Harpo Does Something Funny: Difference between revisions

* [[Jim Carrey]], in an interview during the making of ''[[Me Myself and Irene]]'' said, "It's amazing how blank a script will be. It just says 'Jim does something funny.'"

* Stanley Kubrick almost never allowed this; one exception he made was for Peter Sellers in ''[[Dr. Strangelove]]''. Largely because you never tried to pin down Peter Sellers.

* A fair amount of the [[Bob Hope]]/[[Bing Crosby]] ''[[Road To|Road]]'' pictures consisted of this, despite the fact that a script theoretically existed. Dorothy Lamour later described her contribution to the films as "like I was watching a game of tennis".

* By the time the [[Three Stooges]]' "schtick" was well-established, script writers found it easier to just write in generic stage instructions such as "Moe punishes Curly" and let the boys work it out on their own. (A lot easier than writing out "Moe punches Curly in the stomach, bops him in the forehead, twists his ears," etc.) Curly's reactions and half-hearted or backfiring attempts at revenge were also often ad-libbed.

 

* Many promos are done this way, with the wrestler given a basic outline of what to emphasize in his/her promo and then filling in the rest. Wrestlers who are particularly adept at this are given even more freedom and are usually more popular with the fans, often getting pushes based on their skills at cutting promos. The [[WWE]] has been moving away from this in recent years, scripting promos word for word and insisting wrestlers stick to that, to prevent the risk of obscene content slipping through. It's not been a good decision, overall.

* This is largely true of matches themselves. While the match endings are predetermined (who wins, how s/he wins, and about how long the match lasts), and (depending on how important the match is) there may be a few other predetermined important moments (known in the business as "spots"), most of the action is made up by the wrestlers themselves as they go along.

** Individual wrestlers are frequently given pretty much free rein over their matches. In the old ECW, Paul Heyman gave [[Lance Storm]] enough leeway that Lance was occasionally allowed to change the ending to the match, and some other wrestlers, such as [[Chris Benoit]] and Shane Douglas, were known for not needing much in the way of guidelines. Conversely, giving wrestlers ''no'' leeway is sometimes used to make sure a decent match happens - see [[Hulk Hogan]] / [[Ultimate Warrior]] at Wrestlemania VI, and a [[Trish Stratus]] / [[Stephanie McMahon]] match on Raw.

 

* At one point on the original cast recording of ''House of Flowers'', Pearl Bailey says, "Suppose I have an ad-lib here filled in here for the record date, but we've been so terribly busy over in the theatre we haven't had time."

** In particular, the entire second act is a re-do of ''[[Hamlet]]'' in about a quarter of the time. When they get to this point, they bring in an audience member (usually the one the "Adam" role vomits on) to play the part, encouraging the other audience members to recite a mantra for part of Ophelia's psyche.

** A better example of this might even be the fact that that same night had an audience member named [[Awesome McCoolname|Hercules]]...cuing off-the-cuff jokes about Olympus. Eventually, the proper reproduction of the play ended with the "Daniel" part ''picking up a local mountain'' to squash Claudius (the "Adam" role), with a joke about how much strength that would need.