Twas the night before the funny people

I don’t have much to say tonight, so I’ll probably keep it short. There are so many things going on in my life. Where I’ll be in three months will be pretty darn interesting. Wait…I know what I’ll talk about or write about. Our Funniest Person in Bahrain contest is pretty important. We are getting a lot of really good press out of it. Here are a couple of quotes I gave Gulf Weekly which is one of the most respected papers in Bahrain. "Working with the cast of the Funniest Person in Bahrain has been an incredible experience for me. We have cast members from over 10 different countries/nationalities all coming together with the common universal bond of laughter. What we are doing simply has not been done in anywhere in the world before."
"Our cast includes people from Bahrain, Finland, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Holland, England, Seychelles, India, Pakistan, Ecuador, and some guy from the United States directing all this lunacy. Its truly been one of the most rewarding experiences in my entire career. I love these guys. Except Tariq...I still kind of like him though."

Not only is the content really funny, but what we are doing culturally is important too. Humor is different in every region. Just look at those crazy Japanese game shows if you need an example. There are many Europeans and Arabs that don’t understand American humor. Comedy is very difficult to do cross-culturally. But here we are, from 10 very diverse countries all coming together and making people laugh. Laughter is the universal language. If there were more laughter in the world, don’t you think it would be a better place. Well that is just one of the things we’re trying to do. I think we will try to expand it to a larger scale. But it will have to be in the right time. It has been an incredible experience for me to be a part of this. I thought it might be of interest for you to see the script which we’ll use for tomorrow night. This is just an outline that I use. I gauge the audiences reaction and see what sketches are working and what are not. In the actual dividing up of the scenes, that’s improvised as well. I have a quick hook if the actor’s are bombing. That gives them confidence that I will put them in eery situation to succeed.

Funniest Person in Bahrain Week 9, 2-3-2010

9:00-9:15 Short monologues…How you can tell you are living in an Arabic Country

Bargaining of Doweries (India)
Husband-Wife, Favorite thing to watch tv and read paper, Her task is to get his attention, his task is to remain undistracted
Two women meet for coffee…problem with son and school…listen and give advice, one of the women have tourette’s sounds, grunting

Human props
2 actors + 2 person acting as props
Audience gives the scene, where ”At church”, ”Bus stop”, ”Hospital”
And if they are good, also what is happening. ->
-> Story goes from there, two actors uses two others as props (trees,
Motorcycles etc.)

Proverb/Saying or a Poem
Audience gives the first word-> actor makes a saying or poem, which includes this word.
-> Actor makes a saying or poem, which includes this word.
-> Rick picks one word from the previous saying/poem.
-> Next actor makes a saying or poem, which includes this word.
-> Carries on couple of rounds, and the last poem needs to include the word picked by Rick plus the first word given by audience.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Different scenes, change of the style/genre
STARTS NEUTRAL, after one minute RICK changes the genre / style to something else.

Useable scenes:

1) Suspicious security and alarm systems sales man trying to sell the solution to a libidinous customer

2) Goodhearted robber and Bad robber and the down-on-luck victim at street (or bedroom in the middle of the night)

3) Sadist Dentist & Masochist Patient

4) Morgue, 3 actors, two workers and one corpse, who after a little while wakes up from death

5) Hospital. 3-4 actors. Doctor who don’t believe that the patients are actually sick, two to three patients, in really bad shape

7) Restaurant: 2 actors, something wrong with the food. Waiter is a racist--Yousif

8) Bus stop, 3 actors. One has a bad rash/ chronic eczema, other one have just given up smoking and one sees UFOs everywhere, suspects every body around him are from outer space

9) Band, 3 actors. Two stupid Heavy Rock artists and a greedy manager.

10) Children’s party with really Bad Magician, 3-4 actors.

11) Making alcohol (distilling) in Saudi, community access show, mutawa enters

13) Car shop, salesman has a diarrhea and the customer is a serial killer who wants to buy a car to transport the bodies.

- Monologue Speeches
- · Funeral – the death of barney the dinosaur
- · Aircraft- Pilot kinda wants to break the ice about the plane crashing
- · Financial advisory- explaining in plain English how the credit crash happened
- · Press Conference- Tiger woods wants to explain
- · Press Conference- Paris Hilton opens new university
14) Principal giving a speech at the party in the end of the school year
First the neutral version, this carries on for one minute
CEO’s corporate review to investors
Best Man Speech
Sermon
Sports Coach, half-time speech
Tiger Woods Press Conference--ali
Eulogy


Dialogues
Boss explains why they are firing someone
Break-up
Pregnant daughter explaining to parents
Coming out of the closet to parents
Dad giving advice to son before marriage
Mom giving advice to daughter before marriage

⇒ Rick changes the style to something else.
⇒ Different styles
⇒ Unsecure
⇒ Frustrated
⇒ Sadomasochist
⇒ Megalomaniac

16) Two disobedient/wild children and a strange babysitter (sailor, Vietnam-veteran, Hell Angel etc.)


Different versions like

Racist version
Gulf Daily news version
Mark Twain
Stephen King
Raymond Chandler
Shakespeare
Roman Antic Theatre play
Crazy Kevin
James Bond
Alfred Hitchcock
Elton John
George W. Bush
Whitney Houston
Indiana Jones
Donald Duck
Charlie Chaplin
Communist propaganda
Romantic Novel
Documentary / Tuition spot
Latino version
Rock video
Western
French art movie
Film Noir
Sci-Fi
Pantomime
Children’s Theatre
Italian comedy
Gypsy
Street Artist
Circus

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Simultaneous Interpreter/Dubbing
2 silent actors "bodies" + 2 voices (with mike)
Audience gives the scene, what is happening, where, who they are -> voices takes the story from there, the bodies tries to keep up the action with the story


3 actors
Most…
- Ugliest
- Handsome
- Richest
…Man in the world
together in different situations
Audience can give a scene, where, what happening...

Yousif, as a french guy teaching skiing first to an Arab…then an India.

Yousif
- Any transformer scenes (I can mimic their voices really well, and have done that from before in my stand up comedy act, as part of a joke)
- Terminator (don't mind if some else takes this, just wanted to mention it).
- Scottish guy
- Redneck (giving a speech about anti-racism)--Yousif

- Elmo (speech promoting crime or something else dont know)
-
- Scenes – one liners
- · Really hard test questions
- · What you would do first if you were leader of the country
- AWKWARD SILENCES
-
- · Weird things to say to break an awkward silence
-
- 2 lines – Muneer – Tariq - Sam
- In the Jungle- need to set up camp because its getting dark – Lines – Im not falling for that
- - What was that
- - Trust me! Im a Doctor
- - That hurt
-
- Plane is about to crash … Pilot Tariq – Co Pilot Muneer - Sam Hostess – I lost my drink
- - That’s what she said
- - Yeah I know
- - Have you seen my rash
- Other ideas
- -Eating/Diets 
-School/Work
-Odd pets
-Vehicle problems
-
-
- Missing movie moments Two Characters
- 
Two contestants act out a given scene as two characters (e.g. Capt. Kirk and Mr Spock have an argument about where the new porn holodeck should be)
- - Terminator going in for a service has an argument with service guy (Tariq and Sam)
- - Couch Carter arguing with fat kid about play time (Muneer-Sam)
- - 2 Japanese tourist arguing about how big GODZILLA REALLY IS (Ali and Tariq)
- - Twilight- Wolf Guy and Vamp guy argue about how NEEDY that girl really is. ( Tariq-Imran)
- - Optimus and Megatron are argueing about who should have the last bit of energon and they are being polite. ( Yousif and Muneer)
- - Matrix Neo and Agent Smith talk about all the porn on the net and who gets what ( Tariq and Muneer).
- - Tom and Jerry talk things thru ( Essa – Ali )
-
- Random sence
- like arabs going scuba diving
- when u have to learn all the hand signals for underwater
-

Insecure
Egomaniac
Retarded
Shakespeare
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Hitchcock
Indiana Jones
Pirates of Caribian
Lord of The Rings
James Bond
C.S.I.
24
W,
terminator,
Rambo,
Hitler
Elvis
W
Amy Winehouse
Snoop Dog/Kanye West
Hating
Tourettes
Idiot/airhead

Different styles:
Bollywood
Western
Opera
Horror
Barney
Infomercial
Ballet
Pantomime
Porno
Farce
Scifi
Kung-Fu
Rambo
Terminator

Jerry Springer—Noah
Spit or Swallow
Helping Hands