by William C. Martell
http://www.scriptsecrets.net
YOU HAD TO BE THERE!
What if you told a joke and nobody laughed?
Just as it doesn't matter whether your character cries, the only thing that matters is whether the audience cries; a joke in a movies isn't for the entertainment of the characters. In fact, the earmark of a bad comedy script is that the characters are always laughing at the jokes. I think the more the characters laugh on screen, the less the audience will laugh - look at movies like AIRPLANE, every character is dead serious. The more serious they take the situation, the funnier it becomes. The jokes are supposed to make the AUDIENCE laugh - the most important part of screenwriting is creating an emotional response in the audience.
Mike Binder got a lot of attention from his HBO show, MIND OF THE MARRIED MAN... Enough to land him a role as the villain in MINORITY REPORT and a gig direting Joan Allen and Kevin Costner inm THE UPSIDE OF ANGER. A few years ago I met him at the Raindance Film Festival where he premiered his feature THE SEARCH FOR JOHN GISSING, starring himself, Janeane Garofalo and Alan Rickman. So far, the film has not been released in the USA.
The story revolves around an American executive (Binder) sent to London to close a business deal. When he and his wife (Garofalo) land at Heathrow, they're to be met by an executive from the London branch of the company, John Gissing (Rickman). Gissing is not only a no-show, he proceeds to sabotage Binder & Garofalo's trip - mixing up their hotel reservations, hiring a nun to seduce Binder and break up their marriage, cancelling their credit cards so they will be forced to sleep on the street. What Binder doesn't know is that once he closes this deal they're firing Gissing. Binder will end up with Gissing's job... unless Binder fails to close the deal. One situation after another pushes Binder and Garofalo to the breaking point... until they finally find Gissing and turn the tables on him.
Though much of the film is very funny, there's a patch of jokes that just don't work early on. Binder keeps quipping about Garofalo's stoner brother, and she keeps zinging him about his mother. Here's the problem: We don't know either of these characters. They aren't in any scenes, they don't have any dialogue... so these jokes are about people we don't know. So the jokes may be funny to the characters, but it's just a bunch of talk to the audience. We literally don't know who they're talking about. The mother and brother aren't characters in the movie!
The mother and brother gags are injokes for the characters.
Because we've never seen these characters - we don't know them - Binder ends up with "exposition jokes". The jokes TELL US what's funny instead of allowing us to EXPERIENCE something funny. The characters have to tell us all about the brother, then tell us what's funny about him. Compare this to a funny situation that we can experience along with the characters (like Binder trying to share a bed with a very sexy nun dressed in a very sheer nightshirt - we feel his confusion and embarrassment). There's no shortage of fish-out-of-water gags about an American couple trying to find their way in London... I have notebooks full of funny things that happened to me. There are dozens of words that have completely different meanings depending on which side of the Atlantic you're on - lots of room for funny confusion. There WERE jokes that could have made the audience laugh.
Remember, it's not whether your characters laugh, it's whether the audience laughs. Having your characters talk about something really funny that happened off camera is getting the joke second hand - hey, this funny thing happened! (Too bad you weren't there.) Let the audience EXPERIENCE the funny situation along with your character - give us the joke first hand. Don't use "you had to be there" jokes... TAKE THE AUDIENCE "THERE". If the audience isn't there for the joke, the laughter isn't going to be there, either.