Two speakers break down Robin Williams' technique for getting laughs: commit fully to a character and stay in it. They show examples of his work and explain why the commitment itself becomes the joke.
Robin Williams was a comedic genius. He was hilariously funny and it seemed impossible to match his mental quickness. But there is something about his style of comedy that is very easy to emulate. And when you get this, you can get people cracking up with basically no wit at all. It's simple and it's called playing a character. And just so long time charisma on command. Viewers know this is part of a throwback series where we update old videos we've done in the past and make them punchier. So you might recognize this. Anyway, here's the very basic example of this technique.
Damn it, man. What's going on with you? What? Jeem. I'm a doctor, not a busboy.
That's Scotty from Star Trek. And if you watch any of Robin Williams stand up or his movies, his random assortment of characters is basically the crux of most of his jokes. In fact, it's the basis of Mrs. Doubtfire.
I do voices. Yes, we've come to this planet looking for intelligent life. Oops, we made a mistake. We're happy to be in America. Don't ask for a green card.
What you see very clearly in that clip is that the character isn't just a matter of changing your voice. Robin commits with his tonality, with his word choice, with his body language and his facial expressions. And it's often not enough to get a laugh just to put on a half hearted fake voice. But if you commit fully, you can make jokes that aren't even funny seem like they are hilarious. Check it out.
I came to Bombay last year.
Right here. Robin just puts a shawl over his head and says, I came to Bombay last year. That is it. But because he has the prop and because he commits to the character in his voice, in his mannerisms, in his facial expressions, everyone in the audience cracks up.
You know, I have directed 15 movies in Bambi. I am very excited about my musical. It is a lovely musical called who Is Sorry Now?
And here you go again. There isn't much in the way of jokes, but what you have here is Robin elaborating on this character he's making, this Indian woman that he's created, someone who writes musicals. And this isn't necessarily funny in itself, but the specificity of the character plus the commitment makes people laugh.
Welcome to Iron Chef.
So now he's going to Iron Chef, and this is another character that he's making up totally on the spot. But clearly the guy already has some things we know about him. He's got an Asian accent, he speaks English. And he's a chef, so let's see where he goes with it.
First of all, tonight we are going to cook octopus ball, as you know, the eight legs. So you get four sets of balls.
And again, this is definitely clever, but part of the humor here simply comes from the that fact.
