Dialogue In Comedy
Mary Rose Betten -- February 25, 2010
Funny woman and author, Mary Rose Betten started her literary career as a stand up comic. She provides insight into the stand up world, her transition from funny talk to funny words on paper, and how she learned to write comedic dialog.
When I started as a stand up comic I had five minutes only of a stand up routine about being a Bus Stewardess for the Surplus Bus Company: "When you ride with Surplus you ride the best of what's left." I got hired to appear on the Tonight Show and stood backstage waiting to go on. When you are new you appear last on the program. Well that is if there is any time left you appear. I stood behind those curtains waiting with Kleenex in both my arm pits. Each time the theme song played, upcoming guests were announced and I sweated, went home, washed my one black dress and came back to wait. It's dark behind those curtains. I had a metallic taste in my mouth.
Eventually I went on the Merv Griffin Show, The Mike Douglas show and the big break came when The Dean Martin Comedy Hour booked me at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas and taped me to be aired on TV in a week. I spent $200 alone on postcards to every casting director on the planet. Minutes before Dean Martin announced my name, President Richard M. Nixon came on Television to resign. That's how I came to give up standup comedy. It was like God saying: "That's a wrap, get a day job."
It is so much easier to write comedy dialogue than to write stand up routines. Well, I should say it's easier for me. I grew up in a family of ten, youngest of 3 girls and seven brothers. I learned to listen. Good comedy dialogue comes from deep listening: while my brothers milked the cows (I should say I hid and listened so they would talk about dangerous subjects.) I shared the bedroom with two older sisters and they argued constantly, perfect! Conflict makes good dialogue. Teasing is good for dialogue and my brothers never stopped. What people say to defend their actions is always bigger than life.
When they went off to school my dog Sandy and I would walk down the lane to sit under the Big Tree. Solitude is good for dialogue, voices run through your head. Animals make good audiences, they don't criticize. Imitating speech patterns make dialogue colorful. The brothers constantly talked about girls and imitated their voices or the way they walked. Portraying the opposite sex with voice tones makes things funny.
Then I grew up and married a theologian. Talk about adjustment. Three things you don't make fun of: sex, money and religion. Well of course those three are the best for comedy. Why? Conflict! I met my husband shortly after I completed what seemed like a forever-length tour on the Playboy Circuit. No more farmer's daughter jokes. I remembered the Bus stewardess routine: I could start all over. A friend suggested I had a gold mine in my living room: investigate humor in religion. I wrote When Jesus Laughed, and went on to do eight appearances at the world's largest religious education Congress in Anaheim and my career as a character actress began. It's fascinating the things Jesus said that were funny. Of course it's humor from a different time and place but he did tell jokes: "It is easier for a rich man to go through the eye of a needle than to enter the kingdom of heaven." Okay, different place and time, but that is a joke. And don't forget scripture says: "Jesus and the apostles went to the wedding feast of Cana. The wine failed." You have to picture it.
I became interested in characters in scripture, learned to write poetry and the story "The Prodigal Son's Mother," became my chapbook of poems edited by Leah Maines of Finishing Line Press. I had gained perspective on my own voice as a retired actress so I wrote the first ever book of poems entirely about acting: Finding Your Best Angle. subtitled Give This To An Actor.
I didn't wait behind curtains for this appearance. In 2009 they came out in the same month. Dialogue for actors. The dialogue of scripture characters. I may be new at writing but I've always been a listener. I learned to wait. Oh the things you'll hear.