Here is a five part TV special hosted by Woody Harrelson, a great look back at the most successful comedy team in history. Part three cannot be embedded, so the link is in order.
Jonathan Lyons
Yoiks and Away!!! – Updated
In physical comedy, it’s not the falling down that’s funny. It’s what happens after falling down. What is revealed in the character’s response? Does he get really angry? Does she do a slow burn at whatever caused the situation? Or does he carry on valiantly with the original plan, but in a funnier half assed way, like this guy does…
Here I would post a clip from Robin Hood Daffy, featuring Daffy’s great “Yoiks and Away!” moment where he attempts to swing in for a robbery, only to smack into tree after tree, but of course Warner Brothers won’t allow it.
Update. The Internet has provided! Courtesy of Gifsoup.com
The Fun Factory: Burlesque
I have been reading Rob King’s book on the Keystone Studios, “The Fun Factory”. The sub title is “The Keystone Studio and the Emergence of Mass Culture.” It is giving me quite a lot of postable material.
In developing film ideas, The Keystone studio often used “burlesque”.
A derivative of the Italian burlare, (to ridicule) the term “burlesque” refers, in it’s initial significance, to the tradition of theatrical parody that flourished across Europe from the late seventeenth century on arriving in America two centuries later. (Historically this has not been the only meaning of the word, and burlesque also refers, of course, to the bawdy variety style entertainment that put on leg shows for working class men, in which Mack Sennett began his performing career)
Basically, the directors would see what popular melodramas had come out of other studios, often from D.W. Griffith at Biograph, and create parody versions. Here is basic technique.
Simple exaggeration was, after all, among the most basic and familiar of burlesque practices. “There’s just a hair breadth between melodrama and comedy.” Mack Sennett explained in a syndicated interview in 1913. “You can make the latter out of the former by exaggerating it a bit.” Epes Winthrop Sargent concurred in a 1914 column on the “vogue” for travesty, arguing that “exaggeration” was the most potent weapon in the burlesque filmmakers arsenal. In a later article, the Keystone comedian Chester Conklin, likewise explained that all that was needed to burlesque melodrama was “simply [to] take the dramatic scene and overplay it.” … In the hands of Keystone’s filmmakers melodrama’s ethical ritual quickly shaded into carnivalesque caricature.
This is something to keep in mind if you are watching old comedies. You might not be aware of the source material that is being burlesqued, and you would not find it as funny it’s intended audience would have. Still, the method of creating the comedy is valid to know and use.
Contemporary Tall Tales
I used to like reading classic tall tale stories. Paul Bunyan, Mose the Fireman, Pecos Bill, John Henry, and Stormalong, to name a few. Baron Munchausen was a real person who returned from his travels and told outrageous stories of his adventures. A tall tale sails past simple exaggeration into unashamed lying, and is an expression of fantastic imagination. Words are used to conjure up images of impossible things happening.
Picture postcards have used the same idea in a visual form.
In animation, we had Popeye, who with one punch, could turn a bull into a fully stocked butcher stand, or steel girder into a cannon.
What brings this up is the contemporary version of the tall tale. The two most popular would be Chuck Norris and The Dos Equis Man, “The Most Interesting Man in the World.” In the age of twitter, the one liner rules this style of tall tale.
One of the hallmarks of tall tales is going out of the way to claim the truth is being told. Thus, Chuck Norris “facts”.
Chuck Norris doesn’t churn butter. He roundhouse kicks the cows and the butter comes straight out.
Chuck Norris wears a cup not to protect himself, but to protect the players on the other team.
Chuck Norris can do a wheelie on a unicycle.
Chuck Norris s tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.
Advertising has given us the Dos Equis Man, “The Most Interesting Man in the World” Some examples:
He is so macho it wasn’t until his annual doctor exam that He learned He had been shot five times 6 months earlier.
His snowglobe gets 24 inches of fresh powder annually.
The phrase”cat nap” was coined after he got into a nasty fight with a leopard that ended when he placed the feline in a sleeper hold.
After his birth he cut the umbilical cord from his stomach & used it to choke the doctor for inappropriately touching his mother.
He has found Waldo several times, but has released him because he enjoys the hunt.
He once lapped his opponent in a drag race.
When life gives him lemons… he makes champagne.
He was born in a log cabin he built with his own two hands.
Stay thirsty my friends.