TIMING IS NOTHING

Did you know that in The Shining, the door that Jack breaks down at the end of the movie was actually a real door? Kubrick had originally used a fake door, but Jack Nicholson, who supposedly had volunteered as a fire marshal earlier in his life, tore it down too quickly. It happened too fast, ruining the timing of the scene.

Timing, in all aspects of life, seems to be something that stresses us all out to some extent. Getting it right in a movie, getting it right in life. It’s what we worry most about on a first date (if you believe statistics), helps us figure out when to take that trip to that screenplay pitch in Milwaukee or what to say to our friends when our film was rejected at yet another film festival. Or what to say to them when it is in fact accepted - but they don’t remember you anymore.

There is athletic timing, comic timing, investment timing, engine timing, color timing or as in the case with most people, NO timing…

What is timing anyway, really? Is it speed? Hardly. The guy in the supermarket checkout is fast, but hardly funny, not athletic nor rich (if I am wrong here tell me and I will come to your supermarket and SHOP). 

Where does timing come from? Is it inherited? Was I adopted…?  Is it in our genes? In our gender? Hmm… Like someone famous once said, “Why can’t women tell jokes? Cause we marry them”.

Is it like having a musical sense – can you become good at it with some serious practice and sadistic parents? Or is it like ball sense, either you’re born with an excellent judgment of speed and bounce – or you’re not, and you will always “get picked last”? Well, if it’s not like musical sense or ball sense – is it all nonsense?

Whatever it is, I have lately come to realize a lot of people obsess about this stuff. But perhaps none more than comedians.

Case in point: the other week, I ventured to “downtownish” for some late-nite comedy. Now, it should be said here that since my last trip to Letterman in New York City, I have not ventured out much – for comedy anyway. Just like in theatre, comedy these days seems mostly to be there for other comedians to feel better about themselves – they go, it sucks, they celebrate that it sucks.

But again, what I find so amusing about comedians, and to my point in this blog: is that they seem to place such an awful amount of attention to their timing. Much like business people do.  The sale. The joke. The kill. It all comes from the same place.

So, anyway, it was way past the time when a woman my age should be seen on the streets of the East Village. And on top of everything I knew I had to try to stay sober. I had so drunkenly behaved the last time some of the people at this event kindly entertained me, that in comparison, Ben Sanderson in Leaving Las Vegas would have seemed restrained.

Almost all the men who performed (I guess all the funny women in New York were at a knitting convention or something that night) had impeccable timing. We endured their impeccable rapid-fire of piss, porn and pubic hair jokes. In fact, even the Swedish comedian (yes there was one!) was not boring – to my great surprise since we all know that Swedish men are otherwise only genetically programmed to do two things, invent dynamite and cook for muppets.

But there was one guy who really was not funny. And he wasn’t good either. But he had some seriously GOOD STUFF TO SAY that turned the room upside down. That turned all of us upside down, and inside out. He wasn’t funny, he was outrageous. He wasn’t good, he was great. He ran the show (introduced the other performers, kept energy levels high) – repeatedly launched himself at us with almost disturbing fearlessness, and we happily weathered the storm – afterwards a little ruffled and not as attractive or respectable looking as we had tried to seem when we entered that room – but happy to have been slapped around enough to forget the boredom of perfection that he himself seemed to praise in all his fellow comedians that night. The boredom of perfect timing that makes you laugh, but doesn’t make you care nor remember.

My point? Timing means nothing, if you have nothing to say. You’ll do the deal, you’ll make people laugh – but no matter how much time you’ve spent perfecting your craft nobody will care unless you have something to say.

But then, what the hell do I know… I’m just a bitter hag with neither timing nor anything to say. So, if you are reading this, thinking you’d learn something about timing you should probably STOP. Stop worrying about how to read people (or their blogs), what to say or when. Your life, or your film for that matter, shouldn’t be measured by a stopwatch. If you believe in what you do, just launch yourself at it.

Just grab your ax, rip into that door and say "Heeeeere's Johnny!”

Peace.
Zeniba