Transcript
Woody Allen (0:02)
Tetragrammaton. The big question is, this was my theory about belief in God. Proof of God would lie in jokes. Not quality of jokes or anything. But we all know there are one liners, they're for the nightclub acts. And we know what's written for the television shows and the sitcoms and the dialogue and all that. But then there are those jokes that are long jokes. And some of them are quite funny and quite brilliant, but they take, you know, a long story. A guy walks in here and then he comes back two weeks later. Now the guru is doing this and he goes and he goes out and then finally the punchline is very funny. And you think, who writes those jokes? They seem to appear on Earth, but there's no percentage in writing them. They can't be used for anything. You can't use them in films, on television, on radio and nightclubs. They're jokes and they're good jokes, but there's no reason for any human being to create them. I know of no comedy writer. I know so many comedy writers that ever wrote a joke like that or took time to write an actual story joke that wasn't, you know, a crack, a remark, a one liner or banter. And yet brilliant, funny jokes appear all the time on the earth. So where do they come from? Now, I'm an atheist, so I don't really believe, but one could make a case that it's God's way of telling us that he's up there and he's spending a lot of time doing these jokes and sending them down. Because I see of no other reason for them to appear anyplace. They're not useful except as jokes. And so no one ever spends any time writing them.
Interviewer (2:31)
Do you think that the fact that it takes longer before getting to the punchline changes the way we digest the material? Is it different to hear five quick jokes in a row versus hearing one story over that same time that ends with a punchline? How are those different?
Woody Allen (2:52)
Well, they're different in the fact that, you know, when you hear a comedian, Henny Youngman comes out and tells jokes. Rodney Dangerfield, funny man, comes out and tells jokes and they're snapping off one after the other. In the movie, Bob Hope is snapping off funny dialogue on television, whoever's doing the thing is doing it in the context of the rhythm of banter. But nobody sits down to make up a joke. There are two rabbis in Jerusalem and the first rabbi, you know, and it goes on for a little bit and then it comes to a very funny punchline. Yeah, that joke doesn't serve any commercial purpose anywhere. So no one writes that joke. No comedy writer I ever met in my life would have written that joke or there's no market for it.
Interviewer (3:47)
Yeah.
Woody Allen (3:48)
And yet many of them appear, and quite wonderful ones. Yes, it's a different experience, but the laugh is there at the end. To be entertained. You need more jokes at a quicker rhythm. Although there were some guys, you know, like Myron Cohn would come out and tell those kind of stories. Where he got those stories, I don't know, he heard them places. But I guarantee you he did not have a comedy writer who sat in a room and wrote the kind of jokes he did. Those are jokes he heard from someone.