Learning from Animation

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Book Review: Comedy for Animators by Jonathan Lyons

Most clowns I know love cartoons, often having the same reverence for Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny that they have for Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Comedy animators have borrowed a lot from the (human) physical comedy tradition, but there's a lot we can learn from animation. And a good place to start is the creative and historical work of Jonathan Lyons.

Jonathan has worked for over 25 years both in traditional animation and 3D, with an array of impressive credits that include the first four Pirates of the Caribbean films; Pillsbury Dough Boy commercials; two Clio awards while working at Industrial Light & Magic; his own independent films featuring Floyd the Android; and much much more. He has taught animation at the university level and for years has authored a blog, Comedy for Animators, which you should dive into headfirst at your earliest convenience.

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"To get laughs with animation, you have two choices. Gags and jokes. A gag is intended to create laughter with visual humor. A joke uses words for the same purpose. Tex {Avery} was right, gags are hard to come by, requiring considerable time to develop and integrate into the action in a natural way. American television animation has relied on verbal jokes because they are far more efficient in production. A group of writers can sit around in a room and pitch storylines, then fill in some jokes, and before you know it the script is ready and there is only limited expectation on the artist to make it look good. Visual gags require much more time to invent, develop, and work into action. Jokes don't really affect the storyline, whereas visual stunts will physically change the situation for the characters. Gags need careful timing and acting, which require more time than lip-synching words... One aspect of visual comedy does make it easier, though. A joke heard once is used up, whereas a good sight gag can be successfully recycled."

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Jonathan's blog led to the book of the same name, which is targeted for animators who know how to draw funny characters but don't understand the craft of physical comedy. Thus there are chapters on characterization, comedy teams, context, gags, and storytelling structure. Not all of this is new, but it is pulled together with a unique slant and analyzed with the precision of a creative artist who uses these concepts day to day and not that of an academic on the outside looking in. The book should be an essential source not only for animators trying to tell stories through images, but also for the readers of this blog engaged in live performance. Jonathan offers strong insights for performers telling stories through their own extreme physicality, making very useful connections between live action and animated movement. Highly recommended!

You can buy the book here
and check out his web site here.

And if you want proof that Jonathan knows his stuff, just check out these videos...
his demo reel
one of his Floyd the Android short films

And here are two wonderful video compilations Jonathan has put together analyzing physical comedy:

10 Types of Comedic Entrances

Eating

Life Imitates Art or Too Funny to Be True?

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Do the Keystone Kops ride again? This "dumbest cops" video has gone viral, billed as "actual bank robbery in Detroit."

You know me, I love examples of physical comedy in real life, and this sure would be funny if it were true, but it ain't. (Darn.) It's actually footage shot by an observer during the filming of this 2008 Chevy Mailbu commercial!



That choreography was just a little too perfect!

But this one, on the other hand, is more likely legit, and almost qualifies as a perfect three-part gag — except that there are four crashes. Well, we could edit that!

Keep your eye on the motorcyclist in white first visible in the upper-right-hand corner; first crash is at 7-second mark. Be sure to watch till the end....

Vaudeville in the Movies: Star Spangled Rhythm

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When movies started to sound the death knell for vaudeville and burlesque houses, one fortunate by-product was the preservation of physical comedy routines on film.  Performers and sketch writers transitioning to the latest media naturally made use of the bag of tricks they'd spent half their life crafting. Some of these films were slapdash affairs, hardly memorable as cinematic art, and seemed destined to be forgotten.  But survive they did, thanks to the advent of DVDs and Netflix streaming, and it turns out there are diamonds to be found in these rough cuts.

Which brings us to this post's video clip, a quite well-done piece of business featuring Hollywood actress, comedienne and singer Betty Hutton, in Star Spangled Rhythm (1943), one of those musical and sketch revues produced as a morale booster during World War II. Hutton had begun her performing career in her family's Prohibition-era speakeasy, and later gained fame from such movies as The Perils of Pauline (1947) and Annie Get Your Gun (1950).  I'm not sure who was in charge of this piece; the movie had at least six sketch writers on board, including playwright and Marx Brothers collaborator George S. Kaufman.

What I love about this piece is how it takes the goal of Hutton needing to climb over a wall and the obstacle of the characters not being able to ungrip hands and fashions them into a sustained routine.  While Hutton is the big name, and does a fine job (though perhaps doubled for on one or two tricks), it is the men who seem to come right off the vaudeville stage.  Indeed, one of them is Walter Darewahl, whose later credits include the Phil Silvers movie Top Banana, and on television the Ed Sullivan Show, Jackie Gleason, and Cavalcade of Stars; on the latter he is listed as "vaudeville comic."  Not sure who the other guy is, however.


A thank you to New York clown and dancer Tanya Solomon for alerting me to this piece.  Enjoy!





Update:  Greg DeSanto posted the following comment, which I'm adding here so you don't miss it: "His partner is Johnnie Trama. They performed this basic routine till the late 1960s on variety shows and club revues."

Update (3-26-15): Here's a new blog post with a wonderful comedy acrobatic act by Walter Dare Wahl and Emmet Oldfield.

Early Film: Slippery Jim (1909)

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Here's a curiosity for you from 1909, years before the Keystone Cops and then Arbuckle, Chaplin, Keaton, et. al. ushered us into the heyday of silent film comedy. Produced by Pathé in France under the title Pickpock ne Craint pas les Entraves (pickpockets fear no barriers), it was released in the U.S. under the title Slippery Jim, with English inter-titles.

The pickpocket in question is arrested by the police, handcuffed, and locked in a cell. For the next eight minutes he repeatedly and nonchalantly proves himself to be a master escape artist thanks to his talent as a contortionist and shape shifter. It's all very clever, but it's all accomplished by camera tricks, specifically stop-action substitution.

The Catalonian director, Segundo de Chomón, had worked with that pioneering French movie magician, Georges Méliès, and the film is full of the same sort of tricks of construction — bodies being assembled from component parts — that hearken back to the days of Joseph Grimaldi.

Some of Chomón's visual effects are remarkably smooth for 1909 (e.g., splitting the cop in half), others quite amateurish (e.g., the aerial bicycle). The unnamed performer seems agile enough — watch him scamper up that water pipe — but since the "physical" comedy is faked, perhaps we should just call this "visual" comedy... or live animation! Still, it's quite watchable, and amusing enough. The original music for the film was composed by Antonio Coppola in 2008.

The Steamroller Gag

At least that's what I call it: the flattening of a living, breathing human being into a pancake. Here's the segment again from Slippery Jim, though here they're flattened by a swinging door.

This was done in live performance earlier than 1909 in a pantomime by the Byrne Brothers, and later became associated with the Ringling Brothers clown, Paul Jung, whose steamroller was powered by clowns walking inside it. Here's the description from my Clowns book (glad I remembered I wrote this!): In Jung's version, the steamroller plows into a clown street cleaner, leaving behind an oilcloth silhouette of him on the ground, flat as a pancake. The cloth victim is placed on a stretcher. A clown policeman tries to arrest the reckless driver and is in turn flattened by the powerful machine. Finally, a dwarf with a false head is struck by the steamroller; his head rolls off and is also flattened.

And here's a variation on the gag from Mel Brooks' 1976 film, Silent Movie. Brooks, Marty Feldman, and Dom DeLuise hope to convince Burt Reynolds to appear in a modern silent movie they're trying to make.

Appendix: Segundo de Chomón

From the excellent Europa Film Treasures web site:
Directed by Segundo de Chomón, Catalan artist settled in France, this film renews the genre of the effect film, mixing successfully chase films and effects films. Chomón’s imagination is wilder than ever. Chomón makes the most of his rare technical skills in an interminable series of effect films with Julienne Mathieu his spouse for the company Pathé Frères. This Spanish man from Teruel leaves his office job to become a colorist for Georges Méliès. A good part of his career is spent at Pathé’s where he participates in the set up of a system of industrial coloring; the Pathécolor. In 1901, Chomón settles down in Barcelona. He directs numerous documentaries, has a go at animation and effects. Called back by Pathé to Paris, Chomón works as a camera operator on The Goose that laid golden eggs in particular. He directs all in all about forty films and makes an attempt at every genre. Action, laughter, imagination and much madness… As a Pathé advertisement of the day read: “If it’s funny, then we’re sure to go see it !”


Update (12-4-11): Here's an effusive review of the film from Matt Barry, whose Art & Culture of Movies Blog is well worth checking out.

Super Bowl Commercials

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We interrupt all these reports from San Francisco to bring you this emergency message. There was a Super Bowl yesterday. There were a lot of commercials. Advertisers paid $3 million for a 30-second spot. The least you could do is watch.

Yes, this post is yet another example of the stupid things you can end up exploring once you start writing a blog like this (and by you I mean me). Since Super Bowl commercials supposedly represent American advertising at its best, I was hoping it would prove incredibly illuminating to see what role if any physical comedy played in these ads. Of course this means I actually had to watch all of them, for which each and every one of you should be paying me very large sums of money.

I did find ten commercials sortakinda worth your 30 seconds.

Bud Light: Light House
A party at a house built out of Bud Lite beer cans. The catch is that the cans are not empty, so the guests can't resist grabbing a can to drink and, well, just imagine the consequences.



Grade: B
Keaton's One Week it ain't, but funny enough; maybe I'd give it a higher rating if the beer weren't so piss poor.



Snickers: Betty White
Snickers candy bars give you instant energy, and if you don't have energy you might play football like 88-year-old actress Betty White.



Grade: B–
The two tackles are well done, but I didn't get the lack of transitions between old and young. Morphing anyone?



Focus on the Family: Tebow & Mom
More unnecessary roughness as another defenseless women gets blindsided in this rather odd commercial by a Christian family group.



Grade: C+
Funny idea but they didn't get enough out of it. I would have liked to see them do more with the hit and with her reaction. Can't she drag him for a couple of yards?



Doritos: Dog Gets Revenge
Live-action dog mixed with CG effects to prove how irresistible Doritos are.



Grade: C—
Sorry, the stiff animation was too distracting for me to be amused by this. Real dogs are cute but...



Doritos: Playing Nice
Guy arrives for date with hot single mom whose son slaps him as a warning to lay off the Doritos and lay off his mom.



Grade: B+
Funny, economical, good enough slap. I think reactions sell the gag, so I would have extended that final stare-down a few more seconds. C'mon, what's an extra $300,000 to milk that laugh?


Doritos: Miracle
A guy fakes his own death so he can be buried alive in Doritos and watch the Super Bowl in peace. Makes sense to me. But who can sit still during a football game?



Grade: B—
Did I mention that reactions sell the gag? I wanted more of a take on the churchgoers before the friend jumps up to save the day.



Budweiser: Body Bridge
The bridge is out so how will that Budweiser truck get through??



Grade: A—
I still don't like the beer but I love the image. Remind me to append this to my long piece on human pyramids.



Career Builder: Casual Fridays
When casual Fridays go too far. More physique than physical, but...



Grade: B
This commercial immediately preceded a Dockers commercial with men walking around in their underpants. Is there a movement afoot that I don't know about? Anyway, funny enough, I liked the boldness, but two problems: Aren't most people these days more concerned with having a job, preferably one with health insurance, than they are with things getting too loosey-goosey at the workplace? And though like you, dear reader, I happen to have a perfect body, do they really need to take cheap shots at those who don't?



KGB: Sumo Wrestling
Information is power. Lack of information = instant death by sumo.



Grade: B—
Again the moment of impact is not shown. Conscious decision or shortcut? I'm visualizing all 600 pounds of Sumo Jelly soaring through the air and flattening this guy, all in slow motion.


Coca-Cola: Sleepwalking
Shades of Harold Lloyd as our hero threads his way through unseen horrors.



Grade: B
I liked bumping into the elephant best.
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Those were my top ten, but there were a bunch more with physical comedy elements, including the following:
• A Hyundai Sonata ad with dozens of hands lifting a car like some Pilobolus dance piece.
• A Boost Mobile ad with retired football stars trying to sing and dance, exposing body fat and even a thong.
• A Bud Light ad in which the imminent annihilation of planet earth triggers a wild Bud Light party at an observatory.
• A Volkswagon ad that instructs us to punch the one we're with when we spot a new VW.
• An Emerald Nuts ad with humans as performing dolphins.
• A Doritos ad that proves stealing Doritos has its consequences.

You can see every single Super Bowl ad by clicking here, not that I would necessarily recommend it.

Okay, perhaps not "incredibly illuminating," but notice that a lot of them did have physical comedy roots. It sure seems to me that there was more of this, and more live-action than animation, than in previous years, but I think I'll leave it to someone else to explore that trend. And as much as I like physical comedy, I thought the most effective ad was probably the cars.com commercial. Of course there are plenty of polls online expressing different (= less valid) opinions.

And I'll close with a funny hors-de-compétition commercial from SunLife involving Cirque du Soleil performers. It's not physical exactly and it was actually aired during the post-game show, so you won't find it among the galleries of Super Bowl commercials, but I like.




P.S. — Braveaux, Saints! But next year J-E-T-S all the way.

Performance Report: Cirkus Cirkör & the Delayed Gag

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This is a physical comedy blog, not a circus blog, which means my main focus is on how physical comedy works rather than on reviewing circuses. However, before I get to my little piece on the delayed gag, a few words on Sweden's Cirkus Cirkör, where I saw this really nice delayed gag and so much more Saturday night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

I loved this show. No, it wasn't perfect, and yes it's quite sentimental — two "civilians" get drafted into the world of the circus and discover it's all about heart — but for me it was that rare instance of circus and theatre actually working together. I'm glad not to have read the negative NY Times review until the next day. To tell you the truth, it was odd seeing the Times being critical of a circus at all, since in the past most if not all of their circus reviews have been fluff pieces. ("Golly gee, the circus is in town and ain't that just terrific.")

Cirkör had the bad luck to be picked on by a critic, Jason Zinoman, out to prove them just a pale imitation of Cirque du Soleil. Zinoman's argument is that Cirkör's technical expertise is no match for that of their more famous counterparts: "Cirque serves up this kind of thing as an appetizer, not the main course." Zinoman's own expertise would carry more weight if — here's an idea! — he knew what he was talking about. Take his last paragraph, the only nice thing he had to say about the show: "The one true heart-pounding moment is when a woman climbs a rope in a few bounds and then, from the height of the stage, drops, plummeting almost to her death at an incomprehensible speed. No matter how many times you’ve seen that performed, your jaw still drops."

The only problem is that it wasn't a rope, but a rigid pole, a traditional Chinese pole act. And no, it wasn't some 10-second stunt that went by so fast that such a mistake would be understandable, but a complete act, some 5 to 7 minutes long! Hovey Burgess, who was in the audience that night and in fact for four out of the five performances, commented that it was "the only time I have ever seen this genre performed solo by a woman." He also points out that Zinoman refers to juggling clubs as juggling pins.

And while it's true that the typical Soleil show may have more in the way of technically advanced acts (though not by much), I often find the theatre half of a Soleil show to be very "theatrical" without necessarily being good theatre; glitzy but jejune. With Cirkör, the character interactions and storyline actually made sense. Imagine that!

Here are just a few of the things I liked about Cirkör:
• The troupe is small — eight circus performers and five musicians — and their roles in the production are very clear.
• Most or all of them have been working together for a decade, and it shows in the seamless flow of everything they do. Mirja Tuulikki Jauhiainen and Sanna Kopra perform a really nice stationary trapeze act with transitions that are as smooth as silk, not surprising since they've been working together since 1998.
• Although there are in fact individual acts from time to time, much of what happens is just part of this general flow and is not constrained by traditional variety structure.
• Their use of stage magic and of rear-screen video projection actually worked well with the overall mise-en-scène.
• The band, Irya’s Playground, which the Times only mentions in passing, was not only excellent, but tightly integrated into the performance. You know how the typical juggling act is performed to set music with a few dramatic drum rolls thrown in right before the big tricks? Here there was some terrific interaction between juggler Jay Gilligan (incredible, though from Ohio, not Sweden) and percussionist Erik Nilsson, whose drumming, human sound effects, and scat singing played off of every juggling move to great effect.
• They performed an act walking on bottles that I had never seen live and had only read about being done by the French grotesque Jean-Baptiste Auriol (1806–1881): "He could run along the tops of a row of bottles without knocking them over and then balance in a free headstand atop the last bottle while playing the trumpet." In Cirkör, the performer walks across the tops of a row of bottles on a table. The walk is slow and measured, as the shifts in weight have to be precise to avoid upsetting the bottles, which makes each step more precarious and dramatic than those taken on a tightwire. I'm a bit skeptical of the description of Auriol — c'mon, did he really run across them and do a headstand on one, and were they really free-standing bottles?? — even if that description does come from my book Clowns (p.164). Another nice thing about the Cirkör version was that the table was already there, had been used for other purposes, and the bottles were placed down in order by the "diners" as the equilibrist approached.
















All that being said, it's perfectly fine for someone not to have liked this show. I'm not at all opposed to the idea of serious circus criticism, but I think the "paper of record" might want to apply the same standards to all circuses, and find a writer with real expertise in the area. As my friend Dave Carlyon pointed out, if you're going to write about opera, it's not enough just to know about the performing arts, you actually have to know about music. Likewise... well, you get the point.

Hmm... maybe the Times should hire Hovey as their circus reviewer.

Final salvo: I've been to shows where I was not impressed yet the audience gave them standing ovations, so it's all a matter of opinion, but I still can't resist mentioning that the sold-out crowd at BAM Saturday night gave Cirkör a prolonged, rousing, (mostly) standing ovation.

End of Rant. Here's Cirkör's promo video, which gives you a taste of it all, though without capturing any of the beautiful moments that make it such a strong performance.






Hey, that was more than a few words... no more delays getting to that delayed gag!

For starters, here's what I wrote about the delayed gag in my Yale Theater essay on physical comedy:

Surprise being essential to comedy, the smart performer may play with the cadence of the 1-2-3 gag by initiating the third part either sooner or later than the gag's rhythm would lead us to expect. Most common is the delayed gag. Especially useful in a play or a longer performance piece, it allows a lapse of time between parts two and three. In the interim, the main action of the piece continues. Just when the audience has begun to forget about the gag, the payoff comes, often with doubled effect.

The legendary Swiss clown, Grock, was famous for a heartwarming delayed gag involving his violin bow. After finishing a short flourish on the violin, he tacks on a slight embellishment, flipping the bow up into the air and attempting to catch it back in his hand — unsuccessfully. Embarrassed, he hides himself behind a screen and practices his bow juggling. We see the bow soar repeatedly above the top of the screen. It is clear he has mastered the technique. But back in front of the audience, he again fails. He holds a second rehearsal behind the screen, but when he returns he is beset by new mishaps and soon forgets about the bow.

It is several minutes and one violin later (the first one having been pulverized beneath a Grock pratfall) and he is finally finishing off his tune on the violin. Now comes the payoff. Without thinking about it, he casually tosses the bow up into the air and catches it. Realizing what has happened, he is eager to duplicate his success. He starts to toss the bow up again, but before he can release it he assesses the probable risk, thinks better of it, and decides to leave well enough alone.

By accomplishing without thinking what had been impossible when he tried so hard, Grock creates a splendid clown moment. The delay has heightened the comedic impact, at the same time enriching Grock's characterization.

Got it? So here's the one I loved in Cirkör. It's a bit involved, but I hope worth following. At the very beginning of the show, an audience member is drafted to come onstage and ride a stationary bicycle, which is rigged to generate electricity to power the main spotlight. (Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! He's actually an audience plant, though not an obvious one.) If he doesn't pedal, the stage goes dark. He resumes pedaling, the spot comes on (and they sneak on some other lights as well, but you get the joke.) There's a bunch of business with this, but after a while you forget about it and tune in to the rest of the show. At a certain point you might notice that he's stopped pedaling but the lights are still on, though presumably he's generated enough power to last awhile. Meanwhile, you're captivated by the whitefaced performer who's attempting to balance in a handstand high atop a tall stack of chairs. I'm guessing we were now 20-30 minutes into the show. Just as he goes into his riskiest trick, far above the stage, the lights go out! There is a panicked shout and the cyclist has to pedal furiously to restore the lights as our acrobat barely manages to regain his bearings.

It deservedly got a big laugh, all the stronger because we knew we had been tricked into forgetting about it.