I have read many times that what makes good comedy is timing.
Is this pauses waiting for the punchline or what?
Timing involves tracking what is going through someone’s head who is hearing the joke but not sure where it is going, and then delivering the comedic twist ‘at the right time.’
For example, take the old standard, “Why did the chicken cross the road? … To get to the other side.” And let’s pretend it’s a fresh joke and actually truly funny.
If you told that joke and gave the answer without any pause, it wouldn’t be funny. That’s because no one would have time to ponder the question. You give that pause to have the audience think about the possibilities, think about what might be inherent in chicken instinct and behavior that drives them to cross a road which is dangerous for them to cross.
Then only after they’ve been following a dead end line of thought, you hit them with a valid, obvious answer (which really isn’t a good answer – thus the ‘groaniness’ of this particular type of joke).
Other jokes require no time to think to deliver the punch line, but then give the audience time to realize they’ve been punched, and then to respond with laughter. “A man on the street came up to me and said he’s hadn’t had a bite in weeks…so I bit him.” Too long a pause before the punch line ruins the joke. However, if a particular comedian has a rapport with the audience and everyone there knows this old Henny Youngman line, the comedian can play with the audience and give an overly long pause… teasing them that it’s coming, and then saying it. (Of course, delivery, as essential to comedy as timing will effect whether one can get away with certain timings.) Again, this is an example of tracking the mind of the audience and hitting them with the comedy at the right time.
Peace.
::: runs naked through thread :::
It’s not just joke-telling. Watching some old episodes of Family Ties reminded me what terrific comic timing Michael J. Fox has. In a case like that, it takes careful “reading” of a scene to wring the biggest laugh out of it. What made Fox so good wasn’t necessarily the words he recited - even lame-o lines got good laughs in his hands. It was his ability to track those pauses, or at times to skip them, that defined his character and his comedy. In other words, it was his spot-on timing.
It’s hard to explain–I’ve done a lot of comedy onstage (but not on film or TV, which is a whole other kettle of fish).
Onstage, it has a lot to do with the audience and your costars (who may or may not be milking the straightline or making faces or whatever). And audiences vary from night to night. It’s very difficult to judge an audience and exactly where to drop the punchline, how arch to make it, how to tilt the eyebrow–I’m not trying to make this sound like rocket science, but comic timing is like . . . hmmm, maybe playing jazz. It’s different every night, you have to have your radar attuned.
And, just as often as not, you misjudge and fall on your face.