In my recent appearance on the More Than One Lesson podcast we spoke about a lot of movies, so I decided for my next article I would write about a few sort of under the radar TV comedies.
David Zucker (one of the comedy geniuses behind Airplane! and The Naked Gun) stated in his “15 Rules of Comedy” that, “Two jokes at the same time cancel each other out. When an actor delivers a punchline, it should be done seriously. It dilutes the comedy to try to be funny on top of it. Likewise, if there is something silly going on in the background, the foreground action must be free of jokes and vice-versa.” There’s a scene about halfway through Man Camp where some of our characters find themselves in a bar fight that violates this very rule. The fight in the background is played for laughs as a couple other characters have a conversation that is also meant to be funny. It’s not that these are strict laws that must be adhered to, and if something works, then it works. But when you’re making your directorial debut with a broad comedy, you would do well to heed the advice of David Zucker. Unfortunately, first time director Nate Bakke did not.
