"SILLY IS NOT FUNNY."
There’s a story that the former show-runner of the US Office, Brent Forrester, tells against himself to illustrate a vital rule in writing television comedy. It recalls the day he showed one of his earlier spec scripts to Golden Girls creator, Susan Harris.
Her response was withering.
“Silly is not funny,” she said.
Forrester has since reflected on Harris’s wisdom and acknowledged that his early attempts at writing comedy were unsellable “zany, silly, crazy… yuck fests.”
In a television comedy context, it’s hard to define what “silly” is because there aren’t many examples of it that have endured. That’s because silliness is “comedy” that has no point. It’s neither truthful nor grounded. It’s just a big swing at nothing. Some people say Jim Carey is silly. I disagree. Jim Carey is heightened, not silly. There’s a point to everything he does. And there’s something recognisable in even his biggest characters. Others say Monty Python was silly. Again, disagree. It was all social and political satire told through an absurdist lens. But what about the Ministry of Silly Walks? It even contains the word “silly” in its title? Yeah-nah, that sketch was a dexterous statement on self-importance and British bureaucratic inefficiency.
Silly comedy has no relationship with truth. And skewing the truth is what we’re all about. None of this is to say you won’t get a few laughs out of complete unhinged silliness, but not enough to justify millions being spent on a TV show. So what do you do instead?
Back in the day, Susan Harris told the young Brent Forrester to, 'Write what is difficult for you — even painful. Trust that it will come out funny.”
Says Forrester: “The crazy paradox about comedy writing is that the more seriously you approach it, the more likely you are to have it come out funny. To this day, whenever I get assigned to write a script, I say ‘Okay, given the parameters of the story I’ve been given, what from my own experience is difficult and painful that this story can explore. I really think the secret of why I’ve been able to continue to work in TV is that original rule.’"
Adam Zwar is the co-creator of the Australian comedy series Squinters, Lowdown and Wilfred, created the Channel 10 comedy series Mr. Black and the factual series Agony Aunts, Agony Uncles, The Agony of Life, The Agony of Modern Manners and Agony. He also presented and produced the cricket documentaries Underarm: The Ball that Changed Cricket and Bodyline: The Ultimate Test.