Comedy Legend David Zucker Reveals Untold Stories Behind Ryan Reynolds, Matt Stone, Trey Parker, and Hollywood’s Hidden Secrets
Ashley
So, let’s talk about Master Crash. I think that’s a good segue into that. What is that all about? When I was just researching for this interview, it sounds like you have 15 rules that you teach in that. Maybe you can talk about that a little bit. What’s one rule just to get wet our taste a little bit and we can get into it. But what are some of the things you teach in that?
David Zucker
Well, the 15 rules came from, you know, when we, back in 1972, when we started our theater, and when we came out of Madison, we were just young guys, we, you know, we thought we were real funny, it was anything goes and we were funny. But, you know, on our stage show every week, we kind of learned what worked and what didn’t. And that’s important, because the pace of the show had to keep going. We didn’t do any advertising, it was just word of mouth. And so, we evolved a series of 15 rules, starting with some guy came in, a friend of Jim’s, and said, you know, that sketch, that particular sketch was great. But, you know, you were doing a joke on a joke, you should correct that. We said, what’s that? What’s a joke on a joke? So, he said, you know, if you have a person in the foreground doing something serious, then the background can be funny. And if the background is serious, then you can have somebody in the foreground saying something funny, but you can’t do both. And that’s another rule, which is, well, that is it’s a joke on a joke. So that’s rule number one.
