Getting laughs out of places you would never think to get laughs
Sam Morril: "You’re setting yourself up for bigger laughs in the next line by getting that little laugh out of the gate. You’re getting the momentum in your favor."
How Sam Morril Gets Laughs Between Laughs. (It’s about Sam’s Snow White joke.)
With this joke, you have the setup, which is “They said Snow White is problematic,” and then you have the punch line, but the first laugh line is just you going, “And I was like, ‘All right.’” What is the laugh of, “And I was like, ‘All right’”?
They know who I am, so I think they know I have a problem, but they don’t know how I’m going to say it. You’re setting yourself up for bigger laughs in the next line by getting that little laugh out of the gate. You’re getting the momentum in your favor.It’s almost like a hesi move in basketball. Like, How can I get my jump shot wide open? Gary Gulman is great at getting laughs out of places you would never think to get laughs. I remember that he had a joke where he just said “ka-ra-te.” That shouldn’t be that funny, but it is because it’s very honest to his voice. He would just say, “I don’t know why you guys are laughing. That’s the proper pronunciation.” You learn to get laughs in between the jokes, and the more you write, you need those because holy shit. Storytellers — guys like Tom Segura or Jim Jefferies, people who write these long stories — they have to find those little laughs. But joke writers need that, too. You learn how to bring yourself to a joke, so that it’s not just a “joke like a joke book” joke.