Robert N EmersonHow come jokes never work on the re-tell?
May 24th 2008 00:48
It's one of the mysteries of the universe for me. I can't work it out. Something funny happens to you and you remember it vividly because it is one of the highlights of your life so far but as soon as you go and try and tell it to someone they come out with "i guess you had to be there".
It never fails. The response is always the same, regardless of the material. I could maybe understand it if you try and recount something funny that happens during one of your drunken adventures but I'm talking about things that happen 6 minutes previously, someone late comes up and joins the group, you've all just stopped laughing about it, they say: "What's funny?" and you give them a play-by-play perfect recollection but it's still not funny. And I'm talking about things that are HILARIOUS on the first time, not just so-so incidents.
I guess it is just a particular frustration for me because I want to be a comedy writer and at the start you kind of think, oh yeah I'll just rewrite funny stuff that's happened to me over the years and you put it on paper and it just sits there, lifelessly. Then you realise you have to reconsider your whole career plan and that you've just lost 98% of your joke material and it has to be replaced with sight gags. 25 mins of men in wigs or getting hit in the groin accidentally. It's just not fair- Comedy should be timeless.
It never fails. The response is always the same, regardless of the material. I could maybe understand it if you try and recount something funny that happens during one of your drunken adventures but I'm talking about things that happen 6 minutes previously, someone late comes up and joins the group, you've all just stopped laughing about it, they say: "What's funny?" and you give them a play-by-play perfect recollection but it's still not funny. And I'm talking about things that are HILARIOUS on the first time, not just so-so incidents.
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