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I am researching comedy http://www.scriptologist.com/Magazine/Tips/Comedy/comedy.html Writing A Screenplay For The Comedy Genre
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 ** A long-standing, continuing trend in comedy films is a storyline based on the antics of dysfunctional people. Consider the current box office hit, //Meet The Fockers//, a sequel to //Meet The Parents//. And past successes like //As Good As It Gets, Animal House, The Addams Family,// and //The Royal Tenenbaums// share common elements.

http://www.scriptologist.com/Magazine/Tips/Comedy/comedy.html#|Screenwriters who want to write comedy screenplays can benefit from understanding what makes these films truly comedic.

Here are some common elements that these films share: > > > In //Meet The Parents//, Greg Gaylord Focker (Ben Stiller) is so eager to please and make a good impression that he doesn't think about the consequences of his actions before he acts. Greg tries so hard to fit in and be accepted by his girlfriend's family that he accidentally sets a fire, gets out of control in a water http://www.scriptologist.com/Magazine/Tips/Comedy/comedy.html#|volleyball game, and spray http://www.scriptologist.com/Magazine/Tips/Comedy/comedy.html#|paints a cat to look like the family's lost cat.
 * The protagonist has a [|character flaw] he's not aware of. This flaw is so exaggerated that it leads to outrageous behavior, which becomes very funny.
 * Audiences can identify with the protagonist's [|character flaw] because it's a common, human flaw. That's what makes audiences laugh— they recognize this basic flaw in themselves.
 * The protagonist's [|character] [|flaw] impedes his relationships with others. Everything he does becomes self-defeating, out of control, and funny.
 * He becomes conscious of his flaw only when there's a crisis.

In //Meet The Fockers//, Greg's girlfriend is now his fiancée, and the comedy centers around his future in-laws meeting his parents. Greg's parents turn out to be as dysfunctional as Greg, and the outrageous antics continue.

See this site's [|//Funniest Film Moments and Scenes//] collection - illustrated.
 * Comedy Films** are "make 'em laugh" films designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are light-hearted dramas, crafted to amuse, entertain, and provoke enjoyment. The comedy genre humorously exaggerates the situation, the language, action, and characters. Comedies observe the deficiencies, foibles, and frustrations of life, providing merriment and a momentary escape from day-to-day life. They usually have happy endings, although the humor may have a serious or pessimistic side.

In mid-June 2000, the American Film Institute (AFI) selected America's 100 Funniest Movies with a blue-ribbon panel or "jury" of more than 1,800 leaders of the American movie community including actors, directors, screenwriters, editors, cinematographers, and critics. **AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs** revealed America's 100 funniest movies from //[|a list of 500 nominated movies]//. According to the AFI, these are "the films and film artists that have made audiences laugh throughout the century." AFI's list of the //[|100 Funniest Films]// are presented by this site, as well as //Premiere Magazine's// [|//50 Greatest Comedies of All Time//] Comedies usually come in two general formats: comedian-led (with well-timed gags, jokes, or sketches) and situation-comedies that are told within a narrative. Both comedy elements may appear together and/or overlap. Comedy hybrids commonly exist with other major genres, such as musical-comedy, horror-comedy, and comedy-thriller. Comedies have also been classified in various [|//subgenres//], such as romantic comedy, crime/caper comedy, sports comedy, teen or coming-of-age comedy, social-class comedy, military comedy, fish-out-of-water comedy, and gross-out comedy. There are also many different kinds, types, or forms of comedy, including:
 * Types of Comedies:**

(1) **Slapstick**

Slapstick was predominant in the earliest silent films, since they didn't need sound to be effective, and they were popular with non-English speaking audiences in metropolitan areas. The term //slapstick// was taken from the wooden sticks that clowns slapped together to promote audience applause. This is primitive and universal comedy with broad, aggressive, physical, and //visual// action, including harmless or painless cruelty and violence, horseplay, and often vulgar sight gags (e.g., a custard pie in the face, collapsing houses, a fall in the ocean, a loss of trousers or skirts, runaway crashing cars, people chases, etc). Slapstick often required exquisite timing and well-honed performance skills. It was typical of the films of Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, W. C. Fields, The Three Stooges, the stunts of Harold Lloyd in [|**Safety Last (1923)**], and Mack Sennett's silent era shorts (for example, the Keystone Kops). Slapstick evolved and was reborn in the screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s (see further below).

More recent feature film examples include the comedic mad chase for treasure film by many top comedy stars in Stanley Kramer's **It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)**, French actor/director Jacques Tati's mostly dialogue-free **Mr. Hulot's Holiday (1953, Fr.)**, the Blake Edwards series of //Pink Panther// films with Peter Sellers as bumbling Inspector Clouseau (especially in the second film of the series, **A Shot in the Dark (1964)** with Herbert Lom as Clouseau's slow-burning boss and Burt Kwouk as his valet and martial arts judo-specialist), and Jim Carrey in **Ace Ventura, Pet Detective (1993)** and **The Mask (1994)**. Cartoons are the quintessential form of slapstick, i.e., the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote, and others. (2) **Deadpan**

This form of comedy was best exemplified by the expression-less face of stoic comic hero Buster Keaton. (3) **Verbal comedy**

This was classically typified by the cruel verbal wit of W. C. Fields, the sexual innuendo of Mae West, or the verbal absurdity of dialogues in the Marx Brothers films, or later by the self-effacing, thoughtful humor of Woody Allen's literate comedies. (4) **Screwball**

Screwball comedies, a sub-genre of romantic comedy films, was predominant from the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s. The word 'screwball' denotes lunacy, craziness, eccentricity, ridiculousness, and erratic behavior. These films combine farce, slapstick, and the witty dialogue of more sophisticated films. In general, they are light-hearted, frothy, often sophisticated, romantic stories, commonly focusing on a battle of the sexes in which both co-protagonists try to outwit or outmaneuver each other. They usually include visual gags (with some slapstick), wacky characters, identity reversals (or cross-dressing), a fast-paced improbable plot, and rapid-fire, wise-cracking dialogue and one-liners reflecting sexual tensions and conflicts in the blossoming of a relationship (or the patching up of a marriage) for an attractive couple with on-going, antagonistic differences (such as in [|**The Awful Truth (1937)**]). Some of the stars often present in screwball comedies included Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert, Jean Arthur, Irene Dunne, Myrna Loy, Ginger Rogers, Cary Grant, William Powell, and Carole Lombard. The couple is often a fairly eccentric, but well-to-do female interested in romance and a generally passive, emasculated, or weak male who resists romance, such as in [|**Bringing Up Baby (1938)**], or a sexually-frustrated, humiliated male who is thwarted in romance, as in Howard Hawks' farce **I Was a Male War Bride (1949)**. The zany but glamorous characters often have contradictory desires for individual identity //and// for union in a romance under the most unorthodox, insane or implausible circumstances (such as in Preston Sturges' classic screwball comedy and battle of the sexes **[|The Lady Eve (1941)]**). However, after a twisting and turning plot, romantic love usually triumphs in the end. (See more discussion later in this section.) (5) **Black or Dark Comedy**

These are dark, sarcastic, humorous, or sardonic stories that help us examine otherwise ignored darker serious, pessimistic subjects such as war, death, or illness. Two of the greatest black comedies ever made include the following: Stanley Kubrick's Cold War classic satire from a script by co-writer Terry Southern, [|**Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)**] that spoofed the insanity of political and military institutions with Peter Sellers in a triple role (as a Nazi scientist, a British major, and the US President), and Robert Altman's **M*A*S*H (1970)**, an irreverent, anti-war black comedy set during the Korean War. Another more recent classic black comedy was the Coen Brothers' violent and quirky story [|**Fargo (1996)**] about a pregnant Midwestern police chief (Oscar-winning Frances McDormand) who solves a 'perfect crime' that went seriously wrong. Hal Ashby's eccentric cult film **Harold and Maude (1972)** was an oddball love story and dark comedy about a suicidal 19 year-old (Bud Cort) and a quirky, widowed octogenarian (Ruth Gordon), with a great soundtrack score populated with songs by Cat Stevens. (See examples of other feature films below for more.) John Huston's satirical black comedy **Prizzi's Honor (1985)** starred Jack Nicholson as dimwitted Mafia hit man Charley Partanna for the East Coast Prizzi family, who fell in love with West Coaster Irene Walker (Kathleen Turner) - another mob's hitwoman. The film included an Oscar-winning performance from Anjelica Huston as the vengeful granddaughter of Nicholson's Don. Tim Burton's dark and imaginative haunted house comedy **Beetlejuice (1988)** featured Michael Keaton as the title character in a dream house occupied by newlywed spirits Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin. The shocking but watchable first film of Peter Berg, **Very Bad Things (1998)** told the dark and humorous story of a 'bachelor' weekend in Las Vegas gone bad for five guys when their hired stripper/prostitute was accidentally killed. (6) **Parody** or **Spoof -** also **Satire, Lampoon** and **Farce**

These specific types of comedy (also called put-ons, send-ups, charades, lampoons, take-offs, jests, mockumentaries, etc.) are usually a humorous or anarchic take-off that ridicules, impersonates, punctures, scoffs at, and/or imitates (mimics) the style, conventions, formulas, characters (by caricature), or motifs of a serious work, film, performer, or genre, including: This category may also include these widely diverse forms of //satire// - usually displayed as political or social commentary, for example:
 * [[image:http://www.filmsite.org/covers/youngf.jpg width="110" height="192" align="right" caption="Young Frankenstein - 1974"]]the Marx Brothers' satiric anti-war masterpiece [[image:http://www.filmsite.org/redstar.gif width="14" height="10" align="bottom" link="http://www.filmsite.org/duck.html"]] [|**Duck Soup (1933)**] with anarchic humor
 * the western spoof **Cat Ballou (1965)**
 * Woody Allen's Japanese monster film parody **What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966)**
 * the 'genre' films of Mel Brooks (the quasi-western [|**Blazing Saddles (1974)**], the quasi-horror film **[|Young Frankenstein (1974)]**, the inventive Hitchcock spoof/rip-off **High Anxiety (1977)**, the [|**Star Wars (1977)**] spoof **Spaceballs (1987)**, and his swashbuckler send-up **Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)**)
 * Herbert Ross' [|**Play It Again, Sam (1972)**] poked fun at Woody Allen as an insecure nebbish-hero who worshipped an imaginary, trench-coated, archetypal tough-guy detective (a la Humphrey Bogart)
 * **Silver Streak (1976)** - a comic thriller parody of Alfred Hitchcock's 'train' pictures, with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor (their best film together) onboard the //Silver Streak// from LA to Chicago
 * Neil Simon's scripts for **The Cheap Detective (1978)** and **Murder By Death (1978)** spoofed Agatha Christie detective films
 * Jim Abrahams' and the Zuckers' revolutionary comedy **Airplane! (1980)** - a sophomoric parody of the earlier disaster series of **Airport (1970)** films and the original **Zero Hour (1957)**; their **The Naked Gun (1988)** series parodied TV cop shows, and **Top Secret! (1984)** ridiculed Cold War agents and espionage spy films (and Elvis Presley films); Abrahams' military comedy **Hot Shots! (1991)** was a genre parody/spoof of **Top Gun (1986),** while **Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993)** parodied **Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)**
 * in **The Freshman (1990)**, Marlon Brando (as Carmine Sabatini) poked fun - with brilliant parody - at his own characterization of Don Corleone in **[[image:http://www.filmsite.org/redstar.gif width="14" height="10" align="bottom" link="http://www.filmsite.org/godf.html"]][| The Godfather (1972)]**
 * Carl Reiner's **Fatal Instinct (1993)** spoofed suspense thrillers and murder mysteries such as [|**Basic Instinct (1992)**]
 * Gene Quintano's **Loaded Weapon I (1993)** made fun of **Lethal Weapon (1987)** as well as [|**The Silence of the Lambs (1991)**], [|**Basic Instinct (1992)**], and **Wayne's World (1992)**
 * the **Austin Powers** films **(1997, 1999, 2002)** - parodies of the James Bond 007 films
 * the **Scream** films **(1996, 1997, 2000)** - spoofs of slasher horror films
 * Barry Sonnenfeld's **Men in Black (1997)** - a sci-fi comedy farce based on a comic book series that poked fun at alien invasion films, with Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith as government agents (with camaraderie similar to Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in the **Lethal Weapon** series) battling about 1500 Earth-dwelling, other-worldly extra-terrestrials in the New York area; a sequel appeared in 2002
 * **Galaxy Quest (1999)**, about the cast (including Tim Allen, Alan Rickman, and Sigourney Weaver) of a 70s sci-fi TV series in reruns, this was a parody of sci-fi TV, **Star Trek** itself, and cultish "Trekkie" activities
 * director Nora Ephron's romantic comedy **You've Got Mail (1998)** updated and paid homage to Ernst Lubitsch's classic **The Shop Around the Corner (1940)**, with leads Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in their third teaming (after their previous hit with Ephron - **Sleepless in Seattle (1993)**), replacing James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as feuding-by-email Manhattan bookstore owners
 * **Last Action Hero (1993)** - a spoof of action films
 * Billy Wilder's sex farce [|**The Seven Year Itch (1955)**] - a parody of a conventional Hollywood romance
 * Terry Gilliam's tasteless but hilarious **Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)** and **The Life of Brian (1979)** - an irreverent parody of religious films
 * the witty Monty Pythonesque **A Fish Called Wanda (1988)**, co-scripted by veteran John Cleese (with the character name of Archie Leach - named after Cary Grant's real name) and directed by veteran Charles Crichton (whose film career was responsible for such classics as **The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)**); it was both an acclaimed black comedy and caper farce about a search for a stolen cache of diamonds; the title referred to both a fish and the name of Jamie Lee Curtis' character
 * writer/director Albert Brooks' satirical **Real Life (1979)** - a pseudo-documentary on 'real' small-town suburban family life
 * Woody Allen's pseudo-documentary **Zelig (1983)** with its use of vintage historical clips to portray a human cipher or chameleon in various time periods
 * Rob Reiner's largely-improvised show-biz mockumentary **This is Spinal Tap (1984)** about a non-existent British heavy metal rock band on tour of third-rate venues
 * the serious-comedic political satire of Tim Robbins' pseudo-documentary (or fictional mockumentary) **Bob Roberts (1992)** about running for Senatorial office; **Tanner '88 (1988)** was a similar made-for-TV mini-series about a fictional Presidential candidate (Michael Murphy)
 * Steven Soderbergh's **Schizopolis (1996)** - an irreverent, bizarre, and absurdist media satire
 * Christopher Guest's **Waiting for Guffman (1996)** - an intelligent satirical parody (and mockumentary) about small-town 'drama queen' hopefuls ||  ||   ||