I haven't mentioned it lately here but I'm still teaching once a week in the Master of Professional Writing program down at USC. The course is called "Writing Humor: Literary and Dramatic." Next week is the last class of the Spring semester and I'm making it easy on myself by bringing in a guest speaker…a superior writer friend of mine named Treva Silverman, who wrote for The Monkees and The Mary Tyler Moore Show and many other things including a number of successful movies for which others got the screen credit. Earlier this term, I had in two other guest speakers…Marvin Silbermintz (who writes for that Leno guy on The Tonight Show) and the most brilliant comic actor on this planet, Chuck McCann.
Other weeks, it's just me, telling my charges whatever I think I know about comedy writing, critiquing their homework assignments, etc. Some weeks, we watch and analyze funny movies, TV shows or comedy routines. We did one week on Laurel and Hardy, one week on The Dick Van Dyke Show, one week on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, etc. For one class, I brought in hundreds of Henny Youngman jokes and we just sat around and took turns reading them out loud and discussing why the ones that made us laugh made us laugh and why the ones that didn't didn't.
Before I started, someone else who'd done this kind of thing gave me advice I haven't been able to use. He said that the greatest good I could do my students would be to discourage the ones who aren't funny and will never be funny and need to know that they can never make a dollar in that line o' work. I guess that's true but I didn't have anyone this term who needed that kind of attitude adjustment. Maybe next year.
Yeah, I've decided to keep on doing this. I'll be teaching Funny again during the Fall quarter, and I think the class is already full or close to full. (They even have a profile of me over on their faculty page.) I dunno what the students are getting out of it apart from becoming overly familiar with Henny Youngman's act…but I'm sure learning a lot.