The degree to which a person is funny depends on how much talent s/he was born with. I have been funny since I've been able to speak. When I was a little boy, asleep in bed, and my parents had a cocktail party, their friends would always say, "Let's wake up the funny kid," and they would wake me, and I would stand in front of the party and tell them jokes I had seen on TV on things like The Tonight Show and The Steve Allen show. It's a very powerful thing, being able to make an entire room of people laugh, especially when the room is filled with adults are you are 5 years old. Obviously, it gave me confidence.
Telling jokes you've stolen, and did not create yourself, is still hard to do, and get laughs. There's a wonderful scene in the film, My Favorite Year, where TV comedy writer Benjy Stone is teaching his girlfriend how to do stand-up, with a prefab joke. He shows her the importance of body language (never tell a joke seated, talk with your hands), diction (it's never "a man," it's always "this guy") and, most important of all--TIMING!
Once you have your confidence, you learn what makes people laugh from experience, and you start to get confidence enough to create your own stuff. I can do stand-up, but I can do literary humor. You have all seen me. Written humor is hard, because there is no audience in front of you. You have to KNOW how they are going to react, and it takes real guts to do chancy, edgy funny stuff in print. It can also entertain a huge audience. It is also, believe me, The Jazz.
In 1991, I was a guest when Walt Disney World held its 25th Anniversary Celebration. President Bush was also a guest. There were over 10,000 of us at the closing ceremony. The Master of Ceremonies, speaking on a public address system, said, "Ladies and gentlemen, let's all say thank you to President Bush," and I, in a split nanosecond, before the applause could start, cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled at the top of my lungs, "THANKS, GEORGE!," and the
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R_Kane (15828)
7 years ago
crowd exploded in laughter. Truly funny people think very fast, it is true, but most of us, over time, build up a library of material that we can repurpose at the drop of a hat to make us appear faster than we are. But the simple, direct, unsophisticated "Thanks, George!" joke illustrates one of what I think are the two fundamental rules of humor. The first, from Andrew Marvell: "Wit is nature to advantage dressed/What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed." The other rule, from R_Kane is: the truer the joke is, the funnier the joke is.
I hope you never underestimate the real power of humor, and the tremendous healing power of laughter.
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