not making every single person in it a screwball. We need to see a human in a comedy so we know what is real and what is not. You can’t have Mork without Mindy.
DW: And Pam Dawber was the classic girl next door. Another famous quote is people taking themselves seriously and failing is always funnier than people trying to be funny. Why?
SK: I absolutely agree! Go back to The Simpsons: those characters are not doing it to be funny, they do what they do for a reason.
DW: There don’t seem to be many sly comedies these days. Most hit you over the head. Is this due to marketing and distribution? In this current feature landscape there’s the Judd Apatow comedy, including last year’s Trainwreck, and then, back in the day, Christopher Guest’s ensemble comedies, which I would label as sly or flat comedies. There aren’t many like Annie Hall, which you talk about in your book and won Best Picture when it was
released.
SK: It’s hard to say--people are always chasing trends, and they sometimes try to make comedies even more shocking than the last one you saw, where the story is gross, exaggerated. But I think there will always be a market for smart, sly comedies. Maybe not a big market, but a market nonetheless.
DW: And actors frequently say playing comedy versus straight drama is
harder. Would you agree, and why?
SK: There’s an old story, probably apocryphal, in which an old actor, one of the greatest of his day, is dying. A friend leans over the deathbed and asks, “How are you?” And the actor replies, “Well, dying is hard . . . but comedy’s harder.”
DW: What’s your favorite comedic cinematic or television moment? One that inspires you still to this day. It can be a scene, emotion, character or thematic moment.
SK: Well, there are many! Probably the one that stands out is the end of Life of Brian. Eric Idle is on the cross, and he says to Brian not to groan and moan, leave the audience with a bow, we know the world’s absurd. It’s a great moment. There’s also a quote, “God is a comedian whose audience keeps forgetting to laugh.” Preston Sturges also said, “laughter is all some people have.”
Clip: Life of Brian
Dave Watson is a writer and educator. He lives in Madison, WI.
Dave Watson: Like the title of your book. Why are so many tools of comedy hidden, subliminal, or hard to pin down?
Steve Kaplan: They’re called hidden for a reason. There’s been a lot of myths and tired tropes when dealing with comedy. The rule of three, the sound of “K,” etc. Most people think that some people are just born funny. Woody Allen said you can’t teach comedy. But comedy, like any art, can be taught.
The first thing to realize is that there’s a difference between funny and comedy. Funny is whatever makes you laugh. If you’re laughing at it, it’s funny to you; if you’re not laughing, it’s not. But shaking keys at my little niece makes her laugh, but you wouldn’t consider a set of shaken keys to be the basis of great comedy. Comedy is the art of telling the truth about people, and the “Hidden Tools” are an attempt to understand the hidden workings of comedy—what my friend Brian Rose, now a professor at a New York university, used to call the physics of comedy.
DW: I want to go back a second. What is the rule of three, and why is the “K” sound thought to be funny?
SK: It’s one of the basic tropes: when you list a series of things, the third one can be the absurd, or ”funny” one. In Annie Hall, Woody Allen is describing an annoying guy trying to impress a girl on a date. He describes the ad the guy probably posted, "Thirtyish academic wishes to meet woman who's interested in Mozart, James Joyce, and sodomy." In a not-well-written sitcom though, the rhythms are so familiar that you find yourself anticipating it, and so there’s no longer a reveal.
To many people, the letter “K” just sounds funny, like when W.C. Fields would say, “Cucamonga.” In English, frictives and plosives are linguistic percussion, and sometimes the mere use of them is like a rimshot at the end of a joke.
DW: At one point you discuss the non-hero. This character seems to have been around for decades if not centuries before our entertainment mediums. Why does this character or archetype endure?
SK: The character’s that have been around for thousands of years are archetypes. They were the main characters in the Commedia dell’Arte during the Renaissance, and the recognizable characters in many sitcoms: There’s the innocent fool, the clever-tricky servant. However, the Non-Hero is a tool to heighten comic effect. When a character lacks skills—is unsure, confused, awkward—it creates a comic moment. But giving that same character later in the film sensitivity, compassion, awareness creates more of a dramatic moment. In that way, you can add comedy to drama, and add dramatic moments to comedies.
DW: I think of Homer Simpson.
SK: Absolutely! He’s often a perfect Non-Hero, but at the end of an episode, when he’s a little bit more caring and self-aware, his character can help create a tender moment. At the same time, he’s the classic archetypical fool—the idiot who, in his own mind, never fails. All these archetypes were developed thousands of years ago, as characters in Greek folk plays. Then these characters got organized, codified. In the Middle Ages, roaming troupes of players used these archetypes to propel endless narratives.
DW: Now this almost sounds formulaic.
SK: It’s actually not. The characters convey universal archetypes, but they also have the ability to change. Homer Simpson surprises you. Think of him as your crazy uncle. You might have him over around the holidays and he doesn’t change, you expect a certain behavior from him, but he still might surprise you. Archetypes make comedy clear, and still have the capacity to grow, as opposed to stereotypes. All comedy is transformational. One prototype is the story starts off with a broken person, and they grow. Think of Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. With sitcoms it will happen, too. Look at the Big Bang Theory. In the beginning no one had girlfriends, and now some are married, Sheldon actually kissed a girl.
DW: It’s often been said, most famously I think by Roger Ebert, that the hardest movie to make is a really funny comedy. Do you agree? Why?
SK: I’d say yes, because everybody’s definition of comedy is different. Sometimes executives will look at an actor and say, “Adam Sandler is funny. Grownups has a funny premise,” and so on. I’m sure it made a lot of money, and some thought it was funny, and others, okay, many others, thought it wasn’t. Here’s a key: don’t try to guess what others will laugh at. Write what makes you laugh. The worst movies is where there’s no story, no characters, it’s just there to be funny.
SK: I just finished re-watching Bringing Up Baby and the guy who directed it…
DW: Howard Hawks.
SK: Right: he said the one thing he would’ve changed was not making every single person in it a screwball. We need to see a human in a comedy so we know what is real and what is not. You can’t have Mork without Mindy.
DW: And Pam Dawber was the classic girl next door. Another famous quote is people taking themselves seriously and failing is always funnier than people trying to be funny. Why?
SK: I absolutely agree! Go back to The Simpsons: those characters are not doing it to be funny, they do what they do for a reason.
DW: There don’t seem to be many sly comedies these days. Most hit you over the head. Is this due to marketing and distribution? In this current feature landscape there’s the Judd Apatow comedy, including last year’s Trainwreck, and then, back in the day, Christopher Guest’s ensemble comedies, which I would label as sly or flat comedies. There aren’t many like Annie Hall, which you talk about in your book and won Best Picture when it was
released.
SK: It’s hard to say--people are always chasing trends, and they sometimes try to make comedies even more shocking than the last one you saw, where the story is gross, exaggerated. But I think there will always be a market for smart, sly comedies. Maybe not a big market, but a market nonetheless.
DW: And actors frequently say playing comedy versus straight drama is
harder. Would you agree, and why?
SK: There’s an old story, probably apocryphal, in which an old actor, one of the greatest of his day, is dying. A friend leans over the deathbed and asks, “How are you?” And the actor replies, “Well, dying is hard . . . but comedy’s harder.”
DW: What’s your favorite comedic cinematic or television moment? One that inspires you still to this day. It can be a scene, emotion, character or thematic moment.
SK: Well, there are many! Probably the one that stands out is the end of Life of Brian. Eric Idle is on the cross, and he says to Brian not to groan and moan, leave the audience with a bow, we know the world’s absurd. It’s a great moment. There’s also a quote, “God is a comedian whose audience keeps forgetting to laugh.” Preston Sturges also said, “laughter is all some people have.”
Clip: Life of Brian
Dave Watson is a writer and educator. He lives in Madison, WI.
