An Unexamined Sketch is Not Worth Watching

Filed Under Sketch Comedy

Interesting articles on comedy is this week’s New York magazine. I’ll have many more comments tomorrow, but one quote from Lorne Michaels caught my eye (possibly because it indirectly crucifies my blog, as if the quote top right isn’t enough of a warning that I’m wasting my time). He says:

“I don’t want to get into any theoretical ideas about comedy. Anybody who talks about comedy for more than two minutes is not funny.”

Of course, I remembered the seminal book on SNL, the far too long out of print Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live, where authors describe Lorne Michaels as:

He analyzed comedy endlessly, theorizing, with an acid head’s attention to the underlying dynamics of it all, about what worked, what didn’t, and why. One of his favorite themes was the expressionistic barrnness of the old Honeymooners set; later he would become an advocate of realism, saying that humor derived from the one off-center element in a setting of absolute normality.”

Guess you weren’t too funny in ‘75 huh, Lorne?

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