The Hidden Formula Behind Almost Every Joke on Late Night TV

November 2, 2023 7:48 AM

Slate.com reveals how talk show writers formulate each night's topical jokes. "When you have to write more than 100 topical jokes each day, there’s no time to wait for inspiration to strike. You need a reliable algorithm." (SLYT)
posted by zaixfeep (31 comments total)

This is a follow-up to my answer to this AskMe.
posted by zaixfeep at 7:52 AM on November 2, 2023 [5 favorites]

I guess that's why I never find these guys funny. It's just ... four chords.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:02 AM on November 2, 2023 [4 favorites]

This is really marvelous and smart. Seeing it laid out as though it were a mechanical process sparks a kind of recognition, oh, yeah, that is indeed what's going through my head when I'm making a joke. You may not get the classic joke that stays with you forever by paring it down to hit this algorithm--but you can produce enough jokes that land, to make an audience happy. Now I have to go read that AskMe!
posted by mittens at 8:40 AM on November 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

This helps me understand the way the late night shows make me laugh, but also depress me. The jokes are a series of highlighting things that I think are bad (for example, increased deportations of people not born in the US) without a path toward making them better. Even when the people in power are more in line with my own political views, they still misstep in ways that the late night shows highlight, and that still depresses me. This is why I no longer watch these shows.
posted by OrangeDisk at 8:44 AM on November 2, 2023 [6 favorites]

Or,
Hero fights the ticking clock and defies his boss
...to rescue his young daughter from (the bad guy de jour)
...and
...stop (them, him, her) before they
...kill the hostages or
...blow up the...
...bank
...city
...world

Bonus points if the villain de jour has dozens of hench-persons who fall off high buildings during the gunfight scenes.

Don't forget to overuse percussion instruments to simulate heart-pounding tension. Include gunfight scenes by people using submachine guns who can't hit the hero, even in a hallway. Include long, boring car chases. In a pinch, you can substitute aircraft, tanks, buses, or trains for cars.

Bonus points if you can find a way to reunite the hero with his estranged wife in the final scenes.

Above all else, make sure the hero gets beaten up a lot. He or she must have numerous facial lesions by the movie's end.

Full disclosure: as a lad, I loved the Wiley Coyote cartoons. The plot never got old until I was well into my 20s. Nowadays, well, not so much.
posted by mule98J at 9:25 AM on November 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

timing!
posted by chavenet at 9:29 AM on November 2, 2023 [32 favorites]

reunite the hero with his estranged wife in the final scenes

No! You forgot the most impotent of male fantasies. His wife got killed in the beginning, freeing him to become his real "killer self" and avenge. He hasn't trained in forever, or at all, but he's magically able to win against otherwise invincible enemies. Maybe he even meets a new girl in the process who isn't nagging him yet.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 9:30 AM on November 2, 2023 [12 favorites]

You forgot the most impotent of male fantasies.

Not sure if typo...
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:06 AM on November 2, 2023 [11 favorites]

Full disclosure: as a lad, I loved the Wiley Coyote cartoons. The plot never got old until I was well into my 20s. Nowadays, well, not so much.

The interesting thing about the Road Runner and Coyote cartoons is that they are extra-formulaic as a sort of parody of formulaic chase cartoons, and thereby elevate the formula to art.

(I loved these as a kid and I still do)
posted by atoxyl at 10:27 AM on November 2, 2023 [16 favorites]

Huh.

So, admittedly, it's been more than 20 years since I wrote for a late-night talk show. Maybe things have changed. But this is the first I've heard of this technique.

It's a really interesting FPP and know that I've heard of this technique, if I went back to late-night comedy writing, I'd be glad to have it in my repertoire.

But the video seems misleading on two fronts:
• It suggests that this is a universal technique that all late-night comedy writers use, which I find hard to believe;
• It implies that this is a start-to-finish formula that anybody can use to churn out professional-quality jokes, as opposed to a useful starting point that still requires considerable craft and experience.
posted by yankeefog at 10:51 AM on November 2, 2023 [32 favorites]

There's a recurring type of joke on at least Colbert and Meyers where they show a photo of a scowling political figure and say something like "Then there's [name], seen here wondering if he could eat a whole basket of puppies." Is there a name of that kind of joke? Besides lazy, I mean. And I say that as a fan of both shows.
posted by Servo5678 at 11:16 AM on November 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Needs more Mark Rober.
posted by y2karl at 11:20 AM on November 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Last Week Tonight and SNL Weekend Update also uses that joke construction with some regularity. The joy in it is the esoteric and specificity of the reference. I guarantee there is a name for it but I don't know it.
posted by mmascolino at 11:23 AM on November 2, 2023 [4 favorites]

That algorithm would be a good way to throw lists up on the white board for the writing team to start with, but you still need to know enough to build the lists and you need funny people to make funny jokes out of those lists. Listening to some late-night jokes, though, I suppose a lot of writers don't add much more than jamming something from list A and something from list B into the same sentence.
posted by pracowity at 11:26 AM on November 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

Its a volume game...there is bound to be clunkers when you are doing 10-20 jokes a day, 5 days a week for months and years. Plus you never know how a joke will land until it is in front of audience.

I have written for amateur sketch shows that have a topical Weekend Update segment and we used a similar technique to generate a lot of candidate jokes that are then refined and wordsmithed. We have spent 20-30 minutes workshopping the wording of a single joke only to find that it landed flat.
posted by mmascolino at 11:34 AM on November 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

speaking of four chords
posted by i used to be someone else at 11:57 AM on November 2, 2023

Metafilter - It's called, "The Aristocrats!"
posted by Chuffy at 12:26 PM on November 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

"Then there's [name], seen here wondering if he could eat a whole basket of puppies."
posted by Servo5678 at 1:16 PM on November 2

SNL does these as well (skip to 1:34).
posted by joannemerriam at 12:33 PM on November 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Aaron Wolfe gets a credit as one of the co-writers of this piece. Good to see he made it safely back from Gamehendge.
posted by morspin at 12:54 PM on November 2, 2023

I will say, I greatly appreciate some of Seth Meyers' "Surprise Inspection" segments, where he goes over some of the BAD jokes that were submitted for his monologue. It's a really fun celebration of the fact that writers exist for these shows, and also a pretty hilarious look at how bad it can get when you're writing 100 jokes a day hoping for 2 to stick. Here's the most recent Surprise Inspection from last month.
posted by hippybear at 1:30 PM on November 2, 2023 [15 favorites]

The funny thing about "Surprise Inspection" is that presumably it was written by the writers themselves.
posted by Saxon Kane at 3:09 PM on November 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

I’d love to see something like this from the “British humor” perspective.
posted by gottabefunky at 4:23 PM on November 2, 2023

"Then there's [name], seen here wondering if he could eat a whole basket of puppies"

And yet, I find this formula far less problematic than remarks about the politician's (and it's always a politician) appearance.
posted by cheshyre at 5:07 PM on November 2, 2023

I loved the giraffe poop one.
I might have a low threshold of humor.
posted by MtDewd at 5:22 PM on November 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Here is a Theory of Humor that I think explains it pretty well. I shared this with a former writer for Letterman, and he says it tracks.
posted by hypnogogue at 6:23 PM on November 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

The jokes are a series of highlighting things that I think are bad (for example, increased deportations of people not born in the US) without a path toward making them better.

The response that they are eliciting is Oh Dear.
posted by StarkRoads at 6:47 PM on November 2, 2023

I’d love to see something like this from the “British humor” perspective.

28 years old

And then I got of the bus
posted by Jon Mitchell at 11:16 PM on November 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

Jon Mitchell, thanks for that. 'Lee & Herring'... what a great comedy duo and a pretty respectable Worcestereshire sauce to boot... :-)

Also, here's Harry and Paul demonstrating the formulaic nature of UK panel shows._{omg the daily mail}
posted by zaixfeep at 4:08 AM on November 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Yankeefog, thanks so much for stopping by here, and thanks to any other comedy professionals who lurk or remain pseudoephrinous, errm, pseudonymous in this thread.

May all your bioengineered hydroponic lunar fields of {ahem} be bountiful...
^{that's just my well-wish, of course i could be wrong}
posted by zaixfeep at 4:20 AM on November 3, 2023

Not sure if typo...

Not a typo. Big limp dick energy intended.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 6:33 AM on November 3, 2023

A broader take on the similarities of late night shows (from two years ago.)
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:29 PM on November 9, 2023