Shayne-Michael.COMedy

Road Comedy NO .4: Editing Montana For LA - by Shayne Michael

When I left the road I came back with the idea for a sitcom spec that might be a suitable replacement for the Dukes of Hazard, Green Acres, or the Beverly Hillbillies. What I didn't come back with was material that would work in Los Angeles, which was my next stop. That was because I didn't prepare when I left, or think about what I had done in Montana when I came back.

First, the road is not really for writing material, it's for earning money. That's why you need a piece of your own personal history before you start.

Before you go on the road, you should save at least one set list from before you started playing Montana. You want one set list that was built while you were only experiencing big city life and wasn't corrupted by the moo of cattle and the roar of the neighborhood tractor.

The Sheep Stay In Montana

Part of keeping you act appropriate for Los Angeles is realizing when you're writing material for Montana, that it was written for Montana. Being written in Montana, doesn't always mean being written for Montana. That's a call you must learn to make.

Sometimes, the roll of the rednecks laughter at a dive in Livingston will make you forget that a "no-teeth" joke is not sophisticated or shocking enough for the Sunset Strip.

Letting Go Of LA in Montana, Without Losing It

When I started on the road, I already told you about holding on too long to jokes about traffic lights. These joke weren't appropriate for a town of two hundred who had never seen anything more than the big ole' stop sign in the middle of Cheyenne.

My first mistake was holding on to those stop light jokes too long. My next mistake was cutting the traffic light jokes out of my set-list after I returned to the cities where traffic was real.

At that time, I visualized a set list as one dimensional. There was one perfect way to tell each joke. Once I found the right method for Montana, I completely forgot the way I use to tell it in LA, which was much better for LA.

Don't Do Drug Humor If You Don't Do Drugs, Unless...

I started comedy in Arizona, and incidentally my first road experiences. These experiences included Bisbee, Douglas, Winslow, and Pine: little holes in the middle of nowhere. I was quick to adapt to people who didn't appreciate my Scottsdale brand of humor, but when I came back I kept the revised set lists.

It's common knowledge that sex and drugs are the best material on the Arizona road. So, I struggled to write about drugs. I continued to write about drugs when I came back, despite never doing drugs in real life. But back in Arizona, even the classic one-liners fell flat.

Why could I get away with drug material on the road if it was out of character? Because on the road I was scared to dress up. Apparently you can't ride a horse or direct a tractor in a sport's coat and dress shoes. Outside of Scottsdale, I never tried.

I made myself fit in and came to look like everyone else in town. For that reason, it was easier for audience's to assume I was with them on the drug use. After all, I looked like everyone else in Douglas and what else is there to do in Douglas, Arizona but drugs if you can't drive a tractor?

In returning to Arizona, I should have cut the drug material out all together. It was meant for the road comedy version of myself. As clever as it was, it just wasn't me and I couldn't even fake interest in the material.

Scottsdale Doesn't Want To Hear Sheep Jokes

Looking back, I could have told sheep jokes in Montana, but they'd have only worked in LA. Comedy can come from putting characters in situations where they're not comfortable. It would have been hysterical for me to talk about myself trying to write sheep jokes. I hate dumb humor. Can you imagine a Dennis Miller approach to sheep fucking...

"The thing about fucking sheep as it relates to current events, the Parthenon and Helen of Troy ...."

Scottsdale Does Want To Hear Deer Jokes

I also came up with brilliant lines on the road that I never recognized were just funny in Los Angeles. Just because the road cities could relate to them more, didn't always mean LA couldn't relate at all.

In most cases I abandoned material written on the road all together thinking these lines were the same as sheep jokes. I had written a joke where I talked about hitting a deer: "Do you know what to do when you see a deer in the middle of the road?" I would ask. "You speed up, so that when you hit it, that deer will go flying over your car and it won't knock you off the road."

"You know what, you also piss off the guy in back of you. Look kids Rudolph, and he's gonna hit that redneck with the gun rack.... And then acted the redneck speeding away.

The mere fact that the story has a deer, a redneck and a gun-rack isn't enough to make this joke exclusively for Montana. This was one of those classic jokes that fits into the center. I didn't know, because I didn't try the joke in LA for two years. My only reason, was it was written in Montana.

However, if I had asked, "Can I set the joke in another place and remove the gun rack and call the redneck something else, will it still be funny?" The answer would have been yes. I could have hit a deer on a California freeway. That deer could have hit that a CHP car. That could have been how I ended up in my first obligatory high speed chase.

Bears Live In Wyoming But They Visit LA

In Montana, I found a pamphlet. The pamphlet said if the bear doesn't see you waive your hands and walk backwards. After the bear has seen you, curl up in a ball and play dead.

The original joke I wrote about it went, "If you see a bear and it hasn't seen you, waive your hands and walk backwards." Then I acted out someone waiving their hands which would obviously get the bear's attention, leading to an attack.

At that point, if you followed the pamphlet's advice and curled up in a ball to play dead, you were just making yourself an easy target. "Now you're in a nice bite-size little morsel when it tries to eat you."

The first part of the joke was too specific to Montana. For it to work, you have to visualize yourself walking through a forest, waving your hand being chased by a bear. In LA that's a stretch.

But that doesn't mean you need to abandon the material. The golden strategy to connect your audience to foreign material is the metaphor. In LA, I could have salvaged the first joke with the simile, "That's like swimming in Santa Monica, seeing a shark fin, watching the shark go the other direction, and cutting your arm off and throwing it at the shark to appease it until you get back to shore."

"Number one, all the blood just told all his shark friends that you're there. Number two you, can only swim in circles with one hand. And you can forget waving to ask the life guard for help."

The problem with creating this simile in Montana is when the nearest ocean is 5,000 miles away it's difficult to come up with them. That makes it difficult to writing the connecting metaphors when you write the material on the road.

The easiest tactic you can use is simply changing the setting with each joke. Simply say, if this joke were written in New York the joke would go... Then fill in the blank.

Editing Montana For LA

Making sure you return with a set list that works in LA after you play Montana is a simple process. The process begins by realizing you can't always play the same character in a small town and a big city. Some of the jokes that you write for that small city version of yourself will be inconsistent with who you are in LA.

As a general rule, ask yourself, "Is all the material I wrote about sex and drugs really about me?" If the answer is yes, of course keep it. If the answer is no, be strong enough to realize some material is only for Butte Montana.

The second step is realizing that not all material written about Montana is out of place in LA. Ask yourself, "Which new material about small town life is still useable?"

As a general rule, the material that defines specific towns you played isn't. The material that you met and how they live can either be scaled back or connected with the current audiences through metaphors and similes.

Once you have done that you should have three set lists: one perfect for Montana, one for the city where you live and one you wrote before ever stepping onto the road.

When you come back from Montana, you'll one up on the road comic who auditions for Mitzy Shore with the classic opening bit, "Just got back from Santa Monica. Nice to see an audience with teeth…"