Do comedy writers need to as funny as their scripts when pitching their film or TV project?
The script is a riot. It’s a page-turning jokefest that checks all the right boxes with humorous grace. Which begs the question: does the comedy writer need to be every bit as funny as their script when selling the next potential comedic hit for film or television?
“It should be funny,” Teresa Hsiao (Joy Ride) says, “especially because they need to know your voice. Having a sense of your voice through the comedy is important. I’ve heard it both ways. There are some people who go in, tell the premise, that they know through your writing that you’re funny already, and they know that the actor attached is funny. They don’t worry as much about the jokes. But as a comedy writer, you should throw in jokes no matter what, because that’s essentially what your job is.”
The former showrunner of Nora from Queens doesn’t need to leave executives howling and banging their desks as they hit the magical green light button, though. Even if a joke can score a smile at best over a Zoom call, crack it. “Sometimes if you’re so focused on, ‘Get me through all the plot points,’” Hsiao added, “then it’s easier for them to zone out and check their email on the side.”
Derek Kolstad takes a slightly different approach, given he writes action and comedy, but he packs films such as Nobody and Normal with as many stomach-busting gags as bone-breaking punches. He also concurs with Hsiao: “You don’t need to have the people you’re pitching to cackling with laughter the whole time. You just want to have that warm smile Christmas morning, of going, ‘Ooh, I like this. What’s next? Ooh, I like this.’”
Vanessa Ramos, who crafted airtight plots and jokes for Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney, also wants laughs to help both tell and sell her story.
“I try to make it funny because it’s a comedy,” Ramos says, “and generally if it’s funny, the pitches go by faster and people leave there feeling good about it. Don’t you want a good feeling as they’re thinking about it? I’ve talked to people, too, that find it distracting. I try to strike a good balance. But I’ve had pitches where they tell me after, ‘It’s so refreshing to hear jokes in a pitch.’ I want to make sure I hit all of my points. The characters are clear. The relatable thing is clear. You have your point A to point B. As long as those points come across, I’m going to make it light and throw in examples of things that characters do.”
For writers who deliver bigger laughs on the page than in the room, fear not (too much). It didn’t hurt comedy screenwriting and playwriting icon Neil Simon’s (The Odd Couple) career that he wasn’t a riot in the room—being a master of one-liners and character-driven comedy and known as a serious and quiet talker.
“We’re not performers necessarily, especially if you’re a writer-writer,” Hsiao says. “I know a lot of people who are like, ‘I go in, look at my paper, and I read my paper monotone.’ They’re still selling their pitches, and that’s great for them. Everyone has their own thing. You can’t be something that you’re not necessarily. Just be yourself.”
Executives, whatever the genre, ultimately ask the same question Kolstad does with every story.
“The best comedies are the ones that have real stakes and show real humanity,” Kolstad says. “They have characters that you really do care about, that you want them to win. That is what sells any show or film. In the first five minutes, do I, as a viewer, give a shit?”
You don’t need to have the people you’re pitching to cackling with laughter the whole time. You just want to have that warm smile Christmas morning of going, ‘Ooh, I like this.’
- Derek Kolstad
Comedy, maybe more than any other genre, is deeply subjective. What makes people cry—the loss of a loved one or the last day with a cherished pet—is fairly universal. What makes audiences laugh, that’s a trickier question mark as times and marketplaces change.
“For me, it’s more about dynamics and relatability,” Ramos says. “Do I have interesting characters that have something to say or that the person I’m pitching to can connect with? Also, it’s a bit of a moving target. I can’t predict what they’re going to want by the time I’m taking projects out, so I hope there’s something in there that’s universal enough to where they respond to it.”
Showmanship isn’t the be-all and end-all of pitching comedy. At the end of the day, though, a pitch can benefit from some level of performance.
“That’s a little bit of the fake confidence that you need to instill in yourself to put yourself out there in this way,” Hsiao says. “Part of me likes to think, ‘You should want to buy this. I’m giving you an opportunity to make millions of dollars. You should be so lucky.’”
It’s confidence, fake or real, that takes time and practice to hone.
“The grand irony is that we’re screenwriters. Why do we have to act?” Kolstad asks with a laugh. “I’m an introvert, man. I can do this. I can pitch. I can speak in front of a million people, but I used to want to curl up in an empty bathtub and cry myself to sleep because it just takes a while. It doesn’t give; it takes. The problem with the first couple [of pitches] is over-preparing, reading the pages without reading the room.”
Ramos has a solution. When it comes to reading the room and holding its attention, she’ll use a handy gag. If an executive appears lost in the clouds, she’ll snap them back to reality and draw them back into the material with a ludicrous, almost off-hand joke that leaves them asking, wait, what was that insane joke she just cracked?
“Then I move past it,” Ramos elaborates. “It’s a little bit of checking if they’re paying attention. It is keeping them from looking down at their phone. You pop them back up with, ‘That was silly,’ but it wasn’t disruptive to the point you’re trying to make and the pitch overall.”
The consensus is that laughs go far, but relatability goes farther. When pitching the most outlandish set pieces, emphasize character and story. Even if it’s a laugh that could potentially affect its get executives invested before pitching it.
“Sometimes the bigger the comedy moment, the more you have to ground the emotion around it so that it actually pops,” Hsiao says. “Joy Ride was a spec, but if we had pitched: ‘Hey, there’s going to be a crazy moment here where you’re going to see full nudity,’ you can’t just be like, ‘Hey, we’re going to throw a pussy tattoo on screen.’ You have to earn that moment. If we had pitched it, you could probably see a bunch of buttholes tightening up in the Zooms, being like, ‘Oh my God, no, we can’t do that.’”
