THE CANNIBAL COOKERY BOOK SKETCH

 THE CANNIBAL COOKERY BOOK SKETCH 

Earlier today I watched a few minutes of one of those cookery shows, something I never watch , but whilst doing so I asked myself the question. Where's the sketch?" Within about 30 seconds the answer came to me. The Cannibal's Cookbook.

1. I asked myself why I haven't seen a sketch on this theme before. Like it's obvious. 

2.  Next: First reference. Jeffrey Dahmer and the head in the fridge. 

3 Do I do it as interview with the cannibal taking questions or do I do in a Ronnie Barker style with the e cannibal in a kitchen and those monologues were written in a style in which Ronnie asks himself the questions. "And where do I find a butchered up body at this time of night you may ask, well here's the answer".  The answer is you do both because the interview can be a prelude to the cannibal having his own cooking show.

4 Other things that come to mind when writing this sketch Obvious Chinese and or Indian.

Ok  Straight away I think of the Cookery Show

Cannibal : And here is my Chinese dish, come out Mae Wong. Lovely isn't she , Mae will be served with rice and oyster soup.

The next thing is what will he be cooking?

My first thought once again obviously all the exterior human features. Head, eyes, ears, lips, arms , hands, legs and feet. Then there's the interiors , brain, heart, liver and kidney.

All of these have to be combined with a cookery term such marinated or stewed or casserole.

But what will really make this funny or make it work as far as recipes.

A.Marinated liver. No  

B Silvia's marinated liver. So so. 

C Annoying Landlady's marinated liver.  That's more like it. let's get specific here, he's a cannibal and he eats people who annoy him.

So I'm making up a name for this cannibal character and a dozen have gone in and out and then it hits me, yes the obvious hits me. It has to be pop culture icon Hannibal Lecter in full face mask.

1. It's a satirical sketch so there's no rights to the name etc.

2 He's the biggest cannibal name in the business.

3 He will grab every kid's attention. "Did you see the Hannibal Lecter sketch, that was disgraceful". At this point I'm not thinking disgraceful but I want it to be distasteful. ( pun not intended).

 4. No lines like : 

So what possessed you to be a cannibal.

You could say I had a hunger for it . ( None of that ) Something similar though.

 

 

HANNIBAL'S LECHTER' S COOKBOOK INTERVIEW

 

Host :  Good evening , my next guest needs no introduction. He is world a renowned serial killer and cannibal and master chef. Currently do time a life time in prison with the special title "Never to be released' this man has murdered more people than most of us would dream of. Give a warm welcome to Hannibal Lecter.

CUT TO Hannibal Lecter in face mask.

Hannibal : Hi Guys.

Host: I've got to say Hannibal, that's an impressive entourage you have with you behind the screen.

Hannibal:  They are eight highly trained SAS men who will kill me as if I as much as sneeze.

Host: Give a big hand to the SAS they do such a great job.

Hannibal:  Maybe.

Host: Before we get to the cook book Mr Lecter I'd like to discuss your history of murders, if that's fine with you. It says here Thirty two alleged murders.

Hannibal:  Twenty nine. Alleged. the others are pure coincidence.

Host: Twenty nine.

Hannibal: Well who's counting really, I mean someone turns up dead two blocks away from my house, they are have their tongue cut out , their lungs and kidney removed, their fingers and toes cut off and everyone points the finger at me. Next thing I know they say I am number one on their suspect list.

Host: Yes, those accusations must hurt you.

Hannibal: You bet, sometimes they hurt me so much I could just cut their heads off and eat their brains,  with a mushroom sauce but so be it.

Host: Yes. And did you cannibalize all your victims or just some? 

Hannibal : What do you take me for, a pig? No! In most cases I just enjoyed the killing. I ask you , could you eat a politician. I bet the answer is No!

Host  It is No!

Hannibal: Of course it's No. You would create such a bad vibe from eating them and belly pains. yuk yuk yuk.

Host ( nervously) :  Let's get back to the book. I'll open at a random recipe and you explain. Grilled postman with a bean salad. Can you explain that.

Hannibal:  Self explanatory , he he he. best with olive oil.

Host: Virgin olive oil?

Hannibal: The virgin's the dessert.

Host: The Annoying guy on the bus....... soup. 

Hannibal: Self explanatory. Again. I don't like stupid questions.

Host: They're not questions, I'm just reading out the recipes.

Hannibal: Don't push it buddy. I have little patience.

Host:  Ok Mr Lecter. Ah yes and here's another one. Here's a funny one Chef's Surprise.

Hannibal : Very good choice, the last thing a Chef expects is to be standing over a nice hot stove and suddenly his throat is cut and a minute later his or her naked body is stewing in a enormous pot with lots of garlic, barley and beef stock for flavour. Voila! Chef's surprise.

Host: That's great.  So Mr Lecter, so what will you be having for dinner tonight?

Hannibal  You . I've just removed my hand cuffs.

FADE TO BLACK 

Host AAAGGGGGHHHHHH

Hannibal: Could someone get me a glass of  Penfold's rose.  Please.

THE END

 So that's as a first draft written in about an hour and I've covered the major laugh angles which I was looking for and with a lot more work this could be a very funny sketch.

 

 

WRITING A COMEDY SKETCH

 WRITING A COMEDY SKETCH

It's a bit like everything else in life. If you do it long enough and do it properly it then comes easy.

Your stock standard sketch would usually go for a minute and half to about 5 minutes. the process is the same.

The sketch is like a pop song. The song has a verse  a chorus and somewhere in there is a crescendo.

If the sketch goes for one and a half minutes there is one verse, one chorus and one big laugh somewhere. it does not have to be at the end as a punchline but it helps. Each minute and a half has the same process.

My basic sketch is the two person sketch. It doesn't matter who the people are, the sketch is like an interview. Whether its boy meets girl or cop meets killer one is interviewing the other.

In the sketch interview questions are asked and the wrong answers are given. That's the comedy.

My basic sketch is done in 4's with four lead up lines each which get to the point  and another 4 lines each to the big joke. That's not set in stone of course but it's a good guide.

It's a sketch so the lead up lines are in rhythm like song so that the performers are singing a duet. This makes it comfortable for the performers but it also gets smiles from the audience because they see the humour in the rhythm.

Me. I've devised a little strategy that if it's a confrontational the protagonist abuses the other party with The "Go fuck Yourself" Sketch.

There are a few reasons for this:

1. The Go Fuck yourself signals the end of the sketch.

2 It's my signature

3 I don't want anyone to say my humour is nice and clean and "He doesn't have to use bad language to get laughs'. I'm not writing for Christians nor my mother, I'm writing for 11 year old naughty boys.

Once you learn this it should be like shelling peas. It might take a life time though.

That's about it.

THE LOST COMEDY SKETCHES

 LOST COMEDY SKETCHES : Especially the DUMMY COP.

I've had quite a pile of comedy material for too long. On Sunday it was time to sift through and see what I had. I was of the belief that I had lost many of my sketches over the years. To my relief I've hardly lost any if any at all.

I do have most of the stuff on discs or those plugins but now I know exactly what I have. I can either get it scanned if possible or even re type and save it all again. I have no problem with that because some of the sketches will need to be rewritten. really all the sketches should be rewritten at some time.

I didn't learn a lesson but I should have gone through all of this stuff ten years ago or even fifteen years ago and just sort it out properly. Would have saved some unnecessary anxiety.

One sketch I had presumed lost was one about a cop whose partner is a ventriloquists dummy. I had no idea what the title was , possibly Dummy Cop which would have made things easier. I had done a series of sketches called Mullumdimby Vice and it was an episode of that series of sketches. Once I found that sketch though I realised I had just about all of my material.

This is an important sketch to me. It's very good or very funny. I sent it to a show which premiered in the year 1998. They never got back to me, but this sketch was the opening sketch in their first episode.  I wasn't credited nor did they call me it. It was just plain stolen.

The version which appeared on TV wasn't 100% of what I submitted, there were of course subtle and even unsubtle changes. 

This was the last straw as far as theft of my material was concerned. It was the theft of this sketch which made me make the choice of trying stand up comedy. To protect my material ( As if that worked).

Anyway, I have over 100 complete sketches, mostly "off the wall" to sort through and rewrite. Rightly or wrongly I've gone down this path as opposed to writing sketches for established comedy characters as they already have their writers. They will be retyped, rewritten and improved and stored on a device.

 All good.

 

CARL DITTERICH & ME. ( A true and funny football story)

 

This is my favourite football story.

It was in the early 80's when Carl Ditterich moved up to Brisbane as coach of Coorparoo Australian Rules Football Club. It was big news at the time.

My best mate at the time Neil Perryman had decided to have a crack at first or reserve grade and I went along to training one night just to watch. I hadn't played for  two years ( I think)  because I officially retired from football at the end of Under 19's. Well, I thought I had. 

Now at this time I actually had my right hand still bandaged at the time after it had been crushed in a printing press a few months earlier.

So I'm watching the training the fathers of a player Wayne Clarke who I only knew as Mr Clarke came and spoke me. He said that even though Coorparoo had signed Carl Ditterich they were short of players and now that I've arrived it was necessary that I return. I thought I should explain that I was recovering from a crushed hand. 14 stitches and 78 micro stitches ( they are figures you never forget) and that I wasn't overly keen. I was also a shift worker so training was one week every fortnight. he said " None of teat matters.

So I turn up training and quickly became a favourite of Carl's, the crushed hand angle may have helped.

So about three weeks in Carl calls a group of rovers aside. I was one of that group.  Now in that group was a bloke I will call Rosco. Although short,  physically he was a Greek adonis, every muscle in his body rippled and he was the fastest player in the club. BUT his Achilles heel was that he was weak as piss and a show pony.

So we start this drill and Carl throws the ball out in Rosco's direction and Rosco is first to it, does a baulk or two runs rings around me and gives it back to Carl. I feel a bit eeerrrrr.

Next time it's me and Rosco again and Carl throws the ball to Rosco's side and once again he runs rings around me. once again I'm feeling eeerrrr

Ok, so the third time Carl throws the ball  to my side. Now as I'm positioning myself to pick up the ball, Rosco just drags me off without me having touched because he's showing Carl that he's Rosco and I'm just a piece of shit.

BUT  I reacted as I only can. When his hands grabbed me without the ball I swung around with my left  elbow and  and I elbowed him right in the middle of his fucking forehead. Rosco gave out a scream, I thought "Fuck what have I done" and here's Rosco with blood just pissing out of his fore head. What will Carl think? His gun rover. I'm petrified. 

Carl looks at Rosco and says "You, get off the field mate" and to all the rest of us he says "Lets continue boys".

And although I had plenty of good moments on the field in my time , splitting that gutless squibs head open in front of the king of the elbow will always be my favourite individual moment.

STEPHEN FRY: BRITISH V AMERICAN COMEDY What a tosser.

 Stephen Fry ( tosser)

I've seen a few You Tube videos with Stephen Fry comparing the comedy of the Britain to the comedy  United States. It's seems to be a pet subject of his and I don't get it. I don't get the comparison angle and the whole thing annoys me. I love the comedy greats of both countries equally, but it's not a subject I  would ever bring up as a conversation piece.

First of all his opinion is that British comedy is funnier or better than American comedy, because it's much smarter, more human , more character based. (whatever) Is it? Proof?

In both of these videos he's not in a debate.  He is  stating his opinion unchallenged and in the case of the one in the auditorium he is talking to an audience who are his true believers.

When he talks about the great British performers he reels off many from the 1950's and 60's but he has chosen to compare them with John Belushi , who had a very short career from about 1975/80 Ben Stiller and  Jim Carrey who are modern day American comedians.

He says that in the American film National Lampoon's Animal House John Belushi (and  he calls him John Belushia the first time, which is rude because we all know his name) plays this crazy guy who smashes a folk singers guitar. He says that the American comedian and the English comedian would rather be the folk singer much to the delight of his audience. But John Belushi wasn't the star of this film, it was his film debut and he was eighth on the cast. He was playing a crazy guy, not the protagonist so the whole point which Mr Fry is going down is totally irrelevant. AND he sort of hangs his hat on that example.

He also makes a point of comparing British sitcoms to American films. He reels off  a selection of British sitcoms which include Steptoe and Son, Rising Damp, Fawlty Towers, Tony Hancock, Dad's Army, Alan Partridge, The Office,  but as I say he is comparing these to Belushi , Stiller and Sandler who are now all film comedians. He is not comparing these with Get Smart, MASH, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Barney Miller, All in the Family, Cheers, Seinfeld The Larry Sanders Show, nor even the American version of The Office. If he is going to make comparisons he should compare them to the right genre. He does the apple and oranges comparison as if that's like a fact.

For some reason he makes a comment that Americans are brash because anyone born in the USA can become President but that's not the case with becoming Prime Minister in Britain, well I think that's his point.to me, once again is irrelevant. What the hell has that got to do with fucking comedy writing?

Anyway , I see that what he is taking about is humour and in some ways he is correct,  because the British and the Americans have a different sense of humour and and i'd rather talk to a Pom aover an American anny day , except fro Fry and Ben Elton,  but sense of humour is not comedy , comedy is to me a theatrical exercise. I am an Australian with an Aussie sense of humour. My comedy is a combination of all the things which make me laugh, whether they be Australian, American, British or something from some other place in the world. Once again humour and comedy are not the same and in fact very different. Fry likes to suggest that comedy and humour are the same. They are not and I'm repeating myself here.

His old comedy partner Hugh Laurie is a huge hit in America TV dramas and comedy as well as appearing in films. I sense a huge hint of jealousy and that is why he is attacking the Americans.

FILMSCRIPT REWRITES

 

Film Rewrites

I've been looking at the film scripts which I have written over the years and my first observation is that many of them need some work. That work in most cases involves improving the comedy. Rather than continue writing half good scripts I am better off improving the older ones first. It's also practical because all of these which I wrote in the 90's were before mobile phones were a part of normal life.

1. THE VAMPYRE:  WITH BLOOD & ROSES.

Story A young transyvanian guy takes his girlfriend to meet count Dracula. 

This was my first script and it needs very little fine tuning so I can leave it for the moment. Actually it was my second script. The first was flushed down the toilet many years ago.

2. MY STREETKID

Story: A famous radio D.J finds a young female street kid hiding in his house. Years later I realised I'd plagarised Goldilocks. ( Just Kidding)

Has some major issues with the comedy aspect and this is my first project. In the first scene which goes for two pages I changed the last four lines and made something ho hum suddenly funny. The film script is not meant to be hilarious but that means I have to improve the jokes because the story is  quite likeable. It's my attempt at a feel good story and for that reason I think it stinks.

3 LAST NIGHT OF THE FILTH.

Story: A print worker  accidentally on purpose murders his boss and some of his workmates cover for him.

This is my best script has been drafted many times and is now ready to go.

4. WHEN BUSHPIGS COLLIDE.

A football team called the Bushpigs hire an agency to get recruits for their club for a weekend football carnival. However a mistake leads the agency to send a punk band called The Bushpigs in as the recruits. The band want the money so they pretend to be footballers but they are all hopeless.

I actully like the concept but the script although completed needs a lot of work.

KILL VICTOR GOLD

Story: Millionaire and celebrity doctor Victor Gold has upset gangster heavy weight Milo Krane so Krane orders his execusion. The doctor is left a  paraplegic but whilst recovering invents and designs a body suit which enables him to walk.

What was i thinking. This is like a Marvel Movie super hero story.( It would probably make a zillion at the box office) I haven't looked at it for over ten years.

THE MAD WEEKEND

 

 

The IMPORTANCE of DUBBED LAUGHTER

The Importance of Dubbed Laughter.

I've read that when dubbed or canned laughter was invented the ratings of comedy shows went up.

Sketch comedy needs some sort of laugh track but not a phony baloney one.

As good as Fawlty Towers was it has a laugh track. It could probably get away without one but it would need a musical score and it doesn't have one.(at all).

Over the years of having watched The Benny Hill Show , The Two Ronnies, The Paul Hogan Show for example I came to this conclusion of which I may be wrong.

They have an intial episode with a studio audience. That episode  I believe has the "STAR" doing a series of monologues and maybe one or two simple "live" sketches.

From that they have cutaways to as studio audience for the start and end credits only.

 This smoke and mirrors approach means that  this is the only time a studio audience is necessary but implies that audience was there for all 6 or so episodes.

It also implies that audience saw every sketch so that makes the dubbed laughter seem real.

And most importantly sketch comedy is a very hard sell without dubbed laughter.