Novelist Howard Jacobson: “Once it discards its right and duty to offend, comedy is not just enfeebled, but put to sleep, like an unwanted animal.
No plot is inherently funny or unfunny
Any plot is potentially comic, melodramatic, or tragic, or all 3 at once.
Vastness of the comedy field: laugher, humor, meta comedy, wit, satire, parody, farce, burlesque, grotesque.
Comedy celebrates man’s ability and capacity to endure.
Stand-up comedy: champions individualism and potentially radical ideologies
Situation comedy: favors the status quo and social consensus
Laughter is no guarantee of humor, for it may also come from nervousness in the face of danger, grief, and so on.
Hollywood has many funny men and some funny women (graduates of SNL), but what the genre misses is the straight characters, the stiff and stuffed shirts that the likes of Margaret Dumont had played in the best comedies of the Marx brothers in the 1930s.
Or the character that William Holden played in George Cukor’s 1950 comedy, Born Yesterday, starring Judy Holliday in her Best Actress Oscar role.
Or the character that Peter Lawford played in another Cukor-Holliday collaboration, the 1954 comedy, It Should Happen to You.
Most of the figures in Hollywood comedies are zany and eccentric, but with no one to play against their routines
Comedies about dislocation and disorientation revolve around the idea of a character–usually a male–who is thrown by social or economic circumstances that are beyond his control into a new, different world, or being transformed into somebody they are not familiar with.
Examples:
Teenagers who are transformed into adults over night
Characters learn a lesson the hard way: They begin with a desire that is then turned on its head
Movie Genres: Comedy–Actors, Directors, Dislocation/Disorientation; Role to Offend
Nov 6, 2022
Directors of Comedy (New Hollywood)
Apatow, Judd
Dobkin, David (Wedding Crashers)
Farrelly, Peter and Bobby
McKay, Adam (Anchorman, Taledega Nights)
Phillips, Todd
Roach, Jay
Shadyac, Tom
Actors:
Black, Jack
Carell, Steve
Carrey, Jim
Ferrell, Will
Myers, Mike
Rogen, Set
Sandler, Adam
Stiller, Ben
Vaughn, Vince
Wilson, Owen
Novelist Howard Jacobson: “Once it discards its right and duty to offend, comedy is not just enfeebled, but put to sleep, like an unwanted animal.
No plot is inherently funny or unfunny
Any plot is potentially comic, melodramatic, or tragic, or all 3 at once.
Vastness of the comedy field: laugher, humor, meta comedy, wit, satire, parody, farce, burlesque, grotesque.
Comedy celebrates man’s ability and capacity to endure.
Stand-up comedy: champions individualism and potentially radical ideologies
Situation comedy: favors the status quo and social consensus
Laughter is no guarantee of humor, for it may also come from nervousness in the face of danger, grief, and so on.
Hollywood has many funny men and some funny women (graduates of SNL), but what the genre misses is the straight characters, the stiff and stuffed shirts that the likes of Margaret Dumont had played in the best comedies of the Marx brothers in the 1930s.
Or the character that William Holden played in George Cukor’s 1950 comedy, Born Yesterday, starring Judy Holliday in her Best Actress Oscar role.
Or the character that Peter Lawford played in another Cukor-Holliday collaboration, the 1954 comedy, It Should Happen to You.
Most of the figures in Hollywood comedies are zany and eccentric, but with no one to play against their routines
Comedies about dislocation and disorientation revolve around the idea of a character–usually a male–who is thrown by social or economic circumstances that are beyond his control into a new, different world, or being transformed into somebody they are not familiar with.
Examples:
Teenagers who are transformed into adults over night
Characters learn a lesson the hard way: They begin with a desire that is then turned on its head