…and now, so is comedy, thanks to two posts at The Artful Writer.
One is the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker Fifteen Rules of Comedy, and the other is the trio’s Comedy Glossary. ZAZ being the team that brought us the Airplane! and Naked Gun movie series, this is well worth reading.
Among the glossary’s entries:
Hair Under the Wings: A joke that compromises the integrity of the plot. A joke proposed for AIRPLANE! involved a shot of Ted Striker’s plane taking off with hair under its wings. Funny, but not good for the audience’s investment in the reality of the story.
Better yet, they link to this even-more-comprehensive glossary of writers-room jargon. I’ve always wondered what to call…
“the Gilligan cut”:
When you cut directly from a character declaring there’s no way he’s going to do something, to him doing it, for comedic effect.
