BVA 203 S1W6 : Congratulations, It's a Joke

I was watching a lot of comedy recently and saw the movie Stan and Ollie (2018), which covers a part of the lives of two comedians from the 1930's / 1940's. I looked up the titular Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and found their films quite entertaining and enjoyable.



I've had a plateau and don't know where to go next with this project, so I thought that maybe the style present in these two's comedies might be a more interesting and entertaining way to tell my story.

One of the big things I want to avoid with this film is to have it be pretentious or boring - making it a comedy doesn't take away at all from the idea, it just makes it much more entertaining in my estimation.

I also looked up another comedic duo (who had a small appearance on a poster in the Stan and Ollie movie) - these being Abbott and Costello:



At this point I thought what my opening scene would be if it was executed more in this type of style. I think the waking up from the nightmare part would be much more comical and he would disturb his girlfriend who can't sleep. This escalates as he's very tired and keeps falling back into the nightmare.

This can be followed but him trying to prevent his girlfriend from going to the shower, displaying a bit as well his dependence and focus on her.

At some point I made a dick joke to my girlfriend who was visiting and just as I said that "it's about my penis" in a very immature manner she kissed me. I thought this was funny and considered putting it into my film for research, I was already intending to go for a comedic angle, but now it's changed a lot to be firmly settled into the genre.

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My next development - and one that makes me very excited but changes the film a lot - is that as he goes into the dream the type of comedy changes as well, slowly becoming more ridiculous and abstract.

The idea now is that the film starts with basic human comedy, with a splash of slapstick - like Abbott and Costello lite.

As he goes into the dream the comedy becomes more like Police Squad and Airplane:




Finally as the crazy last act unfolds things become clear that it's a dream and the comedy goes for a modern meme style, Eric Andre comedy thing:



I am very excited about the project again and can't wait to get the script out, although I am finding that I have to write a serious one first and then find the jokes already there, before overhauling and writing a comedy version.

Unfortunately I'm very busy this week and am not able to really work on it - next week!

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