Village Squire, 1978-02, Page 42P.S.
BY KEITH ROULSTON
In times like these when times are tough
and getting tougher what the country
needs is not a good five cent cigar but a
good laugh. The trouble is, would anybody
recognize one if it came along?
1 mean people are in danger of not
knowing what is funny and what isn't
anymore. I've reached this conclusion after
a few recent storm -bound nights of
watching television. It was then that I
realized either I was wrong or somebody on
television was. A whole hour of television
where one burst of laughter barely died
down before the next came and yet I
perhaps managed one laugh through the
whole thing (and that may have been for a
commercial).
I think I first noticed the trend with a
show featuring Andy Williams a few years
ago. It was one of the forerunners of the
new variety show format: a song, a lot of
fooling around, another song, more fooling
and so on. The show featured a bear that
kept coming on stage to do stupid things,
which apparently were supposed to be
hilarious to anyone but those with as
warped a sense of humour as mine.
The trend was followed by the Sonny and
Cher show and then the Captain and
Tenille and Donnie and Marie, all filled,
apparently, with hilarious humour and I
could hardly manage a smile, at least until
the final credits rolled and I could finally let
out a hysterical peel of laughter knowing
my torture was over.
The same trend goes on in situation
comedies. There are few comedies I find I
can laugh at (though even then at about
half the jokes I'm apparently supposed to)
but most of them I find about as funny as
watching a spider spin a web. Yet the
audience apparently thinks the humour is
as original as sin.
What, I wonder, did comedy writers do
before the day of canned laughter.
I was beginning to feel very unfunny
until 1 realized that most of that laughter
came not from human mouths but from
laugh tracks automatically added after the
show is shot to make it seem funny. Even
those shows which are televised in front of
a live audience usually have applause signs
to tell people when to react.
What I wonder, did comedy writers ever
do before the day of canned laughter? I
mean imagine how easy it is today by
comparison to get the proper reaction for a
joke.
HARRY: Why did the chicken cross the
road?
.MO: I don't know, why did the chicken
cross the road?
HARRY: Why to get to the other side, of
course. Ho. Ho.
SOUND EFFECTS: At (east two minutes of
uproarious laughter at such an original
piece of humour.
I know I certainly could do with such an
mcdern convenience when it comes to
writing. 1 try to write something funny and
40. VILLAGE SQUIRE/FEBRUARY 1978.
never know whether the audience (in this
case readers) laugh at it or not. It would be
so nice to be able to write in "laugh,
laugh" every time you thought somebody
should be laughing at something instead of
forever wondering if people really thought
it was funny.
My wife doesn't help my confidence any.
I'll hand her something I've written which I
think is hilarious and she'll read the whole
thing as if she was reading an obituary.
When I look hurt, she says: "Well it's
funny. It's just that I don't laugh out loud a
lot."
Then she'll go back to the book she's
beeri reading and two minutes later she'll
be laughing hysterically and wiping her
eyes at something she reads in the book.
About the only time I've ever seen her
laugh at something I've written is when
she's laughing at my horrible typing that
often makes simple words like "cat", look
like they're an obsecure Hindu dialect.
The one way to know for sure whether
people think things you have written are
funny is to perform them in front of a live
audience. Some brave writers, like W.O.
Mitchell, like to get up and tell their stories
themselves. I'm chicken through and
through so I'd rather leave the' telling of
the jokes to actors (actors get paid to take
risks like having tomatoes thrown at them,
not writers). It can be excruciating,
however, to sit at the back of the theatre
and listen to people not laughing at
something you felt was hilarious when you
wrote it.
Still, writing a play and having it
performed last year was good therapy for
me. For the first time I knew for sure that
people would really laugh at something I'd
written. It's a reassuring thing to know that
people will actually pay money to come and
see something you've written. Writing a
column doesn't have the same immediacy
since people are buying the publication
because of the whole book. not just
because of one column and you never get to
eavesdrop and hear their reactions to your
own work. But when you stick your neck
out with something as risky as theatre,
where it's been known that there can be
more people on stage then in the audience
at times, then the rewards are tremendous.
It was reassuring to know too, that
people still have the good taste to think
what I write is funny. I was beginning to
wonder after watching television. I still
worry though. Another few years of
watching Donnie and Marie or Laverne and
Shirley is apt to brainwash people into
thinking that what these shows say is funny
is actually funny and what we've long
known as funny isn't. People won't know
when to laugh if they don't have the laugh
track to tell them. Lord won't the country
(not to mention column writers) be in
trouble then.
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