As a comedy writer, I'm always praying for the day I can tell a self-aware/break-the-fourth-wall style of joke.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Only one in four jokes ever works, and I still can't predict what people will laugh at.
When you've been doing comedy for forty years, you really do know most of the jokes. And even if you don't know a specific joke, you can pretty much guess what it's going to be.
Comedy is just to me, maybe it's a natural knack, if I can see where the joke is in the writing and I can see where the setup is and I can tell this is the way to make it.
Sometimes an actor will stumble on the joke, and I'm right on them. Back it up before the audience hears the bad version of the joke, because humor is 90% surprise. If they know what's coming, they won't laugh as hard.
I'm not good at telling a joke, but I can say a line in a certain way that makes people uncomfortable because they don't know whether to laugh or not, and I love that comedy.
Sometimes, comedy and entertainment is not all about telling jokes; sometimes you just have to be you for a few moments.
In a comedy, after the day is done, you can figure out ways of how to make it even funnier for the next day. In dramas, it's very different - the mindset that you're in.
I detest jokes - when somebody tells me one, I feel my IQ dropping; the brain cells start to disappear. But something is funny when the person delivering the line doesn't know it's funny or doesn't treat it as a joke. Maybe it comes from a place of truth, or it's a sort of rage against society.
If I think something's funny, I try to mold it into a joke as soon as possible. Once I have a joke, I say it a million different ways on stage until I find a rhythm and it feels like it's as good as it can be.
You learn to laugh at yourself, and you also lean on comedy as a crutch to kind of take the edge off because comedians often are self-deprecating, and they cross lines that they shouldn't. Stuff like that brings a smile to my face every once in a while when needed.
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