David Misch - Funny: The Book - Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Comedy

Copyright 2012 by David Misch

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.

Published in 2012 by Applause Theater & Cinema Books

An Imprint of Hal Leonard Corporation

7777 West Bluemound Road

Milwaukee, WI 53213

Trade Book Division Editorial Offices

33 Plymouth St., Montclair, NJ 07042

Book design by Mark Lerner

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Misch, David.

Funny the book: everything you always wanted to know about comedy / David Misch.p. cm.1. Wit and humor--History and criticism. 2. Comedy--History and criticism. 3. Comic, The. I. Title.PN6147.M527 2012809.72012002359

www.applausebooks.com

For Amy and Emily, whose laughter makes me happy

Contents

In order of height and vocal timbre; beginning with 5'11", light tenor

Bob Weidefor From which direction?Julia Lordfor selling meAndrew Postfor EdshuAdele Lander Burkefor legitimizing meGordon Mitchellfor It Worked on Cheers Lily Bergmanfor the titleBuddy Morrafor managing mePeggy Sarlinfor suggesting I write a bookNora Glasnerfor indexingJohn Cerullofor buying the first copyMarybeth Keatingfor shepherdingMonique Thomasfor the Penis FestivalJill Jonnesfor helping with being an authorTom Lehrerfor Vatican Rag

For Being Good People

Lee KalcheimEllis WeinerJeff RenoRon OsbornVictoria ZackheimDavid LeafLarry CutlerDavid SonneMichael SilverblattJason AlexanderDanny KleinMaryedith Burrell

For USC

Elizabeth DaleyJack Epps Jr.Barnet KellmanDavid IsaacsHedwin Naimark

For Photos

Cheryl Van GrunsvenfindingKate CoegettingBob CarlsenfixingBernard Kanehelping Guy goes to a doctor, doctor says, Youre gonna die. Guy says, Oh my god! How long do I have? 10. 10 what?! Weeks? Months? 98

There are two human activities that result in physical pleasure so intense that it produces a series of helpless, high-pitched vocal spasms.

Youve chosen a book about the one that uses fart jokes.

Of course, comedys a lot more than that. Yet the closer we look, the more mysterious it becomes.

Spasm

It started out simply enough; in ancient Greece, a comedy ended with a wedding, tragedy with a funeral. (But remember, you cant spell funeral without fun .) Thousands of years later, Mel Brooks declared, Tragedy is when I cut my finger; comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die. Still, the differences resist easy categorization. Jerry Lewis said comedy is a man in trouble; okay, so whats drama?

Rodney Dangerfield told this joke: I go to a bar, bartender asks, Whatll you have? I say, Surprise me. So he shows me a naked picture of my wife.

Surprise is the key to humor (Peekaboo! is everyones first comedy routine), but surprise is the key to all art and entertainment; its what makes a story gripping, a ballet thrilling, a painting unforgettable. So how is comedy different?

Please note this admission does not entitle you to a refund, but I dont know.

No one knows why putting one particular word at the end of a sentence makes that sentence funny rather than sad. (Or two words in the case of in bed.) When we describe how humor works, we describe how all art forms workthere is no principle of comedy that doesnt also apply to drama.

So why investigate comedy at all? Why try to discover its secret? Why not just leave it alone in its ethnic-joked, pie-splattered mystery?

Because, as a wise man has written, Humor is an essential element of human identity. Knowledge of the principles and practice of comedy is critical to understanding history, psychology, mass media, religion, and real estate investment. (One of those is a lie.)

E. B. White, author of Charlottes Web , thought examining comedy was futile. Humor can be dissected as a frog can, he wrote, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind. Well, whos he to talkthe spider died, how funny is that?

If dissecting a discipline killed enjoyment, no one would study anything they liked. Yes, explaining a joke can make it not funny, but nonstop yucks isnt the goal of this book. (Assuming you dont have the copy embedded with laughing gas on page 8.) Its to look at humor in general and American humor in particular; introduce/remind and/or get you to think about significant works; and show how American comedy developed out of what Martin Luther King called, in a slightly different context, the content of our characters. Well discuss the origins, definition, rules, and purpose of comedy, and what it tells us about the human condition. In bed.

So let the dissection begin!

My examples wont necessarily be the best or even the most representative, just the ones Im most interested in. And some will be old. Why? Guy reads Hamlet for the first time; friend asks, Howd you like it?; guy says, Its nothing but a bunch of quotations. When you know the foundations of comedy, contemporary movies and TV shows are huge heaping bowlsful of quotations; this book will talk about the originals.

From time to time, the author will project through these pages, using only the power of his mind, examples of humor that illustrate his points. For those unable to receive these projections, links are provided at the end of this book (in a section cunningly entitled Links) for viewing these examples over the far-flung series of tubes we call the Interwebs.

Speaking of which, due to the skinflint lily-livered publisher refusing to spring for a coffee-table tome that could have made me rich beyond my wildest dreams technical considerations, this book doesnt include interactive media. But for the most part Im not a fan of what the Internet calls user-generated content, which gets most of its comedy from being real. A laugh is a laugh, I accept that, but art isnt real, its art ificial. And its not democraticits elitist, created by someone who uses special skills to alter reality and, in doing so, reveal some higher form of truth. (Hey, I just defined artist !)

Still, while accepting the cruciality of professional standards underpinning the creation of art and entertainment, I have to admit a cat flushing a toilet is funny

See : Glorious medley of cats flushing toilets to the unforgettable melody Its a cat / flushing the toilet.

Finally, because the subject of Humor is so vast, by necessity this treatise will be half-vast.

And that is one of three puns in this book.

---

And not just art and entertainmentRon Graham, president of the American Mathematical Society: What makes a mathematical result beautiful or a proof elegant is the element of surprise.

Misch: Funny: The Book , 2012, p. 6.

Trickster

Socrates, Aristophanes, and Agathon were drinking out of a large goblet and Socrates was discoursing to them. Aristodemus was only half-awake and did not hear the beginning of the discourse; the chief thing he remembered was Socrates compelling the others to acknowledge that the genius of Comedy was the same with that of Tragedy. To this they were constrained to assent, being drowsy and not quite following the argument. Plato, The Symposium

People have been not quite following the argument for twenty-four hundred years now. When the closest an entire art form gets to respect is a few drunk philosophers saying Sure, whatever, comedys great, can I go to bed now?, I figure its time to make the argument clearer.

Funny: The Early Years

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