How I failed to write comedy

(in Brazil)

Few weeks back, I got an opportunity to write a major TV show in Brazil and I failed miserably. Since my friends tend to laugh a lot to this story, I decided to share it, as a warning and an inspiration.

The phone rings

It was my agent: “How would you like to go to Brazil? Someone I know is making a sketch comedy show and you are the funniest guy I know, shoot them an e-mail.”

It seemed like the longest shot in the history of shooting, but I had nothing to lose. I want to write comedy, even in Brazil. So I cocked my finger, checked if my powder was dry and developed an episode with 10–20 sketch ideas in an afternoon. I did explain I do not speak Portuguese or know anything about Brasil. One of the producers said the Brazilians laughed at my jokes, so I got the job. Hooray!

Fast-forward a few months. The ticket arrives. I pack reasonably and get to the plane on time. Thirty-something hours and a few planes later, I’ve landed in Florianopolis, a smallish city in the south of Brazil with 440.000 inhabitants. The producer picks me up and takes me home. I will be staying with him and his wife, who is the star of the show. It is not in the city of Florianopolis, more like a 45minute drive to the house at the edge of the jungle in a small surfer hippy village wrapped around a lake.

Day 0

Beware of the spider

The house is on a plot carved from the jungle, which lurks over the fence, sends monkeys to steal your fruit if you leave the windows open and makes parrots scream all night long. All fun if you are not staying in a garage fixed into a guesthouse with no glasses on windows, just wooden panels to close them. Oh, and one more thing. The spider. It is pretty big and if you see it, do not go after it. Actually, run away from it. It is called Armadeira, the wandering spider, and its bite translates in a 4–6 hour long really painful erection before you die. Alternative to death is having your penis emptied of blood with the use of syringe or, in case you arrive too late, peeled like a banana and washed out. Suffice to say I looked under my bed every time I was about to lay on it and lifted all my covers before getting into bed. I did see one, but it was just a spider baby and yes, I am sure it was an Armadeira. Ok, enough about natural beauties. Let’s write comedy.

It was my first day after a 30-hour flight so the producer said we would not work today, I will just meet some of the guys. There was supposed to be 5 of us but so far it was just this one guy. Most of the day they were talking about the characters that the comedienne whose show we were writing developed in her long and successful career. Not one of them was familiar to me. I got to bed early, as I was completely dazed, to be able to prepare for my work the next morning. Be a pro. A pro hired to write in a language he does not speak, about the culture he knows nothing about, in a country half way across the globe. Ok. I was a positive thinking idiot, but hey they found my jokes funny enough to fly me half way around the world, they must know what they are doing.

Day 1

Bombs away

The first day on the job was… ahem… confusing. They were expecting me to shoot out jokes of the top of my head, unexpected, weird, complex and broken down in 3 beats, preferably based on popular Brazilian culture. Which, if you recall, I know nothing about. When writing the pitch, I used Google translate and Brazilian newspapers to get the topics / ideas they were interested in, but while in Brazil the Internet was in the house and I was under the house.There was supposed to be Internet on the terrace writing room, but it never worked. No research. I tried riding my jet lag and I brought around 30 jokes to start with. One-liners, setups, Brazilian stuff like the brazilian wax candles that smell like burning hair. The good stuff was picked up by the other writer who could do Portuguese, while I was left with a sour taste in my mouth. I did not want to squabble about joke ownership, as I knew going in I could not write dialogue. I kind of thought my job would be to give setups, break them into the beats and send them on their merry way to have dialogue written, in a joint comedy effort. But no. I was supposed to… even after a month of reflection I have no idea what was I supposed to do and how did I think I could do it.

When the 3 of us (writer, writer, producer) gathered in the writing room, I started reading my jokes. I bombed like a piece rock hurled from the moon that got caught in Earth’s gravity and burned upon entering atmosphere just to slam into the ground at a terrible speed and produce a massive village flattening shockwave. So instead of writing jokes, I concentrated on what they all found funny, to be able to build upon those in my next jet lag morning session. The list was not very long. It started and ended with blowjobs (bokechi in the local lingo) and there was a bit of dildos thrown in for good measure. After 12 hours of trying to work with an hour break for lunch, I withdrew to my garage cellar, to shower, relax, rethink, and regroup. The producer was upset, as we did not hit the 15-joke norm today. We’ll have to double our efforts tomorrow. No problem. As soon as I figure out how to make an effort that counts.

Even comments I got were confusing — is this realistic in a joke about a flying fuck, how can we make this more weird in a joke about the host getting drunk and trying to rape its guests in-between dancing scenes and blow-job jokes.

Day 2

Blowjobs and dildos

I got good 4 hours of writing dildo and blowjob jokes in before everyone else came to work. To be honest, I cannot write those. I am still gratefully embarrassed when my wife tries to blow me, so trust me, I cannot write dirty jokes. Must be that entire catholic upbringing everyone around me has been having. Today a local producer-writer joined us for a session. He was on fire. Every idea he had, he would act it out on the spot, with voices and everything. Being used to just writing jokes (and I could not even get that right) got me frustrated. As the session escalated into Portuguese and beyond my comprehension it only got worse. They laughed and laughed about a band that everyone in Brazil knows and likes, a sort of Boney M looking band that performed samba in Egyptian outfits. It sounds funnier than it is. I’ve skipped lunch to dig out something Brazilian and funny on the Internet, to have something done for when they come back (my early morning efforts were dead on the paper). It did not work out. My jokes were just not working. It was killing me.

Even my use of free time was creeping them out. Instead of going out, rocking with my cock out as any decent comedy writer worth his salt would do, I went to bed early. Hey, I was running 5 hours ahead of them and I needed a bit of alone time to organise stuff in my head. Nothing was going according to plan. What would you do? I overheard my employers who were my landlords as well (or imagined I’ve heard them — it was in Portuguese) talking about how I stay in the casilleta all the fucking time. I was stuck trying to write dick jokes or falling over objects jokes. The bottom of the humour barrel.

Day 3

Fired and quitting

Desperate and without any joke writing confidence left after 2 days of complete bombing the 3rd day was actually good. Half of the jokes we wrote started of my queues, end were brazilianized in the process. Or so I thought. As the day drew to a close, I got asked to stay after the rest of the 2 writer crew left.

After a short talk, the producer and I agreed that it was not working. I could stay in Brasil for 10 days, living in their nice garage house, with enough cash to be able to eat and move about. My plane ticket could not be changed for a portion of the price, but only for 3 times the price. The production has already used half of the budget on my ticket and could not afford another one. If I wanted to fly home the next day I would have to pay for it myself.

Let me remind you I had no car to move about, I was living in the garage with no glass on the windows and the village I was staying in was tiny. My confidence was crushed. I tucked my tail between my legs and gave my credit card details to my girlfriend so she can book me a seat on the next flight home.

I would have loved to be able to explore Brazil, but I just wasn’t feeling it.

Day 4

The pity lunch

It was Sunday. We went out to lunch to a fancy fish place next to the lake, with a grass patio for kids, where they serve local oysters (Florianopolis is known for its oysters).

The talk was stiff. Don’t beat yourself up, we gambled on you a bit, but you just weren’t what we were expecting. It’s fine, really. I thought the working process would be different.

For dessert we got stuck in traffic for 4 hours around 10 km from the house. Walking really slow it would take less than 2 hours. Nobody tried to say anything. We were just staring in the long line of cars in front of us and waiting.

Day 5

Creepy guy getaway

On the morning of my 5th day, I was packing and cleaning up my room. When packed I planned a boat trip around the lake. It was raining, as these are winter months in Brazil, so I waited for it to stop to go out. I kept hearing the rest of them making jokes about this arrogant guy who thinks he knows comedy and dismisses their jokes. Then there was this creepy guy who just stares at people, like a horror movie trailer. It was kind of funny, until I overheard them talking about me directly, so I decided to work the creepy guy angle a bit and went up to say goodbye. You should have seen their faces.

The producer/writer who fired me (so he could earn my money) could not look me in the eye. I hugged him and thanked him for a wonderful opportunity. Then I shook the hand of the other writer who was stealing my jokes and passing them on as his. Thanked him for help and insight into Brazilian culture. I thanked our star and then the producer who hired-fired me too.

Then I walked down into the village, took a boat ride around the lake, ate some fish dinner. I walked the village end to end. It took me half a day. The other half I‘ve spent talking to fishermen about football. You don’t need to know the language to do that. They offered to take me fishing, but would not return in time for my flight, so I had to decline.

During the drive to the airport the producer consoled me by explaining I was the 15th writer they tried out. What if they invite people over to Brazil, pay them petty cash and then use them to prototype weird, Ricky Gervais type jokes? How clever and evil! He also told me that the guy who was using my jokes is getting fired too. I felt sorry for the dude. His coke habit needed the money.

How was Brazil?

Food is excellent, air is clean, people are nice, they dance and laugh all the time. They might roofie you and have their mates kick you around while they drag you from ATM to ATM to draw as much cash as they can and then leave you to be found face down in the surf by a jogging fireman in the early hours of the morning, but hey. What’s a little joke between friends you’ll never see again? It could happen in New York too (true story, bro) so don’t fret about Brazil being dangerous. It is what Latin America is, on average. Wild, beautiful and a bit unpredictable.

Sex is funny. When a host flashes her tits at guests on the air and tries to blow them. THAT is hilarious. Even the word “blowjob” is funny. Don’t believe me? What about the proverb: Drunken asshole is not picky? I’ve picked that one up from my writer colleagues.

Poor are funny, because there is so many of them. Rich are funny, but catchphrase funny, like “In Paris it is all different”.

There is no racism, there are no discriminations based on sexual preferences. No one will object to you poking any of those drunk assholes, whatever the sex. Then again, rape is common.

Women are all ass. Men from Rio are pushy. Men from Minas Gerais are nice which is considered strange in Brazil. The Paolitos (people from Sao Paolo) are… can’t tell you that. I can dance / act it out with grunts.

The spider.

Dance all the time and everywhere. As soon as you see bateria de samba, gyrate your hips, curl your arms and dance. Do not do it if you’re not from Brazil. Only people born in Brazil can dance samba.

How do you actually write comedy in Brazil?

Simple really

Comedy is hard. Especially in a language you don’t speak and a culture you know nothing about. So to do it well in Brazil you must:

1. Be Brazilian
2. Speak Portuguese
3. Wave your hands a lot, singing and dancing all the time
4. Make 87% of jokes about sex or poverty (12%). Throw in some gun violence, drugs, prostitutes, celebrities and politicians to improve the flavour.
5. Know Brazilian celebrities. Build upon comments on their Facebook pages. One of my ex-producers swears by this one.

If you find this account bitter, please let me know, so I can re-write it. It was not my intention to embarrass anyone but myself. People who offered me this job had the best intentions, as did I. It just did not turn out so great. Sorry. It was a great experience and lesson. Thank you.

PS. If you’d care to read the script that got me hired, leave a comment.