Newsjack: Explosion In A Clown Factory
Sorry about that last blog. I never wanted to come across as a font-obsessed monomaniac. Oh, I am one; I just didn't want everyone knowing.
So, the sketch deadline for Newsjack show 3 has passed. Did you send anything in? Slow news week, isn't it? And where it's not slow, it's grim.
The first radio job I had was writing on The Way It Is - like Newsjack, a topical open-door sketch show. The phrase 'explosion in a clown factory' became a writers' meeting joke for when we'd discussed all the headlines and we'd moved on to the AOB news stories; a code for the ideal subject for a topical sketch show. Anything other than write another sketch about London Fashion Week. It always seemed to be London Fashion Week back then - it was snow of the late 90s.
Newsjack has brought those days flooding back. Of course, then a non-comm could actually come in and wave their script under nose of the producer and find a corner of the canteen to do rewrites. This was before the whole Jill Dando thing made the Ö÷²¥´óÐã much pickier about their door policy. Added to that, most of the open door submissions were coming in by post or fax so the competition from slush pile was only a few inches rather than a couple of feet. Email has oddly made submitting both easier and harder.
These days I use 'explosion in a clown factory' slightly differently. For me it's a news story that at first sight looks like it'll result in comedy gold but actually has little to offer the sketch writer because it's already funny, a joke on a joke.
Brilliant! Yet, I think it's a prime example of a light industrial Pierrot tragedy. The problem for a comedy writer is that all the jokes are already in the story. There's no sideways angle, there's nothing other than a funny news story. The jokes are already there for everyone to see - no matter how much you extrapolate, there's very little you can do that is funnier than the fact that Swindon and Disney World have twinned.
Beware the 'And finally...' news stories. Beware anything in a tabloid that's less than two inches in length - and beware anything that sounds like a set-up to a penis joke. Beware the Most Emailed on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã website, where comedy news never dies - that was still getting married last year. It might sound pretentious, but a sketch has to have tension and drama like any other script, just in miniature. OK, it did sound pretentious, but it's still true. Often that tension and drama turns on the juxtaposition of the story and your treatment of it. So if the source material is already a joke, where do you have left to go? Obviously, we're not asking for page upon page of Haiti jokes, but if there's nothing real under discussion what's the point of the sketch? That's not to say that 'just being funny' can't be the point - I certainly don't want a drily po-faced satirical show where the cast solemnly hold their fists in the air after every sketch - but it's better to be funny about something with a bit of balls than a nothing story that happens to include a
There's also a sub-set of the EiaCF (as all the cool kids are calling it) and it's this: the bleeding obvious take. Last week we had a lot of stuff about Iris Robinson and I'd say 90% were some form of The Graduate parody. That's not to say some weren't good, but they were all parodies of The Graduate - with a story about an older woman called Robinson seducing a younger man that's route one; the bleeding, dare I say it, obvious. That might sound harsher than I mean it to be. All I'm asking of you is this: when you're thinking of a funny angle on a story, be better than a Sun sub-editor. Could anyone have written that sketch or only you?
Now, by way of variety and to give some respite from my endless stream of opinionated rule-making, I've asked some writers that I respect and, more importantly, have the email addresses for, to write down the one bit of advice they'd give to someone starting out writing for a show like Newsjack. First up is , writer of The Thick of It, In The Loop, The Comic Side of 7 Days , World Of Pub and many more. Tony...
Always re-read what you've written before you send it.
Always re-write what you've written if you think you can make it better.
Persevere, persevere, persevere, then give up.
Give all your writing fees to charity.
Don't take other people's advice as gospel.
Thanks, Tony. Considering the nature of these blogs, that last one's quite interesting and I'll be discussing it in my next dictatorial rant: Script Editors - Where Do They Get Off?
Dan
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