[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: How does a buddy comedy movie differ from a romantic comedy?
Steve Kaplan, Author/Instructor/Script Consultant: They probably are not having s*x, but in a buddy comedy they’re getting intimate and it’s about learning how to get intimate in a way that they haven’t been intimate before. Part of the comic trope is you get them as close to having s*x as you can without making it kind of this creepier graphic but what’s one of the classic comic buddy comedies out there? Planes, Trains and Automobiles. What’s one of the funniest sequences? When they have to sleep together because in a buddy comedy they have to learn to drop defenses and become more intimate than they already have.
If you start with a buddy, like in Wedding Crashers, they seem like they’re great buddies but it’s so superficial because their goal is superficial to just work together to seduce women at weddings. What happens after that is they both get into dilemmas, they both find women that they really like, some of whom kind of confuse them, and they both have to help themselves to resolve their problems. A good buddy movie is a movie in which both characters need to change in some way and somehow this pairing, either the pairing itself is the is the inciting incident, or something happens to them that changes their relationship and changes the way that they react to each other and they react to the world at large. The one thing I want to say about…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
BUY THE BOOK – THE HIDDEN TOOLS OF COMEDY:
The Serious Business Of Being Funny
BUY THE BOOK – THE COMIC HERO’S JOURNEY:
Serious Story Structure For Fabulously Funny Films
BIO:
Steve Kaplan is the author of The Hidden Tools of Comedy and The Comic Hero’s Journey, best-sellers in their field. He’s working on a third book about writing comedy for television. In addition to having taught at UCLA, NYU, Yale and other universities, Steve created the HBO Workspace, the HBO New Writers Program and was co-founder and Artistic Director of Manhattan Punch Line Theatre. In addition to development projects for HBO, he has taught workshops online and around the globe and at companies such as DreamWorks, Disney Animation, Aardman Animation, and NBC’s Writers on the Verge. Steve has worked as a script consultant and script editor for productions companies, studios, directors and individual writers.
UPCOMING COMEDY INTENSIVE ONLINE CLASS WITH STEVE KAPLAN
Kaplancomedy.com/product/the-comedy-intensive-online-2023-spring
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