MARRYING THE JOKE: The Crucial Art Of Narrative Comedy (Patreon)

No matter how much we may discuss the finer details of comedy, we all know there’s only one real metric involved…

Did you laugh or not?

As a consumer or critic, it’s important to recognize that it really is that simple. You watch comedy primarily to laugh, which is a weird thing if you think about the biology of it. Because it’s when you make your body do this involuntary thing where your diaphragm spasms out of control because… you’re delighted? Which in turn makes you feel endorphins and things? (honestly, the science of why we laugh tells so much) But in that way, the import of comedy is undeniable. And as a critic it’s also important to be honest about whether a movie actually did that. For example, Ebert used to lament when he would hear fellow movie critics laugh through a silly comedy and then go home and give it a scathing review saying the movie was stupid, not realizing that very stupidity was producing the exact intended enjoyment. So the heck is what’s going on there?

I’d argue that a lot of confusion comes from the fact that there are many kinds of laughs. There’s outright belly laughter, gentle chuckles, nervous laughter, nostalgic smiles at old call back jokes, or the pointed laughs at satire, our delights at absurd irony, or even the scathing cackling at something that feels camp. This is the disambiguation of comedy itself. So as much as it may seem like “a laugh is a laugh,” all those differences actually affect how we feel about the end product. Meaning there is a crucial emotional nugget under the laugh itself. But this makes sense because comedy is all about context, right?

I mean, we all have jokes that make sense with some close ones in our lives, but wouldn’t work with strangers, right? Well, the same thing is true for stand-up comics and audiences. John Mulaney, Tig Notaro, and Jerrod Carmichael can all make different jokes about their lived-in experiences (or at least have a context for HOW they joke about those various things). But all the “rules” about punching up / punching down are much better summed up by W. Kamau Bell’s perfect simplification. All jokes are a simple question of: “Who do you want to include? Who do you not want to include?” Because that’s what actually dictates what you’re *really* after with your comedy (and simplifies the whole thing about alt-right type “comedians” and their entire bullshit, because they know exactly who they are courting). But all of these variations and concerns hit an additional level when we come to the most difficult complication of all…

What happens when NARRATIVE comes into play?

It may not seem like such a huge winkle, but it’s a massive change. Because a stand-up on stage can take you in and out of every kind of comedic approach with their words alone, whether it is a one liner, a personal story, or a tone of irony, or utmost seriousness, and they do so all with the control of their voice, communication, and intention. But movies are whole narrative worlds unto themselves. They need to be brought to life in front of audiences in a way where you don’t see the strings, all so that you can fall into the movie’s reality. You need to believe what’s happening on screen the way you would any sci-fi, thriller, or even slice of life drama. And with comedy, that’s where things get more tricky because it is inherently about taking you into the unexpected, all in order to make you laugh. It’s just that it has to be an unexpected thing that still works within the parameters of the larger film itself. It’s complicated, but the good news is I first wrote about this subject a couple years ago when I talked about the importance of the “baseline reality” in comedy and that’s the start of conversation here once again. To paraphrase the whole column: in order for a narrative to function, the audience needs to believe a baseline reality for two reasons…

The first is so that they can, you know, believe in the characters' existence on screen. The second, and far more important reason, is because comedy is about holding tension. You may not think tension applies, but that’s the thing: all genres are just different reliefs of tension. Horror relieves tension with a scare. Thrillers do it with a last second escape. And action movies relieve you with a big triumphant punch and win over the bad guy. But comedies? You create a situation where you think X thing is going to happen and then you are surprised by something from left field. Like, you see a ball going to a person’s head and then they duck to pick up a penny or something and thus it hits someone else. There’s of course more refinement to it than that, but it’s the interplay of expectation and reality of result. And that’s the whole thing about narrative: how do you create the expectation? And how is the result a play on that?

To be clear from the start, the “reality” is not about REALISM. In fact, you can have any old crazy thing happen you want. But you still need to uphold the reality of that, ESPECIALLY when dealing with the surreal. Like, the crazy thing that happens needs to have happened. You need to sell this is a thing everyone sees and exists in the reality of the movie. And it needs to have cause and effect. Like, even fourth wall breaks need to be consistent (or at least have a VERY specific import). Because once again, the audience needs to know where the tension is. And if they’re given too much inconsistency from either the narrative world or especially a character’s variant behaviors? Then they subtly shut down as they watch because they can’t track and anticipate the tension. It’s soooooo important to understand this and yet so many storytellers fall victim to the appeal of going out of bounds on a whim. And it is actually Brennan Lee Mulligan who actually came up with my favorite verbiage on the subject at large. He was being interviewed about how he runs D&D games so well and this is an arena where what I’m talking actually matters so damn much. All because you have a bunch of ad libbing comedians participating in a narrative story around a table. So as he put it:

“The easiest way to get laughs is to break the reality of something. Like leave a moment, abandon the tension, pop the bubble, and I think that when you watch a lot of media, when people aren’t necessarily comedians, they will sometimes find humor by destroying what's there in the moment, by saying no or something like that. But what’s great about the cast of this show is you guys always find humor by going DEEPER into the truth of the moment…. but anyone can mug to camera, anyone can be tongue in cheek, anyone can be snarky, anyone can say something that abandons the moment for quick laugh.” And in another interview he goes on to give the perfect expression of this, saying “you have to marry the joke.”

When you look back at the host of great absurd comedies, you realize how much this is true. For example, with Dumb and Dumber you have these absolute nitwits who seem too dumb to even be alive, but that’s the thing: they’re locked in their reality. Everything they do is real and has cause and effect. He pees on a motorcycle and of course, in the logic of the gross out gags of the film, they get stuck together. But perhaps the perfect example is the original Anchorman, because it is a film constantly filled with sudden absurdity that then impacts the story going forward. Have an absurd new anchor rumble with tridents and nets!? Well how about a scene where they’re all going over the actuality of those tossed off visual gags, doubling down on the reality and saying that Brick’s going to have to go into hiding for murder. No matter what film you’re talking about, everything is about how hard you marry the joke. Whether it’s “aim for the bushes” of The Other Guys, the bus hit in Mean Girls, or even the rain of frogs in Magnolia. You have to commit. Think about it, the Santa Claus speech in Gremlins would play so CALLOUS were it not for the fact that Phoebe Cates plays it so sincere and earnest (because that’s what makes it funny). Even movies that have hyper-absurd gags like Duck Soup or even Looney Toons are about writing impossible things into reality. But perhaps no single entity shows this better than Police Squad / The Naked Gun, where Leslie Neilsen absolutely sells every bit of it with the most deadpan delivery possible. Every absurd thing is the realest real that can real. Because it’s all about marrying the joke…

And now we get to the reason I bring it all up.

Because there’s a recent trend of movies that have not just failed to commit to their own reality, but were CONSTANTLY popping their own bubble for the easier joke. The first example is this year's Cocaine Bear, which I wasn’t going to write about at the time because it didn’t seem prudent or all that productive. I’m even genuinely happy for its success (seriously, I want movies like this to make 90 million dollars all the time). But when it comes to the fact that a lot of people didn’t really like it, or said things like “oh it was stupid, but whatever,” shows some of the ways  that it crashed up against the good old tangible details theory. So many people were just left for a feeling for why it felt underwhelming or “stupid,” but not the kind of transcendent stupidity that’s endearing. And the reason they felt that was because it was constantly popping its own bubble.

Because it’s conceit depends on marrying the joke right? I mean, it’s literally based on a real life story and the whole main mechanic of the bear doing cocaine and as “unrealistic” as some of the bear’s behavior is, rather than lean into it, the movie is more expressing constant incredulity at its own premise. Every character is reacting like, “oh my god, did that just happen??!?” Or “Holy shit! A Bear is doing cocaine!” As if the audience needed to be constantly reminded of why they are there in the first place. Even the big stand-offs with B plots and characters feature some way of constantly undercutting themselves or letting the tension out by going on way too long. It’s always reaching for the easiest joke (or every joke), which also creates a whole system of desperately confused motivations. Because again, it’s about what we FEEL under the intended laugh. And this is even harder with a film that skews into horror comedy.

Because horror kills are largely a matter of rooting interest. We like X person, we don’t like Y person. So the difference if we like x person is we want x to get killed in a suspenseful or intense build up. But if we hate Y person, we want their kill to be gnarly and secretly cathartic for us as an audience. Yes, there’s SOME playful wiggle room here, but you can see what I’m talking about in the way that Raimi can be cruel in a funny way to his characters (or the ways the Coen brothers and Fincher do in other slightly more dramatic forms). But in this film, the problem is that this movie isn’t cruel OR empathetic, it’s that it feels indiscriminate. Which starts with the fact that the characters’ behaviors are weird and all over the place, often oscillating between cruel and mugging for your sympathy at different moments, which is why none of it ends up feeling suspenseful OR cathartic. It doesn’t know how to actually direct your feelings. It just knows how to always reach for the easiest joke or gnarliest kill and never once stops to think about how this actually adds up. Honestly, it’s part of the exact same dynamic that plagued the much-reviled Jurassic World. And while this film didn’t have the onus of blockbuster-dom, the fact is that Cocaine Bear was a “dumb comedy” only meant that it couldn’t quite figure out how to gel with its own premise - and ended up being the very thing it settled for.

But this can be true with even movies you like or that movies work in other ways. For example, there’s so many things I love about Barbie, but consensus seems to be that one of the least successful parts of the film is the Mattel stuff. Why is that? Because it can’t make up its mind about where it’s coming from with them. It’s painted as the evil corporate patriarchal hegemony, one designed to be the threat hovering over our gal’s journey, but it’s also constantly popping the bubble with them (which dissolves any tension) AND is going back and forth with their characterizations. So it’s like, yeah, someone like Ferrel can riff and get you a million great jokes, but sometimes it’s not about what’s funniest, but what is RIGHT for the narrative. Because whatever is going on the execs with them doesn’t really add up into an arc, but just a see-sawing dynamic the whole time that somehow ends in them being nice? But remember, the reason Ken works so damn well is because he is so completely serious the whole time (in his head, this film is a drama about his journey). THAT’s what makes all the absurdity feel so real. With Ken, they marry the joke and never deviate.

Lastly, I thought of all this while I was watching Bottoms the other week. Which, to be clear, is a movie I like! But it’s also a movie I wanted to love so badly, especially because I love everything it’s AIMING for. You know how we talked about inclusion above? Well, it’s exactly where I want to be and the problems 100% come down to the execution regarding the tension. Which was extra surprising to me because I was a big fan of Emma Seligman’s previous feature Shiva Baby, which is probably one of the most tension-filled comedies I’ve ever seen. Everything turns on the razor of clarity and expectation, drawing you into the main character’s interiority and compounding anxiety after anxiety as she tries to navigate a shiva afterparty and its nightmare guests as best she can. Now, you may ask, “isn’t Bottoms a broad comedy that would have a radically different tone?” That’s right! But instead of merely tweaking the kinds of jokes that result from the tension and making them broader, the new baby goes out with the proverbial bathwater. All because it’s constantly popping the bubble. To the point that I’m not even sure the bubbles are getting blown in the first place?

Because characters are CONSTANTLY making asides of incredulous jokes and I’m like, wait is that real? It’s almost like no one is even really in the movie they are in, and more importantly, I’m constantly questioning if anyone is even listening to each other. People saying CRAZY ad-libbed lines and then people just stare at them are like, “um, like, okay, THAT’S weird” and they have little to no effect on anything that happens on the scene going forward. And later, some of the things said end up mattering a lot and it’s so bewildering (especially for a narrative that depends on two characters that are ostensibly conning their peers). And when it comes to characterization, the other problem is that we’re constantly told things about characters that are not demonstrated, nor dramatized. And this not even to speak to the bizarre world building of this high school reality that seems so weirdly caught between satire and sincerity (the whole other town murder thing feels so poorly set up). You just NEVER know where you are standing in the context of things, which means you cannot stand in the tension either.

Again, I cannot tell you how much I like what the jokes are aiming for. It’s all about inversions of power, distinctions within gay circles of talented / untalented, and it even has a massively good third wave feminism joke. Heck, they cast Marshawn Lynch! And he’s great! But the problems add up in this really quiet way where people might not know why it’s affecting the end result. Like, we had a pretty full audience and so many of the jokes were just getting these quiet chuckles of like “I can see why what the person said was funny, but it’s not LANDING.” And afterwards, no one in our big group thought it was bad but we all sat around and it was full of comments like “Yeah, I liked it” or “I don’t know why it took me so long to get into it.” And that’s the cumulative effect of what I’m talking about. Because it's not until the characters of Bottoms actually get real and vulnerable with some of the elements half through that any part really begins to have any kind of gravity to something the audience can hold actually onto (besides irony). And there’s sort of a telling sequence right at the start of the film that I can’t stop thinking about.

Near the opening, we see the two stars Rachel Sennot and Ayo Edibiri (who if you read my essay on The Bear, you know I’m a massive fan of) and they trying to get ready for the carnival pep rally thing and they’re setting out all their grand plans for the film in terms of wants and crushes, but they’re also doing a lot of hedging and shrugging and disaffection. But specifically you see Ayo putting all these hats on her head as she’s moving around and talking. And immediately I’m thinking, “wait, is this on purpose?” Because one of the old rules of comedy is “don’t put a hat on a hat.” And what that’s really about is the idea that when you create a sketch or narrative that has some kind of goofy premise or angle, you don’t want to put another silly unrelated thing on top of it because it’s hard to get the audience to track (Bill Hader has a great explanation of how Seth Meyers taught him that here) And yet, we see just this massive piling of hats and I’m like, is this stating the film’s intention? Is this a meta-purpose? Is it aware of the joke? I honestly don’t know. And it’s all a part of the way it doesn’t know when it’s doing satire, or disaffection, or brechtian artifice, or trying to push the audience away or pull them closer. Instead of surgical deployment of each tactic, t all just kind of turns into this weird mush.

But me saying this comes with a recognition that I know that there are people who absolutely love this movie. And I think EXACTLY what I’m talking about is part of the reason. Because the disaffection towards its own construction adds up into a total attitudinal vibe. It’s not about loving the story, it’s the way the film reflects a larger audience's disaffection with the state of comedy in general (to wit, I love you all to bits and pieces, but it’s not an accident that all my friends who loved this film are absolutely the most jaded movie-watchers I know, especially with regards to the current climate). But the movie’s disaffection comes with this baked in tonal defense of “whatever, it doesn’t matter! Don’t take it so seriously! Blah! *finger gun noises*” Or maybe it’s aware of everything I’m talking about and doesn’t care. Maybe it’s about the expectation of NOT having an expectation. All part of a meta, vibe-y dance of comedy that in the end, just might not be for me. And hey, I’m the first to agree that what this movie is reaching for is probably more important than the execution, too. But I don’t know. It can be as simple as looking at this whole argument and going “I just don’t care about what you care about” and that’s honestly fine. I really mean that.

But I also know that I genuinely believe that if they made a surgical version of this same movie? It would be something that the people who already love the film would actually love 10 times more. I *KNOW* that’s such an absurd abstract argument for me to make. And a completely worthless, unprovable one at that. But the truth is, whether or not we think the film is “good” is irrelevant to our examination (especially given that I honestly still like Bottoms overall and recommend it anyway). This is just about getting to the bigger issues of construction. And most of all, I want you to understand that I’m more concerned about “The Why” behind it all. Because most of the faults in storytelling? And especially with comedy?

They come from fear. That probably sounds harsh. But trying to be funny is scary as hell. Honestly, it’s part of the reason I rarely try to be funny. I know I’m not good at it. And it’s so much easier to sit here and be analytical and responsive and throw flags on the play instead of offering up jokes on my own. But the dynamic is true. Trying to be funny is scary. It’s why standups reach for more extreme jokes early in their careers. And it’s why filmmakers will reach for the “funniest” joke regardless if it’s the right one. But I want people to have faith in their central conviction. No matter how absurd, how scathing, or how disaffected, I really want people to actually care about the reality of the movie they are watching.

Which is why out of all the comedies this year, I’m surprised to say that the film that best “married the joke” was actually the Jennifer Lawrence comedy vehicle No Hard Feelings. It’s a bit of a throwback movie in the sense that it highlights a movie star’s genuine charisma, but also goes for big gags, and ultimately offers a surprisingly sweet story at the center. But it succeeds mostly because it pays attention to all the small details that create the world within the film. No matter how absurd, the throwaway gags or observations build into emotional payoffs (the three part arc to “maneater” is the best example of this). No matter how much it finds humor in people’s faults and bad behaviors, it’s never really showing outright disdain for anyone on screen, let alone indiscriminate callousness (this is critical with the nerdy boy in question). Even the most “reality breaking” moment at the end is something that you feel comes from the fear of needing to have a big climax. But in the end, no matter how silly, you end up genuinely caring about the friendship at the center of all of it. Which turns it into this throwback to the kinds of comedies that leave you with this warm happy feeling that’s actually earned in the story. But its success comes from a simple realization…

That comedy itself isn’t simple.

There’s so damn much that goes into it. And I say that from a place of commiseration. I hate anytime I go on with criticism for a while and am not offering that which is actually constructive.  Which is why I’m rooting for it and every single person mentioned in this dang essay to go on to make great stuff. Especially because in writing this, I accidentally realized that Cocaine Bear director Elizabeth Banks also produced Bottoms, and I don’t want that to seem like a pile on (but bubble popping was the exact same problem with Pitch Perfect 2 and Charlie’s Angels as well). None of this is a shot at ability. It’s about rallying around a larger philosophy of understanding. I mean, we’ve seen how outrageously good Banks can be in so many things. Every single one of the people mentioned in this essay has and CAN make incredible stuff. Which is why I’m talking about the goals of collective understanding. For the very notion of “direction” is to provide the focal point. To cull the set of jokes that are “right” to make it all come together into that little magical thing that doesn’t just make us laugh, but connects on some level deeper. It creates an audience not just included, but seen. Tensions not just alluded to, but relieved. And jokes that don’t just pop an easy bubble, but marry their stories through and through. Because when you do that?

You’re surprised how much the audience marries the film in turn.

<3HULK