Episode 87: At’sa Some Joke, Eh, Boss? (featuring Elliott Kalan)
Every so often, at gatherings of smart and sophisticated people with good taste (i.e. Marx Brothers fans), someone will invoke the names Sharko and Hippo, along with a story about how thanks to a clever picture book which builds on the fish-flush-flash routine from Animal Crackers, some child or group of children has miraculously fallen in love with the Marx Brothers.
Sharko and Hippo would be reason enough to dream of having Elliott Kalan on The Marx Brothers Council Podcast — and this conversation is so rich, we don’t even get to it until the end. Our main topic here is the art of the joke, as explored in Elliott’s latest work, Joke Farming: How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense. The book is a practical guide to writing funny, informed by Elliott’s experiences writing The Daily Show, Mystery Science Theater 3000, and more. Here, we examine those principles through a Marxian lens.
We also talk about Sharko and Hippo!
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Official description: “Award-winning writer/comedian and longtime Marx Brothers obsessive Elliott Kalan (The Daily Show, MST3K, The Flop House, and the new book Joke Farming) takes us deep into the craft of professional comedy writing with a nice dose of Marx-inspired examples. Elliott details the difference between satire and parody, defends the noble pun, and tells the story behind his delightfully chaotic Marx-flavored children’s book, Sharko and Hippo.”
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