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Elliott Kalan, "Joke Farming: How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
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Elliot Kalin
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Elliot Kalin
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New Books Network Announcer
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Rebecca Buchanan
Hi, this is Rebecca Buchanan, host of New Books Network, New Books and Popular Culture. And today I'm here with Elliot Kalin, who is the author of Joke Farming, how to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense. Elliot, thanks for being here with me today.
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Elliot Kalin
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk to you and to talk about the book.
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Rebecca Buchanan
So can we start out by you talking a little bit about why you decided to write this book, sort of how it came to be a little bit about you and why writing about jokes.
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Elliot Kalin
The most immediate reason that I decided to write this book, Joke how to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense, is because one of the editors at University of Chicago Books, he got in touch with me and said, hey, would you like to write a book about comedy writing? And I said, yes, I would very much. And that was my editor, David Olson. But the reason he was asking me in particular is because I've been a professional comedy writer for.
- [02:30]
Something like 20 years now, a television writer for about 17 years. And before that I was writing newspaper columns and things like that and sketch comedy to perform and stand up and things like that. And I've just been thinking about comedy for a long time I've been a big comedy fan since I was a kid. I really connect with, connected with it early on and have been lucky enough to make a career writing comedy, which doesn't make sense. Like it's not a career that should exist in the world. But I've been able to support my family doing it for a long time now. And I've spent a lot of time thinking about jokes, how they work, how to construct them, how to put them together, and how I can build a writing process for myself where I can write them reliably without having to spend a lot of time just sitting back in my chair, staring into space, going like something. And so I, years ago, kind of designed a writing process for myself that helped me to write things much faster and more reliably. And so this book was about showing how that works and hopefully encouraging other people, especially professional writers, but really anybody, to create this kind of process for themselves that they can write the kinds of things they want to write better, faster, without as much stress, without as much anxiety. So that's the, that's the short, long answer. That's the, that's the longer version of a short answer about why I wrote it.
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Rebecca Buchanan
Well, which is perfect. You know, when you're talking, when you were talking, one thing I wanted to say, and maybe we can talk a little bit about and that I really loved about it, was that, yes, it is this process and you're focused on writing jokes, but it really gets at thinking about being a writer in general. Right. Like a lot of people think writing writers just sit down and it just comes to you and it's perfect. Which is not the case at all. Right. And so, and when we think about being a writer, we're often thinking about fiction in some way, shape or form or maybe even creative nonfiction. But you're really saying, like, jokes, writing, writing jokes, it like jokes need to be written. Right. Jokes need to be thought about. You need to be really thoughtful in how you write them. And I don't know if that's something people are always thinking about if they're not part of the comedy world. Right?
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Elliot Kalin
No, I think, and I agree, I think there's a. Well, there's the beautiful romance of writing, which is the idea that, yeah, the muse just whispers in your ear and it all flows out and it's amazing. And especially with comedy, most people think comedy, they think stand up comedy. And in the past 15 years or so, there was, there was a surprising amount of culture about stand up comedy movies and TV shows and things where Almost inevitably you'd have a character like, I don't know what to say. And then they'd get upstage and they just start. They just start telling their truth. They just start talking about their life and suddenly it's all coming out with setups and punch lines and three act structure. And the audience loves it. And it always made me really mad because it's just not how it works. And it makes it. It devalues the amount of work that goes into writing something funny. And sometimes a joke does just strike you. You know, it happens all the time in real life. You know, people say funny things, but the idea that all you got to go do is go up there and just talk and it comes out funny. And also you just make it up on the spur of the moment, which is the illusion of all performing, is that the person is saying it on the spur of the moment. They're just coming up with it right now. And I did want to push back on that idea because I appreciate something more. The more work that I've seen goes into it. There's a. As a writer, I always feel the same. And I feel this. You know, I wear. I'll read a book and I'll say, ugh, this person's so good. They probably just wrote this in one draft all the way through, and then I'll see. I remember I was reading an article about Don DeLillo and they showed a picture of one of his manuscript pages from White Noise. And like, most of it is crossed out and there's scribbles all over all of it. And I was like, oh, thank goodness. Or years ago, I went to the. I think it was the Morgan Library in, in New York where they had John Milton's manuscript for Paradise Lost that he had dictated to his daughter because he was blind at the time, I think. And there words were crossed out and replaced with other words. And I was like, oh, I mean, if even John Milton doesn't get the right word the first time, then it's okay for me not to do it. And so I wanted to pull back the curtain on that a little bit, but also to show people that writing is something that. I mean, some people are more innately talented with it than others, but it's a skill that you can learn. It's a thing that is not magical. It's like stage magic, where it appears magical. But the main thing you have to do is practice over and over and over again to get really good at it. And my hope was then that people who want to Write comedy can read it and say, oh, okay, this is not as mystifying as I thought it was, but that people who enjoy comedy or writing can read it and say, oh, now, I appreciate the effort that goes into this. You know, it's not just someone standing up there spitting truth. You know, it is a. It is work that goes into it. And enjoyable work. Enjoyable work and work that can be valuable. This is already a long answer, but I'll say one last thing, which is the. You meant that I really don't see that much difference between more traditional, what you'd call writing, you know, prose writing or fiction writing, nonfiction, you know, writing, readable writing, and comedy writing. Because all writing is about communication. Ultimately, it's about taking an idea or a feeling or a sense of some sort and taking it from your head and putting it into another person's head. And that's what comedy writing is. It's just doing it in very kind of discreet. Be like discrete little units that are called jokes. And every joke is just. Is meant to communicate something. And if the joke lands and if someone finds it funny, then it's because it communicated properly. The same way that all writing has to communicate properly to the person that's addressed to.
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Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah, and I love. I love your answer can be long as you want it to be, right?
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Elliot Kalin
Oh, it's going to be long. This is. This is what listeners, this podcast will learn is this. It's hard for me to stop talking. So.
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Rebecca Buchanan
But what I do love about that, too, is, like, when you see someone doing something that seems so effortless, then, like, in thinking about, like, reading your book can help you really think about how much work did go into making it effortless. Right. And that it might not have been the first time they tried that joke or the first time they went through that. And that it takes like a village to make Jon Stewart funny or whatever it might be. Right.
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Elliot Kalin
I mean, I will say Jon Stewart's hilarious on his own, but it. But it takes. But there are still times, you know, and you bring up John Stewart, probably because I worked. I wrote for John Stewart for a number of years. I was. I worked at the Daily show for a long time during John's first run on the show. And I really learned most of what I know about being a writing professional, a comedy professional from my time at that show. I started working there as a college intern my last semester of college, and then I just stayed there for like 13 years. And eventually I was the head writer for, like the last year and a half. Of John's first run there, and I just learned a lot there. And John himself is brilliant. He's one of the two real geniuses that I've worked for in my time. I've been really lucky with the projects I've worked on. And he is very funny, but at the same time, he's a human being. And so, yeah, he needs help to put. He can't put a show together all by himself. And also, some days, you know, not every person has is. Is on 100% every day. And so you need your writers behind you, you need your producers behind you. You need the entire production and creative staff. It takes a lot of people to make a television show, and just about any. That's the other kind of, like, secret behind any creative act is that it takes more than one person almost all the time, that even if you're writing a book and it's just one name on the COVID you've got an editor who's working with you. You probably have multiple editor with you, your main editor, your copy editor, everybody like that. I do a lot of comic book writing. I've written children's books. And there's always. I'm not an artist. And so it's me and the artist, the illustrator, or multiple artists and the editor. And it's like there's a. It takes up a lot of people to do something. And the illusion then is that, again, there's this special kind of person, this special kind of creative person who just kind of like, has it, you know, just has this. Has this special brain that does these special things all on their own. And. And I don't think it's ever been true, maybe. Except for maybe Charles Schultz, Like, Charles Schulz is maybe the only person I can think of where. When you read Peanuts, that's just him. Like, it's all him and nobody else. But even then, he still has. I guess there's still newspaper editors and there are people writing in and saying, you should do this. And he goes, oh, yeah, that's a good idea. So they even there. There's. There's other people who. Working around the margins, you know, And.
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Rebecca Buchanan
I love what you talk about. You just mentioned there, like, people writing in. Like, one thing that comes up in this is. Is that the audience is really important. And it is for most everything. But for comedy, it's sometimes very immediate and very important. And knowing who you're writing for, what they want, and how you can quickly change if you need to, based on what that audience needs. Yes. Can you Talk a little bit about that relationship between audience with comedy. Like that, right? That special relationship. Maybe that's the way to say it.
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Elliot Kalin
Yeah, very much so. That there's. That's. I mean, that's You. You put your finger on the thing that I should have said in my last answer, which was that the. There's really. You can't do com. You can't do any art without an audience, you know, or else it's just. I mean, unless you're just making it for yourself, in which case you are the audience. You. There's still an audience, but it's you. But with comedy especially, you need another person to laugh at it. And that's the real test of a joke. People ask me all the time. They're like, how do you tell if a joke is funny? And I'm like, well, somebody laughs at it. It could still be a bad joke, but it's funny if they laughed at it, you know, um, it might be that it was structured well, even if it's not a good joke and they. And they laughed at it, or it's not structured well, but there was a swear word in it and they laughed at that, you know, but there. You need an audience, and they have to have that immediate reaction to it. They have to laugh at it. There's a. You can show. Someone can read kind of like a sad book and not actively cry. And they could still be like, that was a really good book. And you can watch a horror movie and not literally be screaming while you watch it and still be like, that was a good movie. That was scary. But if you're not laughing at a joke, then it really isn't doing its job, and the audience will feel that. And so half of. I mean, this is the other. The other kind of romantic illusion about comedy, and especially standup comedy, is it's like these outsiders bringing uncomfortable truths into your home. And, like, if you don't laugh at it, it's because you don't. It's too crazy, you know, it's too. It's too much for you, and you're just not ready for it, man. And in reality, I find that your job in comedy is to make the audience laugh. They want to have. They want to enjoy themselves. You can change their minds or make them think at the same time, but the audience is there to laugh, and you want them to laugh. I don't think any comedian goes. Maybe Andy Kaufman, I don't know, goes and does a show and is like, I hope the audience doesn't laugh. At me tonight. I hope that they don't get it. You want them to get it. You want them to understand it. And if they're not laughing, no matter how funny you think it is, it is not being successful, you know, and it's. Every now and then I say this in the book. Every now and then there's a once in a generation comedy genius or comedy talent whose work is just too far ahead of the audience and the audience will have to catch up. But that's most likely not you, not the. The person reading the book or the listener. It's not me, certainly. And so if I write a joke and it doesn't get laughter, or at the very least like a, huh, like that kind of little smile from somebody, then I have to discard it or figure out what's not working about it. So much of making comedy is listening to your audience and following their reaction to a certain point and trying to figure out if they're not laughing at this, how do I get them to laugh at it? How do I figure out something that they will laugh at that doesn't change the core of who I am or what I'm trying to say, but changes the way that they are receiving and reacting to it. And that's a big reason that in the book I really emphasize things like, really exciting things like structure, wording, choice, the things that will make or sync a joke beyond the actual content of the joke. You know that if you're selling a joke and the audience doesn't laugh, then it might be because what you're saying is just too.
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Truthful or too upsetting for them. But it might also just be that you said it in a way that was not well structured and they didn't quite get it. And if you said it a different way, they would laugh at it and they'd go, oh, yeah, that's that. I find it upsetting, but I'm laughing at it, you know, or, oh, yeah, I'm laughing. And I agree at it and agree at it, agree with it. Yeah, I'm a professional writer.
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But there's a need and a necessity for the audience. And also the last thing I'll say about it until the next thing we talk about is there's also a real, like, it's really great to write for an audience. It's really wonderful. And I talk about in the book how the most exciting moment to me in writing or performing comedy, because I used to perform comedy quite a bit, and I still do sometimes, is the moment when you have kind of released a joke into the wild, and there's a split second before the audience has laughed where you don't quite know how they're going to react to it. And if this is hardened road tested material, then you have a sense of how the audience is going to laugh. And you know what pauses to make things like that. But when you're delivering a new joke, the risk of, are they gonna like this? I hope they do. And if they do, it's incredibly gratifying. And if they don't, it's not the end of the world. But the reason for performing comedy as opposed to another form of entertainment or writing or communication is in many ways to have that moment of excitement, that moment of suspense where you're like, are they gonna laugh at this? Is this gonna go over? Um, and then when they do, like I said, it's. It's incredibly gratifying. And when they don't, it makes the times they do that much more satisfying. You know, you're like, ah, I did it. I finally made this work.
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Rebecca Buchanan
I have to save it up till I remember again. It's kind of like teaching when like, you're like, I hate all these students. So you have to save the times where you don't hate them all and be like, yes, I know why I did this. I love them.
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Rebecca Buchanan
And so. And you've divided this book into kind of three parts where you start out by giving your kind of process, but then you get into those elements that you were talking about, which again, as someone who teaches writing, I really love because you mentioned kind of wording and you think about sort of structure and all that, which is so important.
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To writing. Like some people think. Like you said, you just write it and it's quick. And my favorite part of writing is editing things or revising things maybe. Right. And so I love that part too, where you really get into the meat of what it means to revise, you know, in all these different ways, what you need to think about when you revise. And then you kind of end with this. Different ways we can use comedy. So I'm wondering if we can talk maybe a little bit about your process for people to sort of get your process and then. Yeah. And then go into some of those sort of parts. I mean, we talked a bit about audience, but a couple of the other ones that you talk about in that second part as well.
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Elliot Kalin
Sure. In that first part, the. It's very funny. This was originally the second part of the book. And then everyone I showed it to said, this should be the first part of the book. And again, like listening to the audience, they when everyone gives you the same note, then it's probably a correct note again, unless that note is, you should bury this book. It's too dangerous. No one should ever see this. In which case then you can probably discard that, you know. But in the first section, I talk about what this writing process that I created for myself when I was working at the Daily show, where I didn't have a lot of time to write, I needed to find a way to do it faster. And so I said to myself, there are times when a joke just pops into my head. So when. What is my unconscious mind doing when it does that? What are the steps it's probably going through really quickly and then trying to reverse engineer that into a process that I could use. And so especially this is a process I created for that show, but I use it for all sorts of things. And the first thing, first step was to figure out, what is this joke about? Kind of like, what's. What's the absurdity of what I'm looking at here? Where I think. Because often you'll look at something and you'll be like, I know there's a joke in this, but I don't know exactly what it is. I know there's something in what. In the Daily Show, a lot it was writing in response to sound bites, but from the news. But you may, if you're, you know, you see someone do something foolish or that that doesn't quite make sense, you're like, I know there's something funny about this, but what is it? And so before I even try to be funny, I write out for myself very clearly, what is the absurdity in this? Just kind of as. As a clear statement, you know, just a statement of what is, what doesn't connect here, what doesn't seem right. And now once I know what that is, because, okay, I know what this joke is roughly about. I know what I'm communicating. And then it's a matter of what is a. I know what the point of the joke is at that point. What's the premise that I can use for this? And a premise is essentially in. In comedy writing, the way I use the term is like, it's the little story that you're telling the joke through. You know, it's because a point can't, you know, you can't tell a joke. That's just like rich people, they don't. They get away with not paying taxes, but they should pay most of the taxes. Like, that's not a joke. It's a point you can make, but it's not. And so the premise is, well, how do I tell a little, very, very short story, probably a one or two line story, that gets across that point in a funny way and ideally gives the audience most of the information they need to understand what I'm saying. But not all of the information they need so that their brains can then fill in the rest. And once that, when they understand it, that's when you're getting a joke you want to give someone. Like I say in the book, it's like you want to say A, B, C, D, F, and you want their brains to feel an E. And E is the funny part. That's the moment where they're getting it. So I start to ask myself kind of like, what if questions about that thing rich people don't pay enough in. In taxes. I think that's my opinion. That's the point I'm trying to make. Well, what if they had to do something else to make up for that? They didn't just get away with it, but they had to do some kind of very public community service or what if. What is it? That's. What if they had to itemize the things they're actually spending that money on when it's not going to feeding people or, you know, or running the country or things like that. What is the. What if they, instead of hiring lawyers to do it, they had to hire animals to figure out their accounting for them. Again, like, these are not amazing, amazing ideas for jokes, but you kind of like just ask yourself questions about that point, you know, and to try to find the funny aspect of it, to try to find the aspect of it that maybe someone wouldn't think of right away off the top of their heads. And once I've done that and I have that premise, I try to structure it in a way so that, like I was saying, I'm giving the audience the information they need one step at a time and leaving out a little bit of the information so the audience can fill that in so that when the punchline comes up, it is them putting two pieces of the puzzle together, rather than me just stating outright what I'm doing. And I would continue with this example, but I don't have. I don't really have any ideas for how to structure that joke. But the important thing is to structure it in a way that, again, is parceling at information in a. In a way that the audience is picking up what they need as they need it, and removing excess information and making sure you're not missing information. Jokes are all about. They're basically discrete units of information that are lacking. One thing that the audience will fill in otherwise has to give them everything, but not too much because you can, You'll. You don't want to distract an audience with too many details, and you don't Want to leave anything out and then have to be like, oh, yeah, that's right. And also, the guy had a beard. That's why. That's why that happens. And like, okay, that's it. Well, now I get it, I guess. And after it's structured like that, then I will focus on the wording of it. How can I say it in as few words as possible? How can I find words that are very vague or general and use more specific words? You know, I'm a big fan of, like, if you. You can say the word gross, but you could also say like, disgusting or loathsome or reprehensible or, you know, slime encrusted. You know, there's a. There's more specific ways of saying things. And as with all writing, the more specific you are, the stronger the image that the audience is going to get in their heads. The more it's going to connect with them. And the more specific you are to a unique or individual experience, the more an audience will relate to it. You know, if you say, you know, like. Like, like, I was really hungry the other day, then people go like, yeah, okay, sure, that's fine. But if you're like, it felt like my stomach, like something. My stomach was trying to wrench itself apart, like it was trying to eat anything that was inside me. It was jumping after my own lungs. Like, I mean, that's more an exaggeration than a specific thing, but you know what I mean? And finally, it's a. After kind of working on the wording and things like that, then it's a matter of trying it out. You know, you've got to show it to an audience and. And test it. Sometimes I'll. I'll read a joke out loud to myself to kind of be a first audience to see how it sounds. But then I'll usually read it to my wife or friends of mine, or if it's at work, it'll just go to the other writers I work with or to the executives on the show that I'm working at. There's always some audience that will tell you what you're doing wrong, but it's. Each step of the way is about clarity. Basically, the three kind of principles I talked about book are clarity, specificity, and brevity. Where you want the purpose of your joke to be clear, you want the story you're telling to be clear, and clear to yourself as well. What are you saying with this? You want to be specific with your details and with your words. So that's the strongest impact in the least amount of words. And that goes into brevity, where the shorter a joke, usually the better the response and the longer the joke. Unless the thing that's funny about it is that it is very long. Unless that's the joke that. That you're trying to get across, that you are either trying the audience's patience or you are deliberately taking a winding path. You know, you want the joke to kind of get in and do its job and get out so people have time to. To laugh at it before they are bored of it, tired of it, confused by it, annoyed by it. That's basically the way I do it. So that was a. That was a very long description.
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But.
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Rebecca Buchanan
It fits in with, like, you sort of talk about those elements you talk about in your second part. And what I really appreciated, too, was that you brought in examples from a variety of folks. Like, you brought in some of your own examples, but examples from a variety of comedians and writers who are doing those kinds of things as well. Like, when you were talking, I kept thinking about, like, the wording. Was it the Steven Wright joke about, I can't. I'm not gonna get it right.
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Elliot Kalin
It's the one about. The one about he went to restaurant that serves breakfast anytime, so he ordered. Was it French toast during the Renaissance or something like that?
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Rebecca Buchanan
Yes. Right. You know, and then it was this idea which is hilarious. Like, I was dying. Right. Which is. I mean, he's kind of hilarious. And I just, like, imagined him deadpan saying that joke. Right. But that idea that, like, you have to really think. It gets at that really short thinking about the wording, and you kind of deconstruct that for us then, too. So we can kind of see, what if he would have added these words? Or what if he would have said Middle Ages? It would have been different. You know, that kind of thing. So we can really see the ways in which these ideas of sort of structure and voice and wording and, you know, audience really are impacted by just.
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Elliot Kalin
Maybe one or two words, by very small things. Yeah, there was a. The. There's a joke in a. In the show I'm working on right now where.
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A character is. They've got to stop a monster without hurting their teammate. And they say the monster. And then they say, how do I. How do I. How do I shoot the monster without shooting the. And then they say the name of the other character, which I would say, but none of it's been announced, so I can't. And it was like. And in the temporary voice track for it the person who had done it had omitted the second the. So it was just how to shoot the monster without shooting and then the name. And I was like we got to get that the in there. Because that's. That's why how. What makes it a joke is referring to someone with the in front of their name as if they are a type of thing as opposed to an individual person. And it was a similar case where it was like that one word. The is what makes. Turns this from just a statement into a joke. And it can be those very small tweaks and very small additions that are what make a joke work or not work, what make comedy happen.
- [28:51]
That is the one magical thing about it is that it really is all about putting words in the right order or if it's a visual joke, putting the visual elements in the right order and the right arrangement and a slightly different arrangement will. Will have such a fraction of the power that the exact right arrangement will have. Which all makes it sound very kind of like mechanical and very engineering based, which I. Which I believe in. Like, I believe there's a. As much as I love, I find creative expression wonderful. And I think writing is a. Is a sacred work that I'm very excited to be able to do as a. As a profession to do it all. There is a lot of mechanical engineering to it. And we can get so enamored of the beauty of what we're doing that we forget how much, how much precision or how much welding, for lack of a better word, has to go into it. You know, how much soldering you have to do while you're making these things. But it's a. You talked about me using examples in the book. I really wanted to go out of my way to try to use a wide variety of examples. If I could. It would have just been the Marx Brothers all the way through been nothing but examples from Marx Brothers movies. And as it is, I think they are overrepresented in the book compared to other other types of comedy. But I do believe that all comedy, all jokes rather, because comedy is not just jokes. But jokes are. But jokes are jokes. Comedy is the way is. Jokes are the main defining mark of comedy. But you can do other things with comedy. It's not just jokes that all jokes operate on these same principles and these same elements, voice.
- [30:24]
Premise, structure, tone, wording, audience, those are those same elements make up all jokes. And so I've got stand up examples in there and then there's examples from Twitter and examples from comic books and examples I have an example from Tristram Shandy. And there's, you know, they all operate on the same principles, no matter how old the joke is or where it's coming from. And I wanted to put all those things on the same kind of comedy continuum that like Steven Wright exists on the same continuum as Tristram Shandy or the, or a funny movie or the March Brothers or a joke that's on the back of a deodorant package. You know, especially there was a certain point when it was like the barriers between humor and the rest of the world broke open. For better or worse? For worse, often nowadays. And suddenly there were jokes everywhere, like on packaging for things. And like just it's, you know, there was no, no escaping jokes. And they all work on the same principles. They're all the. There was a, an example that I wanted that I had to cut out of the book just for space. But I broke down into three act structure, a novelty sign I saw in the back of somebody's car, in the back window of someone's car when I was driving my kids to school. And I was like, that joke works the exact same way everything else does. Like, there's no, there's no different mathematics to anything. It's all the same math. And that's what I wanted to hopefully get across with the examples is no matter where they are in this amazing kind of like spectrum and universe of comedy, they all work the same way.
- [31:53]
Rebecca Buchanan
And it allows people then to realize, like, I don't have to have. My Persona, does not have to be the same as comedian X, Y or Z. I can create my own Persona and make it work for me and it will still fit in if I use sort of think about this structure or think about these elements of writing a joke.
- [32:12]
Elliot Kalin
Yeah, yeah, exactly that. What's that? There's a I, I. When I was a, I was very briefly a stand up. Very, very, very briefly. I mean like a few years. But like, I didn't put a, I didn't put the work into it that I should have. And I would see performers that I was a big fan of and many of them not super famous, just people that I knew. And I'd be like, they, they have a, what a great standup Persona Persona they have. I wish that I was just like a naturally, like funny person in that I had naturally weird person, so I could go up and do that. And that was me at the time devaluing the work they were putting into refining who they were presenting themselves as and the work they were Putting into writing those jokes and also undervaluing the ability that I should have harnessed to take what was true about me and turn that into something that could be expressed in a. In a joke way. And I'm now, I don't think I haven't had the time to do perform, stand up. And it's hard to get stage time, you know, in Los Angeles, where I live, but. But I've been slowly accumulating standup material to try to get back to it at some point and try to be like, okay, what's a joke that sounds natural coming out of me that I can tell that is funny and is not? Like you're saying, not attempting to be somebody else or at the very least, attempting to take on somebody else's voice. Because the first thing that you start with, as always, is your. Your individual voice or the voice of the character you're writing for. Who are they? Who's telling this joke? Every joke has a teller. And everything about the joke flows from that teller's point of view, Their perspective, the assumptions they have about the world, their frame of reference of the world, what they take for granted and what they don't. What they know naturally and what they don't. And if you try to force it, it won't work. But if you are true to that voice, even if that voice is not true to what reality as accepted by most people, then it's the best first step towards figuring out how to make that funny, how to make that voice funny.
- [34:03]
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Elliot Kalin
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Rebecca Buchanan
What are you eating?
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Elliot Kalin
Not even yogurt.
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Elliot Kalin
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- [35:00]
Rebecca Buchanan
Deck will stick with us forever.
- [35:01]
Elliot Kalin
That's how good leads the way.
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- [35:33]
Rebecca Buchanan
You in your third part. Right. You talk about then how do we apply this to different like. Or different uses of comedy? Right. And we've talked about stand up. You have some, like, standup that people know or people are very familiar with, I would say maybe even the visual humor people are familiar with. But I would love for you to talk a little bit about satire because you kind of really. Right, because I think that's something that. And you mentioned in your book that we sometimes confuse with parody and that it's really, really hard to do. And so. Yeah, can you talk a little bit about that and how you think about satire?
- [36:13]
Elliot Kalin
So in that third section of the book. Yeah, it's different kind of formats or outlets for where jokes appear. And yeah, there's one about narrative comedy and one about visual comedy. And the visual comedy was the one that was the one I was most excited about because I got to talk about fine art jokes, like jokes in pieces of fine art or modern art, I should say. But satire is one that I've especially thought about a lot, coming from a kind of political commentary, comedy background. And a lot of political commentary or parody gets named as satire, even though I don't think it really is. This is me being like a real pedant. This is the one. This is the one place. This is the one place, I promise, where I'll be a real pedant and a real stickler, and otherwise I'll be real accepting of anyone else's ideas about things. But to me, satire is a very specific form of comedy that is based around exaggeration and essentially exaggerating something in order to reveal something about it that either is hidden or that everybody knows but is not admitting to themselves that the purpose of satire is to take a situation that is not right and blow it up to such a grotesque degree that any. Even the people who refuse to admit that there's something not right about it in Theory hopefully will recognize that there's something not right about it. And so, for instance, like working at the Daily Show, a lot of people would call it satire when it really wasn't, from my point of view, satire, it was commentary. It was political comedy. But it was not satire in the way that our sister show, the Colbert Report, was where Stephen was creating the Stephen Colbert character who was really exaggerating at the time. Now his. Now it looks kind of quaint. Like, now it doesn't feel exaggerated, but exaggerating at the time, the kind of stuff that Fox News was doing, or conservative commentators or a movie like Dr. Strangelove where they are exaggerating how insane the people in charge of nuclear weapons are, how inept the public officials that are supposed to do this are, how inevitable some kind of disaster is in order to take what everybody kind of knows on the back of their minds, which is, it's really bad that we have nuclear weapons. Like, it's really bad. This is going to be bad. There's no good part of this. And making it something you have to see, you have to. You can't ignore, you know, because it's so undeniable after it's been exaggerated in this way. And so I find that. But then there's something like Airplane or the Naked Gun, which gets turned into a. Which gets called satire. But it's like, well, it's not really. I don't know what it's really revealing about disaster movies or cop movies or anything like that. It's like, they're very funny. You know, they're really funny parodies, but they're parodying the form of something rather than the content of something. And satire can often mean parodying a content in order to exaggerate and reveal something about it. But it isn't always, you know, it doesn't always have to be. And the problem is that, as you said, satire is really hard. It's really hard one to make it funny because oftentimes if someone disagrees with you, they'll shut themselves off. Or if someone agrees with you, they're like, I get it. Okay, cool. Like, I know this. But it's also so easy to misinterpret because if you're making satire really well, then it gets so close and close and close to the thing that you are commenting on that you can tip over to the point of accidentally becoming that thing or people misunderstanding it as being that thing. An example that I give in the book is the science fiction author Norman Spinrad. He wrote a book called the Iron Dream, where the concept of it was that this is a book from a universe where Adolf Hitler was a science fiction writer and he wrote this. This book that is embodying the themes of racism and fascism that are part of being a Nazi, but embodying it in the sort of heroic fantasy science fiction narrative that is so prevalent in fantasy and science fiction. And he's doing this in order to show this is latent in fantasy and science fiction. These kinds of. This kind of racism where other races are treated as lesser or depicted as creatures or monsters, this sort of Fuhrer worship where there's one singular hero who can only. Is the only one who can bring order to a disordered world or universe or whatever. And so he's writing this in order to say this is a part of fantasy and science fiction that we have to be aware of. And I'm. I'm exaggerating it. And then at a certain point, according to him, he was made aware to him that the American Nazi party had put this on their book of recommended, this list of recommended books to read. And he was like, no, that's not. But this is the opposite of it. Like, you don't get it. And that's part of the problem with satire is if you do it well enough, it can become to many of the audiences indistinguishable to what it is you're satirizing. And so you have to be really careful with your tone. But you also have to just accept a certain amount of audience will either misunderstand what I'm doing or not take it seriously enough. And the ultimate goal of all satire is to end the thing that you are criticizing. And I don't think it has ever happened in the history of the world. So it is a. It is a fairly ineffective method. Except maybe, I feel like satire can be really effective on the young people who are. Who are still forming their ideas about things. And occasionally the very old people who are. Have gone through the other end and they're now open to changing their minds because they've seen it all, you know, but it is a. It's a very hard thing to do. And in the book I talk about so why do it? Why bother? And I quote the writer Alan Moore, who talks about how. Talks about satire as a very powerful form of magic, that a satire done well can destroy someone in the eyes of their neighbors, can destroy someone in their own eyes, can destroy the reputation for centuries afterwards if the satire lives long enough. And that it's. That this is why he says satire in.
- [41:49]
Authoritarian states or in kingdoms, things satirists were. Satire was one of the first things banned, and satirists were some of the first people to be arrested or thrown in jail is because it does have that danger to it. But you have to pull it. You have to be really good at it. You got to pull it off really well. It's like being a wizard, where it's like you gotta. You're either doing something, you're either pulling off the most amazing magic, or you just didn't put enough practice in and you just don't have it. You can't. You can't get the spirits to do what you want. But it is a. But it's a really tough thing to do. And so I have. It is. It is something that I say in the book. The way to start with it, as with any joke, you want to start with what am I going to say? And with satire especially, you have to find what is the thing I'm saying that people either refuse to acknowledge or that people are not seeing. And I talk about the movie. Sorry to bother you. I think it's called I Never. I can always get the title mixed up. Boots Riley's movie, where it is basically saying it's making a couple different satirical points, but one of them is that the world we live in, this modern world full of technology and things, it is built on the destitution and the mistreatment and abuse and borderline at times slavery of other people in other places who are making these things for us and doing these things for us so that we can live lives of relative ease and have this technology and everyone kind of knows it, but you can't really admit it to yourself a lot of the time, or else you would live in despair or you'd have to go off the grid to live with human within your principles. And that he exaggerates this to this enormous degree with the story, that line that ends up with black men being kidnapped so that they can be injected with chemicals that turn them into Horsemen, you know, and they're running rampant in the streets, trying to escape at the end. And I think it's an amazing movie. And partly because he's taking this thing that we all kind of know in the back of our minds, and he's exaggerating it to the point where we cannot ignore it because it's gotten so grotesque in the. In what's happening that it starts with finding the thing that you want to say and finding that. That message that needs to be stated and is uncomfortable, maybe even for you to say to yourself the thing that you don't want to admit to yourself. That's where you have to start. And so satire involves such deep digging and such dark digging to get to that point that I would say, if you're going to write comedy, don't make it the first type of comedy that you, that you attempt, because it's. Because it's a very high. It's a. It's a. It's like a triple axel. You know, it's hard to pull off.
- [44:06]
Rebecca Buchanan
So you've got to ease into it. I have to. You know, I'm going to ask you, like, two more questions. One is, you wrote this. You're writing this book on comedy, Right. So you've got comedy interspersed within it. But can you talk a little bit about, for you, the process of putting together a book that you want people to take seriously, but not too seriously. Right. Like, there's the humor in there. There's your voice sort of coming through as a writer, but it also is about things that are. Yes. Like, it's work and it's important. So can you talk a little bit about that process?
- [44:39]
Elliot Kalin
Well, I wanted it to be a funny book also. Like, I wanted the writing to be funny and I wanted there to be jokes in it because there are a lot of books about joke writing. There's a lot of books about humor writing. And I find, except for one of them, which I will not name because I don't want to. I don't want to promote the competition. Except for one of them. I think they're almost entirely not very good either, because I think they don't go all the way in breaking down what comedy writing is about or because you're. They're really dry. And there was part of me that's like, well, if I want people to take me seriously as a comedy writer, then I should have a funny book. Like, I should be showing them throughout. I am capable of the kind of writing that I'm telling you that you. This is how you do it, because this is how you'll believe me that I know what I'm doing is I am showing you that I'm doing it. You know, but also I wanted to be enjoyable. You know, there's. There's a. A joke. If you're trying to use a joke to get a point across, the first thing that you need to do is you need to make someone laugh at it. You know, you need. They need to enjoy it before they're going to Accept what you're trying to say through it. If you're trying to say something, and if you're not trying to say something, that's wonderful, too. The. The comedy that I think lasts the longest and has the greatest penetration into the human soul, let's say, is often the comedy that is the silliest and is not ostensibly trying to get a message across to you. You know, I mentioned the Marx Brothers earlier, and I find them to be just. Personally, I find them to be the funniest people ever lived. And I find their work beautiful in a way, partly because it is so much about nothing but just being funny. You know, it just exists to be funny. And that's its. That's its cause, you know, that's. It's. That's its reason for being. And so I wanted the. But. But I had things to say. I couldn't just be silly because I had people to. Things to tell people. How do you write a joke? And. But. So I want to be funny. And I apologize if you can hear the gardeners outside right now who are using trimmer equipment right around the plants. It's really throwing me off. They're very nice guys, but it's really distracting me. That's why. But. So I wanted to be funny. And I. But there were times when I worried, is this going to. Especially coming from a university press, coming from University of Chicago press, I was like, is this going to be taken seriously as an academic work if it's funny? And I was traumatized in middle school when I had to write a paper about Romeo and Juliet. And I decided to write it as a funny paper, like, still making my point, but making jokes in. And I got a very bad grade on it. And the teacher said, you're not doing this right. This is. Don't put jokes in these. And so this time I threw off those shackles. I said, no, I'll be. I'll be funny this time. So I did have that worry. But at the same time, the. I was thinking to myself, again, the same thing I do when I write a joke, which is what am I trying to communicate here? And what I'm trying to communicate is this is how I write jokes. And this is a start for how you can write jokes and how a joke works. And so I better show you one, that I know what I'm talking about. Not going to make you laugh, but also two, that it's fun. You know, that writing is work, but it's fun work. There's all sorts of work is not always Fun. There's a thing that I always have to remind the writers I'm working with when they complain about the process and I go, it's funny candy. It's not fun to work at the candy factory. The work of making the thing is not as fun as enjoying it, but it should still have some fun to it. Because ultimately if you're not enjoying being a writer and you're not enjoying comedy writing, if you don't get some satisfaction out of it personally, then you should do something else. Because, because it's a very hard job to do and it's a very hard way to make a living. And I people when they ask me, I people ask me about all the time, younger people say, you know, what would you tell me if I want to be a writer? And I would say, do you need it? Like, do you need to be a writer? Because if not, you should find something else to do that is less exhausting, less personally hurtful if your work doesn't come across less difficult to make a living doing. And at the same time it should be fun at least part of the time. So I kind of wanted to balance between the book feeling like it was real information, this is not a parody of a, of a how to book or anything, but that it was still fun to read, to get across. Well, why do I do this? I do it because I like it. You know, I write jokes because I love jokes. I think they're really funny and it's fun to see a joke be enjoyed by other people and it's fun to enjoy the process of writing it. So even though it's work, it should still have an excitement and a fun to it and the book should have some too. I felt like a, if it was a. I had dreams of writing this really dry kind of scientific text that would be very respected and people be like, well, this is the, this is the most authoritative text on it. This is the premier book. But then I was like, do I actually want to read that? Though I was reading recently the book the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which I found so fascinating, like a really, a really fascinating book. But I was also like, this is dry. Like this is the driest book I've ever read. And it made me really wish that it, that every now and then that the author might have thrown in a joke. You know something, even I, I spent a lot of last year doing a year long podcast about the Power Broker by Robert Caro, which is one of my favorite books of all time and is, you know, it's something like 1200 pages long. It's a very, is a serious book. It is about people's lives as they are affected by bad decisions made by the, by governments essentially, you know, and when, when a construction is done for the wrong reasons, how it affects the day to day suffering of people. And even then it's such a readable book and there are a few parts in there that I think are very funny. And I'm like, well, that's the difference. You know, you can get, you can, you can get me to read this huge long book as long as it's fun to read. And so I wanted to. This. My book is not huge long. It is, you know, it's, it's a pretty quick read, but I still want it to be fun, you know, and if people find it less dignified, you know, if they're like, then that's okay. I guess that's the. Gotta pay. Yeah, yeah.
- [50:10]
Rebecca Buchanan
What are they? I mean, seriously, what do they know?
- [50:13]
Elliot Kalin
Yeah, exactly.
- [50:13]
Rebecca Buchanan
I mean it's. You should be entertained by what you read however you want to be entertained, right? Like.
- [50:18]
Elliot Kalin
Yeah, yeah. Even a thing that you're reading for information. Hopefully you're, you're enjoying it as well. And I, and the. There were a number of how to write comedy books that I saw that had graphs in them to like explain like different elements of. And I was like, well, I can't, I'm not putting any graphs in this. That's. This is not a science as much as I talk about it with engineering and mechanics and things like that. As anytime I started getting to the point where I was like, it sounds like I'm stating a, a piece of fundamental, the law of the universe physics. I would pull back or try to pull back a little bit because I was like, well that's. Then I'm making claims that I can't, I can't stand up to, you know.
- [50:51]
Rebecca Buchanan
And you're very much like, it all works this way except for this example. It's not going to work. But yes. Right. Yeah. So the book is out now by the time this goes out. So my final question. Self promotion. Anything with the book that you want to promote or anything else you're working on that you kind of want to let people know about.
- [51:09]
Elliot Kalin
Sure. Well, this book I have been doing, I have a. Unlike usual when you're a comedy writer. I have a day job right now, so I have not been able like a television writing day job. So I have not been able to put the effort into promoting that. I wish I could But I will say if this is coming out before, if it's, if this is coming up before this Sunday, November 16, 2025, and maybe it's not. I'm going to be in Chicago at 57th Street Books on Sunday, November 16, where I'm going to be doing an event, talking about the book and signing it. I hope to do something in Los Angeles where I live at 6 some point, but otherwise I think.
- [51:51]
Please just go to your local independent bookstore or and and pick up a copy of it. Joke farming. I really appreciate it. I have a bunch of other things that I'm always doing. I, I'm, I'm a podcasting guy, as all men who look roughly like me are. And for years and years I've been doing a, a podcast about bad movies called the Flophouse, which is a bunch of nonsense and very silly. And I talk about it in the podcasting chapter of Joke Farming. I do another podcast for the Smartless Network called Smartless Presents Clueless that is a kind of puzzles and games podcast. And I am writing the, the monthly Harley Quinn comic book for DC Comics. So every month go to your local comic book store and that comes out and I write it. And that's another one where I'm just trying to be funny, just trying to have a funny comic. And earlier this year I had my third children's picture book. It's a called Sadie Mouse Wrecks the House. And that came out. So I got a lot of things to promote, but the main thing, the main thing is joke farming. How do I keep saying, I keep saying it sounds like I'm saying joke forming, which is not it. Just joke farming. How to Write Comedy and other Nonsense from the University of Chicago Press. Again, if you're in Chicago on Sunday, November 16, and it's not past that day already, then come to 57th Street Books in the afternoon and I'll be there. I think it's at 3 o' clock and I don't know if that's all. That's enough stuff to promote, mainly joke. Marmon is the main thing. That's the thing I want to promote.
- [53:09]
Rebecca Buchanan
So there you go. Perfect. You did my job for me there. Thank you again for talking with me. Elliot Killon. A New Books network, new books and popular culture about joke farming.
- [53:21]
Elliot Kalin
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.