Mel Helitzer

It comes back to the age old question for comedy: Can you teach funny?

This book does it best to provide technique, formulas, and devices. It also provides a lot of actual jokes and bits for dissecting.

Where it wanders for me is, it tries to teach comedy in a scattershot manner, from how to compose sitcom scripts to writing humor for, of all things, greeting cards and t-shirts. A book that explores humor in stand-up AND in cartooning is reaching, in my opinion.

And, ultimately, while the author can expound all he wants on the 'rule of threes', 'topping', and other comedy techniques, the one thing the most astute comedians of our time have said is, 'you can teach comedy, but you can't teach someone to be funny.'

So, books on comedy will always be elusive for this reason. This one is very 'old school', to be sure, but if you want to understand why some things are funny and why some aren't, this at least gives you the equations, if not the answers.… (més)

I took prof. Helitzer's first ever class in humor writing back in 1981, and I still think he proves that the frog doesn't die during the autopsy. The book is filled with good and not-so-good jokes and examples and should be of great help to any aspiring writer/performer, but also to more seasoned tradespeople. The updated version of the book that I have just read also makes room for anything related to the internet and for coarser language. The professor used to warn against using too many puns; still he spends a considerable part of the book on the lamer part of comedy - this is the book's only real drawback.… (més)