I got the opportunity to take part in a round table interview with the hilarious and talented Marlon Wayans while he was in Miami promoting his new movie A Haunted House 2. During our interview, we touched on why comedy is harder, his site WhatTheFunny.com and that Richard Pryor biopic and more!
Q: I feel like I had a shared experience with you now because we both experienced that nasty bathroom. (The Examiner)
Marlon: Oh, I was about to say “What’s her name?”
(laughs)
M: That was just like I don’t understand. That’s not some regular poop. That’s some dinosaur shit, man, that was crazy.
Q: Are you a cat person? I ask because dogs in the movies have not fared to well. (The Examiner)
M: Actually, I’m more of a dog person than a cat person. I love dogs. Cats, I’m allergic to. I like doing decadent things to fluffy little things. Something about a cute little cuddly dog. With a safe dropping on it, it kind of makes you laugh.
Q: In terms of writing the screenplay for this movie, what’s the process like in order to write down the jokes, and seeing if it plays off well? (The Examiner)
M: Well, I think it’s not just this movie. I think it’s every movie, there’s definitely a process. Every writer has his own process. My process is brainstorming first, and just watching movies, studying staples. And then finding common denominators, and then after that I find the lines and the characters in the story. From there, I carve the movie out. I write an outline. I add in, you know, what’s the character’s journey. The hero’s journey. What is the progression of the plot. So it’s a multi-colored card system that we use, and then from there it’s “how do we hang all these jokes that we collected earlier into this structure?”
Q: You said before that you enjoy doing comedy because it’s more of a challenge. I wanted to hear more about that, and why it’s more challenging than a drama. (The Young Folks)
M: Drama, it is what it is. You do deal in some subtext, but for the most part it is what it is. It’s easier to feel than it is to take your feelings and make people laugh, or to take a scary situation and make it funny. You’re actually taking it, and flipping it instead of just being scared. There’s double the effort because you have to go with the scare, you have to bring it in, and then hit them with the joke. So I just like the math that comes along with comedy, and the challenges of trying to make people feel the same way at one time. Even though they come from all different walks of life with different experiences that you can make a whole theater of people laugh at the same time consistently, I think, to me, I like taking that challenge.
Q: Coming back to writing. Actually, on the first film, what was the challenge of writing a “found footage film” since it’s not a typical screenplay? (The Examiner)
M: Found footage movies, for the most part, is just like you watch these movies do nothing, and then the last five minutes everything goes haywire. So when you write a script version of this, it has to be interesting all the way through. The character has to start in one place, and end in another place. That goes through out the whole movie. You have to build your scenes that build your sequences that build your acts that builds your entire movie. They all have to have twists and turns. The character has to go to a negative and a positive. You keep changing the polarity. It’s kind of like good news, bad news to worse news. So it’s a lot harder. You have to bring stuff to it. It’s not like we moved in a house that already has furniture. It didn’t even have walls, so we had to start from scratch, and put the walls in, design it and paint it. We had to create what was not there, otherwise you don’t have a very interesting movie. You could stain that kind of suspense for a paranormal kind of found footage movie, but in a comedy, people are not going to sit in a comedy for an hour and a half, and then the last five minutes you’re going to make them laugh. So we had to find a way to get them all the way through.
Q: When you were touring with the first movie, was there any reactions, as the movie came out for home release, did you use any feedback from what your fans were getting in order to input some interesting takes on this movie? (The Examiner)
M: Yeah. It was actually a couple of things I tweeted out beforehand I was writing it just to get people’s point of view on it. So that and, you know, I would read some comments whether it be on Netflix or on YouTube. You know, you gather “okay, they liked this. This scene was more decisive, or these things really made them laugh.” You know, for me when I make a movie for an audience, I want to make them laugh. That’s important to me, so you do take notes, and that’s why I hold test screenings where I’ll screen a movie before we put it out in theaters. I play back not the video, I play back the audio and I watch it and I go “okay that’s a dead spot. Take it out, or that joke was flat. Take it out, or this joke got more ooohs than aaahs, what can we do to fix that?” Sometimes, it just means you have to let it go. So I listen to the audience because I’m designing and tailor-making a suit for them.
Q: When you do that process, do you go back and shoot something new or try to fix it in editing? (The Examiner)
M: If it’s not good, yea, we’ll re-shoot. But sometimes it’s just simple adjustments, you know, it’s kinda like halftime at a basketball game. You go in the locker room, you discuss what worked, and what didn’t work. Then you go back out ready to make the changes, and ready to have a great second half. So, a lot of times it’s just tweaking the material. We knew we had funny stuff, but sometimes we went too far with the joke or we went too long with the joke.
Q: I know you like to use racial stereotypes in your movies. What’s that about? (The Young Folks)
M: It’s not so much racial stereotypes. I like to talk about the things that people…
Don’t talk about? (laughs)
M: Yep! I like to say what people think but they’re not saying. I like to put it out there in a movie, and, you know, kinda toss it up there for discussion. It’s so fun to see a diverse audience watch this movie and laugh in different pockets at different jokes and then collectively. There’ll be a joke that the white guys says about black people, and the white people will want to laugh, but they’ll look at the black people who go like “oh that’s messed up!” And then the black people start laughing, and then the white people go “oh thank god because I really want to laugh right now.” So, I think it’s a guilty pleasure. I think laugher is healing, and I think it’s good for everybody to kind of ease those tensions and to just laugh about some of the things that we just don’t say.
Q: It’s been 20 years since one of your breakthrough roles with Above The Rim, and 10 years since White Chicks (The Examiner)
M: You’re aging me. Making me want to keel over and die.
(laughs)
Q: Do you look back at those movies and reflect upon, or is it better to move on? (The Examiner)
M: I look at all my experiences as good experiences and they are great memories, but I don’t hold on to the past. What I bring to the new experiences is always the fun that we have, and I try to have more fun the next time around. When I’m filming my movies now, I do stuff like have the ice cream truck come, or I’ll have In-N-Out burger come, or a coffee truck. I just want us to be lighthearted and have fun, and I want to thank them everyday for their hard work and effort.
Q: What are your thoughts on doing something out of the comedy genre? (The Examiner)
M: I would love to. There’s a couple of things I’m circling. There’s a project I have with one of my best friends, Omar Epps, where we play best friends but it’s a thriller. And then there’s the Richard Pryor story. If that happens, great, if not, I don’t know. There’s a new director on it, Lee Daniels. I don’t know if that’s going to come my way. If it does, that’s something I would love to do. I’ve been doing stand up for three and half years just preparing for that moment. If it happens, great. If it doesn’t, I’m very grateful to Richard Pryor, and the journey of this whole process because it got me to get on stage. I started out wanting to play a great, now I want to be a great.
Q: I saw him on his last tour. (The Examiner)
M: He’s awesome!
Q: Do you have any future projects for WhatTheFunny.com? (The Young Folks)
M: We have a lot of content going up daily. Check it out. We have 200 or 300 videos right now. Just funny shorts. I think it’s a great little community for people to go see brand new up-and-coming content and talent. My nephew, Damon, has a very funny sketch show on there called Wayan’s World. I’ve done some sketches on there. Todrick Hall, who is amazing, he does all these musical kind of rachet broadway parodies. Instead of “Singin’ In The Rain,” he did “Twerkin’ In The Rain.” It’s just a fun site to visit. There’s a free app for it. You can get it, or visit WhatTheFunny.com.
Q: What was the genesis of getting it launched? (The Examiner)
M: I think there was a need for an urban audience to have a space that they can come to. Funny or Die is a great destination for a different crowd. For ours, I think it speaks directly to that young, urban hip audience.
Q: What’s the best part about making somebody laugh? (The Examiner)
M: Knowing that that laugh might have changed or shifted their entire day in that one moment. That you took a lot of stress and tension away. When I do a movie, I wait a year to hear the laugh. I do stand up now religiously just to hear laughs. I’m addicted to laughs, so for me every time I get a laugh, I got a fix.
A Haunted House 2 is now playing
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