Going the other way
So a couple weeks ago a friend of mine asked me to help her make — brace yourselves — an audition tape for a reality-television show. For trademark reasons I can’t get into which show we’re talking about exactly, but let me say that it rhymes with … um … “The Machelor.”
The producers, who’ve been courting this friend of mine for a while now, sent over a list of … well, they were more strongly worded than suggestions. Do’s and don’ts, sort of. Don’t underlight. Don’t shoot too close. Do shoot in a colorful setting. Stuff like that.
We shot the show yesterday, and I’m proud to say that I violated every single one of the little guidelines the producers had sent over.
I don’t think my friend was really expecting what I gave her, either. I’d listened as she and some others had bounced ideas around. You know, all the typical stuff. Make it funny. People love funny, right? So make it funny.
Let me tell you something right now: Nobody gives a shit about funny.
Funny is one of the hardest things in the world, not just to pull off but even to get people to agree upon. Except for the stateroom scene in A Night at the Opera, there’s no single product of human endeavor that everyone agrees is funny. And to make it worse, the same person will find the same thing more or less funny — or not funny at all — at different times. Funny is hard, because it’s so high-contrast. There’s nothing in the middle. There’s no such thing as “a little bit funny.” Something’s either funny, or it’s so very not.
Funny is hard. Almost funny is easy, but almost funny is not funny at all. So funny is hard.
And I’m lazy.
So I went a different way.