Lessons in VERY Old School Comedy
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Very disappointing. Despite quoting from a few modern American comedians in the book,the comedy being taught here is SO dated. The actual humour techniques described inside might've been useful if you were writing a routine for Bob Hope in the 1950's, but bear little relation to today's comedy. Try using and performing old techniques from this book in a stand-up act like puns,wordplay, malapropisms etc , and you won't get very far in today's market, or get many laughs in the process. Do any of today's most successful comedians like Eddie Izzard, Ricky Gervais,Chris Rock,Dane Cook etc use these ancient comedy methods? Of course not. I give the book 2 stars for one interesting chapter on writer's block and brainstorming ideas, but the rest is a let-down.
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Wow!
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I've just read the other reviews on here and I'm shocked.
This is an EXCELLENT book, a detailed read on why we laugh, what is funny and what is not - and why!
If your an aspiring comedian, or just want to develop your "sense of humour" this book is for you.
Five Stars. No Question.
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Ignorant, vindictive and charmless.
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After the seventh page I found myself skipping the bits written by the author and jumping instead to the quotes. When I did force myself to read the (poor) prose between the quotes, I usually found the gist could be got from the first sentence with the rest of the paragraph mere padding.
Looking from the writing style to the theory and philosophy;
While I am undecided whether the author was the bully or the bullied, I am certain that he is familiar with bullying. In fact, his philosophy of comedy largely revolves around vindictiveness of one type or another and as such provides a charmless and cynical picture of humanity as a whole.
Moving from his philosophy to his theory of getting laughs; I found it distracting when the author used bad definitions of terms and then cited examples that failed to support even his own definition (eg: "malapropism" ... which uses a pun to introduce it in the book before mistakenly citing examples of verbal imbecility as malapropisms).
If you are interested in writing comedy, I strongly recommend against this book in favour of ... something else. For me, "Writing Television Sitcoms" (Evan S. Smith) is a much stronger book with more convincing (better written and informative) arguments and a much less misanthropic view of comedy.
Just my two cents.
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Save your money, time, ...
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It will be insufficient if I just say "very poor". Although interesting in the very beginning the book is shallow and is based on teaching tricks rather improving the "self". As far as the tricks are concerned you won’t get too much either - put it in this way it is like reading a newspaper and expecting to become a great politician. What you might get is few good jokes that are cited. I am not sure it worth reading few hundreds sides of garbage for the few jokes. The quality of the book as an object is such that it felt apart after 10-20 openings.
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An excellent overview of the comedy writing process
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This book provides a comprehensive look at the comedy writing process. If you are involved in comedy of any kind then this will be highly useful. The insights and methods make sense and are effective. Even if your just interested in the writing process then there will be something here for you. This has made my comedy writing funnier and I get more laughs from my jokes in casual conversation. A superb book.
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