How to direct comedy: try serious

Buster Keaton in Sherlock Jr.

 

I've never cared for comedies that look as if they're bending over backwards to make me laugh. With truly effective comedy, you never see the gag coming. The director and writer don't seem to be striving to get laughs and neither do the characters on screen.

 The most extreme examples can be found in the silent comedies of Buster Keaton (The General, Sherlock Jr. et al), but Leslie Nielsen's Frank Drebin displays the same principle in The Naked Gun films - mayhem is all around yet Frank never notices.

I'm not saying all great comedy has to be deadpan - that's just one approach among many - but filmmakers and actors should decline to underline the humour. Viewers want to feel they've discovered it themselves.

Howard Hawks, whose great Hollywood comedies included Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday and Ball of Fire, put it well in a 1976 interview:

"You don't find a good comedy so easily. There are a lot that are made that are supposed to be funny, but aren't. There's another thing about making comedies - they start out with funny main titles and with ridiculous gags, this attitude of 'Look, we're going to be funny and we want you to laugh at it.' 

"I try to start it as if it is all serious then all of a sudden surprise them. It's much easier to do it my way than to do it their way. If I go to see a movie and they start off trying to be funny right from the beginning, I get up and walk out."