The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [56]
Attitude: “Never, never try to be funny!” commanded Producers genius Mel Brooks. Following this advice doesn’t mean never laughing; rather, relaxing to lower the stakes. Try quips, not shaggy dog stories, and smile. The more confident you seem, the less exposed you feel, the clearer your voice will be, and the funnier you’ll appear.
Pitch Woo: If misjudging the audience is the commonest cause of humor failure, second is knowing the audience too well, and letting on, by jabbing at their insecurities. Don’t tout your sharps, oversell, or announce, “Here’s a funny one” before testing the water. Instead, do as comics do: Build rapport, lob the odd compliment.
Recognition: Read a group, ensuring it can read you. Humor has a regional accent, dramatized by actor Simon Pegg in this exchange between friends (B is British, A, American):
B: I had to go to my grandad’s funeral last week.
A: Sorry to hear that.
B: Don’t be. It was the first time he ever paid for the drinks.
A: I see.
Observe what makes listeners tick, ideally taking the truth and twisting it. Or as another comic advised, don’t give a funny opinion; give an opinion in a funny way. Forget rococo riffs on harpsichords: People will more readily endorse the comic value you assign to, say, the horror of opening beer since the ring-pull’s demise, or cadging a favor out of a miserly neighbor, or plowing through Ikea on a holiday weekend.
Style: Humor speaks with forked tongue—in double meanings, incongruity, image, metaphor, and so on—but overcomplicate it and no one will get it. A cleverly bowled joke deceives just enough to be caught; listeners’ pleasure being in their mind turning somersaults, then making a clean landing. For instance, a phrase like “bungalow mind” places an extra processing load on the brain, which effort makes it stick.
So be economical, gulling listeners’ imaginations into being your collaborators. Use as few words as possible; employ vivid, visual language, and act out stories with body and face. (Like actress Lucille Ball, who was so adept her scripts featured “light bulb” and “puddle up” as facial stage directions.) Dazzle your listener’s mind’s eye and he won’t see a punch line hurtling at him.
Pace: Stand-ups say: “Never step on your punch line.” Meaning: Savor the pause before a gag, defined by Franklin Ajaye as “the lighting of the fuse.” When telling a funny tale, build suspense, let misunderstanding and expectation coalesce in listeners’ minds, and adhere to the principle “Don’t say it until you have to.”
Surprise: No doubt Julius Caesar’s witty conquests in court taught him:
The most powerful weapon of war is the unexpected.
Mix maladapted elements to wreak comedy havoc: Praise the bad, exaggerate, understate, fake anger, feign delight. Use inversion: Rather than “What a big pancake roll!” say, as a lawyer did to me, “This pancake roll wants to devour me.”
Humor works by guile, not advertisement, but play with comic expectations and punch lines may be discarded. A Bill Cosby routine began: “One time I had a sore throat, bad sore throat.” He paused, preparing his audience for a joke, then resumed in a cross child’s voice, “I have a sore throat.” They cracked up, as much because the pause primed them for a gag.
Follow the Way of Woe: In funny-land nothing gets better: The trajectory is always bad gets worse gets more and more absurd. Such as the time I was whining about my expanding bottom. My husband—sighing, eyes shut, in bed—said, “Not at all.” So in I hopped, to a loud crack. My side of the bed had gone through the floor. My husband groaned, got up, and we lifted it out. Another crack. The leg on his side had snapped. Finally, so did he.
THE ANATOMY OF A JOKE
Jokes embody in miniature the short, dapper definition of comedy given by the short, great Charlie Chaplin:
Two opposite ideas that collide.
The simplest come in two parts: the setup (building comic expectation) and the punch line (exploding expectation to reveal the skulduggery). Like mathematical equations organized on absurdist principles,