Brad Schreiber - What Are You Laughing At?: How to Write Humor for Screenplays, Stories, and More

PRAISE FOR WHAT ARE YOU LAUGHING AT?

At last, a how-to book by someone who actually knows how to.

Larry Gelbart, creator, M*A*S*H (TV), screenwriter, Tootsie

Attention, aspiring writers! Youll learn so much about the craft from Schreibers book that you can skip school altogether and spend your tuition money on sex and drugs.

Tom Robbins, novelist, Jitterbug Perfume, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Some people are just plain funny. Some people dont know funny when it bites them in their collective ass. For the rest of us in the middle, this book might help. That is, if funny is your idea of a good time.

Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller

Brad Schreiber gives chapter and verse to those who aspire to join this fraternity, and he sets the best example himself: recognize the standard, struggle toward it, and be worthy. Thanks for the road map.

Mort Sahl, comedian

Brad Schreiber has the rare gift of demonstrating the art of comic writing even as he teaches it. Hes like one of those professors whose class you couldnt sleep through. Laugh and learn.

Phil Proctor, writer-performer, cofounder, the Firesign Theatre

Brad Schreiber has taken the very serious business of humor writing and made it accessible, instructive and, above all, humorous. His range of knowledge on the subject is impressivewhether citing Franz Kafka or George Carlinand theres much to be learned from his book even without all the great jokes.

Jane Heller, novelist, The Secret Ingredient, Lucky Stars, Female Intelligence

Do not buy this book. Do not read this book. Refuse to accept this book if given to you. I have enough competition.

Jim Kouf, screenwriter, Rush Hour

Brad does a magnificent job of breaking down the elements of comedy.

Jason Clark, producer, Ted, Stuart Little

With the delicacy of a lover with a twitch, Brad Schreiber lifts the skirts of comedy and bares her naked truths.

Paul Guay, screenwriter, Liar Liar

Copyright 2017 by Brad Schreiber

All rights reserved. Copyright under Berne Copyright Convention, Universal Copyright Convention, and Pan American Copyright Convention. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Allworth Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

Allworth Press books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Allworth Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or .

21 20 19 18 17 5 4 3 2 1

Published by Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018. Allworth Press is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., a Delaware corporation.

www.allworth.com

Cover design by Mary Belibasakis King

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Print ISBN: 978-1-62153-600-0
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62153-601-7

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THOSE WHO supported me in so many ways except financially. You can ask only so much of people, I guess: Bruce Bauman, Florie Brizel, Laraine Crampton, Dori Fram, Peter Hay, Jane Heller, Marybeth Menaker, Michael Vincent Miller, Ron Murphy, Jim Parish and Jon Winokur.

Thanks to my agents, Linda Chester and especially Laurie Fox, for calming me down.

Appreciation to Dr. Linda Venis and Cindy Lieberman and staff at the UCLA Extension Writers Program and Craig Gore and staff at Columbia College, CBS Studio Center, for letting me distort the impressionable minds of their students.

A special tribute to Regina Lynn Preciado and Simon Levy, both of whom annoyingly interrupted my bouts of self-pity and discouragement with optimism and praise.

And to Chris Vogler, a great friend, associate, and mentor, who is the main reason this book exists. Blame him for any oversights.

Introduction

THERE ARE TWO THINGS TO REMEMBER ABOUT comedy. No, three. Comedy is funny. Dying is hard. I forget the other two.

But Brad Schreiber remembers them. He practically invented them. Hes the go-to guy around here for comedy knowledge. Just think of Brad as the squirrel who has gone around gathering the nuts of comedy knowledge so you lazy squirrels dont have to. Hes big for a squirrel, but fast. Actually too big for a squirrel. Make that the Himalayan brown bear who has gone around gathering all the rice balls of comedy knowledge to help you through the long winter of humor deprivation. Metaphors be with you, Young Skywalker.

Okay, lets start over. Brad is my friend and colleague. Not funny, but true. He has studied every nook and most of the crannies of humor and has gathered them together into this humidor, where they will stay nice and dry until you need them. In fact, he had some dry humor left over, and he put it in the cuspidor. Actually, he has never been within spitting distance of a cuspidor. But I digress. And Euphrates.

The fact is we are living in a comedy-impaired era, especially when it comes to screenwriting. People have forgotten how to be funny. The most common form of comedy script I encountered when reading scripts for a living was the genre known as The Unfunny Comedy. The jokes were there, or at least they were indicated, but they werent funny. The punchlines lacked punch. The scripts had potentially funny situations but they werent exploited.

Some of these scripts got made into movies and people went to see them and some of them even laughed, but it was the hollow laughter of the humor-starved. Those poor souls were laughing at the idea of a joke, at the memory of a funny situation, at the faint hope of being amused. People are so starved for funny that I have often said that if you write a script with two really good laughs in it, you have a hit. Also it helps to have people dancing, especially klutzy white people trying to dance, which makes for good trailer moments that you can enjoy later in your trailer.

This is serious, folks. The standards for comedy have fallen far and fast. Toilet humor and mean-spirited insult humor are now occupying the niches once reserved for wit and clever innuendo. I am convinced writers suffer from mass amnesia about the principles of comedy writing, and there are such principles. Just ask Brad, the Klown Kollektor of Komedy Konsciousness. He has thought about them systematically and has presented them entertainingly.

Why is comedy so danged important? Because we live in a world that constantly bruises and abrades us, that fills us with frustrations that MUST BE RELIEVED somehow or we go bonkers. Comedy is one of the ways to get that fast, fast relief. Comedy relief. The Greeks knew about this. You know, the funny Greeks. Aristophanes. Nia Vardalos. They had a word for it, of course, and the word was comedy. Well, really it was komos , a word that meant revelling, partying, kicking up your heels.

The old Greeks (and their neighbors, the Geeks) lived on a steady diet of tragedy, and they got a little gassy with it after a while and liked to cleanse their systems now and then with some funny stuff, just for laughs. So just think of comedy as a kind of Roto-Rooter for the soul. Away go troubles, down the drain.