Stand Up Routine

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"Pause for laughs" - you might to wait rather a long time for laughs as I'm not sure a lot of your jokes will make them.

I don't get the pig/rake joke.

The die hard joke is a very weak pun.

You can't rely on the audience member to laugh to set up your joke.

The popcorn bit is pretty weak and may not technically be a joke at all.

Otherwise, good luck and have fun when you perform it.

When you step on a rake it's the handle that flies up and hits you. The pig would get a bruised snout, not cut into pieces.

I agree with everything that Tiggy has said, and would add that I do not enjoy talking about how expensive things are, especially as you are being condescending to women by saying that the man pays for everything. You do have a nice conversational style, but you need some stronger jokes. I hope you post some more work on here, but let us decide where we might pause to laugh.

Don't write laughs into your script/routine it will go tits up the minute someone heckles or shouts you will lose track remember the audience haven't got a script. Just perform, be natural don't wait for laughs, if you're good enough they will laugh.

Maybe you could film yourself performing this in an empty room? That would be really really good to see.

Deja vus Hello you

Take no notice of the pillocks Francis. Take on board the constructive criticism from those who have bothered to offer up some helpful words.

Unfortunately I too didn't find your routine funny but you are on the right road. I won't reiterate what has already been said. From another perspective many stand-up scripts don't necessarily read funny but it's all about personality and how you put your words across. The best advice I can offer is write / re-write / get reviews etc...you WILL end up with a funny stand up routine.

If you do decide to hang around - I would highly recommend reading as many other sketches on here as you can and continue writing and posting. For every 3 totties that post unhelpful nonsense you will get a constructive review that will help you to improve.

Don't jump ship quite yet and head back to the awful world of seriousnessness!

Where is the cleft based Francis?

Have to admit, I thought that was pretty weak, I'm afraid. I didn't go for the bad gags (cluck; vested) but at least they were jokes - you could possibly beef up the latter by saying "I love the Die Hard films. Yeah, OK, I admit, my company does the costumes...so I have a vested interest". Hmm, still shit.

Some of it basically made no sense (rake), which I suppose could work if you had the right persona - although pausing all the time might kill that.

And finally the rest of it was pretty tired observation. If you're going to do that sort of thing, make it absolutely unique, compact and effortlessly repeatable ("what oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed" sort of thing), or twist the observations to make them jokes: "Aren;t films expensive nowadays? Twelve quid to go the flicks? I could have got one and a half bags of popcorn for that."

I appreciate my jokes are also shit, there's a reason I've never written stand up.

(Pause for critical adulation. And Godot)

Quote: Francis Cleft @ 25th July 2014, 11:55 AM BST

I've been wondering if comedy is really where my strength lies. I have written dramatic screenplays, so maybe if I post a link people could tell me if I do serious better than funny. This is link is just three or four pages from a piece I wrote called Dust to Dust.

Dust to Dust

View original

Ironically, I think this is slightly funnier, if anything.
Still pretty awful, though.

Though your mastery of screenplay format leads me to think this might be a wind-up.

Either way, perhaps you should spend some time reading real scripts and screenplays before you write anything else.

How expensive movies have got is right up there with the side effects of medicine. There's not a lot of stuff that someone else hasn't already talked about, to varying degrees of success.

Of course there's an unfair irony to the fact that if you mention something new and recent, there's a chance that your audience doesn't know what you're talking about yet.

We all start somewhere. You're just testing the waters and my best advice is to write about something you're knowledgeable about and the jokes progress naturally from that.

Movies aren't expensive.

How much does a cinema ticket cost? Compared say to a couple of pints and a cheesy nibble down the boozer?

It depends on where you go. At the AMC theaters the matinee tickets without 3D glasses are eight dollars and that's just your standard weekend price. If you don't have the weekends off, but you want to see a film before it's on DVD, you could be looking at fifteen to twenty dollars.

Franics: I've read the script. It could definitely use some polishing. There's a lot of telling and not showing, for example:

TRAMP
You asked for this.

The TRAMP lunges forward and tries to stab JUDITH, but she
evades the attack and knocks the knife out of the TRAMP'S
hand.

JUDITH
Didn't expect that, did you? When
Tom died, I did some martial arts.
I learnt how to defend myself
against animals like you.

You could cut that entire line out and not lose anything in this script.

TRAMP
I don't believe this is happening

Have Judith put the Tramp in a hold, or have her restraining him on the ground when the police officer comes along, so that it makes sense that they'd want to take her down to the police station.

This is just one example and there are a few times when you could just let the silence be a character and allow them to tell the story purely with action.