Quotes: Jonathan Winters
Posted on 27 January 2012 | No responses
Throughout my life, I’ve been gratified that I’ve been able to keep the child in me alive and inspire others.
—Jonathan Winters, comedian, actor, artist
Glove and Boots: Time Machine
Posted on 23 January 2012 | No responses
I do watch film and television comedies. In fact my highest aspiration is to write scripts for television and/or film. However, as far as this blog is concerned, I mostly stick with live comedy. Many people are already covering the other, and live is such a rich fertile ground for experimentation and growth. If you were to ask me what my favourite media-produced comedy is at the moment, it’s a video blog: Glove and Boots.
Glove and Boots follows the thoughts, insights, and adventures of a group of puppets. The two lead puppets are Fafa the groundhog, and Mario, a red, bearded fellow. Their delivery is more Crow and Tom Servo of Mystery Science Theater 3000 than The Muppets. Their humour is squarely aimed at a grown up audience who still enjoy a bit of whimsy and chaos.
Big media loves their storytelling formulas. Large sums of money are being invested, so they want surefire winners. The problem is they get safe, bland, and forgetable stories. So when something like Glove and Boots comes along playing both with and outside these formulas, the laughter is long and loud. Surprise is key to comedy. You drop the formulas, you get more surprise. I love not knowing what’s coming next and being delighted when I get there.
The below selection is my favourite episode from the blog. Pay close attention to the paraphernalia in the room. They place a lot of running gags and referential jokes in the background.
Peace and kindness,
Katherine
Quotes: Dawn French
Posted on 20 January 2012 | No responses
I never do any television without chocolate. That’s my motto and I live by it. Quite often I write the scripts and I make sure there are chocolate scenes. Actually I’m a bit of a chocolate tart and will eat anything. It’s amazing I’m so slim.
—Dawn French, comedian, writer, and actor
Comedy and Civilisation
Posted on 19 January 2012 | No responses
Once upon a time how civilised a man was reflected on the quality of his manhood. A robust man went to the opera because that showed he was the epitome of evolution. After all he had the intelligence and ingenuity to create and enjoy such entertainment.
Civilisation, and the coordinated cooperation that comes with it, has certainly made it possible for us to develop survival strategies at a much faster pace than biological evolution. However like many things such as cyanide, which becomes toxic with refinement, certain aspects of our culture have become toxic with their refinement: things including media marketing, corporate values, and the concentration of power.
The core values that are consciously and subconsciously driving our culture are: status, dominance, and control at all costs.
For a bit of fun I regularly read the Neatorama Website. Recently they republished an article that was based on a campaign begun by Commercial Alert in the 90s. This campaign had to do with the way companies were attempting to control the minds of our children in order to extract more money from the parents. Here is a portion of the open letter sent by Ralph Nader, Gary Ruskin, and a group of others in 1998 to the International Advertising Association in order to encourage the establishment of ethical guidelines.
Advertising firms use techniques that harm children and families, including:
- Convincing children that purchasing products will solve their problems and make them happy.
- Exploiting a child’s emotional weaknesses, such as his or her sense of insecurity, inferiority, need to be loved, powerlessness, and need to fit in. Nancy Shalek, then-president of Shalek Advertising Agency, explained: “Advertising at its best is making people feel that without their product, you’re a loser. Kids are very sensitive to that. If you tell them to buy something, they are resistant. But if you tell them that they’ll be a dork if they don’t, you’ve got their attention. You open up emotional vulnerabilities and it’s very easy to do with kids because they’re the most emotionally vulnerable.”
- Fueling anger and rebelliousness among youth. According to Rick Litman, a partner at Kid 2 Kid Research, “marketing is a unique process in which corporations learn to use youth rebellion to more effectively target a product and sell a product.”
- Manipulating children to nag their parents to buy products. In other words, pitting children against their own parents, and causing strife within families. As Cheryl Idell, director of strategic planning and research at Western International Media, explains “It’s not just getting kids to whine, it’s giving them a specific reason to ask for the product.”
Children are unable to defend themselves against this commercial manipulation. They cannot understand the manipulation that your industry subjects them to. They are not mature enough to see through what advertisers direct towards them.
Think about when that was written. It would mean that people had been observing and creating the effects of child targeted advertising for at least a decade. So the generation of comedians we are now seeing would have been influenced by a culture saturated with this child marketing. I remember in my own childhood how angry some parent groups were with Sesame Street because it deliberately used advertising formats as a way to capture the attention of children and teach them literacy and numeracy.
This generation has been taught to be insecure and that insecurity is resolved through materialism (life is short, eat dessert first). They have been taught that it’s cool to be rebellious like the kids in the sixties had been, but it’s taken out of context and equated with freedom without responsibility (silence is golden, but shouting is fun). They have been taught the need for uniforms of solidarity in a generational us against them culture (all black couture and all the latest technology). And they completely get the golden rule: those who have the gold make the rules. And how do you get that gold: status, dominance, and control.
It’s no wonder we have so many angry comedians at the moment. Anger has been portrayed as sexy. And yet mostly I’m seeing purely anti-social anger. During the Vietnam war when George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, and the Smothers Brothers were angry, they had a reason to be angry. Ongoing racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc means that when Dick Gregory, Margaret Cho, and Lily Tomlin are angry, they have reason to be angry. This generation has reason to be angry as well, but marketing has made it hard for them to properly see and take aim at their target.
The skinny-fat debate has women tearing one another to shreds. This plays right into the hands of corporations who will use the anger and insecurity to sell more products. The solution is for women to turn around and demand to be valued for the quality of their character, rather than their appearance. Men are given cool detached icons to emulate—so cool and detached that men are no longer involved with families, friends, or their community, then have severe problems with loneliness, depression, and suicide.
In fact we are seeing a massive divide and conquer campaign through marketing. So long as people distrust and wish to out-do one another, you can convince them to keep on buying your “weapons” such as makeups or 4WDs. The arms race we are holding against ourselves is bringing about the dissolution of our civilisation.
Think about how many close friends you really have. Facebook has encouraged a generation who are satisfied with “Tupperware friends”. These are friends close enough to invite to the party, distant enough to not mind selling them things. What everyone needs is at least three “lasagne friends”. These are friends who when you have no money after the rent is paid are happy to pop by with a lasagne.
In my pursuit to get laughs I’m disturbed about the times when I have been complicit in this culture. When I make self-deprecating jokes about the (small) size of my breasts: on the one hand I am revealing to other women that I have insecurities as well, on the other I am perpetuating the idea that breast size is an issue of real concern.
I’m also aware of the times when certain comedies started out as satire, but ended up being perceived as celebrations of the very things they stood against. The character of Archie Bunker in All In The Family was meant to be an unreconstructed man and a person worthy of derision. Every week he was given one-liners to characterise his narrow view of the world, such as, “I’m not racist! I’ll be the first to say it, it’s not their fault they’re colored!” People would then quote these the following week in a positive manner. The creators cancelled the show when they discovered the hero Archie had become to their audience. The Simpsons followed a similar trajectory, their lead characters originally were meant to be unsympathetic. I once worked with a child whose developmentally delayed brother was forbidden to watch The Simpsons because he would emulate Bart. He was incapable of seeing the satire. What he saw was a self-directed, empowered boy.
Addressing these issues is tricky, but it still needs to be done. Fear has brought us to this place. Fear about survival, fear of one another, fear of loneliness. Carpe diem (seize the day) has been too long interpreted as “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.” Instead let us savour experience out of a respect for life. This draws out the fear and grounds us in a healthy and balanced approach to the present. You can also “seize the day” by performing one act of kindness right here and right now.
The awesome thing about live comedy is that it brings people into a social experience. The next step is activate these people into forming communities. These could simply be communities of friendship, but that’s a big step toward eliminating the fears. The following step would be to help these communities begin a dialogue, which is a thoughtful and compasionate examination of all things social, political, commercial, etc, followed by life-affirming action. Now is the time for people to learn how to think for themselves. Now is the time for people to assert for themselves that they are valuable, not because they look a certain way or own certain things, but because they care and are doing something about it.
Can you tell a joke that makes someone feel better about themselves? Start doing it. It will be the most authentically edgy thing you could do today.
Peace and kindness,
Katherine
Funding A Comedy Show
Part 3: Crowdfunding & Personal Fundraising
Posted on 16 January 2012 | No responses
Crowdfunding and personal fundraising are often done hand in hand. You don’t have to use crowdfunding to raise sufficient funds through an event, but you absolutely will have to run events to make the crowdfunding work. So, I will discuss these together.
Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is all the buzz right now. It’s often seen as the most positive way to raise money: you are by-passing banks and relying on the community to help you. You should be aware of the caveats.
Crowdfunding is a form of microfinancing. By combining micropayment technology and social media, various organisations have made it possible for projects to solicit for funding in amounts as small as two dollars per investor. If you can then get a thousand people to kick in that much, you will have the two thousand you need to produce a show for Melbourne Fringe. It also becomes a form of advertising, making people aware of your show.
Often project organisers offer something in return for various levels of funding. For two dollars they might list your name on their Website as having contributed. For twenty dollars they might give you a ticket to their show (a form of pre-purchasing). For fifty you could get a ticket and a program. For one hundred the artists/actors/comedians will sign your program and you are invited to the after-party.
Different crowdfunding groups will charge you in different manners for their service. Some will expect a percentage of your income and others ask for a small flat fee. So you will need to take that into account. Also worth noting, some groups use a threshhold system. You ask for a certain amount, say $500, and if you don’t receive $500 by the deadline you have set, all contributors’s money is returned and no funding is passed onto you. You are always aware of how much money has gone into your request for funds, so if you have received $480 in pledges, most crowdfunding sites are happy to let you pay in the $20 difference and receive the monies.
Threshholding sounds hard-nosed, but there is wisdom in it. When you desperately want to get your show off the ground, you want any and/or all money you can get, and may be willing to go forward even though your show is under-funded. This invites disaster and people will become disillusioned with investing, if it means losing money to a failed show. It takes bravery to realise that now may not be the time to put on a certain show and to let it go. If you let it go, no one has lost out and no one feels put out. So, they might be willing to invest again when you are better prepared.
Now anyone who thinks they can just put their project onto a crowdfunding site and expect the dollars to roll in is fooling themselves. Setting up shop is only the beginning. You have to aggresively market your project and the page where people can donate. To do that you should have a plan and a team of helpers.
Your plan will include developing promotional media, such as YouTube videos, that you will post at various intervals. You will be prepared to cross-promote on FaceBook, Twitter, Google+, your fan mailing-list, and a professional Website. You will encourage your friends and family to write about you in their blogs and link to you on their favourite social media. You will regularly post updates about your campaign on the crowdfunding site. You will run events to encourage people to donate.
Sound like a lot of work? It is, and particularly hard for people who are a bit shy, private, or uncomfortable with marketing themselves. The extroverts succeed here. The good news is that funding deadlines work best when they are only between 60 to 70 days, longer than that and people’s interest wanes.
IndieGoGo runs a helpful blog to improve your crowdfunding efforts. Some Australians have successfully used IndieGoGo. However, we do have an Australian crowdfunding site: Pozible which has had many success stories of its own.
Personal Fundraising
Any fundraising you do can be directed toward your crowdfunding efforts. You can make entry into a dunk-tank event, for instance, dependent upon people donating on a laptop you have made available which is connected to your crowdfunding site.
Fundraising usually requires money up front. As an example if you decide to have a fundraising preview show, you will probably need money to rent a venue and sound equipment.
The most genuinely effective fundraising event I ever run is a garage sale. That requires little to no up front money. Ask family and friends if they have items they wouldn’t mind you taking off their hands, put this together with your own stuff. Around a week before the sale, put up posters and arrow signs along your street and nearby major roads. It is useful to put a small ad in your local paper, since that will increase numbers of buyers. Afterward make use of Freecycle to give away the leftovers.
Other events I have run include a chocolate tasting party, where I went to a quality chocolate manufacturing plant and purchased several boxes of their cheap off-shaped chocolates. Keep in mind that people NEVER eat as much chocolate as they think they will, and need a few savouries like carrot-sticks between rounds of sweets. I ran a number of film nights at a community neighbourhood house, where we checked out and ran films from the state film library and sold homemade chocolate chip cookies during intermission (the aromas from baking them during the first half of the evening ensured sales). I also ran tarot and massage days with the help of various friends.
If you run event fundraisers, make sure you have a strong box for the cash—even a small one. It’s not so much about theft, as having a clear place to store funds while you are keeping the event moving forward. Use these events to hand out flyers to your show and to take names and email addresses of people to put them on your mailing list.
At the end of events be sure to count your money then immediately deposit it into a business savings fund. You need a good way to ensure that money is 100% earmarked for your show, with no temptation to spend it on other things.
If you have any other fundraising ideas, please feel free to share them in the comments. It’s mostly a matter of knowing what you have to offer and what your “peeps” would find interesting. If you have been taking belly-dancing classes, have a belly-dancing event where you dance and perhaps teach others a little of the basics. If you are good at photography, have a day where people can get funny portraits of themselves with a giant soft toy. It’s all about making people feel happy to contribute to your dream. And if they are having fun, they will.
Peace and kindness,
Katherine
Dick Gregory
First African-American Comedian to Play to both Black and White Audiences
Posted on 15 January 2012 | No responses
In 1961 Dick Gregory began his career as a comedian at Roberts Show Bar in Chicago doing social/political satire. He was soon hired by Hugh Hefner to perform at the Chicago Playboy Club and went on to perform on The Jack Paar Show, a nationally broadcast US television show. He continues to perform standup to this day.
Dick was active in the African-American civil rights movement, Vietnam protests, and a supporter of the feminist movement.
Happy Martin Luther King Jr Day!
Peace and kindness,
Katherine
Quotes: Jerry Juhl
Posted on 13 January 2012 | No responses
I’ve worked with genius performers. Sometimes they created great work with a bad script…but not often. Play it safe: write well.
—Jerry Juhl, head writer: The Muppet Show & Fraggle Rock
Funding a Comedy Show
Part 2: Private Granting Institutions and Sponsorships
Posted on 10 January 2012 | 1 response
Going for private granting and sponsorships can be a tricky path to follow. You must be prepared to make compromises. You must be willing to be a poster child for someone else’s interests. You must play the popularity game, and show you will attract a large enough audience to make it worth a sponsor’s while.
What You Are Offering
You can either start with a show you have already developed and try to pitch that, or you can tailor your show to the needs and interests of the sponsors and institutions you are approaching. Granting institutions that were founded by large companies may genuinely be seeking to benefit the community. However, an element of image marketing is always going to be a part of the process. Will helping you make them look good?
Jason Chong created a marvelous show in 2009 called Why The Bloody Hell Aren’t Ya? Its subject was the value of blood donation. The inspiration was the health crisis Jason faced when his father collapsed from internal bleeding and needed transfusions. This show was performed at both the Adelaide and Melbourne Fringe Festivals. It has also been taken to Adelaide schools. It was an original work with great passion behind it, and could easily have been pitched for either government or private funding in order to tour. A step to make this happen would probably be forming a relationship with someone like the Red Cross, so that their name would be on the posters and they would assist with marketing.
Of course a work like this would not tour solely as a comedy show. Nevertheless, it would further establish Jason as a comedian, and one with heart. The high likeability factor would make everyone involved look good, and it would deliver an important message. It’s a win-win for comedian and sponsors.
Certain subjects lend themselves to an easy pitch. My brother-in-law Steven Pam produces a television show called Hound TV. Animals, and especially dogs, are a popular subject. Steven definitely likes dogs. He specifically chose the subject because he knew he could get sponsorship to pay for his learning how to create for the small screen. Soon after he had the go-ahead to run his show, he gained the advertising dollars of a prominent pet-supply chain.
It’s important to note Steven put his show together BEFORE talking to advertisers. So, he wasn’t sucking up to any one company, he simply had something to sell. This meant he still had space to give his personal vision scope on the project. I’ve had direct experience with companies who will want to take over creative control, in order to turn a project into one long advertisement for their company, and often their ego. Any vision, creativity, or soul will be sucked out of such projects, and despite initial funding, will fail. You have to be sufficiently confident and prepared, so that companies won’t try to kill the goose that’s laying their golden eggs.
The less obviously commercial show subjects may be better suited to government grants. However, you might be able to find non-obvious angles. Are your characters Greek or bird-fanciers? A Greek restaurant near your venue might be happy to kick in a few dollars in order for you to encourage people to eat at their establishment after the show. A bird-fanciers association may be happy to pitch in free props for a plug, thereby at least reducing your costs. I have a routine that involves two Tiki god puppets. I casually mentioned them at a shop that used a Tiki as their logo and the shop actually offered sponsorship on the spot.
Where to Go
The Web has made charity sponsorships apparently easier. Some large companies inform you online how they wish to be approached for sponsorship. Boost Juice for instance puts this on their contact page. Be warned that the email forms you are asked to use to pitch your project may be sent through a program, which automatically weeds out requests based on certain key terms. If you don’t hear from these companies in a few weeks, very likely you never will. I would say after three weeks, go ahead and give them a call but don’t expect much.
The Australian Directory of Philanthropy includes a section where individual and corporate donors for the arts are listed. The donors often ask that the particular creation addresses certain issues, such as poverty, the environment, or peaceful international relations. They are also more interested in organisations and group works. You can purchase the directory or subscribe to the online version. I would suggest tracking down a nearby library that has a copy. I know Box Hill and Holmsglen TAFEs both have copies.
The Australian Business Arts Foundation may provide the most help in tracking down a good funding match. They hold courses, events, workshops, and consultations on developing your arts based business and finding money. They don’t directly create matches between artists and donors, but they do publicly list projects by individuals in need of donors through the Australia Cultural Fund.
It may also be worth approaching the Awesome Foundation and perusing ArtsHub, who regularly report on funding opportunities, and Sponsorship News to get an idea of how sponsorship works on the grand scale.
How to Pitch
This deserves an entire article of its own. But I will touch on a few points here and you can keep your eyes peeled for further developments.
When making a pitch be sure to have done your research FIRST. Know what the company or funding institution wants and follow it to the letter. Know your show: know how much it will cost to sensibly produce it, how big the venue is, what your ticket price will be, what your break even point is, plus all other marketing and business details.
Be realistic. If you are clearly a new comedian and yet you are making grand predictions about your success without any evidence to back it up, you won’t get the money. At the same time have a grand enough vision that you are interesting. I know, that’s a tricky balance. Don’t be shy about asking for what you genuinely need. Know what your bottom line is and don’t budge for anything less. Underfunded projects usually fail.
Approach companies and donors confidently and respectfully. Act as if you expect a positive outcome, but be gracious in accepting a “no” when it happens. Regardless of outcome, ALWAYS thank the person you spoke to about funding. They may agree to fund you at a later date, if you haven’t burnt your bridges.
If you take up sponsorship, then you must check with your festival, event, or venue what is permissible in the way of promotional material. Some festivals don’t like sponsorship at all and will make their omission part of the contract for participation. For tours sponsorships, grants, or donations are often essential. So getting a little practise pitching and selling to say, a local business for a show in your suburb, is a useful thing.
Peace and kindness,
Katherine
How Many Stephen Colberts Are There?
Posted on 7 January 2012 | No responses
Fascinating New York Times article about Stephen Colbert, his development as a comedian, and how The Colbert Report came into being and functions.
By now Colbert and his staff, which numbers about 80, have the show down to something like a science. They call it the “joy machine,” with equal emphasis on the fun and the mechanics, and the engine runs practically nonstop, at very high r.p.m.’s. By 11 every morning, a rough plan for that day’s show is established and the writers — all of them brainy and most in their 30s — are sent off, usually in pairs, to come back with finished scripts in just a couple of hours. Editing and polishing goes on all day, and sometimes continues even after the taping is done, around 9 or so.
“How Many Stephen Colberts Are There?” by CHARLES McGRATH
Quotes: Ruth Buzzi
Posted on 6 January 2012 | No responses
Life has all sorts of hills and valleys, and sometimes you don’t end up doing what you had your heart set out on, but sometimes that’s even better!
—Ruth Buzzi, comedian, actor