Humor Authority Podcast on December 21, 2011 at 1:29 PM
Guess what?! I did another episode of Humor Authority. I talk with Brad Guigar and although we drift from the topic a little, it’s a relatively good time.
I mean, maybe for you guys. I had an absolute blast.
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Very excited!! Maybe we'll get some more Daily Affirmations too! :D
EDIT: I love Brad's laughs.
Great to see; been hoping for a new episode for quite a while, really interesting from what I've listened to so far. Seconding the request for more Daily Affirmations too.
My days are increasingly unaffirmed. This needs to be remedied ASAP.
Loved it, as always.
Gah! Brad mentioned an unaired episode of Webcomics Weekly! It's almost torturous!
We're going to need to stage a series of black-ops break-ins to half-pixel world headquarters.
This will be made difficult because cartoonists probably work weird hours.
Regarding Brad's view on joke clarity; does that mean that he would write 'chomping at the bit' rather than 'champing at the bit' in a comic?
That talk about mistletoe is something that can really bug me. When that happens I feel like the artist is calling me stupid. It's exactly how I feel about Armageddon having horrible science because Michael Bay thought it'd confuse the audience. I think creators should have a little more confidence in themselves and give their audience a little more credit. In the mistletoe case, are people really going to say "that isn't mistletoe, I don't get this holiday joke at all"?
Some people will, and it's not really worth it to the joke to open that door. While I like to not treat my audience as dumb on the whole, you have to pick your battles.
Sadly I also understand this from a storytelling point-of-view, but the real place this is irritating is in science fiction like you mentioned. Science is sacrificed on the altar of audience friendliness all the time. I don't know that drawing mistletoe to look like the all-purpose-holiday-plant holly is calling anyone stupid.
Here's another good example where storytelling has to rein in believability: characters on TV or movies receiving urgent phone calls. They do this all the time on SVU. "Detective Benson… what? On my way." There is literally no time for the person on the other end to deliver anything but "hurry" or "murder, quick!" But we let it slide, because I don't want to listen to silence for three minutes while our hero gets the address, etc. from the caller.
I hate bad science, and in the case of Armageddon or even the 2009 Star Trek, I think there's a way to balance believable science and an exciting story. But I get why science has to come last.
I'd lke to think of the common idea of what a mistletoe looks like as visual language. With most jokes it's best to have punch line zing as fast as possible and if you were to use the more correct visual for the mistletoe, that's going to take a bit longer for the brain to comprehend what was being described and that could probably slow down the delivery of the joke. Seinfeld once recounted in an interview how when it comes to delivering jokes, the slightest thing like a comedian coughing or stuttering a couple of seconds before the actual punchline can turn an otherwise funny joke into a completely unfunny one. I suppose that's because some of the mental focus of the listeners goes towards trying to interpret what they might have missed while the comic was coughing or something just goes awry with their attention. I'm not sure how much of that completely applies to visual media like comics because the reader is also partly responsible for the speed he progresses through the panels.
I actually like putting two types of visual humor into the strips that I've been experimenting on. Visual gags that are part of the strip's storyline and then some visual humor in the details which may not be noticed upon the first reading but are part of what the reader (hopefully) finds humorous upon further scrutiny. Which, I guess, is why i also love scrutinizing the facial expressions, anatomy and gesture of a lot of kate beaton's strips.
Your mention of how hard it is to have a comedy bit which presents itself as a definite "ending" brought something I'd encountered earlier to mind. A link to a screencap is below.
http://i.imgur.com/fiGzI.png
Brad mentions a film industry analog to the Comics Code; I'm assuming he means the Hays Code (according to Wikipedia it's actual name was the Motion Picture Production Code). The Warren Commission was the investigation into JFK's assassination. Y'know, the 'magic bullet". Just in case anyone listening would like to know.