Or is all surrealism pointless?
Can you be surreal and have direction?
What do you mean by 'direction'?
Quote: Matthew Stott @ May 30 2013, 9:44 AM BST
I think you got the wrong thread.
Quote: MCharsley @ May 30 2013, 9:35 AM BSTWhat do you mean by 'direction'?
Er, that's kind of the point of the thread. It's up to you to decide.
The owl and the pussycat went to sea.
Quote: garyd @ May 30 2013, 1:47 PM BSTThe owl and the pussycat went to sea.
Yes, that had direction. Or have I missed your point?
I think you can. If you have a base storyline as in you know the beginning, middle and end you can have all the wonderfully creative and strange ideas running on top of that. Generally have the basic tools of any sitcom/sketch and run the weird and crazy stuff on top.
Surrealism doesn't imply directionless: think of the films made by the Surrealists, they're mainly about strange associations of ideas.
Quote: Tim Azure @ May 30 2013, 1:48 PM BSTYes, that had direction. Or have I missed your point?
No, you're spot on, Tim.
That was so surreal for me as a kid, not that I knew anything about surrealism at the time.
It was a case of suspending perception of all I believed to be real to 'get' it.
Lear a fore bearer of modern day surrealists?
Milligan adapted this 'nonsense' and made it real - The Goons.
IMHO.
Quote: garyd @ June 2 2013, 12:06 AM BSTMilligan adapted this 'nonsense' and made it real - The Goons.
But did the Goons have direction or did their stories often go nowhere?
IMHO the Goons apparent randomness was very tightly scripted, with a beginning, middle and end, all be it they were taken on some very surreal tangents.
I think Surrealism always has a direction, regardless of whether it seems like babble / tosh / ect.
sometimes you just have to find it.
Thats the kicker. 
i think as a society, we are kind of guided along logical lines. very grounded within that in order to fulfill tasks to completion. I always wondered wether a forum such as this, which upholds comedy in all its guises. was maybe a bad idea.
The critique forum
without sounding harsh, if your looking for ideas on comedy, or if your looking to be "taught" comedy, or gain someones perspective, it might be, you will never leave this forum. because in asking for help as you are unsure of your vision, it means you lack the creative skills, and if you were to have your work revamped by the input of others, even if you did get it in top shape, in the end it will reflect in being a vision of many and a master of none.
a fine example in the borat movie, is the humour coach. Its not something that can be taught. And so, from my long winded point. Surrealism, in order to have a resonance with its subjects, must have some sense of irony, structure, or payoff value, otherwise it lapses into Surrealistic artform of no objective precept.
I wonder if "the mighty boosh", put up for critique as a scripted screenplay, on this site, would come across, lame, undirectional, unfunny, but only in the real world, do some things payoff.
i think the familiarity of a place or situation, that has a running constant, makes it a welcoming place to be. And I thinkthat's where, in the Zoo, in the first series, it beds in nicely, with the surreal characters.
I loved the fact that there was nervous laughter on the early recordings of Monty Python, its a sign of a gamble. I also loved SPike Milligans open ended approach "what are we gonna do now". It paved the way for creativity to reign. But as long as you have a grounding element, it may work.
One of the joys of shows like The Young Ones and Boosh is how they seem completely off-the-wall at first but on rewatching you understand the method in the madness as well as the madness in the method.