The Laurel and Hardy Legacy by Barry Brophy

Author:Barry Brophy [Brophy, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Comedy
Publisher: Bennion Kearny
Published: 2016-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

6. Actions & Reactions

Very often it is the reaction to a funny moment that makes it really funny. It’s like a punctuation mark, a point of inflection that gives the humour its beat. The Laurel and Hardy films were a veritable study in reactions; each comic’s humour being made funnier by the other.

[Graham Linehan] With every single joke in Laurel and Hardy, you get three for the price of one. You usually get Ollie’s reaction, and then you get Stan’s reaction, and then you get Ollie’s reaction to Stan’s reaction…and often they will go one further and cut back to Stan. And these three or four reactions each get a laugh.

There is something fundamental about the idea of reactions in comedy. In many ways, comedy is like the riddle of the tree falling in the forest – if the moment isn’t witnessed, can it be said to have been funny? How often have you experienced something in exasperation or disillusionment or disbelief, to later laugh about it when relating the incident to friends?

[Galton & Simpson] You have to have somebody to bounce off. When you have two, you can really explore the characters.

[Stephen Merchant] The dynamic in Extras, between Ricky [Gervais] and Ashley [Jensen] was explicitly a Laurel and Hardy. We sat down and said let’s do an idiot and another idiot, except we’ll just make one of them a woman. In fact Extras is almost entirely Laurel and Hardy, just differently apportioned: Me and Ricky, Me and Shaun [Williamson], Ricky and Ashley, Me and Ashley. Whatever it is, it’s really just a Laurel and Hardy set-up.

Sometimes something that wasn’t even particularly funny can be made funny by the reaction alone. And in extreme cases, a reaction is not even required; the absence of a reaction can say it all.

[Barry Cryer] Humphrey Lyttelton could get a laugh out of silence. You could almost see him when you were listening to the radio at home. One of us would have sung a song or something [on Sorry I Haven’t a Clue] and there would be a bit of applause and then nothing would happen for a few seconds and the audience would laugh. The people there could see him, obviously, but in a way at home you could get it, as well…that Humph was just thinking, ‘Oh, God, let’s move on to the next thing,’ but he would say this with a silence.

With Laurel and Hardy there were more than just the reactions to each other. There were the interactions with the people they brushed up against in what is usually a very hostile world. These other characters were a hugely important part of what made Laurel and Hardy work. They had to act, for the viewer, as a soundboard for Stan and Ollie’s daftness, and do so in a believable way.

[Stephen Merchant] It has to feel real. They have to be credible people because reacting to stuff is very hard to do. You need someone to witness the comic behaviour of Stan and Ollie, as this makes it funnier.

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