Comedy For Animators

This is the final install­ment of excerpts from the book Too Funny for Words by Ollie John­ston and Frank Thomas.   The sec­ond half of the book is vir­tu­ally all pic­tures.  These remain­ing quotes all stand on their own with no expla­na­tion needed.

Walt was always intrigued by a per­for­mance that had care­fully dis­played ges­tures and expres­sions or was enriched by the use of per­fect tim­ing that gave tex­ture and excite­ment to the move­ments. He par­tic­u­larly appre­ci­ated actions that were comic in them­selves and the extended rou­tines based on a sin­gle idea.
Those ele­ments were all evi­dent in the vaude­ville acts he had seen — acts like “Willie, West, and McGinty” where three seri­ous car­pen­ters work on a house, and saw ham­mer , paint, and move mate­ri­als about in a beau­ti­fully chore­o­graphed rou­tine of split-second tim­ing and improb­a­ble events. The act was based on expec­ta­tions and sur­prises, with dis­as­ters mirac­u­lously avoided time and again, then sud­denly strik­ing when least expected.
The audi­ence gasped in dis­be­lief, rose in their seats in antic­i­pa­tion, and were con­vulsed with uncon­trol­lable laugh­ter. The car­pen­ters were nei­ther dumb nor inept and seemed to be unaware of the poten­tial calami­ties sur­round­ing them. This of course, added to the humor. Any­time the audi­ences under­stand a sit­u­a­tion bet­ter than the char­ac­ters on the stage, they either become ter­ri­bly bored, or ter­ri­bly involved, devel­op­ing in the lat­ter case a con­cern that insures and emo­tional response as the story unfolds. Pro­duc­ing this involve­ment is the first and most impor­tant step the actor must mas­ter if he is to suc­ceed. The sec­ond step prob­a­bly should be the elim­i­na­tion of that pos­si­bil­ity for bore­dom.
… If Walt had not had vaude­ville as a model, had not seen these exam­ples, had not been aware of the pos­si­bil­i­ties, he would have set­tled for less with­out ever know­ing such a poten­tial existed.

There is always a still-better way to show the sit­u­a­tion and the char­ac­ters, and the artist will keep search­ing for it.

If it is funny, stay with it. Add more gags, stretch out the humor, squeeze every last ounce of enter­tain­ment out of the predica­ment before leav­ing it.

There are sev­eral ways a gag can be inap­pro­pri­ate. It might be some­thing a cer­tain per­son­al­ity should never do, or it might slow the progress of the story by being too long or over devel­oped. It could also be mis­lead­ing or con­fus­ing, or even repul­sive to cer­tain seg­ments of the audi­ence. A pie thrown in the face was excel­lent for Don­ald Duck or for any other offi­cious unfeel­ing char­ac­ter, but it would not have been right for Cinderella.

Once a sto­ry­man showed an abil­ity to cre­ate his fun­ni­est gags for one of these stars, he was pegged the same way.  In time, each of our famous char­ac­ters had his own gag writ­ers,  just like the live come­di­ans of the day, and a com­plete team from direc­tor to ani­ma­tor devel­oped mate­r­ial to insure that the star would remain popular.

Dave Hand, our super­vis­ing direc­tor, warned us that an audi­ence could be eas­iliy con­fused and that we should go to any length to pre­pare them for the gag we were going to use. This was called “antic­i­pa­tion.” Aways be sure that what you are doing is per­fectly clear to every­body then pre­pare them for what is going to hap­pen next. It is also called “Sset­ting up a gag.” Young ani­ma­tors, often too eager, are apt to give away the gag before any­one is ready, thereby cre­at­ing a bit of action that is nei­ther funny nor clear.

Walt helped us to observe by demon­strat­ing in his own act­ing the man­ner­isms that reveal per­son­al­ity, the lit­tle move­ments that show a per­son is feel­ing, the spe­cial reac­tions that make an indi­vid­ual sym­pa­thetic, bel­liger­ent or even humor­ous. He gave exam­ples from famous come­di­ans and pointed out what cir­cus clowns do to hold the crowd’s inter­est and to make them laugh. An impor­tant part of the act is the per­form­ers slow, blank, help­less look at the audi­ence, shar­ing his inner feel­ings with them.

Norm, “Fergy” Fer­gu­son had grown up watch­ing the best vaude­ville in New York and knew how a look at the audi­ence should be ani­mated. When he drew the scenes of Pluto entan­gled in the fly­pa­per (Play­ful Pluto, 1934) the hap­less dog revealed his whole range of emo­tions through looks, sim­ple expres­sions, and strong act­ing. The audi­ence under­stood and responded with sus­tained laughs. The char­ac­ter did not have to make a funny face when his sin­cere reac­tion to a sit­u­a­tion was so strongly communicated.

Walt enjoyed this spirit of rivalry and often cast story men of oppos­ing view­points to work on the same assign­ment. He felt that they would each try harder to prove that their ver­sion of the mate­r­ial was the bet­ter.   As he often said, “If I have two men who agree all the time, I only need one of them.”

If the build-up to a gag or spe­cial scene goes on too long or is too heavy handed, the humor will lose it’s fresh­ness and fail to deliver the expected laugh.   The intru­sion of actions that do not really fit the sit­u­a­tion will make the whole con­ti­nu­ity lag and seem tedious. Too many gags in a row, no mat­ter how funny, can spoil the pac­ing of a well planned sequence.

There is a strong humor in the laugh that comes as a release from ten­sion, but the humor relies almost entirely on the build up of anx­i­ety that pre­cedes the sud­den switch to unex­pected gen­tle­ness. A gag can even come in the mid­dle of a tense sit­u­a­tion and seem fun­nier because of the over­all excitement.

Frank Thomas and Ollie John­ston break down Dis­ney sight gags into 8 cat­e­gories.   One good rea­son to buy the book is the large num­ber of pic­to­r­ial exam­ples. Each type of gag gets it’s own chap­ter to fur­ther describe them.

DISNEY SIGHT GAG CATEGORIES

1.  THE SPOT GAG:  The spot gag is the sim­plest and eas­i­est to write.  It is the iso­lated, sin­gle joke, the funny visual event that is com­plete in itself.  It needs no intro­duc­tion and no cli­max for an end­ing.  It fills a spot in the con­ti­nu­ity, or the character’s per­for­mance, with­out effect­ing the story.

The illus­trated exam­ple: A dachsund form­ing it’s body into steps for Mickey Mouse to board an airplane.

2. THE RUNNING GAG:  A run­ning gag is one that occurs sev­eral times through­out a pic­ture, becom­ing fun­nier through rep­e­ti­tion rather than through any devel­op­ment.  3. The gag that builds.

The illus­trated exam­ple: In “The Band Con­cert”  Don­ald Duck repeat­edly pulls a fife out of a pocket, despite the other band mem­bers try­ing to stop his playing.

3. THE GAG THAT BUILDS.  In con­trast to the iso­lated spot gag or the rep­e­ti­tion in the run­ning gag, the gag-that-builds is made up of a series of gags that increase in inten­si­tiy.  Start­ing with a comic sit­u­a­tion, indi­vid­ual gags relat­ing to the  same cir­cum­stance are care­fully added, each becom­ing wilder and fun­nier until a cli­mac­tic event crowns a com­plete routine.

The illus­trated exam­ple:  The Big Bad Wolf gets run through a “wolf paci­fier” machine that ends with him being shot out of a cannon.

4.  THE ACTION GAG.  Unlike the spot gag, which focuses on a sin­gle event, the action gag is based on tim­ing and the unique way a char­ac­ter moves.  An action gag … is con­cerned less with what the gag is, then how it is per­formed.  It requires enter­tain­ing actions and comic movements.

The illus­trated exam­ple: Goofy try­ing to be a hur­dler, and trip­ping over the hur­dles.  Trip­ping over hur­dles is not funny in itself, but how Goofy does it makes it ridiculous.

5. THE TABLEAU GAG is a held pic­ture at the end of an action, in which the char­ac­ter is left with a ridicu­lous appear­ance due to some for­eign sub­stance or object hav­ing been placed on, around, over, or in his face or figure.

The illus­trated exam­ple:  Don­ald Duck gets beard and hat that makes him look like a Russ­ian cossack.

6.  THE INANIMATE CHARACTER GAG comes from the humor in giv­ing an object or machine a per­son­al­ity that clev­erly fits both it’s appear­ance and it’s func­tion.  Walt felt that every­thing in the world might have a per­son­al­ity if only it could be brought to life in human terms.

The illus­trated exam­ple: A steamshovel head becomes a momen­tary char­ac­ter with eyes and mouth.

7.  THE FUNNTY DRAWING is spe­cial to ani­ma­tion.  Per­haps it could be com­pared to the clown makeup of a live per­former, or a ridicu­lous cos­tume, or any­thing that gives some­one a laugh­able appear­ance.  In ani­mated films it is the draw­ing itself that makes the gag funnier.

The ill­lus­trated exam­ple: In the Jun­gle Book, an ele­phant is using his trunk like a trum­pet, another ele­phant squeezes it, caus­ing him to inflate a lit­tle before it goes limp.

8.  SPECIALIZED GAGS.  The color gag, which was based on the accepted role of var­i­ous hues in cre­at­ing emo­tional responses, and the effects gag, which made fan­tasy avail­able through the care­ful and pre­cise ren­der­ing of every­thing from fire and smoke to a swarm of dis­grun­tled hor­nets.   Finally there is the sur­prise gag, which many con­sider to con­tain the most impor­tant ele­ment of any gag, since inter­est and expec­ta­tion are added to even the most mun­dane sit­u­a­tions.  Actu­ally, a fresh new method of per­form­ing any action has to be a sur­prise to the audi­ence by def­i­n­i­tion, ad the gag that is pre­sented with this ele­ment star­tles them into an impul­sive laugh by intro­duc­ing the unex­pected.  In fact, prepar­ing the audi­ence for a more tra­di­tional occur­rence is the best way of sur­pris­ing them with the unfore­seen gag.  It is so con­sis­tently used with the reward­ing results that it could be listed here as the eighth pri­mary source of humor in our films.

The illus­trated exam­ple:  Pinoc­chio with fin­ger on fire.