On topic! Writing physical comedy

Question

Okay, I'm working on a couple of comedies with MC, and I need to know how to write a Marx Bros- type physical comedy scene. Like in Something About Mary - the fishhook scene. How do you write a food fight? "She throws a biscuit, and mayhem ensues?" I know the Michael Bay answer - "You write food fight, we'll do the rest" but I am not in his league. Help!

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]Okay, I'm working on a couple of comedies with MC, and I need to know how to write a Marx ... Michael Bay answer - "You write food fight, we'll do the rest" but I am not in his league. Help![/nq]
The point being: What (one hopes) will be funny on the screen, doesn't really leap off the page as funny.
"The dinosaur skeleton wobbles and Cary Grant falls to the floor" just doesn't convey the look on his face or the timing of the pratfall...

"...the writers, *** bless them, are the only true commies we have in Hollywood."
Ned Beatty

Usenet · Answer

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. I remember the editors of America's Funniest Home Videos suggesting to wannabe videographers, not just to get the funny shot, but the reactions to what happened. What exactly is this mayhem that ensues?

Is it some sort of escalating chain reaction that pulls in innocent bystanders? Blazing Saddles takes over the entire Warner Bros. backlot.
Is it a chain reaction like a Rube Goldberg? What really got me to think outside the box was the Ranma 1/2 Vol.2 Graphic novel. I've turned several people onto manga with this sample, and you can read it so much faster than you can watch the anime. You also have the benefit of being able to adapt the graphic novel as a writing exercise.

Play with our expectations, and then defy them. Be funny with the phonetics in your dialogue, and remember the Rule of Three. Duck, duck, goose.

Usenet · Answer

Duck,
[nq:1]duck, goose.[/nq]
Actual line of dialog i was privy to: I was at the library out East. The librarian was late, she came in flustered - something had happened. "I stopped for a goose, and I got rear-ended!"

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Help![/nq]
And don't mix up the humiliation that you love with a putdown. The only putdown in the Wile E. Coyote Road Runner saga is that bottle sound effect Road Runner makes with his tongue. The humiliation is a consequence and very brief, because if the Coyote fails to get up again, it's not funny.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Help![/nq]
[nq:1]And don't mix up the humiliation that you love with a putdown. The only putdown in the Wile E. Coyote ... The humiliation is a consequence and very brief, because if the Coyote fails to get up again, it's not funny.[/nq]
It's not that I love humiliation, but it's the basis of comedy. Something About Mary - or any other comedy - is a series of embarrassments. Look at the whole zipper scene - now that was bad. And insults are only funny when you put them in the mouthes of the meanie, who gets his/ her comeuppance.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]"The dinosaur skeleton wobbles and Cary Grant falls to the floor" just doesn't convey the look on his face or the timing of the pratfall...[/nq]
That's because you're summarizing the story instead of telling it. Think of it as an action sequence but with laughs instead of excitement if it ain't on the page..
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8383966838452437038&q=Bringing+Up+Baby+dinosaur&ei=X1qYSJfxHImK4ALXz5GKBQ&hl=en

She's gone up on the ladder and they're talking and her excitement that he had fun that day starts her swaying in giddiness. He starts swaying to keep up with the conversation, neither of them noticing, until she asks him to stop rocking, but he's not the one rocking. She realizes she's become a pendulum on the ladder and she starts to scream with each sway. Whoa, Whoa, Whoah!
She climbs onto the skeleton, just before the tall ladder makes its final swing toward the ground.. The bones starts to give way. Cary reaches out for her hand, snatching it as the huge cloud of museum dust kicks up. The skeleton crumbles to pieces below. He holds on for dear life and hers. Her hat flies off.
"Hold on!" he says as she looks down at the mess she's made. "You do forgive me?" she asks as he pulls her up to safety on the scaffold. But it's not so much a question because she won't let him answer her. She continues yapping. FADE OUT
That's a LOT more than "The dinosaur skeleton wobbles and Cary Grant falls to the floor".

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Okay, I'm working on a couple of comedies with MC, and I need to know how to write a Marx ... Michael Bay answer - "You write food fight, we'll do the rest" but I am not in his league. Help![/nq]
Personally, I don't even try to write physical comedy. That's all actor dependent, so my comedy is all situations and dialogue.

If they happen to cast Jim Carry or Steve Martin the physical comedy will be there, but you're not going to write something that could work for either Jim Carrey or Steve Martin because while they're both physical comedians, they're very different from each other. So you have to write something that would be funny for Steve Carell, David Cross, Jerry Seinfeld OR Jim Carrey or Steve Martin or any of 10 other hot comics. In other words it has to be funny on the page, and physical comedy really isn't very funny on the page.

That's my opinion, but it's also a thing that got lectured into my head by my agent; you might hope that a producer will see it as a great vehicle for the physical comedian you're picturing, but you're casting too narrow a minnow net if you're writing only for physical comedians.

Alan Brooks

A with an Underwood
...he scribbled on
the nearest banana
peel...
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Usenet · Answer

[nq:1] ...he scribbled on the nearest banana peel...[/nq]
That's pretty much what I've gotten from going through my library of street scripts - which I did today - is: you write Food fight. BUT someone had to write the Animal House "What am I? A zit!" bit. And that's a desert-island movie for me.
So it's a fine line between clever and stupid. Okay, I'm gonna cross that Rubicon from witty into funny - someone's got to do it. I tell you, sitting around trading quips is fun for two minutes, but I'm looking for how to write the zipper scene in Something, or any classic awful/ awful funny thing. But I do know so much is casting - like in Liar Liar, when he was in the bathroom beating the "**** out of himself."
Okay, lesson learned - write what you can, leave the rest. Sound good?

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2] ...he scribbled on the nearest banana peel...[/nq]
[nq:1]That's pretty much what I've gotten from going through my library of street scripts - which I did today - ... bathroom beating the "**** out of himself." Okay, lesson learned - write what you can, leave the rest. Sound good?[/nq]
Gotta say, I think Warren, oops, I mean Alan... was pretty much on the money.

"...the writers, *** bless them, are the only true commies we have in Hollywood."
Ned Beatty

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Personally, I don't even try to write physical comedy. That's all actor dependent, so my comedy is all situations and dialogue.[/nq]
No doubt. I'm watching the news the other day, and the story was about a turtle memorial on a beach somewhere. There was a big sand mound where the turtle died, and a bunch of crunchy hippies around it crying and ***. Out of the ocean comes another turtle, it walked all the way up the beach and laid down at the foot of the mound. The male news anchor in the studio said "Who knew turtles had feelings?" and the hottie blonde co anchor punched the guy in the shoulder.

I guess one way of writing physical comedy is to just be absolutely absurd. In a comedy, the news would move forward into sports or weather and present a situation where the male anchor punches the hottie co-anchor in the ****. I know its all been done before by the the greatest spoofs.In my script. I have a hot dog eating contest...for dogs. Everybody thinks the same thing, wow funny image, but dogs will eat themselves to death, literally, and thats NOT funny. But wait, I have a licensed VET monitoring for safety. So now for the scene to work, the Doc has to be an absolute joke, immediately. Either old and incompetent, or blind, or whatever. To make it work as physical comedy its all dependent on the absurd situation playing out.

Dogs start barfing and ******** everywhere. Hot Dog mayhem ensues with dogs fighting over hot dogs. Owners slipping in dog puke. Dogs eating dog puke. Gangstas giving CPR to a dead Pit Bull. CPR and mouth to mouth actually bringing the pit bull back. A redneck arguing over the official results. The look on his dogs face. The doc, with stethascope on a puke covered old fufu dog. Shaking his head no. And finally on the promoter trying to get hotdogs back from people and dogs that are continuing to take and eat hot dogs.
There is some physical comedy in the scene, but I wouldnt dare attempt to write 3 Stooges where every scene involved tripping and slapping and eating weird things and retaliation. I like to write scenes where the only way out of the scene is for it to go so far that physical comedy is unavoidable.
Is the ex-model hottie co-anchor punching the hunky rock jawed anchor in the arm funny? Is it violence? Is it cute because she is really hot, and a signal like that from a girl punching you playfully in the arm is an invitation for more flirting? I don't know. I just know if you play it out one way with him punching her, its can lead to comedy.

Its hella ambitious Bones. Good luck.
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On topic! Writing physical comedy

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