- Playing
- Funny Business
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- Brian Beatty
Comedy is not pretty. Or, at $100, cheap. In "Funny Business," I detail how I went from a nobody to a nobody who'd made people laugh by telling them my original jokes in four short weeks. What I learned about comedy and myself might encourage someone else with self-esteem issues to screw up the nerve to get on stage.
This piece is an early attempt to adapt my writing for broadcast, so it probably needs some work.
A longer, considerably different edit of this piece originally appeared in The Rake, a free Twin Cities monthly.
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Piece Description
Comedy is not pretty. Or, at $100, cheap. In "Funny Business," I detail how I went from a nobody to a nobody who'd made people laugh by telling them my original jokes in four short weeks. What I learned about comedy and myself might encourage someone else with self-esteem issues to screw up the nerve to get on stage. This piece is an early attempt to adapt my writing for broadcast, so it probably needs some work. A longer, considerably different edit of this piece originally appeared in The Rake, a free Twin Cities monthly.
4 Comments
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Review of Funny BusinessIt starts off with the pronouncement, “People have always laughed at me.” The reading style is very deadpan and unflashy-- sad almost, in a way that recalls Charles Bukowski’s reading style. I’ve never heard a radio documentary on this subject and I listened with great curiosity. It’s quite funny and enjoyable and has a built in story to it. He wants to try his hand at being a stand up comic and he takes us all the way through the training process at a kind of comedy school where students learn the seven levels of comedy. Beatty rings the inherent absurdity out of being taught how to be funny—the humor that emerges from the gulf between theory and practice. The only thing I would say that’s missing is some tape of the actual event at the end. The desire to hear how it goes becomes so great—because of how engaging the narrative is-- that by the end you just crave a bit of a bigger dramatic pay off. |
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Review of Funny BusinessAn odd little piece about a comedy course. Slower paced than it seems like it should be. The speaker has a style like a Steven Wright which would play well in a comedy club but kinda drags for an essay. It is well written and spoken but just leaves me waiting for something exciting to happen which never does. Would be a good piece for This American Life but probably has little use elsewhere. |
Sarah Cook
Posted on March 14, 2005 at 08:04 AM | Permalink
Review of Funny Business
The story was interesting, it seemed to be more sarcastic than humorous, but still amusing. I liked the way that it flowed and the progession of his classes with the progession of his humor. The voice was very intesting and really helped to carry the story, it was breathy and monotone in a way that was intriguing. The author wrote a quality story that was meant for radio but still had some literary merit.