The ZAZ Comedy Glossary
Over at Kung Fu Monkey, John Rogers has a cool post about the jargon TV writers use. It's worth checking out, especially if you're an experienced TV hand who can help contribute to his list.
That inspired me to share a similar "glossary of terms" developed by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker. I do a lot of work with David these days, and I can vouch for the usefulness of the list. Finding a shorthand (especially in comedy) is a very important part of the self-critical process. Sometimes it seems like we spend all day trying to explain to each other why we're wrong. A list of established terms helps codify those reasons and legitimize the critique.
The following list (copyright David Zucker, reprinted here with permission) is intended for feature comedy writing. Any of you drama guys have something like this?
WRITING
1. Shoe Leather: The physical traveling or action of a character in a scene. If not in direct service of a joke, it's superfluous.
2. Drive-By: A joke that appears briefly and then out, as opposed to filling up an entire page or two.
3. Bric-A-Brac: Jokes not intrinsic to a plot or scene that only serve to detract from the point the scene is trying to make.
4. Gilding the Lily: Taking a joke so far that it's no longer funny.
5. Hair Under the Wings: A joke that compromises the integrity of the plot. A joke proposed for AIRPLANE! involved a shot of Ted Striker's plane taking off with hair under its wings. Funny, but not good for the audience's investment in the reality of the story.
6. Ya-ta-ta-ta-ta-da: A joke so hokey it needs washboard and kazoo music.
7. Knocking Down the Posts: It's not enough to set up a parody, you have to do the jokes. In AIRPLANE!, mere recognition that the girl chasing the plane was a spoof of a particular movie was not in itself funny. The laughs came only when she began Knocking Down the Posts.
8. Floocher Dialogue: Filler lines recited by foreground characters to enable the audience to focus on a background joke.
9. But, I Wanna Tell Ya: An extra beat of Floocher Dialogue added to a punchline to make it less of a swing, or to help the audience hear the next line.
10. Ba Dum Bump: Obvious sitcom-style punchline.
11. Transplant and Whack: The joke is the organ we save. Transplant it to a scene that can live and whack the rest.
12. Blow: A joke funny enough to end a scene.
13. EAT: A setup so obvious that it might as well have one of those restaurant neon signs with the blinking arrow pointing right at it.
14. Cumulative Effect: Too much of one thing is never a good thing. One sex joke may be funny, but too many and it's diminishing returns.
15. Manic Dumb Show: Slapstick for the sake of slapstick, but without character/plot motivation or wit.
16. People Talking in Rooms: The concept that witty dialogue in confined spaces can often times be as effective as huge comedy action scenes.
17. Turn the Play Inside: Use existing characters in all possible instances instead of creating new parts and endless residuals.
18. Off Message: A line or scene that steers the movie off its main plotline.
19. W.P.A.: Scenes so extraneous to plot that they merely serve to fill up pages. Like those old FDR New Deal programs, they're strictly "make-work".
20. Eating Your Young: On second draft and beyond, cutting one's own jokes or scenes that only seem unfunny because of repetition.
21. Dynamite Plunger (hand signal): At the end of the movie, you can get away with things that you couldn't in the body of the movie. With only moments until credits roll, it's often okay to blow the bridge, getting broader and sillier with characters previously grounded in a lot more reality.
22. Schmuck Bait: A twist ending that makes the audience feel cheated, such as the old "It-Was-All-A-Dream".
23. Bridge Too Far: Taking a joke to its illogical conclusion.
CASTING
24. Cheese Factor: W.C. Fields once said, "If you're going to smash a car, make sure it's a beat up car. If you're going to stomp on a man's hat, make sure it's a tattered one." Thus, in "Scary Movie 3," the best aliens were the cheap ones (Ed. note: semi-robotic aliens were used for initial scenes, but time and budget constraints forced us to use crappy Dr. Who-quality aliens for reshoots. The resulting aliens were absurd, flimsy, obviously fake...and much much funnier.).
25. Black Hole: Some actors just aren't well disposed to be funny. Often producers think they've scored with two A-list actors but are surprised when the result is "Ishtar."
PRODUCTION
26. Broken Field Running: Saving a scene by improvising fixes on the set.
27. Outlet Pass (to avoid a #33): An alternate shot, usually in a master, with no attempt at a joke.
28. The Extra's Socks: A small detail obsessed over by the director, diverting his attention from a real problem.
EDITING
29. Apollo 13: Saving a scene without reshooting through the ingenious use of loop lines, outtakes, footage before "Action" or after "Cut," reversing film, inserts, etc. Anything to avoid a reshoot.
30. Dailies Laugh: Hilarious in dailies, crickets at a preview.
31. Cutting Out the Cancer: Eliminating dud jokes or superfluous story. The most pressing task after a first preview with Angry Villagers.
32. Flywheel Theory: Keeping the audience laughing is a lot easier than starting them back up from scratch.
PREVIEWS
33. Swing & A Miss: An obvious attempt at a joke that doesn't work. It is essential to get enough coverage so that every joke attempt connects. Also avoided by shooting an outlet pass.
34. Angry Villagers: The reaction at a first preview when a succession of jokes doesn't work. The lost momentum inevitably results in the audience turning against the movie, conjuring up the "Frankenstein" image of a mob carrying torches and pitchforks.
35. The Director's Rail: At the old Sherman Oaks Galleria - the third floor balcony rail outside the multiplex. After a first preview, most directors want to vault over it.
36. Sonny on the Causeway: Thinking a joke is a sure-fire winner, then getting ambushed by the silent audience reaction.
37. Filling up Compartments: Each bad joke, like a torpedo hit, fills a compartment. Too many in a row sinks the ship.
38. Hail Mary: Usually after the last preview (no time left on the clock), an ADR or an edit thrown in as a last ditch effort to make a joke work. The risk being, of course, a Swing & A Miss.
39. The Lion: Telegraphing a joke. In NAKED GUN 2 1/2, a lion attacking Robert Goulet didn't get a laugh until a third preview Hail Mary, in which the set-up was eliminated.
MISCELLANEOUS
40. Going Through the Guard Rail: Any outrageous comment, joke, or statement in the writing room that results in absolute silence and appalled looks.
41. Calling in an Air Strike (On Your Own Position): Saying or doing something self-defeating.
42. Dancing Around The Calf: Rejoicing over some idea or concept that seems great at the time. Dancing typically continues until a wiser voice arrives to point out how stupid the idea or concept actually is.
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Craig, these are funny as hell and insightful. This list needs to be expanded and franchised into Action/Adventure… Thriller… Horror and Drama categories.
I especially like #20. Eating Your Young. This can be applied to the action script as well. You write an action scene that everyone is floored by… but three months and ten drafts later, the director/studio forgets why they liked it or are bored with it and want to change it.
We do have one for action/adventure plotting: 1. The Pencil. The story goes that NASA spent millions trying to develop a pen that would write upside down to be used in space. The russians solved the problem… they gave their cosmonauts a pencil. In other words… sometimes the low-tech, no frills solution is the best. We’ll spend days trying to think up some crazy, complex plot device, and then look at each other and say, “the pencil.”
No. 20 resonates with me, too. You spend so much time reading and rewriting the same scenes over and over and over again that it becomes hard to tell whether you’re making it better or just different.
Me to, Michael. One of the reasons I have only attempted one flat-out comedy spec. It’s just so damn easy to lose perspective on what’s funny. This is also probably the number one reason most comedies are written by partners — less of a chance for material to get lost by poor judgement in the rewrites.
Some “Drama” glossary, just for kicks;
WRITING
1.Spare Sneaks: Whatever willy wrote, use sparingly.
2.Calamity Rule: Have a catastrophic outcome, use it - once.
3.Parsing Functions: Remember your good old dictionaries? Well, what’s the page number?
4.Coincidence: If i were you, i’d start by setting it up first.
5.Flop or Drop: You’d think printing it is enough when ink is sparse or smudged.
6.Shelf: If it’s on it, you read it.
7.Crater the Shelter: Better to be warned than “never wait”.
8.Inch me that length: Margins, orphans, right, down… i’m formatted and my head is spinning.
9.Do it: Fields.
10.Store E: a) b) c) d) e)None of the above.
11.Mythology sounds familiar: Been there, done that.
12.Vee Ooh: As far as i’m concerned, the noise in my head is the result of intellectual flaws. And, it’s over too.
13.Writer’s block: We call it dice throwing. Roll, spin, dot, cube, whatever suits you.
14.Emotive has a reason: The logic in that is the very fact that my pages bleed outloud when i stare at them.
15.Compass: re-Commend, Comsider, ya know.
16:Nobody knows anything: He’s absolutely right.
CASTING
17.Look, hook, book: If you describe them, they’ll see.
18.Role my a**: The characteristics of such personalities are spread out thick on the very same paper you’re lookin’ at.
PRODUCTION
19.Money Talks: I can hear, so should you.
20.Transmit the Limit: Number crunching, don’t ask. On second thought, do suggest the nearest figure, if you dare.
21.Skeleton Framework: Story is organic, meat on the bones, energy and so on.
EDITING
22.Procastination: In disguise.
23.Perfect or Object: The more we think about it, the less we are aiming for any of these two.
24.Touchdown: If you mess too much with it, i will personally put this thing down where it belongs. Watch me. Correction, i will chase and hunt. No, i would very possibly kill a vast number of reputations and destroy anyone’s careers to protect that work of art. You touch it, you earn it.
PREVIEWS
25.RSVP: It’s the who is where and when. Why or what for completely eludes the absent or the snubbed up.
26.Red Alert: See, told you — it failed or succeeded as predicted.
MISCELLANEOUS
27.T-Rex: How crazy of you of thinking such a thing, an extincted specie is necessarily a fossile. Text or animals.
28.Rewrite that right: If you ruin it though, you’ll be escorted out of these premises.
Ahhhhh… that was fun!
Derek:
The Pencil! I like that!
“4.Coincidence: If i were you, I’d start by setting it up first.”
The rule I’m familiar with is that the degree to which you can get away with using coincidences is directly proportional to how far into the movie you are and how much of an impact the coincidence has. So a big coincidence with a big impact is readily accepted at the beginning of the movie, not so much in the middle or end.
;]
The pencil is brilliant. It falls in line with Rodriguez’s “money hose” analogy. Very nice.
Sylvain,
I think you are very funny and enjoy your posts. Even if I have no idea what your numbers 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 21, or 27 are. And though I am completely baffled by them… I have to say that I LOVE and will now quote number 15 in meetings (Compass: re-Commend, Comsider, ya know.) Its mystery is its appeal.
This brings up a good question.
What are we going to do with Sylvain? :)
Sylvain, I’ll be honest. I’ve been toying with the idea of banning you from comments, mostly because what you write is so amazingly obtuse.
On the other hand, it is sort of fascinating.
Is everyone okay with Sylvain’s continued musings? If so, he stays! If not, ah well. Lemme know. :)
Re: Sylvain
http://redwing.hutman.net/%7Emreed/warriorshtm/garble.htm
Re: Sylvain Sorry, should’ve been:
http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/patois.htm
That’s hysterical.
I waded into Sylvain’s post not realizing that it was posted by Sylvain (error number 1). I then tried to figure out what it was saying (error number 2). After the headache went away, I remembered reading a recent article which explained everything…
http://www.pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/#examples
“Sylvain” is clearly an MIT research project into computer-generated internet postings.
Suggested solution: have the “Posted by:” mark at the top of the post, so people at least have a warning that they’re in for a Sylvain post. That way they can skip on, or turn off the English-parsing segment of their brain and read it just for giggles.
Expression is the power of the illiterate when spoken as properly tracked and backed jargon between those who’ve never heard it.
Anonymous… comedy isn’t garble and patois (love these francophonics)? Flame warriors would be able to prove it.
Keith… RBGX-CMYK(c) parsing designs bought up by Fuji/Sony/Kodak & so on (Yup, the photo dots streamliners of proprietary code as filed for later Jpeg “appliances” and electro pop cool aftershocks.) are quite all the MIT’s engineers fault, true. And certainly not mine, only.
Craig,
can i go or leave now?
Posted by?
Wow.
I don’t know what to say. That was the most incomprehensible post yet.
I actually think you bought yourself more time. :)
I know Sylvain from Terry’s Wordplay site. I like to think of him as a word-Picasso. There’s no apparent logic, but there is obvious effort at work, so technically, he qualifies as art. And if you squint, you can surmise something akin to truth in his posts, in a sort of citizen-of-the-world way. Is he a genius? We won’t know for sure for at least a hundred years.
Craig,
I believe that Sylvain channels English by way of Finnegan’s Wake. Some days I’m willing to try and decipher him (good to know, thought it was a her), some days—not so much.
I’m sure there are many days that others have little desire to read me and would prefer to just read you, or Ted or one of the other pros.
My solution (perhaps impracticable) would be to switch your method of showing replies to your articles from the current “one-after-another” form, to a more traditional “tree” structure (see the wordplay boards for an example).
Cheers, T
And if anyone is interested, here is my parse of a Sylvain quote:
“Keith… RBGX-CMYK(c) parsing designs bought up by Fuji/Sony/Kodak & so on (Yup, the photo dots streamliners of proprietary code as filed for later Jpeg “appliances” and electro pop cool aftershocks.) are quite all the MIT’s engineers fault, true. And certainly not mine, only.”
RBGX-CYMK: Red, blue, green, black, cyan, yellow, magenta, black. The two color spaces used in computer imagery (RBG is used for monitors, CYM for printing). (c) = copyright, Sylvain’s well-known disdain for corporations use of intellectual property to privatize what he thinks should be free.
So the above + “parsing designs bought up by Fuji/Sony/Kodak & so on” = what is real is already parsed by software owned by corporations onto your computer monitor or printer
… “are quite all the MIT’s engineer’s fault, true. And certainly not mine only.” = and that software was also created at MIT.
Overall seems to be a joke based on Keith’s html site and the fact that MIT is responsible for the creation of jpegs and other forms of computer-expression of what is real.
The paranthetical is left as an exercise for the reader.
Sylvian’s posts are…
like daggers, enter in mine eyes; no more, sweet Craig!
I thought shoe leather included any tedious stretch of business required to set something up — something like laying pipe?
Je me demande si Sylvain se comprend mieux en français mieux? I had an Israeli boss once, though, whom no one could understand; but alas, I was told he was equally obscure in Hebrew.
Trev:
There is theoretically a way to run threaded comments with Movable Type (the blog software that powers this site), but so far, implementing it has been beyond me
I’ll take another run at it this weekend. It’s something I desire as well.
So far, things are running about even for Sylvain. :)
Okay, so here’s the deal with threading comments.
There’s a patch out there.
It was written for Movable Type 2.6. I’m currently on MT 3.16.
There’s a patch to the patch that made it work for MT 3.11, but apparently not for 3.12. I assume 3.16 is right out.
Since a patch like that is obviously reaching deep into the guts of the software, and since each new MT release obviously changes the file schema of the commenting system, I have a feeling that threaded comments aren’t going to happen here until MT integrates them as part of a major release.
Alas.
Sylvain’s posts currently read like something The Postmodernism Generator (http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/) would dream up—so maybe it would be better for everyone if Sylvain just posted in French. We’d know right away it was one of his, and any interested party could run the text through Babel Fish to get the gist. Less pain all around!
Jaylynn, :)
Small world! Here’s the “genius” part, just for you(s) as a REAL gift. RGBX(c) is a code that was programmed (by me) in the early 90’s for Fuji (&…) via Cambridge/Delphi networks to provide the theoretical framework for a web-safe set of 239+/-4 colors: a) Adaptative to printout gamets scaling processes. b) Generalizing industrial use of “some” standard. c) Offering a clear protocol strictly for publication. d) Solving (then, fifteen years ago) the chaos issue of digital binary visuals.
As this is completely off-topic, i went on for a glossary/jargon list of my own (funny, serious, known or not!) only to receive what i deserve?
PS: Yes, Alex… i’m still stuck in Quebec trying to communicate too. French isn’t up on Mazin’s site banner for The Artful writer. Thing is, everyone would have to translate this back…
“La signification probable de tous mes messages, ici ou ailleurs, n’a (et n’avait) pas la moindre importance (let me get this accent pooling stuff online) à mes yeux. Je n’ai que le respect et la politesse de m’adresser aux anglophones dans le language qu’ils devraient comprendre.”
Meaning that, to me: There is absolutely no difference between using one or the other. Culturally distinct by constitutional rights or not, for ANY languages. Maybe, i should tackle Spanish, German and couple of dozens more. Which doesn’t make (or made, btw) me any less or more fluent or capable at anything.
You wanna call it domination or common enough worldwide, get the Chinese and the Hindu to the equation.
Until then, i’ll keep using whatever is necessary.
Spelling, typos, syntax, grammar, vocabulary, thoughts, ideas, participation, opinions, contribution included. To the best of my knowledge or less, if i must.
So wait, Sylvain, did you/do you post on the Wordplayer boards as something like Zyxlplion, or some crazy name? When I first saw a post of yours here, that poster immediately came to mind.
Phoenix:
That’s him. :)
And to conclude,
Anonymous, please you now can quantify me as…
Half a Mike Reed’s Flame Warrior garble, mostly a philosopher and certainly your usual Rottweiller Puppy as long as the Lonely Guy isn’t Bong.
But, not patois!! :)
No more Sylvain, please. He writes that gibberish deliberately. He thinks it’s funny or something.
He can be perfectly comprehensible when he wants to be.
Another good term my colleagues and I have used for several years… Very useful for those of you who are obsessed with keeping page count down:
A Yoko: a small widow
Greeting! This is a great site enjoying the online tutorial thanks
Good Luck!