Laughing Matters

I've been tardy with my reading (and some will say ' and this blog', apologies, I've been writing) . Even though I get through three books a week, plus magazines, plus newspapers there's always something that falls off the radar, gets pushed to one side, doesn't get read. Larry Gelbart's 'Laughing Matters' is one such book. I wish I'd read it when it came out in '97. I don't know why I didn't but I didn't. It was on my radar, then it went off it and it's taken me all this time - two years after the great man passed away - to get around to it. It was worth the wait.

Gelbart began as a writer at the age of sixteen, his dad go him a job on The Danny Thomas Radio Show "My kid's funny, you should hire him". He wrote for Jack Parr, Bob Hope and famously Sid Ceasar alongside a writing team that reads like a Who's Who of comedy scribes: Neil Simon, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Woody Allen. His movies include Tootsie and Movie Movie, his theatre credits A Funny Thing Happened on the Way To The Forum and City of Angels. And then there was M*A*S*H.

For anyone interested in writing comedy - or drama - 'Laughing Matters' is up there with Adventures in the Screen Trade. It's not an autobiography, though it's autobiographical in part. It's not a 'how to' book - though you'll learn more here than in twenty such tomes. Gelbart knew his patch and knew it well. He thought about his writing, what he was going to write, how and why. That last one is often missed; why am I writing this? Will it improve the human condition, will it throw some light into a dark corner, is it purely an entertainment or is there something deeper to say, something no-one has said before.

For some people Larry Gelbart was just a name, a credit on M*A*S*H 'Developed for television by...', but for those of us who followed his extraordinary career he was much more. I'm sure he would have eschewed such titles as sage and guru, but he was that and more. A mentor to many, a collaborator, a writer who used his pen to make his points. His targets were often wrapped up in a joke but as he grew older he discovered he didn't always need the funny - though he never wrote anything that didn't drip with wit and sophistication.

If you are a student of comedy or have any ambition to write anything pick up a copy of his book. And through the wonders of You Tube you can listen to the words of the great man in an extended fascination interview.

I'm off to finish the last ten pages - I've got  feeling the author did it.

First Annual Caption Competition

Today I bring you our first annual caption competition.  So here are some wonderful old pics along with my efforts.

Please play along at home.

Dr Barnado's merges with Ministry For Fisheries.

No matter how much Mrs Nemo protested the good Captain insisted on bringing his work home.

After the personal cd player and personal mp3 player comes the Amstrad personal satellite receiver.

 

Evidence of crack 'Black Cat' Nazi ballet corpse surfaces. 

Dance night at Sizewell B is always so much fun

Fed Ex reveal new eco friendly double-decker couriers

Contestants at the 1954 'Miss Incognito' Contest   

Phasers to stun - Shatner at 80

Today William Shatner celebrates his eightieth birthday. The first time I saw him I wasn't sure I wanted to. I had two favourite shows as a kid - Lost In Space (check out Series One before it got stupid - ooo scary, well it was for a ten year old) and Dr Who, which most people say they watched from behind the sofa. I watched it sitting on the sofa, and lapped it up. So, when the BBC announcer told me that was the end of the series and next week I could join the crew of the USS Enterprise on their space adventures I was less than impressed - until I saw it. Star Trek opened up a new world of story telling. Phasers, photon torpedoes, the transporter room. There were Green women, Blue women, a race of all Blonde women - all in short skirts. All the men had their trousers tucked into their boots - hmm, where can I get a pair of those boots, I drove my mother crazy, Clarks didn't do them.

And at the centre of all this was the man they called Jim - Captain James Tiberius Kirk. A quip and a smile for the ladies, didn't matter what colour they were he was up for it (the kiss he shared with Uhura was the first interracial smooch ever televised). He had a judo kick or a punch for his enemies - sometimes it was an enormous rock that he'd pluck from the perfectly flat alien ground, using it to crush an alien head. Ouch.

Growing up with the space race and the moon landings Kirk was my hero and by extension Shatner too. His acting style was broad. His - speech - was - quite -odd andthenhe'dsuddenly runallhiswordstogether - and - then - back to - the - staccato - stuff - Bones, Spock, Mr Scott. 

He was the man at the centre of the universe, dispensing good old American values to those far flung M class planets whilst swatting away those pesky Russians, sorry Klingons. Gene Roddenbury's Wagon Train to The Stars was just that, a series that stopped off at a new point each week to have adventures, just like the western series before it. Shatner was its heartbeat.

He's also the star of one of my favourite  Twilight Zone episodes, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
playing Bob Wilson - no, not the ex Arsenal goalkeeper, that's Bob Primrose Wilson - but a salesman on an airplane for the first time since his breakdown six months before. He spots something on the wing what - is - that - out - there? Every time someone else looks out the window, the thing leaps out of view, so nobody believes Shatner's outlandish claim.

He realizes that his wife is starting to think he needs to go back to the sanitarium, but also, if nothing is done about the thing, it will damage the plane and cause it to crash. He steals a sleeping policeman's gun and - in a fantastic sequence - opens the window marked "Auxiliary Exit" to shoot the gremlin, succeeding despite the fact that he is nearly sucked out of the plane himself. Once the plane has landed, although he is whisked away in a straitjacket. But the final shot reveals evidence of his claims: the unusual damage to the plane's engine —yet to be discovered by mechanics.
I never knew about shows being canceled in those days, Star Trek was repeated ad infinitum, the BBC's planet earth logo mixing through to the stars as Kirk's voice intoned those now classic words "Space, the final frontier...."
Yes, there was TJ Hooker but Bill poured into a uniformed cop's suit didn't look right - it looked like he'd forgotten to say when.
Much better was Boston Legal - and his surprisingly good chat show Shatner's Raw Nerve attempting to probe his guest's most sensitive subjects, quite often capturing celebrities at their most unexpected.
I got to write for him when we did a 'Houseparty' show in New York - but I didn't get to meet him.
Having met some of my heroes who turned out to be less than heroic maybe that was for the best.

So thank you Bill for fifty years of entertainment.
Live a bit longer and prosper.

A Tale of Two Genre Shows

I've been watching BBC1's new law drama SILK - and you should be too. All the things I hope for when a new series hits the air are here. Excellent writing, great cast, looks terrific.
Silk is the brainchild of writer Peter Moffat (Criminal Justice) and stars , Maxine Peake, Rupert Penry-Jones, Natalie Dormer, Tom Hughes, and Neil Stuke. We're four episodes in with two to go so there's still chance to catch up - and these days there's always the iPlayer. It is confident and stylish with characters who hit the ground running. There's intrigue, duplicity, sex and confrontation - and that's just in Chambers. The court cases are tense and believable,  Moffat has experience of the law and the ear to reproduce crackling discourse. 

But the test of any good drama is whether you care enough about the characters to make you want to spend time with them next week. Moffat has spent time working out who these people are; the plots are their characters, their characters are the plots. We have the good - Maxine Peake's Martha Costello who believes in justice not just the law - the duplicitous Clive Reader played by Rupert Penry-Jones, he's the charming cad we all love to hate, and Billy, the Machiavellian chief clerk at chambers played by Neil Stuke. It really is an object lesson in television writing. Stories that pay off each week but have resonance over later episodes, well thought out character arcs that make the piece richer and deeper and dialogue that pushes the story forward whilst appearing conversational. Superior stuff.

Compare and contrast with a another newcomer to British screens, Monroe.  

The ubiquitous James Nesbit plays a brilliant and unusual neurosurgeon. A flawed, quipping,  genius who never lets anyone forget his flaws or his genius. Each episode features a story of the week about life or death situations. Sound familiar House fans?
There is more than a pinch of Hugh Laurie's maverick medic about this show (it starts with the graphics in the opening titles). Apart from Monroe there's Dr Jenny Bremner (Sarah Parish), a glacial cardiac surgeon, who has little time for him and his emotional approach to his patients. Bremner is a closed book, but with the help of his best friend and anaesthetist Laurence Shepherd (Tom Riley), Monroe is determined to unearth her sense of humour.
Hmm. Early House, Cuddy and Wilson anybody? (There's also a dash of Nurse Jackie in one of his young trainees).
It's not a copy and you can't disapprove entirely of a show that uses one of TV's best - and most idiosyncratic - medical drama as it's springboard. But in doing so it feels cliched. Instead of a new take we have another take on a take that's already out there. I found the dialogue clunky and it has saddled itself with a directing style that just loves drawing attention to itself. 

I couldn't  write either of these pieces, to do true justice to barristers or medics I believe you need first hand experience. Silk comes first hand, Monroe feels distinctly second hand.

If You love Westerns

I don't know about you but those gross-out, dumb-ass comedies that have taken over the genre of late don't do it for me so I can't tell you how great it is to see something like "Rango". I came across the trailer last week and it looked pretty smart, I got to see it yesterday and it blew me away.

This is an computer-animated feature written by John Logan (Gladiator, The Last Samurai, The Aviator) and directed by Gore Verbinski, who helmed the Pirates of the Caribbean pics - a franchise that went from swashbucklingly refreshing to incomprehenisble twaddle in three movies. But go back to his first film - Mouse Hunt - here was originality and comedy aplenty - not to mention excellent performances from Lee Evans and Nathan Lane. Rango owes more to that level of comic invention than the P of C films - even if they do share the same leading man.

In Rango Johnny Depp plays 'the lizard with no name', who walks into a western town called Dirt, populated by an assortment of desert animals all playing archetypes from the Western frontier.  Dirt could be called Dust on account of the lack of water. Rango is made sheriff and tries to solve the mystery of the missing agua.

But here's the thing: in the telling of the story Rango draws on sources from Chinatown to Star Wars, Sergio Leone to Hunter S Thompson, Chuck Jones to Tarantino. This is a animated film for sophicated movie goers - but even if you don't get all the references there is so much here to enjoy. It's a PG and whilst the animal characters and slapstick will appeal to youngsters it's not really aimed at them. This is a movie for movie lovers with a succession of great moments. Twisting, turning, reversing, it's great to look at, sharp, snappy and satirical with laugh out loud moments you'll cherish all the way home.   

If, like me, you like your comedy smart and inventive check out Rango.

Radio Days

The BBC is considering scaling back its local radio stations to broadcast only at Breakfast and Drive-time. At present it's just a discussion, part of a difficult one that the BBC has to have about a number of its services. However, at a time when the Corporation is looking to be more relevant to the country outside London it makes little sense and is ladled with irony.

I started my broadcasting career at BBC Radio in Bristol in the early eighties, at a time when money was ‘tight’. We had no money but creative juices in abundance. In those days city radio stations had seasoned producers who were not chained to a computer but ‘out there’ seeking local material.  Local contributors provided spots on everything from angling to Asian programmes, religion to specialist music shows, arts, motoring, cinema and sport – all within a local context. We tried all kinds of formats: schools quizzes, an education programme wrapped up in a rock show, late night chat, consumer shows, comedy, children's shows, a plethora of outside broadcasts...it had ambition.

The music choice was random – we were only allowed to play a tiny number of commercial discs each day but local music was recorded and found its way onto the airwaves. When I left to pursue a career in network television I took my eye off local radio and it wasn’t until sixteen years later, after I’d left the BBC and was working as a writer, that it came back onto my radar. I was invited to present a show back in Bristol. I found a very different kind of local radio. 

The RL Show team: Ben Orr, Jo Hurst and RL

Most of the voluntary contributions by local folk had gone, the staff numbers were now tiny and ambition had been scaled back. The local radio ‘sound’ now owed much to a centrist agenda. 

Having said that thanks to a great supporting cast, a good producer and a nose for what works I had a great time illiciting wonderfully bizarre and extraordinary stories from listeners about their lives and the places they lived (one day I'll write about the Elephant buried under the high street in a district of Bristol).

BBC Local Radio was still there, staffed mostly by enthusiastic youngsters, under funded, constantly under the kosh but still relevant to thousands of people’s lives, people whose only radio listening was the local station. 

If it is whittled away to nothing more than breakfast and drive-time shows it will lose its character, sustained outside those hours by broadcasts from either 5Live or Radio 2.  The BBC has a huge financial problem on its hands but I suspect it has no idea of the depth of feeling out there for local radio. Without it who will challenge local politicians and champion local sport on the airwaves – certainly not the commercials boys.

Could it be better? You betcha, of course it could. It has as many detractors as it does satisfied customers. There are so many things it could do better; it needs to be ambitious, relevant, dispense with the hackneyed and the clichéd and be local. 

It’s time to shine boys – or sink.

Food and Comedy

Alan Davies - Gutted

 Food and comedy obviously didn't make a great mix as BBC 2 have just canceled the Alan Davies comedy Whites. I wrote about this show some months back. More drama than comedy drama. I didn't believe the character Skoose -an agency commi-chef - could intimidate an all-powerful sous-chef like Bib (should have been).

Oliver Lansley, co-writer of the show blogged: 

Watching the reaction to Whites throughout the weeks has been fascinating and seeing how often it's been described in terms of 'drama' is particularly interesting. Matt and I always had very strong feelings about where we wanted to take this series but I don't think we have ever thought about the show in terms of it being a 'drama' as such. We've only ever thought in terms of the stories we wanted to tell. We knew we didn't want to make a 'normal' comedy show. We didn't want a laughter track, we didn't want to fill it with 'gags' and we felt very strongly that, particularly in episodes Five and Six, we wanted push the characters and do things that are probably quite unconventional for a half-hour comedy.

The unconventional was writing episodes, or long sections of episodes, that didn't have any comedy in them. He then wonders why some of us out here suggested it might be drama.

Perhaps it didn't engage us because there are so many examples of the real thing on TV.  I just checked on the BBC website to see how many chefs it lists - hundreds, really, hundreds and hundreds. They do an A-Z.  There were 67 in the A's. I gave up.

What's more there are 78 cookery programmes listed.

78! (Sorry, I already used up this years ration of exclamation marks). But really. Seventy bloody eight. Jeeze Louise.

Perhaps someone somewhere thought Whites was actually a cookery show - and we seem to have enough of those. Last in, first out. 

What exactly is going on with food shows on TV? I know they're not a new phenomenon and  I'll happily admit I've picked up the odd recipe idea from them but I don't slavishly scan for foody show or watch entire series. Not even Jamie or Gordon are big enough guns to get me hooked week after week.

But it would seem that food shows - and antiques (how many antiques shows does it take to make a daytime schedule? at the moment SEVEN!!!!!)  - are now the staple diet of BBC programming. A few years ago it was decorating and gardening. Why do we go through cycles of being swamped with more and more of the same.

Because we tell the broadcasters we like them. Yep, it's our fault. Maybe it hasn't happened to you but people get polled.

"Do you enjoy cookery programmes".
"Yes".
"Would you say you'd watch a good new cookery programme if we made one?"
"I'd give it a try"
"So, that's a yes?"
"I suppose. Yes"

And when the results come in all the people who are happy watching one or two cookery shows seem to be demanding more and more cookery shows. Which is why the BBC is making 78 of the buggers. And I know they're out there looking for new chefs!

Of course Whites didn't have the culinary charm of the Hairy Bikers, or the Drama of The Restaurant, or the tips of Nigela. It wasn't a cookery show after all, it was supposed to be a comedy. But there was more comedy in some of the factual entertainment shows - so an okay show about chefs that was really a very slow burning comedy drama got the chop.

In the meantime get ready for the next tranche of 'new' exciting cookery shows, coming to a plate near you very, very soon. And if somebody with a clipboard stops you on the street and asks you if you like cookery shows, do me a favour - throw an antique at them.

The Question All Writers Get Asked

If you stare at a cursor blinking on a screen (daring you to write something) for a living you'd better put some kind of exercise programme in place otherwise you'll start to feel the flab growing around you. Believe me, I know.
So in a bid to get back to somewhere near a respectable fighting weight I went back to the gym last week. I had a long chat with Jim at the gym and we agreed some goals. Of course what I do for a living came up and as soon as I said writer he said, "Where do you get your ideas?".
It's the question I can never answer. The best answer I've heard is "A little golden bird sings to me in my sleep". But that's not my answer; I'm not sure I have one.
I've had ideas come from thinking of a title, a character, a situation. They pop into my head when I'm not consciously thinking about a project at all. I'm not too good at trying to tailor something to the current market. I've always thought, if they've got one of those why would they want another but sometimes you can come up with your own idea off the back of a current series.
I'll pick up any magazine and flick through. And I mean any. From Camping and Caravanning to Homes and Garden, Nuts to Top Gear. And I read endlessly. Biographies and Factual, Novels and Short Stories. Absolutely anything can contain the kernel that starts the process.

Once I get an idea I play with it in my head. What will my characters be like? (try to think of people you know or you've encountered rather than basing them on characters you've seen in other shows). If you're trying to create a series, what will your stories be? If you're contemplating setting it around a fantastic character you've met make sure there are enough stories that would be true to that person in his/her world. If he's a plumber emergency call outs to blocked drains might get old pretty quickly. And a plumber who solves murder mysteries will stretch credulity. Maybe he's not a plumber but a Priest.

When I get an idea I research as much as possible about and around the subject. From anything that might be procedural to the characters associated with the topic and any stories I can glean. But when it comes to putting it all together, making something come alive I don't know where that spark comes from. What I do know is that things start to fall into place. The subconscious takes over. I don't know how that happens, nor do I wish to. It happens, I'm grateful, move on.

Yes, there is such a thing as a muse but if you want to keep writing for TV or film I don't believe that's something you can rely on. You have to treat the job as a job. You can't wait for inspiration to descend, you have to write. When I first moved away from writing comedy sketches and tried my hand at longer narrative forms it was undoubtedly a mess. I'd start writing the moment I had a thought, try and write my story as I went.

That is such a bad idea.

You lurch from scene to scene, not knowing where you're going, writing dialogue you think is snappy, only to discover you have no story and no kind of character development.
These days I spend as much time as I can researching a subject before I even write an outline. Once the outline is down I'll play with it, find twists and turns, surprises, tear it up, start again. Only when I'm happy with the outline do I start writing pages. And then I take heed of the best piece of advice I ever heard:

Don't be afraid to write bad.

When you're working from a detailed outline you KNOW where you're going - it doesn't mean you can't deviate if a better idea pops up, that's the time to STOP writing, go back to the outline and work that idea through. But even when you know where you're heading sometimes you can get held up by a line of dialogue or piece of action that you know isn't right. Doesn't matter. Write it bad. Don't let it hold you up. You can always come back and make it sing later. Remember, Paul McCartney's dummy lyric to Yesterday was Scrambled Eggs. he had the tune, he had the rhythm, and eventually he had the perfect words.

So, once you get a notion, go research. Fill yourself up with all the detail you can find, write your outline, hone it, polish it, tear it up, write it again and then start writing the script. Once your head is full to bursting the ideas flow.
Only when you've learned to ride the bike can you do tricks on it. That's when the fun begins.

Charlie Sheen Remakes

Today I read that some group out there are in the process of buying the Blade Runner brand in a bid to turn it into sequels, prequels and much, much merchandising.  Given the amount of money it takes to make a movie it's not surprising that producers cast around for anything that had a shimmer attached to it; be that comic book, novel, old TV series or film ripe for remake. Just look what the Coen Brothers have done with True Grit. They made it grittier and truer. But with Blade Runner they can imagine all kinds of things around it but they can't remake it. That is verboten.

If you look down the list of what's been made over the past five years and what's coming up in the next twelve months you could be forgiven for thinking you were in a time warp. Everything from Alvin and The Chipmunks to the X-Files by way of The Green Hornet, Clash of The Titans and Bewitched. Some deserve much praise - stand up Christopher Nolan for what you did with Batman - others deserve scorn and derision  - sit down Todd Phillips, Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson for Starsky and Hutch.

But you can't blame them. The theory is that people will go to see something they're familiar with at the expense of something good that they've never heard of. It makes the movie easier to SELL.

Okay. With that philosophy in mind let's remake some movies with Charlie Sheen. You've heard of the show/comic/old film...and now EVERYONE has heard of Charlie *?@X£^ Sheen. Let's put them together. We could make some money here.

Charlie Sheen's Angels, the one where he has phone sex with the Angels

Charlie's Chocolate Factory, the one where he gets to hump a Lumpa.

Charlie Wilson's Whore, the one where he gets to beat up a woman he's paid for. Not funny but then when was Charlie Sheen funny.

This is one Mr Sheen guaranteed to take the polish OFF your product.

Your suggestions gratefully accepted.

Make 'em Laugh, Make 'em Laugh

The cast didn't want to be in the same room as the script

One man's funny is another man's tablecloth, mushroom or chicken. We know what makes one person laugh can leave another shrugging.

"What? I don't get it".

We also know that there are certain elements required within a comedy. There must be some funny, quite a lot of funny actually. Things off kilter, warped, wrong. Things that  break the logical pattern, or expectation of what will happen. Things that make us laugh. I'm not trying to work out one of those bizarre equations here:  if L (laughter) is the end result of W (warped logic) over S (situation) STOP.... trying to find a formula for comedy is like juggling geese on a slack wire.

However, I say again, television 'comedy' is a precious thing and we can't keep churning out shows that don't make enough people laugh out loud. Watching the new Channel 4 show Friday Night Dinner is a pretty dismal experience. It's billed as an appointment with "...the gloriously idiosyncratic Goodman family. Starring Simon 'Will from The Inbetweeners' Bird, Tamsin Greig, Paul Ritter, newcomer Tom Rosenthal and guest star Mark Heap". Good cast. But come on. This is another quirky 30 minute show that is masquerading as funny. At times it is pretty desperate stuff, as the husband/father flips the bin lid and finds a piece of toast he gets the reprimand  "Stop eating out of the bin" . But there it is, boasting a cast that includes Mark Heap and Tamsin Greig. It's another show that purports to beautifully observe the idiosyncratic dynamic of the family unit but without much that isn't puerile or achingly unfunny.

I'm beginning to worry that we're losing our sense of what a television comedy is. It absolutely HAS TO MAKE YOU LAUGH. More than a wry smile, more than once in an episode. Comedy is not a tool to bring about world peace or change the human condition. Comedy has one purpose. If it doesn't make you laugh, it ain't comedy.

I've written elsewhere about the UK/US 'comedy co-production' Episodes. Since then it has come in for a lot of stick from critics who were less than impressed. But I wanted to add this, I've just heard an interview with Tamsin Greig where she said - get ready for this - "We never thought it was a comedy". Whoa! Rewind.

"We never thought is was a comedy".

Turns out they were making a quirky drama about a couple who go to the States and have their sitcom ripped apart in the US system. To be fair that is EXACTLY what it was. More drama that comedy, it was quirky and insightful about the industry - and sometimes funny.

But it wasn't promoted like that. In the weeks leading up to TX we saw trailers for the new Matt Le Blanc comedy. And that it most definitely was not. So, the problem was we were sold the wrong product.

If a chef presents you with an apple pie that's what you expect to get. If it turns out to be a blackberry pie you might spit it out. Ugh, this isn't apple. It doesn't matter that it was probably a perfectly good pie, it wasn't the one you had your mouth ready for.

The message is simple. Don't keep selling drama as comedy simply because there are laughs in it. You are badly positioning your audience.
Don't tell them it's a rom com if what you've made is a monster movie. Have I underlined this enough? Too much.

There is a flip side. I remember Six Feet Under winning a British Comedy award a few years back. Michael C. Hall said thank you but was a bit bemused because they thought they were making a drama. And they were. The fact that it had some laughs in it didn't make it a comedy. (See also The Sopranos). Funny in a drama doesn't make it a comedy.

It may be time to organise a seminar to remind a few folk what laughter sounds like. It doesn't have to be in the studio. It can be at home. But without it, there is no comedy.
Strange and idiosyncratic are not the same as funny.