Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Comedy bunny, free for the taking

The premise: The French taunting scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail was really just a massive miscommunication.

The execution: First, translate the entire scene into French. Then compare the English and French side by side, and look for places where mistakes might be made. Words that sound like other words, common mistakes that Anglophones make when learning French and vice versa, faux amis, etc. Then incorporate these mistakes into the dialogue so that every statement made is a logical and rational response to the previous statement. Any character can speak either language at any time - after all, it's perfectly normal to try to accomodate.

The goal: a bilingual conversation wherein every character thinks they're responding perfectly reasonably to what their interlocutor says, but the end result is (or can be interpreted as) the French taunting scene.

Yes, I might work this out myself someday, but for now I haven't the slightest idea how to do it and don't have the time and energy to try. So I'm throwing it out there for free.

1 comment:

M@ said...

I recently remarked that academic jokes are the funniest jokes, as long as you are knowledgeable enough about the subject matter to get the joke. (P.D.Q. Bach, for example, is a riot for musicians and music students, but not for the general population.)

I think that, from that point of view, the Comedy Bunny sketch would be a crashing success.