Third Beat

WEBCAST TO BROADCAST

Panelists: Josh Faure-Brac (Creator & Executive Producer, SuperNews), Steven K.L. Olson (Director of Animation, SuperNews)

There’s no way around it: I completely bailed on this one. I even bailed on the thing I was intending to bail on it for (the Artists vs. Industry ball hockey game).

Funny thing about Just For Laughs: your perception of time kinda fades throughout the week. The day goes fast, the evening is full of so many shows that you lose track of what time it is, and before you know it you’re back at the Hyatt bar sitting and chatting with an array of really awesome people who totally trump sleep. When people start to trickle in for round 2 after the big Russell Peters dance party around the corner has shut down, and you realize it’s almost 4 a.m…. Oops.

I asked a lot of people if they made it to hear the SuperNews guys speak on Saturday morning, and they hadn’t. Shows went late. The midnight party went late. Kibitzing around the hotel bar went late.

On behalf of all of us who overdid it the night before, please accept the following linkage with my apologies.

SuperNews: http://current.com/supernews/

SuperNews blog: http://blogs.current.com/supernews/

Steven K.L. Olson: http://www.sklomotion.com/

Josh Faure-Brac on Twitter: http://twitter.com/super_Josh

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IN CONVERSATION…WITH TODD PHILLIPS

Speaking of heavy drinking and the morning after… JFL’s Comedy Director of the Year Todd Phillips was interviewed by Bill Carter of the New York Times, spending a very entertaining hour talking almost exclusively about directing The Hangover.

He was recently out for lunch in Los Angeles, when a firefighter recognized him from his part in Old School, and yelled “I’m here for the gang bang!” The kicker: he was at lunch with his mom.

Phillips takes public feedback to test screenings very personally, recalling an instance of him “lying behind the back row of a theatre in Burbank” listening to an audience react to a screening. The studio told him that the only person to be more angst-ridden over test screenings is Oliver Stone.

For test screenings, they rarely bother to look at “the cards” (the written surveys the participants fill out), because the general consensus from the type of people who see his screenings is that he needs more scenes about pot. He says they use nightvision to film the audiences’ faces, which doesn’t just measure when they’re laughing and how hard, but also shows them when they’re getting bored and fidgity.

Fun fact: The original draft of The Hangover had no stolen tiger, and no missing baby.

Reluctant to answer questions about Mike Tyson’s acting skills, Phillips would only say “he’s a boxer”, and “he really likes fucking with people’s perceptions of him.”

The epic story of how Ed Helms removed his dental implant for the role is well known, but Phillips provided a few extra details. At first, they tried various methods of covering his tooth, including blacking it out and greenscreening it. Nothing was working, and Phillips was stressing over it, when Helms finally revealed it was an implant. Being the good friend he is, Phillips made him feel bad about it, telling him “it’s so much smaller than your other teeth”. (You be the judge.)

He convinced Helms to have it replaced (courtesy of the film’s budget) and even debriefed the dentist (who happened to also be his own dentist) to not make a big deal of it to Helms. It would be easy! While he was without an implant, Helms wore a retainer-type device with a single tooth on it, and even had to wear it well into production of The Office in case there had to be additional shooting for The Hangover.

On judging whether something is funny or not while shooting it, and not always relying on crew laughter as a barometer: “sometimes they laugh because they want you to stop and go for lunch.”

On Zach Galifinakis: His comedy is so subtle, “unless you play to that, he can really get lost in a movie.”

On Bill Carter reciting a list of his in-development projects: “You can’t treat IMDB like it’s the Wall Street Yournal. You realize it’s some 14 year old in Tampa writing those.”

The famous promo shot of the guys in the elevator was not re-staged for still photography. Phillips loved that shot so much while filming, he had them stay put and called the still photographer over to shoot it.

When he’s shooting, he can sense when a scene is not working, and just stopping and taking a walk with the guys to figure it out can help significantly.

There are always a few days scheduled after wrapping for reshoots. For the Hangover they didn’t have to reshoot any scenes to make them better, just shoot new ones for continuity (ie. to bridge scenes A and D, when B and C had been cut).

On doing movies that have real characters in plausible situations: “I like Austin Powers as much as anyone, but it’s not the kind of movie I want to make.”

Alright, let’s tighten these things up, shall we? The balance of Thursday’s seminars weren’t quite as rockin’ as the not-all-that-rockin’-anyway development panel in the morning, but here’s the gist of what went down:

COMEDY’S NEXT GENERATION OF WRITERS

Moderator: David Bernath (SVP Programming, Comedy Central)

Panelists: Kristofor Brown (Writer – Drillbit Taylor, Beavis and Butt-Head), Etan Cohen (Writer – Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, Tropic Thunder), Tami Sagher (Writer/ Executive Story Editor – 30 Rock; Writer/Producer- MADTV), Rob Sheridan (Writer and Story Editor – Corner Gas; Co-Executive Producer – Little Mosque on the Prairie), Dan Sterling (Executive Producer & Head Writer – The Sarah Silverman Program)

Changes in the industry lately? A few panelists cited the work of Judd Apatow and Todd Philips making it possible to make films that aren’t star-driven.

Does writing for the internet require a different type of pacing to account for shorter attention spans? Etan Cohen says that pacing has increased in general, and everyone is packing more into a shorter timeframe. He cited the Comedy Network series Hotbox as an example of a good fast-paced show.

Tami Sagher said that on 30 Rock, they will write subtle jokes into the background to reward fans for paying attention. And as for that McFlurry product integration controversy? They really did just do that on their own, without receiving any money (just permission) from McDonald’s. Sagher admits the staff may have been naiive to think audiences wouldn’t automatically assume there was a cash deal in place.

Etan Cohen is working on the film adaptation of the Candy Land board game, and has found one unforseen quirk in the writing process: some Candy Land candies are specific to the US, and they need to be excluded from the script so the film can play internationally.

Best advice for young writers? From Dan Sterling: “Become a director.” No, seriously. Put your own stuff online, he says, because people are more inclined to watch a Youtube video than read your Office spec script.

Best quote, I believe from Kris Brown: “We can talk about all the shows we love, but Paul Blart and Two and a Half Men will stomp the shit out of those.”

Comedy's Next Generation of Writers

THE WEB: COMEDY’S NEW WILD WEST

Moderator: Simon Assaad (Co-Founder / Co-CEO, Heavy.com)

Panelists: Michael Buckley (Host/Writer, What the Buck!), Michael Farah (Producer, FunnyOrDie.com), Darrin McAfee (Principal, E-Comic Branding/Levity Entertainment Group), Avi Rothman (Creator, The Inappropriate Yoga Guy), Ricky Van Veen (Co-Founder / Editor in Chief, CollegeHumor.com)

I’ll be honest — I was tardy in my arrival for this one, but thankfully there’s a very detailed recap available at The Comic’s Comic.

Two quick things I took away from this:

Funny or Die doesn’t run ads before each clip on their site. But Michael Farah expects this to change within the next year. You have my sympathies, nerds.

And yes, Darrin McAfee from E-Comic Branding did talk about how easy it is to get artists’ “superfans” to do the “heavy lifting”. I think we’ve all seen this in action for quite some time. I’ve been a journalist for 10+ years, and always find it adorable that people who run fansites or fanblogs get all proud about their new best friend at some publishing or film company, who generously hooked them up with the thinnest of promotional content. It keeps working, though I think E-Comic is aiming to make it work on a more substantial level.

Just hours after this, E-Comic sent around the “customized” Jim Breuer insert-site-name-here promo, encouraging a select group of bloggers to post it on their sites. On the list of reasons why I didn’t post mine, getting my blog url wrong is at the top. Feeling like I was asked to show up at a party in the same dress as 5 other girls is a close second. And the assumption that you guys don’t come here to watch an ad would be third. If I were Jim’s biggest fan, I would have squeed heavily over the (mangled) mention of my site’s name and posted it everywhichwhere. But I’m not, so I didn’t, and I haven’t. (Am I too jaded? Don’t answer that.)

Etan Cohen accepts JFL's award for Comedy Writer of the Year

COMEDY WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD: Etan Cohen (Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, Tropic Thunder)

I almost didn’t stay for this, because people are usually only given awards as a way to lure them to your event. Whether this was the case with JFL or not, it didn’t matter, because it was actually fun and not at all as false as I’d predicted.

Dianna Schwalm from Warner Brothers Canada gave a slick introduction to Etan Cohen, who opened his speech with “I would thank God, but I’m not sure he approves of what I do for a living.”

By contrast, Bryan Callen took the stage for a hilariously awkward tribute to his Hangover director Todd Phillips, who reminded the young directors in the room that “if you’re getting into comedy for accolades and awards, you’ll be disappointed.”