Original subtitles

Whether it's working in slapstick,

surrealism or parody or some

combination of the three.

The comedian success depends first and

foremost on his ability to create

a funny character. As Charlie Chaplin

once said, in comedy, nothing transcends

character. And for

the physical comedian, this means his

ability to communicate through his body

language.

My name is very much Kevin's speciality

and his famous piano act his one of

the highlights of his stage show.

Part of the pleasure is to do with

illusion, making a see what is not there,

but it is mainly about using the body

to create character. Comic acting, in

other words.

Through his body language, the comedian

can introduce intimacy and even elegance

into the generally frantic world of

physical humour.

The comedy may lie simply in the shadings

of a facial expression, particularly now

in the age of TV, where the close-up

is so common.

This is the comedy of personality.

Rather than the comedy of gangs, it's

not about doing funny things, it's about

doing something quite normal in a funny

way. The skill lies

in the accuracy of human observation and

the precision of the execution.

Yeah. Up.

Jack Tatty Now there's an artist

carried on the silent comedy tradition

into the sound there by making

films virtually without dialogue.

He was not only a creator of

jokes, but an observer of life who

saw humour in the smallest details of

human behaviour. He was a specialist in

the comedy of character expressed through

body language.

In visual comedy, we see the same ideas

crop up again and again.

The width of the comedian often lies in

simply inventing new variations of old

jokes. He could do this because the

success of any comic idea depends not

just on the skill with which it is

executed, but more importantly, on the

attitude with which it is performed.

Knew attitude. New joke?

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very

much. Yes.

This is the first comedy ever put

onto film. Nearly 100 years ago in

1895. Aboy stands on the gardeners hose.

He lifts his foot and the gardener

gets a face full of water. It's

the humiliating surprise, the basic.

Practical joke. It doesn't come over

to funny now, to be frank,

because it is crude, predictable and

essentially characterless.

However, if Kevin approaches the same

situation of man and hosepipe with

different kinds of comic attitude, we

should see how it can be

brought to life in different ways

by introducing character into the comedy.

Number one, the dim attitude.

The comedy of stupidity.

The crucial element in the character of

the comedian is his lack of awareness. He

knows less than the audience about what

is going on.

The dim comedian confronts the world with

a kind of bewildered innocence.

#2 the aggressive attitude. The crucial

element in the character is his lack

of consideration for others.

Get a clean one is clean

now.

Now.

#3 the crude attitude,

the comedy of vulgarity.

Who?

Crude comedian thrives on the comedy

of social embarrassment.

No. New.

So which comic attitude is funniest?

Probably the one you find funniest is the

one with which you identify most. Only if

you identify with the comic attitude can

you laugh. Take Chaplin

for instance. The whole world found him

funny in his day, but hardly anybody

laughs at him now.

Why, He's certainly far more skilled and

inventive than a lot of modern comedians

whom we do laugh at.

He does everything it is possible to do

in visual comedy, including all the

things we've talked about so far.

He wears comic clothes, he has

a comic walk, and he is

an expert in using his body.

He is constantly transforming himself,

turning himself into a woman.

Or an animal. Or

an object. His films are

full of slapstick.

And acrobatic stunts.

There is relentless

sadism, understated violence

and overstated violence.

There are surprising appearances

and disappearances.

There is surrealism.

And there is imitation.

He is an expert mind.

And a sharp observer of human behaviour.

Chaplin was also a perfectionist in the

execution of his comedy, doing hundreds

of takes to get things right. And yet,

however much we admire him, it is hard

for most of us these days to actually

laugh at his films.

There is often a considerable gulf.

Between what can be described as comic.

And what we personally find funny? The

problem with Chaplin.

Is that it is hard for us to get

involved in what he does. He is distanced

from us by time and by the silence of

his films. But the main difficulty, I

think, is that we just can't identify

with his attitude anymore. He seemed too

cute or too pleased with himself.

Although the best physical comedians

always have a strong character and

attitude of their own, they also have a

surprising amount in common. There are

certain qualities of character which crop

up again and again because these are the

qualities that make visual comedy happen.

The first thing to say here is that

the physical comedian is an alien. He

comes from the other side of the looking

glass. He is like us, but

different.

Whereas the verbal comedian is often

smarter, sharper and faster than those

around him, the physical comedian usually

has a quality of innocence, of

having been born yesterday.

Harry Langdon is one of the weirdest of

the lot. Someone once said that he looks

like a baby dope fiend. He is an

adult with the emotional and intellectual

equipment of an infant.

The comedian's childishness emerges first

of all, in his difficulties with objects.

He is constantly doing battle with them

in a way which invests them with

a life. Soul of their own.

But there is just as much

potential in very simple domesticobjects.

It is battles with objects. The comedian

is bound to be inept.

In order for funny things to happen,

he must constantly make mistakes and he

must constantly be susceptible to

accidents.

Throw it over your shoulder.

Although he is clumsy and inept, the

physical comedian is very tenacious. He

keeps on doing things long after the

point where the normal person would have

given up.

If we take Kevin into a fashionable

restaurant, the one thing he won't do is

sit there and behave himself.

So I don't know.

Muse. He needs to be

uncivilised.

He either doesn't understand social

conventions or he is incapable of

following them.

Mr Driftwood, Quickly, but allow me Mrs

Claypole, Mr Godley, Mr Godley. Mrs

Claiborne. Missus like Paula, Mr Godley,

Mr Godley, Mrs Piper, Mrs Claiborne. I

could go on like this all night, but it's

tough on my suspenders.

The physical comedian not only disregards

convention, he's got little regard for

morality or legality.

And he has none of that consideration for

others, which inhibits the rest of us

from behaving like comedians all thetime.

Now let's see what happens if we swap it

around so that Kevin becomes the waiter

and Mr Driscoll becomes the customer.

Since waiters are supposed to be polite,

hardworking and competent, the comedian

guard go far wrong if he is

rude, lazy and useless.

If he were to conform to social

expectations, he wouldn't be funny

anymore. One

way or another, the physical comedian has

got to be a threat to decent and

respectable people.

He may be aggressive or he may

be affectionate, but the comedian is

always causing offence and spreading

confusion.

He makes a mockery of

all authority, politeness and pretension.

I'll take this side.

None of my business, but I think

there's a brace of woodpeckers in the

August Drunkenness, like childishness,

immediately supplies the comedian with

the stupidity, incompetence and

irresponsibility that he needs in order

to be funny.

The physical comedian is certainly no

match for the verbal kind when it

comes to flashes of searing insight.

Visual comedy is a more blunt instrument.

But this means that everyone can

understand it.

Most of the time you only have to be

human to get the joke.

Since he is such a maladjusted outsider,

the physical comedian finds it hard to

form normal human relationships with

women. He is bound to get it

all wrong. Let's

have a look at three different

approaches from the Comedians Manual of

Sexual Relationships. This first one

we'll call the Romantic approach is

Emotional age zooms up from childhood

to early adolescence.

This leads us straight into the comedy of

embarrassment, as all his efforts to

appear impressive are bound to come to

grief.

Body.

Butter.

I think we're on a

winner each three. Alright, nice

and cool, some nice and

cool, you know what I

mean?

A second possibility is the direct

approach. The

comedian simply ignores all codes of

proper behaviour and act immediately on

his desires.

Hey, you got a nice pair there. And of

course.

Shut up your city pictures only bit of

fun.

The third possibility we might call

the startled virgin. This one depends

first of all on the comedy

of role reversal, with the woman

as the sexual aggressor. While the

comedian is impossibly innocent, he

remains a bewildered. Child masquerading

as an adult.

The physical comedian is really the

ultimate outlaw. As we've seen, he

breaks all the rules of decorum and

convention. He does all the things we

can't, couldn't, and shouldn't do in real

life.

Second, you can't break

the rules without getting

into trouble, and consequently

the physical comedian is

suffering most of the

time. He is an

eternal victim, subject to

constant hostility. From all quarters.

Move up the grass. Goes around

it.

Well, that's about it. I think we're

finished with Kevin now. So I just like

to make one final point.

The final point being that

the physical comedian is indestructible.

Ah, thank you.

Yes, that split second timing when

instinct tells you.

That's haha ahe

wave of assassination.

Whatever the odds against him, the

comedian always survives to walk away at

the end of the story.

However, whatever you say about comedy,

the opposite is also true.

So if you like, you can

ignore everything I've said.

Is that OK?