April The First

INT. DR'S SURGERY. OFFICE. DAY

Dr Dooverlackie is swivelling around on his chair until he hears a knock at the door.

Dr Dooverlackie
Come in.

A saddened looking man enters the office. He is wearing a cap over his bald head. This is JERRY.

DR DOOVERLACKIE
Hi Jerry, please, come in. Take a seat.

JERRY SITS.

DR DOOVERLACKIE
Now, I know you've been waiting for these results a while now, but they've arrived, and I'm happy to say, it goods news, the cancers cleared right up, you're gonna be fine.

JERRY
Really? That's great! So I'm gonna live, oh my God I'm gonna live.

Jerry jumps up and hugs Dr Dooverlackie.

JERRY
I'm so happy, I've gotta call my son.

DR DOOVERLACKIE
No don't do that...

Jerry innocently ignores Dr Doovalackie due to his overwhelming feelings of Joy and dials a number.

DR DOOVERLACKIE
Probably won't get a signal in here anyway!

JERRY
Jack, it's Dad, the cancers cleared up, I'm gonna be fine. Ok, see you soon, Love you so much.

Jerry hangs up the phone.

JERRY
Listen doc, thank you so much for all your help, you've been great. I'm gonna make sure the world knows about your marvelous practice and how wonderful you've been. Thanks doc.

Jerry gives Dr Dooverlackie one last hug and leaves the room. At that moment the Dr's assistant walks in and notices a worried looking Dr Dooverlackie.

ASSISTANT
Dr, what's wrong??

DR DOOVERLACKIE
I couldn't bring myself to say APRIL FOOLS!

Comedy is a complex thing, Macca - and 'offensive' comedy is one of the least-well-understood areas of that already complex subject.

The simplest way to explain it is perhaps to liken it to waving your willy at a group of people in the street. If it's small to middling, you're just going to make an arse of yourself. However, if it's a really big one, you'll get some respect. No matter how shocked or disgusted those people might be, you'll get some grudging respect from some of them if it's a genuine whopper.

Now, getting back to your sketch - it's a middle-sized willy, which is to say it's going to offend a lot of people without impressing many (if indeed any) of them.

After an offensive joke or sketch, and after flashing your willy in the street, if the audience say "Yes, it was offensive but it was also a wonderful example of the genre", you've won.

Cancer is such a dreadfully unfunny subject however, that to get a genuine laugh from any normal person with a cancer-related joke you have to come up with something very very good indeed. It's never easy and it's always dangerous.

To improve the script, you must either make it much more offensive or much less offensive.

I could make it much more offensive while simultaneously imbuing it with considerable comedic merit but that wouldn't be wise.

In making it less offensive, I think a young teenage girl getting the results of her pregnancy test might be about your best bet in terms of offending some people while also getting laughs.

Good luck!

Thanks buddy. I shall take that on board. I might play around with a few different scenarios/situation and see what works best. Maybe the April fools joke could be that the Dr tells the patient he is dying, then through shock the patient dies suddenly of a heart attack. Then the assistant could rush in and ask what happens and the Dr responds he was playing an April fools joke???

Quote: Macca @ November 6 2010, 1:33 PM GMT

Thanks buddy. I shall take that on board. I might play around with a few different scenarios/situation and see what works best. Maybe the April fools joke could be that the Dr tells the patient he is dying, then through shock the patient dies suddenly of a heart attack. Then the assistant could rush in and ask what happens and the Dr responds he was playing an April fools joke???

View original

A good comedian, like a gentleman, will never never offend anyone unintentionally.

Jokes, sketches, plays and films about death have always been popular but you'll find the most popular ones tend to treat death in such a way that it's separated from reality by some distance. There's often something about the situation which reassures the audience that it's not real.

The sketch you suggest would struggle to please a mainstream audience if the terminal disease struck a realistic chord with them (i.e. if it were a familar killer).

It would succeed, however, if it were a fictitious tropical disease with a vaguely comedic name.

When visualising the sketch, I see the doctor trying to ascertain how the disease was contracted:

DOCTOR: Have you been to the Tropics recently?

THE DOC GIVES HIM A LOOK AS IF TO SAY 'THAT'S IT THEN'.

See, I'm writing the thing already!