- Aug 2023
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austinkleon.com austinkleon.com
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Comedian Phyllis Diller had “gag file,” which is now housed at The Smithsonian: Phyllis Diller’s groundbreaking career as a stand-up comic spanned almost 50 years. Throughout her career she used a gag file to organize her material. Diller’s gag file consists of a steel cabinet with 48 drawers (along with a 3 drawer expansion) containing over 52,000 3-by-5 inch index cards, each holding a typewritten joke or gag.
A Zettelkasten for jokes!
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americanhistory.si.edu americanhistory.si.edu
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other jokes did not land because I did not know the movie star or celebrity referenced.
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The main thing I learned while reading through Phyllis Diller's jokes is that comedy has changed a lot since she started her career in the mid-1950s. Her comedy is focused on short one-liners that get laughs in quick succession, while today's comedy is more story-driven. Although a lot of her jokes are very time-bound due to their content, it was interesting to get a glimpse of what was happening at the time a joke was written. Each joke card has a date on it, and the cards span the 1960s to the 1990s. The topic of the jokes told a lot about what people were worried about or focused on at the time the joke was written, whether it was the inflation or student protests of the 1970s, a celebrity's many marriages, or gossip about the president at the time. While, like any comedian, some of her jokes fall flat, I appreciated Diller's hard work in meticulously recording, testing, and filing each joke in the gag file, along with her ability to make a joke about almost any topic.
evidence of comedy shift from 50s/60s of one liners to more story-based comedy of the 2000s onward. Some of this may come about through idea links or story links as seen in some of Diller's paperclipped cards (see https://hypothes.is/a/W9Wz-EXsEe6nZxew_8BUCg).
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americanhistory.si.edu americanhistory.si.edu
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These index cards are organized alphabetically by subject ranging from accessories to world affairs and covering almost everything in between.
Phyllis Diller's gag file was arranged alphabetically by subject and ranged from "accessories" to "world affairs".
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This beige metal cabinet is Phyllis Diller’s gag file, a categorized archive of the jokes Diller used in her stand-up comedy routines throughout her half-century long career. A small three drawer expansion of the gag file is also in NMAH’s collection (Catalog Number 2003.0289.01.02). The 48 drawers of the gag file, along with the 3 drawer expansion, contain a total of 52,569 3-by-5 inch index cards, each holding a typewritten joke or gag.
52,569 3x5" index cards!
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americanhistory.si.edu americanhistory.si.edu
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Other comedians have maintained their material in joke files, among them Bob Hope, whose file is in the collections at the Library of Congress.
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transcription.si.edu transcription.si.edu
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Phyllis Diller Gag File - Drawer No. 49, Part 1
In this set, you will find cards from the following category: Lockhorns.
https://transcription.si.edu/project/9431
I had some collections of comic strips in my youth, but sadly didn't keep up the practice or them.
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www.latimes.com www.latimes.com
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Liebenson, Donald. “Classic Hollywood: Remembering Phyllis Diller (and 52,569 of Her Jokes) at the Smithsonian.” Los Angeles Times, May 12, 2017, sec. Television. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-ca-st-phyllis-diller-smithsonian-20170512-story.html.
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Three weeks and 52,569 jokes later, the job was completed.
While many sources seem to indicate that Phyllis Diller had approximately 52,000 index cards with jokes, the ultimate tally after the completion of transcription for the Smithsonian Institution seems to have been 52,569 cards.
While the Los Angeles times lists this as the number of jokes, it's far more likely to be the number of cards as some cards I've seen have multiple jokes.
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Hanna BredenbeckCorp, project assistant for the museum, was impressed. “It took me four months to scan all the joke cards,” she said with a laugh.
It took four months for Hanna BredenbeckCorp, a project assistant for the Smithsonian Institution, to scan all of Phyllis Diller's joke cards for subsequent transcription and creation of a searchable digital database.
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- Jun 2023
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comedycenter.org comedycenter.org
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via Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.(Break Thru Films/IFC, 2010)
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National Comedy Center Becomes Home to Joan Rivers’ Career Archive<br /> by National Comedy Center
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comedycenter.org comedycenter.org
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564 jokes are filed under PARENTS HATED ME (see: NOT WANTED) and over 300 within the STEWARDESSES category.
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a file cabinet containing over 65,000 original jokes spanning from the start of her career in the 1950s to 2014 when she passed away.
The NY Times blew her obituary date of 2014 when they published material based on this press release.
Joan Rivers card index of jokes comprised 65,000 cards spanning the start of her career in the 1950s to 2014, when she passed away.
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www.imdb.com www.imdb.com
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https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1568150/
Based on having watched the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work and the depictions of Rivers' card index in the film and using her hands and a lateral file for scale, her cards seem to have been 3 x 5" index cards.
cross reference: https://hypothes.is/a/RvLTZjCQEe2uuaNwpTBNuA
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www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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Zinoman, Jason. “A ‘Crown Jewel of Comedy’: The Joan Rivers Card Catalog of Jokes Finds a Home.” The New York Times, June 8, 2023, sec. Arts. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/08/arts/television/joan-rivers-archive.html.
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“And yeah, it goes on, and on, and on. And one day, we’re going to get a little intern who thinks they’re in show business and is going to sit and put each and every one of these cards onto a computer so that when I’m in England and I need a joke about doctors, I can just go into my computer and come up with a — oh, this is a tramp. This tramp donated all her organs for transplants, which should make the recipients happy because her body has never rejected anything. [LAUGHS]: So. But it just goes on, and on, and on. These are just jokes over the years, years, and years, and years of jokes. And when I die, I can sell this to some lucky, lucky comedian who will then, if they’re smart, have enough to keep them going for their whole life.”
standing in front of her card index for comedy, built into a wall of other files.
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In a scene from the documentary “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work,” the comedian explains how she kept a record of her jokes and cross-indexed them.CreditCredit...Break Thru Films/IFC
In the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, she explains how she kept and filed records of her jokes.
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Example typewritten jokes from Joan Rivers' card index of comedy:
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Rivers, who wrote gags at all hours, paid close attention to setups and punchlines, typing them up and cross-referencing them by categories like “Parents hated me” or “Las Vegas” or “No sex appeal.” The largest subject area is “Tramp,” which includes 1,756 jokes.
Joan Rivers card index of jokes is categorized by topical headings like "Parents hated me", "Las Vegas", and "No sex appeal". The largest subject category in her collection was "Tramp" with 1,756 jokes.
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In Carlin’s archives, by contrast, the jokes were “mainly scraps of paper organized into Ziploc baggies then put into a folder by topic.”
quote by Journey Gunderson, the executive director of the National Comedy Center
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When it comes to the Joan Rivers joke collection, “I don’t know that another exists that is nearly as vast,” Gunderson said.
Ignoring Bob Hope's collection or possibly that by Sid Caesar.
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Joan Rivers’s card catalog of jokes and include material covering a vast swath of comedy history, from the 1950s to 2015.
Joan Rivers card index of jokes spans material covering the 1950s to 2015.
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Instead, Rivers is donating the extensive collection to the National Comedy Center, the high-tech museum in Jamestown, N.Y., joining the archives of A-list comics like George Carlin and Carl Reiner. The fact that the jokes will be accessible is only one of the reasons for Melissa Rivers’s decision.
To avoid the Raiders of the Lost Ark problem, Melissa Rivers donated her mother's joke collection to the National Comedy Center so it would be on display and accessible. The New York-based museum is also home to the archives of George Carlin and Carl Reiner.
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Take a look at some of the artifacts from her archive, which includes 65,000 cross-referenced gags and is headed to the National Comedy Center.
Joan Rivers' card catalog of ~65,000 cross referenced jokes will be housed at the National Comedy Center, a museum in Jamestown, NY.
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- Feb 2023
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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What screenwriting books recommend note cards for drafting/outlining? Do any go beyond the general outlining advice?
What is the overlap of this sort of writing practice with comedians who had a practice of writing jokes on index cards? (Ronald Reagan, Phyllis Diller, etc.?
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- Sep 2022
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Posted byu/piloteris16 hours agoCreative output examples .t3_xdrb0k._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } I am curious about examples, if any, of how an anti net can be useful for creative or artistic output, as opposed to more strictly intellectual articles, writing, etc. Does anyone here use an antinet as input for the “creative well” ? I’d love examples of the types of cards, etc
They may not necessarily specifically include Luhmann-esque linking, numbering, and indexing, but some broad interesting examples within the tradition include: Comedians: (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten for references/articles) - Phyllis Diller - Joan Rivers - Bob Hope - George Carlin
Musicians: - Eminem https://boffosocko.com/2021/08/10/55794555/ - Taylor Swift: https://hypothes.is/a/SdYxONsREeyuDQOG4K8D_Q
Dance: - Twyla Tharpe https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000SEOWBG/ (Chapter 6)
Art/Visual - Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/archive/archive-collections/verkn%C3%BCpfungszwang-exhibition/mnemosyne-materials
Creative writing (as opposed to academic): - Vladimir Nabokov https://www.openculture.com/2014/02/the-notecards-on-which-vladimir-nabokov-wrote-lolita.html - Jean Paul - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00168890.2018.1479240 - https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.10520/EJC34721 (German) - Michael Ende https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Endes-Zettelkasten-Skizzen-Notizen/dp/352271380X
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