HOW TO MAKE A GOOD AUSSIE SITCOM

HOW TO MAKE A GOOD AUSSIE SITCOM

 I've written this article many times and then deleted the lot. What I've said is ok , I just haven't liked the way I've said it or gone about it.

To make a sitcom which works on commercial TV in Australia these things are needed.

1. A well developed protagonist. Like FRASIER - A star character.

2 A sitcom based in a situation with which Australians will identify.

3 Not a small group of  "CLOSED SHOP" writers but all the best comedy writers that this country has to offer, but in doing so, make very strong guidelines clear. ( No parody musical numbers for one at least not in the first season )

4  Big name guest stars. Now this is not necessary in the USA but it is necessary here. Our audiences want it.

5 Not a small group of "CLOSED SHOP" writers but all the best comedy writers that this country has to

offer. Did I say that, well that the main one.

I've written a pilot and outlines for a sitcom called DR SPORTZ. 

which is FRASIER  meets ARLISS  and LARRY SANDERS but for an Australian audience.

What does that mean?
Strong Egotistical male lead character.
Family situation
Work situation . ( In this case sport)
Sporting guest stars.

That's the shell of the idea.

And to think all my other articles on this were four times as long.

MIKE SHANAHAN ( my comedy partner)

MIKE SHANAHAN

 I first saw Mike Shanahan it must have been around 2001-2. I'd stopped doing that three times a week open mike bullshit and I must have seen him at the Chardons Corner Hotel one Thursday night.  I even took my best mate Terry Mays to come along one night to see him.Terry had the same verdict as me and that was although his material isn't  great he had the ability to make ok material get bigger laughs than it deserved. He has the ability to draw you in. He has charisma. 

His looks and style are both similar to Will Ferrell and Tom Gleeson if you can see a connection between those two.  So I befriended him which was a strange thing to do because I had no friends in the comedy scene. It's funny putting that in writing because after a few years you'd think there'd be someone but there was no one until Mike. I'll say this, I'm happy that he was the one.

So when my gets on stage he is droll. He can stand up there and get laughs before he opens his mouth. Then he comes out with his continual barrage of one liners. The he does a few bits like his crush on Sandra Sully and back to the one liners. His one liners are extremely different from mine so I give him a lot of material that is in his vein.

Now I know I have a particular funny way of saying things but it never became so clear when one night Mike asked me along to  a gig at Wynnum. He had a 25minute set, must have been the headliner this night  and he did his usual stuff , Sandra Sully etc but then he started doing my material. BUT it wasn't my material, he was just  quoting things I'd said in conversations my normal talk. My normal talk was his routine. I wasn't angry, i wanted to be but I wasn't . So he eh finishes his stet walks off the stage and says 'Thanks for all the material. I said "that's not material, that's me talking".

BUT we haven't done a great detail.

So we  a C.D of stuff, written by both us. That in itself was good. here's the weird thing, I thought the C.D was pretty good  technically but Mike didn't so we didn't  pursue it's release. It's funny enough.

We did four years of a show at 1197 SWITCH on a Sunday night. That would have continued but they changed location to a shed behind Indooroopilly golf club and I lost interest quickly.

I wrote some sketches which we performed with Mark Arabin and filmed one Saturday. Now some of them are on You Tube and they funny but not funny enough because something happened. We did a lot of sketches, no more than 15 seconds each and we were all laughing loud. But when Phil the  cameraman gave us the tapes back most of it was missing as if he's forgotten to to turn the camera on. 

I actually created this style called the 4 liner and I knew we had over 20 of these but once we started Mike and Mark started making their own contribution. These sketches often had the punchline "we go fuck yourself then" Sounds funny - No . Was funny -Yes.

A few years later Mike and I went to a recording studio to do some sketches. This is where I fall down as a person, seriously. I went to the studio to do an edit with the 'producer'. Actually I thought I was the producer. So she says to me it's complete and I watched the finished product and I was mortified. Each sketch had it's title across the screen and there was this vaudevillian style curtain around each sketch. That's not my product. I internalize my thoughts and anger.  I should have said  'Can you delete those curtains' that's probably all I needed to say.  I didn't think of it because I thought she has gone to a lot of work here. Maybe it was as easy as hitting a delete button. I was so devastated really I  couldn't say anything.

I am looking at stuff like it's set in the 1920's when I wanted it to look low budget but edgy. What's edgy about a fucking curtain. Mike has put some of them on his You Tube page but I wanted to burn them. I gave her the $1200 for 2 hours studio time plus editing and left. But this is the "Me" I live with weak and insecure. BUT back to Mike.

Mike was one of the co stars in IT'S BRISBANE TONITE WOW. I wanted him to be the lead role but Scot McPhie insisted on me.It should have been  him.

In all my scripts there is a place for him as one of the lead roles.

Anyway Mike is a very good comedian, a good bloke and a great friend.

When i write my scripts now

 

 

SOME COMEDY THOUGHTS PART 1

( this is not thorough by any means)
Australian  sketch comedies are a dying breed. Why is that?  Comedy is comedy , hey. Well No its not. There seems a thought in Australian television that if some guy can write a few one liners, he is capable of writing sketches for sketch comedies.
Sketch comedy is an art for want of a better term.
Sketches need to be constructed, thought out. The funny stuff will work itself out.
The best way to learn to write sketch comedy is by watching great sketch comedy. EXAMPLES
Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, NOT ONLY BUT ALSO, THE TWO RONNIES and ALAS SMITH & JONES. ( Not Monty Python- You can love it but it won't teach you much)
So why do I not like Australian sketch comedy?
What I see is a sketch based upon a one liner that is inserted in the sketch or some kind of punchline.
Why is this?
Because the writers of our sketch comedies for the past  twenty years have done this successfully. Successfully on face value. But Shaun McCaileff is the only comedian of this era to be still on sketches on  television .
Why? Because this style of sketch comedy writing quickly wears thin.
The best sketch comedy and by that it usually means most durable and watchable over and over again is from THE LATE SHOW, circa 1993.
THE FAST FORWARD and COMEDY COMPANY  material is painful.
AUSTRALIAN networks have no knowledge of comedy writing, they want a product and for years the product has failed.
The product will continue to fail.
The worst or best example is a show called EAGLE & EVANS. To be blunt, the sketches were were written wrongly.

to be continued

JONATHON WINTERS RIP

Jonathon Winters made me laugh because he was a very funny guy. He was a favourite of mine but I saw him far too infrequently.

As a kid growing up in the 60's he was a regular on THE DEAN MARTIN SHOW and was in a number of 60's comedy movies of varying quality, but unlike Paul Lynde and Don Rickles he didn't guest star in television sitcoms and it's a shame.
His role as Mirth in MORK & MINDY really benefited the show and his work with Robin Williams was very funny.
Of course his fame is based on his improvisation.

Like so many comedians he lived a long life and I always believe that making people laugh adds to a longer life.

Will be forever remembered for destroying the servo in It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World  and stealing the movie.

Goodbye Jonathon you were a funny man.

MUM'S BIRTHDAY. 75 TODAY HAPPY BIRTHDAY

It's my mother's birthday today.
Happy Birthday mum.Viola or Vi, it's weird to say that because to me she is mum. She's 75 and  fortunately healthy and looking good. I want success in her lifetime because if I get any I'd like for her to share in it. Otherwise it would just confirm how cruel life can be.
She has been 100% behind me from a very early age.

My Uncle Lionel once said to her when I was a kid." He watches far too much television".
She said "He doesn't watch it, he studies it, It's his life"
Well it hasn't been so far , but I still study it.
And even though I'm not involved yet, ( at 53 ) it's my life and she taught me nuch about films.Yes films. TV is my genre.
She was telling me about James Dean, Errol Flynn and Jeff Chandler when I was 10 years old.Yer Jeff Chandler, women have their favourites for whatever reasons.

My mother and father separated when I was four years old and my sister a baby. This was unusual in the 60's and she was a working supporting mother all my childhood , without any government assistance she deserved a lot better. She also deserved a successful son.



HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM.
Love you.

MY COMEDY WRITING STYLE Re Aussie American

MY COMEDY WRITING STYLE

FILM  & TV
I love writing Australian characters , but the comedy writing process which has been developed by Americans for one hundred years is the format in which I write.

As much as I think the world and Australia misses out on seeing Aussies being Aussies in film, it's the American style of writing which is funniest and I have adopted. They set up a joke properly. Well in TV sitcoms they do.

American's could never make a Don's Party, so we have to, but we are incapable of making a TV series like Frasier, and some of Frasier is 10/10 comedy.

One of things which amused and puzzled me during the shooting of  IT'S BRISBANE TONIGHT WOW was people said "it's so Australian" and I'm thinking 'No it's very American". As long as I'm thinking it's American and every one else thinks it's Australian , it's not an issue.


Here's a fact both sides of my family going back two or three generations are Jews and I relate to Jews. So I guess I relate to Jewish humour/comedy.

SKETCH COMEDY

My sketch comedy is based on the British style. Alas Smith & Jones , The Two Ronnies, Not the Nine O'clock News, Not Only But Also, Benny Hill and Monty Python. The Poms do it better than the yanks and they do (did) a maximum of six shows per year. (I don't know or even care as to why) but Saturday Night Live (to me) just isn't funny.However dean Martin did some funny "guest star' based sketches and The Sonny and Cher show was funny.

The influence Australian sketch comedy has on me is that the Paul Hogan show was a stand out because he only did 4 shows a year. The other shows with a cast of a dozen 30 plus writers and 30 plus episodes a year is about how "Not" to do as sketch show.

AUSTRALIAN FILMS and Australians in film

Australiam Films and Australians in Films 

I want an opportunity to make films about Australians. There are not enough films about Australians and we are a dying race. The Anglo Saxon Australian is mixing with other cultures and races and the iconic Aussie will not be here in one hundred years. 

I myself have a Fijian Indian wife so I'm not coming from the angle of racism. 

But what I'm saying is  the "Good on ya mate Aussie" is dying.and these characters have a great sense of humour and  way of talking and it is would be great to get my scripts  made into films, because these are my characters.

The humour from younger generation Australians is dislikeable at best. It's seems to be put down humour with no self deprecation.

And I'm not talking about the real broad Aussie which is perpetuated in shithuse films like DIMBOOLA. .
I am talking the likes of early Bruce Beresford films.  Bruce Beresford made four films, DON'S PARTY, THE CLUB , THE MONEYMOVERS  and BREAKER MORANT which showed  a realistic portrayal of the Australian, warts and all. I also liked ALL MEN ARE LIARS and SPOTSWOOD.

My script LAST NIGHT OF THE HOODOO'S is very Australian and I intend to rewrite AFTER DEATH and MAN OF THE PEOPLE to be more this way.

 And just for the record i do think CROCODILE DUNDEE is a great feel good film.