Telling the Jokes?
By Gene Perrett
There are two important elements to joke-telling. First there’s the joke itself. Is it inherently funny? Would it get laughs even if you read it in a paper? If it satisfies those criteria, it should get laughs. It’s a good joke.
Will it get laughs? That’s a different story. That depends on the second element – who’s telling the joke.
Humor is a combination of material and performance. Someone once asked Sammy Cahn, the legendary song writer, how he went about writing a Frank Sinatra song. He answered, “You don’t. You write a song. When Frank Sinatra sings it, it becomes a Frank Sinatra song.” Although that example applies to music, the parallel is there – the end result is the blend of the material and the performance.
People often ask me if I felt offended when Bob Hope would tell one of the jokes I had written that got big laughs. “After all,” they would suggest, “it’s your material and Hope is getting the benefits of it.”
Well, the answer is, it’s not really my material. It’s material I happened to write for Bob Hope. That comedy was written specifically for the character that Bob Hope worked on, developed, and sustained for several decades. I was privileged to borrow that character to help form my jokes.
The same applied to Phyllis Diller. That zany character and that raucous laugh were the result of Phyllis’s creativity and effort. Yes, I fed some gags to that stage character, but it was Phyllis Diller’s creation.
The same is true of all comedians. Abbott and Costello each had their stage persona which created hilarious routines. Jack Benny had his gimmicks. George Carlin was an identifiable personality onstage. All of them had their idiosyncrasies, their styles, and the type of material they did and didn’t do.
So any one delivering a joke or telling a story, should tell it with their own speech patterns, their own emphasis, their own flair. That’s what will turn a funny piece of material into a funny joke.
Here are some tips that may help in your own joke telling:
Know the Punchline: Understand the joke. Everything in a joke is there for one reason – to present the punchline. Anything that doesn’t serve that purpose is extraneous, takes up valuable time, and may eventually get in the way of the joke. The various elements of the joke are there not only to present the punchline, but to emphasize it. To hit it hard; to deliver all the impact that it deserves.
In order to present the punchline effectively and powerfully, the story teller should know what it means. For an extreme example of what can happen when the comic doesn’t understand the humor of the joke, consider this gag:
PERSON A: (ASKING A FARMER) Can you tell me how long cows should be milked?
FARMER: The same as short ones.
OK…there’s a joke there. At least there was until the straight man, who obviously didn’t understand the gag said:
PERSON A: (ASKING A FARMER) Can you tell me, how should you milk long cows?
The comedian playing the farmer has no response.
That is an extreme example, as I admitted, but there are many times when a joke is destroyed in the telling because the person telling it loses sight or misunderstands the punchline.
In telling a gag, find the humor of it and emphasize that.
Make Effective Use of Pauses: Some people say of music that it’s the silence between the notes that create the melody. The same can be said of comedy. There is a rhythm to most jokes and a good joke teller can orchestrate that rhythm and capitalize on it.
You often hear people comment on how important timing is to comedy. But what is timing? They rarely tell you that. Timing can be the rhythm that you establish in telling a joke. It adds a lilt to the gag that enhances it.
Timing, and using the pauses effectively, can also build dramatic effect. If you set up a premise and then allow some time for the listeners to accept it and then try to figure out where you’re going with it, that’s building tension. Relieving tension is always a good comedy device.
If you can perfect that skill, you’re always delivering the punchline at the precise moment when the listeners are ready for it.
Don’t be afraid of silence in telling a joke. If used correctly, it makes the laughter sound even louder.
Speak Slowly and Enunciate Properly: There’s a tendency, when one gets to the funny part of the joke, to rush through. It’s just too good to hold back any longer. Often, though, rushing through it destroys the rhythm of the joke. We just talked about that. But it can also make the words impossible to hear. As we said earlier, the purpose of telling a joke is to get to the punchline. Once you’re there, though, you must allow people to hear and understand it. If they can’t make out the words you’re saying, they can’t appreciate the humor.
Be sure to enunciate the punch and speak loud enough and clear enough so that people can hear and then laugh.
Vary Your Comedy Inflections: Every comic has a way of emphasizing the punchline. They try to deliver it with a little extra zing. That’s fine. That’s what you want. That tells the audience, “Here’s the funny part of the joke.”
However, the same comedy inflection at the end of every joke can get monotonous. It can lull an audience into indifference. To them, all the jokes sound the same, so they must be the same. You don’t want that.
So try to develop different inflections for the joke line. Some comics may “throw the joke away.” In other words, instead of emphasizing the punchline, they almost (and I emphasize “almost”) slide right by it. Then there may be added surprise when the audience catches on.
One example, was the Bob Hope gimmick and saying, “But I wanna tell you…” He would deliver his punchline and then immediately slide into that phrase. But then he would pause (again, that pause is valuable) and the audience would look for the joke.
That’s just one device. The important idea here is to develop different ways of highlighting the punchline. It should make your joke telling more interesting.
Gene Perret is a three-time Emmy winning comedy writer who has written for Bob Hope, Phyllis Diller, Carol Burnett, and many others. His latest books on comedy are “Comedy Writing Self-Taught” and “Comedy Writing Self-Taught Workbook” (written with his daughter Linda). These books are are available at Aamzon.com and at www.comedywritersroom.com. Or email us for more details at [email protected]. This article is reprinted from his blog.
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