Many of the things people claim to know about comedy are, in fact, myths. We've all heard those myths: "The letter K is funny." "Comedy comes in threes." "Comedy is exaggeration." "Comedy is mechanical." "Comedy is about feeling superior to other people." "You have to be born funny." "If you try to explain the joke, you'll kill it." "Either you're funny, or you're not." And, of course, the one thing that everyone knows about comedy: "You can't teach comedy." YOU HAVE TO BE BORN FUNNY How are you born funny? I don't think there's many OBN/GYN's who have had the experience of delivering a baby, slapping it on its behind, only to have the baby turn around and say, "Hey, how you doing? Anybody here from out of the O.R.? Hey, a funny thing happened to me on the way out of the fallopian tubes!" Somewhere between being the doctor slapping you on the butt and the Grim Reaper slapping you into a coffin, funny people somehow learn to be funny. How do they learn it? Excerpted from The Hidden Tools of Comedy: The Serious Business of Being Funny by Steve Kaplan All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
