Poking a Dead Frog

Humour can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind … (Humour) won’t stand much poking. It has a certain fragility, an evasiveness, which one had best respect.

(E.B. White)

Christmas is a time for giving. A poorly chosen gift can make someone feel misunderstood. A well-chosen gift, noticed and valued. A few weeks ago, I received a gift as part of our buddy system at work. (We’re paired up with someone at the start of term and put treats in their pigeonhole throughout the year). In return for my buddying last year, I received a book on comedy writing. I was really moved to be given it because, for me, it was a perfect present. So often in life we’re asked what we want: people feel it better to meet a request, than take a chance and have them react like Brad Pitt at the end of Se7en. "What's in the box? (Looks) OH GOD!" But when someone gets you something that you didn’t see coming, that recognises you and your interests, there is no finer thing.

I love the craft of comedy. I tried my hand at stand-up, gigged three hundred + times, but never got beyond mediocrity. I found the art of stand-up writing extremely difficult. In retrospect my problem was to treat it like conventional writing. I would sit in the library writing pages and pages of monologue, emboldening the punch-lines, checking I had a laugh every other line (something I was taught on my comedy course). The result never sounded right. Through listening to Stuart Goldsmith’s Comedian’s Comedian Podcast, where he interviews comics on their craft, many talk of ‘writing on stage.’ Now this isn’t meant literally. It isn’t performance art where comics turn away from the audience, grab a stool and type up potential routines live to an increasingly enraged audience. What they mean by this is material can be dismissed, elongated and elevated depending on the crowd’s reaction.  A lot of acts will go on with a bullet pointed idea of what they want to say, over time this will crystalise into syntactical form. My approach meant that if I missed a pre-rehearsed line the whole thing collapsed. Simply, I didn’t have the confidence to deviate from the rigidity of writing into the spontaneity of conversation that gives rise to great stand-up. 


Because I couldn’t do comedy, I venerate people that can.  For me, they’re greater than dramatists, worthy of more praise and study. Few think this way: comedy often being overlooked by taste-makers (only seven out of ninety-one Best Picture films have been comedies). With this in mind, I appreciate anyone who takes comedy seriously. In Poking a Frog: Conversations With Today’s Top Writers, Mike Sacks does just that. He sits with a lab partner (another comic writer) and together they put laughter under the microscope, ruminating on its origins, its intricacies, sometimes defining the roots, other times conceding its mystery.

The book is a series of chapters that takes disparate forms. There’s interviews with the likes of Mel Brooks and Terry Jones, short essays from Stephen Merchant and Amy Poehler, bespoke advice on how to write for sitcoms and awards – there’s also a long list of films aspiring writers should watch by Bill Hader. The nature of the book means it doesn’t have to be read in any particular order. I chose to read the chapters about the writers I was familiar with first, nodding with recognition as they discussed scenes, episodes and arcs I know and love; then I focused my attention on the artists I was unfamiliar with; consequently, I now know the role SNL, National Lampoon and The Onion have played in American comedy. As a comedy fan based in Britain, I therefore found the book educative, giving me an insight into how things work across the pond. 


I genuinely enjoyed all the chapters; by the end appreciating how comedy is a broad church that accepts a whole spectrum of lunatic: cartoonists, satirists, improvisers, stand-ups and script writers are all welcome. No heed is paid to race, creed or religion. The only thing that matters is you bring the funny to the offertory plate. If you can make them laugh, then pull up a pew.

Some of the subjects of Sacks' book.

Given I’ve read through the whole thing, I would like to share with you some of my favourite nuggets from Sacks’ investigation and talk about them one by one:

People do not become angry if you’re writing tragedy and you don’t do a good job. But people get extremely angry when you create comedy that isn’t funny – or, at the least, with the comedy they don’t find funny.

(Terry Jones, member of Monty Python)

There is much truth in this. In comparison to drama, just think of newspaper reviews and Twitter comments on comedy. You would think some comics had pissed on the critic’s grandmother, such is the level of vitriol fired their way. And what an impossible position too. Jones rightly adds the caveat ‘or, at the least, with the comedy they don’t find funny.’ When someone doesn’t find something funny, they don’t look at the rest of the room and go, “Well, they’re laughing, so there must be some worth in what the person is doing.” Instead, they throw pragmatism under a bus, decrying: “What is wrong with these fucking people? Why don’t they see what I see?” Comedy brings out the best in an audience, reminding them they’re part of one body, all responsible for each other, united  in laughter; it also brings out the worst, making people take leave of their senses, forgetting that opinions aren’t facts, that not enjoying something doesn’t make it worthless. 

 ‘Good stories beat good jokes every day of the week and twice on Sundays.’

(Mike Schur, creator of Parks and Recreation)

This is so true. There are comedies on television that have a joke every other line – like my model for comedy earlier – however, it doesn’t mean anything if it hangs on something artificial and insubstantial. What really makes people laugh is when characters we care about are put in danger. If a character doesn’t inhabit a recognisable story, then the jeopardy they face feels contrived and unimportant. We laugh at David Brent because the cringe comedy is framed in the body of an aspirant social climber. The joke has more weight and depth because we empathise with his motivation. Two-dimensional characters thrown into revolving comic scenarios might make us titter, but laugh? No, that’s for the stories and characters we’ve bought into.

‘As long as your unconscious is preoccupied with work, you can get into a kind of zone where what seems to be inactivity is progress.’   

(James L. Brooks, creator of Taxi)

This seems like sage advice. The rare time I did come up with good comic ideas was when I was running, on the loo or in the shower. In other words, when my mind was at rest. This sounds paradoxical: to work better when you’re not working. But the only reason this happened was because I’d been at the laptop hours before, spraying graffiti on the screen, eventually leaving the room, sated with loathing and self-disgust. Although I left the car, I'd kept the engine running. Tick, tick, tick, it ticked over. Away from concentrated thinking, my brain joined the dots, forming the picture I wanted.

He (his improv mentor) had two key tenets: one was to always go to your third thought….Another lesson was always to play to the top of your intelligence.

(Adam McKay, Anchorman writer)

This reminded me of Bill Hicks view of comedy: play to the smartest person in the room. This doesn’t mean talk quantum if a physicist is in the room or Nietzsche if a philosopher comes by, it means communicate your truth in an original and creative way. Comedy is a genre that depends on unpredictability. If you can predict the punch-line, then the magic is gone. If a comedian makes a joke and everyone guessed it, should anyone make a sound? My feeling is no. Don’t encourage the bastards. Make them go away and work harder.

Einstein thought something similar too.

These were lessons that really resonated with me, only I wouldn’t have the skill to articulate them so well. I guess that’s what a good book on comedy should do: pin down the butterfly, capturing what's evasive for display. White is right: comedy is fragile. It must be handled with care. Sacks’ book does that, demonstrating the beauty and complexity of the form.


Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations With Today’s Top Comedy Writers is available on all good online bookstores.