Take the Rest of the Day Off

A few weeks ago, I watched the Hallowe'en episode of Modern Family - in which Mitchell ends up hiding in a toilet cubicle dressed as spiderman. And acting like spiderman. For good, story-based, character-fulfilling reasons. It's utterly, wonderfully hilarious - the kind of scene which, if I'd come up with it, I'd have thought to myself 'Well done. Take the rest of the day off.'

'Take the rest of the day off' seems to be a fairly standard expression among the comedy writing community, at least. It denotes an over-whelming feeling of pride and satisfaction at a comic masterstroke that it merits time off. It's a joke, or scene, or line, that is the perfect blend of character and story.

The Perfect Line
What I mean by that is this: A sitcom is only half an hour - 21 minutes if you're American. You don't have long. And it needs to be tight because the audience is expecting jokes. Therefore, as many lines as possible should be jokes. Or set-up to jokes. Those that are neither should be expositional - and all of the above should be done in character.

So, as a rule of thumb, if a line of dialogue isn't a joke, or a set up to a joke, or a bit of exposition, or character development, it should be cut without question. It's a waste of words and breath. The best lines are mega-jokes that move along the plot in character. Or they're just show-stopping, scene-topping jokes (eg. 'I'll have what she's having' see here)

The Awful Truth
But what is the implication in 'take the rest of the day off'? The subtext is 'Wow. That is the kind of joke that would normally take several painful, frustrating hours to come up with, but you came up with it just before lunch - so, hey, take the rest of the day off!'

And there's the rub. Those flashes are rare. And they don't just happen. They come through hard work. It would be easy to think that the writer of that Modern Family spiderman scene is just amazingly, effortlessly funny, oozing natural talent. That way, I could always assume that I would never come up with anything so good, because I'm not a genius, and so why try? Just do your best, and leave it at that.

And yet every so-called genius says the same thing: it's just hard work. Talent, yes, but mostly hard work. Thomas Jefferson apparently said, "I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." These are surely sage words. It's about putting in the hours. The fact is, that the Spiderman scene probably turned up in Draft 4, or didn't quite get the zing 'til then. Stuff that is that neat and clever normally leaves a trail of destruction and devastation in its wake. There's a hard-drive strewn with old drafts and a whole batman/catwoman sequence that should have been hilarious but just wasn't for some reason. Then the flash of genius comes.

There is no substitute for hard work. Redrafting, rethinking and rewriting. Identifying problems and fixing them. And the more we do those things, the more ideas we turn over, the more combinations of words, plots and characters we put together for a brief moment, the 'luckier' we'll be. And we'll say to ourselves, 'Take the rest of the day off', grab a coffee, and then get back to our desks to work hard enough to get lucky again.

What I learned from Seinfeld

Occasionally, I watch a TV show that is so good and perfect that I'm at a loss to know what I can learn from it. It's like looking at a Picasso or, my personal favourite, Claude Lorraine.

I mention this because recently, my latest TV treat has been Modern Family and I have almost nothing to say about it. It's an astonishing piece of work, reviving the family sitcom like a whiff of smelling salts. It has all the verve and brio of Arrested Development, and all the heart of, well, Arrested Development. And yet it's a domestic family sitcom, split over three households, with familiar storylines, retold in a stunningly original way.

Some time ago, I had similar feeling about Seinfeld. I've got every single on DVD (or at least I did until my friend Luke lost my Series 7, even though he swears I loaned him Series 5. It's okay, Luke. I forgive you.) I'm a huge fan and was always sad that BBC never committed to showing it at a decent time on BBC2, when the show has such British anti-sentimental sensibilities ('No hugging, no learning'.)

After multiple viewings and thinking about things, I spotted one thing that Seinfeld has the courage to do that no-one else seems to do. It makes peripheral characters funny. Really funny. In most comedies, the regular cast are the funny ones, and anyone else who is brought in for the week is normally played, or scripted, very straight. Harrassed shopkeeper, or disgruntled customer or whatever.

A good comedy actor knows the importance of playing straight, so that the comedy in the established funny character is heightened. But Seinfeld showed that his doesn't always have to be the case. Who can forget the Soup Nazi? Or the Bubble Boy? Or the infuriating Bania? Or Kramer's insane lawyer Jackie Chiles? Some of the characters, like Bania or Chiles, were so strong, they could recur again and again. And many recurred in that final (ill-advised) courtroom episode and we had no problem remember who any of them were and why they would be happy to stitch up the regular characters.

In some ways, the strength of these minor characters is typical of the show. Despite being a successful comedian, and having his name on the show, Jerry Seinfeld did the smartest thing he could have done: he effectively gave the show away to George, Elaine and Kramer - and to the comic genius of Larry David. Jerry is almost the straight man in the show, since he is always reluctant to get involved in Kramer's schemes or humiliate himself. The comedy world revolves around Jerry - his parents, his Uncle Leo, his nemesis Newman among others. You know you've got a hit on your hands when you create a 'world', and find yourself smiling when you even start thinking about it. (How many people reading this thought to themselves 'Hello Newman'.

There's no doubt that creating this kind of world is easier when you're doing 26 episodes in a run, and after four years find yourself shooting episode 100. But it is still easier said than done. Conventional wisdom says that all comedy should be focussed on the regular characters, since they are the ones that the audience have invested in. This is true - but there is another way. If you can get it to work.

So that's what I learnt from Seinfeld - and one day, I'll learn something from the flawless Modern Family.

In the meantime, here's Jackie Chiles in all his glory.

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For more of this sort of thing, you might want to think about getting my book, Writing That Sitcom, which is available for the Kindle/Kindle App via Amazon.

It's available as a bog-standard PDF here.

People seem to like the book, found it useful and have been kind enough to say so:

"A MUST Read for Aspiring Comedy Writers. This book gave me the feedback I needed and the tools to change and greatly improve my script." Dr. Rw Fallon

Good Intentions of Self-Improvement

And so we'll soon be staggering into 2011. And New Year's Resolutions beckon. What would it be useful to resolve to do as a writer?

Career goals are nice to have. A series of one's own on television in the next 12 months would be the obvious one - but we have no control over that kind of goal. We can write furiously, daily and sometimes amusingly, but what may or may not be commissioned is relatively arbitrary in my experience. Maybe your show will be get picked up and broadcast and maybe it won't. The reasons given for the show being bought or turned down will sound, on inspection, non-sensical. It's almost impossible to know whether or not a show will work until you actually make six of them, at least. It's impossible to know why it will work, if it works. Usually it turns out to be successful for different reasons than those planned. (Friends was written with Joey and Monica planned to be the 'hot couple'. Yes. I know) It's also impossible to know whether or not the Great British Public have the slightest interest in watching it. And even if they don't, the show may yet succeed. (The ratings for the highly-acclaimed Peep Show are pretty dreadful, but Channel 4, to its credit, has stuck with it since it delights its regular followers and it's nice to win awards.) So, in the words of Melchett in Blackadder II, 'Like private parts to the gods are we. They play with us for their sport.' Or, as Goldman says, 'Nobody Knows Anything'.

But some goals are achievable when they are personal ones. We have no control over what is commissioned and what is not. Be we have complete control over the words we write on the pages, what the characters say, how they talk, how they are - and what they want, what stops them and how they overcome those hurdles. How, then, can we improve those words and stories? How can we find better words, a more interesting order for them and a more original plot? Where can we find characters that a real and vibrant?

Reading. No, not by going to Reading - although that may throw up some fairly bleak and powerful storylines. Reading books. I need to read more. Fiction and non-fiction. To be honest, I find non-fiction very easy reading. I'm naturally a facts person, I think. I'm interested in almost everything, which is very helpful. But I need to read more books. And better books.

This has partly been hammered home to me through reading The Venerable Stephen Fry's latest autobiography. It seems like he turned up to Cambridge at the age of 18 having read more books than I have at the age of 35. I've read plenty of books - especially between graduating from Uni and having kids. The books I like to say I've read include most of David Lodge, Malcolm Bradbury, Michael Frayn and Tibor Fischer. But there are so many classics to read. And I've not read them. I feel ashamed and embarrassed to reveal that I've not read any Dickens or Austen. No Henry James, Tolstoy or anything of that sort. I read a Hardy at school (virtually at gunpoint). But overall, my reading list is pretty shameful.

There is no doubt that reading decent literature, and just well-written or well-researched books generally, improves one's thinking and writing. It's what all the great writers tell other not-so-great writers to do. I need to do it. But how?

Well, herein lies the poetic agony of the human condition on which the genre of sitcom itself is predicated: character flaws and failure. Sitcom characters turn over a new leaf virtually every week - trying to do something, start something or change. But they don't. They fail and return to how they were. They don't learn. And we laugh because we recognise this tragic quality in ourselves.

So to change we need to be smart. I need to read more. But I have a finite amount of time. I have a wife and two young children that I need to keep spending time with. So I can't save time there. I need to work and earn money for the aforementioned wife and two young children and landlord. So something else needs to give. And I know what it is: television.

Now, I'm a screenwriter, so I'm hardly going to throw the TV out of the window on January 1st. (I don't want to be one of those superior people who work in television but don't own one - with the implication being that TV is vulgar and for the masses. It's part of the myth that clever people and the rich people (often not the same people) enjoy live arts, theatre, opera, books, Radio 4 and Film (not films. Not film. But Film.)).

In order to make more time to read, I need to watch less television and be smarter in what I watch. I can keep watching the really good stuff - like House, Modern Family and 30 Rock. That's all fine - and very inspiring. It's the stuff that just doesn't get you anywhere that I needs to go. And that is, largely, watching panel games, stand-up comedy and tedious documentaries about the making of sitcom.

I don't mean to denigrate these forms of television. Anyone who's developed a panel game will tell you how tortuously hard they are to get right. They delight millions. And that is fine and large. But I don't find panel games nourishing. So they need to go, for now.

Likewise, stand-up is a superbly compelling form of comedy, even through the lens of TV. One man or woman - and a microphone. It's exhilarating stuff. Or can be when the comedian isn't talking about the differences between cats and dogs, or men and women. Or alcohol, recreational drug-use or commercial flights. Of all, at the moment, I find Dara O'Briain to be the most delightful - and I find it very difficult to switch off, even when I've seen it several times. (I love his 'learning to drive' routine. Love it.)

And no-one is more interested in learning about the craft of sitcom from documentaries than me. But they've all the great sitcoms have been documented. Thrice. I don't need to know any more about that chandelier in Only Fools and Horses. Or that bit in Father Ted where he goes up to Richard Wilson and says 'I don't believe it'. I get it. And I'm not thinking that more time has been spent making programmes about these shows than on the programmes themselves. A bit silly, really.

But my plan for 2011 is to stop watching these kinds of television and read more. I'm going to avoid panel games (with the exception of Have I Got News for You, obviously), televised stand-up (will happily go see it live) and comedy docs. Oh, and movies that I've seen before. And I'm going to used that time saved (maybe a few hours a week) to read those book that have been on my shelf for months, or years and just haven't been read. Yes, that stuff like War and Peace, Leviathon, The Koran. (I'm pretty much up to speed on the Bible, if I do say so myself.)

So that's the plan. It's foolproof, surely? Which it needs to be since I, like every man and woman every born, am a fool.

Mind the Baby

This evening, I got round to watching Raising Hope, the comedy comedy from Greg Garcia, one of the guys behind My Name is Earl (which was a show that I liked very much). In fact, it's a cross between My Name is Earl and Raising Arizona. And it's funny. I can't fault the jokes and characters and the pace and the script and the direction and the casting. It's the set-up. In particular, it's the baby. The baby makes me worry.

Let me briefly explain. The set-up of the show, done brilliantly in the first ten minutes, is that a poor young guy, who wants a new challenge, sleeps with a girl who is then convicted of double murder and executed (which is funnier that it sounds). Before she is executed, she gives birth to a baby, who is then given to our hero to look after. He is totally unprepared for it, and his family tell him leave the baby at the fire station to be taken in, but he refuses. He's going to raise this baby. On hi own. And his family refuse to help or get drawn in.

And so we have a guy who doesn't know about car-seats, or nappies or anything to do with babies, trying to raise the baby by himself. The guy is great and good and kind and sensitive. And the baby is gorgeous. But the whole set-up puts me on edge. What is at stake in this story? Theoretically, it's a quest for our hero. But his quest depends on the well-being of a baby. And it makes me worry. And when I'm worrying, I'm not laughing.

I'm sure this is because I have a toddler and a baby of my own, and I'm such a wuss, my heart goes out to any little child on the TV. But there's nothing I can do about this instinctive reaction. I'm unable to enjoy this show. I wish it well. God bless it, and all who buy the boxed set. But, unfortunately, I'm out. (which is fine, really. I have about 17 eps of Modern Family on my Sky+ box. But we'll leave that for another post.)