Funny, Not Funny
FilmStack Monthly Challenge #9
If you know me on here, then you probably already know that one of my favorite things on FilmStack are the FilmStack Monthly Challenges. It’s something I look forward to and participate in every month. It’s such a wonderful way to see how we all examine and engage with the same prompt from our own unique perspectives. I enjoy them so much I kind of became the FilmStack Challenge of the Month historian, by creating this database of all the responses here, and doing round ups of the responses every month found on FilmStack Daily Digest, this way we can have a guided permanent (well as permanent as Substack is around) record of all we’ve done together.
Therefore, I felt it was my duty to post one for this one. What was it?
It was given to us by FilmStack’s own funny man, Jon Stahl
FilmStack Monthly Challenge #9:
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write something funny. Something that makes someone laugh.
Some ground rules:
It has to be written
It has to be new
Laughter is the goal – Your goal is to induce laughter.
Note the word “someone” – It’s not enough to make yourself laugh.
Verified laughter is preferable – So if someone replies “LOL,” you should check with them to confirm that they did, in fact, laugh out loud.
Publishing is encouraged but not necessary
Insults are discouraged
This is the challenge that defeated me.
Not for lack of trying. Believe me I’ve thought about it a lot. I’ve sat down at my computer and tried, but the blank screen just taunted me every time.
I guess it just boils down to one thing or the other…either I am not funny, OR writing something funny is extremely difficult.
I mean I like to think I’m kinda a funny as a person. I may not be the telling big loud long jokes for rooms full of people kind of funny, but I often make people laugh. Mostly through sarcasm, of course.
That’s why responses like Charlotte Simmons…
Or The Long Take’s…
…were the type that maybe I could have done but they did it first and they did it so well, so there goes that idea…
I mean I’ve also written amusing things before. Usually it’s an odd trait that’s amusing, or maybe an over the top emotional reaction or something else that breaks the character out of their seriousness for a moment, you know a chuckle to release the dramatic tension…but the scenes where I write funny don’t often stem from sitting down to write funny. That seems to be an incredibly difficult thing.
Something about this challenge made it impossible for me. I think the “it must be laugh out loud funny part” just felt like too much pressure. My mind went blank every time I sat at the computer.
Perhaps I have some deep seated childhood trauma around being funny? Maybe when I was 8 years old I told a joke and no one laughed, or maybe I had a teacher in middle school who told me I wasn’t funny?
Perhaps also the daily shit show we live in, and the stress of looking for a full time job? Maybe the holidays are to blame, I mean 8 nights of family getting together to light menorahs and arguing over whether or not applesauce or sour cream is better on the latkes is a lot for anyone? Or maybe it was the brain fog from all the Sufganiyot (jelly donuts)? Maybe it was the constant screaming and fighting all day long between my kids while they’ve been home for winter break for the last two weeks? Perhaps all that had something to do with it?
Or perhaps, I’m just not funny? I dunno. I just know that this is the Challenge that defeated me.
Again I tried but alas I could not write something funny. I thought it important to share this failure though, after all failure is a big part of this process.
Lastly, my hat’s off to you Jon and for anyone that does write comedy regularly….its definitely, in my opinion, the hardest thing to write.
I wish I could hop into a time machine and laugh at every joke you made when you were 8.
"I mean I like to think I’m kinda a funny as a person. I may not be the telling big loud long jokes for rooms full of people kind of funny, but I often make people laugh. Mostly through sarcasm, of course."
One line that really stuck with me -- don’t laugh -- comes from Ocean’s Twelve. You know the scene where Rusty and Danny coaching a very young Matt Damon before a visit to a friend in an Amsterdam weed shop.
The advice goes something like this "be specific but not memorable, be funny but don’t make him laugh. He should like you and then forget you the moment you leave."
That became a motto for me.
Honestly, it was such a hard challenge, everytime I see the view counts going up on my piece I just want to hide someplace dark.