Erich Kästner (1899-1974) was a "singer of the little man and the poet of the little freedoms” (Marcel Reich-Ranicki). With his witty and reflective verses that appear so simple, he guaranteed the continuity of the literary cabaret of the twenties into the postwar years. Following his first performances with his "utilitarian poetry” during the post-inflationary era of "new objectivity” prior to 1933 in Berlin cabarets such as Küka, the Tingel Tangel, Cabaret of the Comedians (Kabarett der Komiker) and Werner Finck’s Catacombs (Die Katakombe), he was only able to publish during the Third Reich with a special authorization or under a pseudonym. After the war, the pessimistic enlightener continued work of the Berlin era, now in Munich. With his melancholy and poetic songs, scenes, and sketches for the Showbooth (Schaubude) and Little Freedom (Kleine Freiheit), he influenced the cabaret of the years immediately following war until the foundation of two German states. His ideal of the cabaret as a moral and philosophical institution and a lyrical theater of the times anticipated the political and satirical ensemble cabarets of the fifties. "My writing is directed against the indolence of the heart and the stubbornness of the mind.” (Erich Kästner)

Ernst Busch (1900-1980) was the singer of the proletariat and of proletarian history, a nuanced king of the democratic worker’s song. As the “singing heart of the working class” (according to Hanns Eisler), he performed songs of Tucholsky and Kästner in the Berlin cabarets Stuff and Nonsense (Larifari), the Catacombs (Katakombe) and in the Cabaret of the Comedians (Kabarett der Komiker); he also sang at demonstrations and worker’s meetings. After emigrating in 1933, he took part in the Spanish Civil War, and when interned in France, he led the theater group at the camp Gurs and performed in Peter Pan’s cabaret. He was extradited to Germany in 1943 and sentenced to a life term in prison. After liberation, the “Gründgens of the GDR” revived his career as a powerful actor of the people in numerous films and in Berlin ensembles. “Not an entertainer, not a sentimentalist, nor a dry reciter of revolution, but rather a militant artist of our times. When Busch sings political songs, they retain their humor in all their seriousness, and their seriousness in their humor. They keep us alert. They are hits and others keep singing them.”

Max Reinhardt on Cabaret.

Cabaret as a form of satire, its literary, political, philosophical and poetic content are at the forefront of documentary interest; the ongoing collection and scientific utilization of its diverse manifestations is the central task of the German Cabaret Archive

The playful, satirical form of cabaret and its literary, philosophical, and poetic qualities are the focus of our documentary interest. The central task of the German Cabaret Archives is the continuous collection and the availability of these materials to academics and historians

David Letterman kept the Ed Sullivan Theater around 55 degrees F because the temperature keeps the audience alert.

Apparently back in the 80s, Dave experimented with different temperatures on different shows. He tried 75 one day. 65 another day. The day he went with 55, jokes really hit and from then on that was the temperature. http://www.sandpapersuit.com/2011/07/why-letterman-keeps-his-studio-so-cool.html

Some folks say David Letterman doesn’t want to break into a sweat during intense interviews under hot studio lights. But, according to George Clarke, Theater and Building Engineer for CBS, the cool air makes the sound crisper and keeps the audience more alert. “Crowd reaction is very important in this business, and the comedy stays fresh in the cold, too” says Clarke...

At about 5 o’clock each week night, Clarke and his boss, Joe Soldano, Building Manager, must make sure that the temperature of the Ed Sullivan Theater is pulled down to 50° F before the audience arrives. The MULTISTACK chiller has never failed to cool things down. “The stagehands call this place ‘the refrigerator’.” In the filming rooms everyone sits around in winter coats, hats and gloves. They, too, are kept crisp and alert by the cool temperature. via http://www.multistack.com/casestudies/david_letterman.aspx

https://funnyhow.substack.com/p/how-chris-rock-and-jerry-seinfeld

Comedian Matt Ruby relates his personal experience watching Chris Rock workshopping his comedy writing in front of auciences at stress Factory in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Rock would show up unannounced and perform new material in front of small crowds to test it out. He'd read/perform material off of a yellow legal pad.

Peter Sims included some of it in the introduction of his book Little Bets.

This is broadly similar to my own experience seeing Rock at the Laugh Factory trying out material for the Academy Awards as well as Adam Sandler at the Improv on Melrose doing midnight sets reading straight off of a notebook.

origin of the phrase? see: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quot_homines_tot_sententi%C3%A6

apparently from Latin, echoing line 454 of Terence’s Phormio

Or the fuller quotation: - quot homines tot sententiae: suo’ quoique mos - as many men, so many minds: to every one his own way - There are as many opinions as there are people who hold them: each has his own correct way

I think you should all know that I did not come here tonight to make fun of Don Rickles. Neither did I come here to trade barbs, because it would take a comedian to do the first and a true wit to do the second.

Instead, I've come here tonight to say something nice about Don Rickles. And for that, you have to have an actor. —George C. Scott, at a roast of Don Rickles

A Zettelkasten for jokes!

Hanna BredenbeckCorp numbered and scanned 52,569 index cards from Phyllis Diller's gag file. Prior to this archival effort most estimates for the numbers of cards were in the 40-50,000 range.

Spanning the 1960s to the 1990s roughly. The index was donated in 2003, so there were certainly no

Exact dating on the cards may give a better range, particularly if the text can be searched or if there's a database that can be sorted by date.

Via https://hypothes.is/a/UbW8nERrEe6xjEseEEEy1w we can use the rough dates: 1955-2002 which are the bookends of her career.

This gives us a rough estimate of:<br /> 2002-1955 = 48 years (inclusive) or 17,520 days (at 365 days per year ignoring leap years)

52,569/17520 days gives 3.000513698630137 or almost exactly 3 cards (jokes) per day.

Going further if she was getting 12 laughs (jokes) per minute (her record, see: https://hypothes.is/a/MTLukkRpEe635oPT5lr7qg), then if continuously told, it would have taken her 52,569 jokes/12 jokes/minute = 4,380.75 minutes = 73.0125 hours or 3.0421875 days to tell every joke in her file.

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).

Phyllis Diller's gag file was arranged alphabetically by subject and ranged from "accessories" to "world affairs".

52,569 3x5" index cards!

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.

BredenbeckCorp, Hanna. “The Evolution of Phyllis Diller’s Career in 7 Objects.” Smithsonian Institution (blog), March 13, 2017. https://www.si.edu/object/evolution-phyllis-dillers-career-7-objects%3Aposts_f0bf8f9142b02dbb88d3d720517f6697

via https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/phyllis-diller-raucous-comic-famous-for-her-withering-oneliners-8069891.html

“Phyllis Diller’s File Of 53,000 Jokes.” Weekend Edition Saturday. NPR, March 11, 2017. https://www.npr.org/2017/03/11/519807672/phyllis-diller-s-file-of-53-000-jokes.

Was this originally hers? I've used a variation of it for decades myself....

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.

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.

Quote from Roseanne Barr on Phyllis Diller's card index gag file.

Joke quoted from Phyllis Diller's card index.

Actual origin?

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.

https://www.reddit.com/r/bulletjournal/comments/14qu116/bullet_journals_for_six_hours/

bullet journals for six hours<br/> —u/FirstOpalize

via Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.(Break Thru Films/IFC, 2010)

National Comedy Center Becomes Home to Joan Rivers’ Career Archive<br /> by National Comedy Center

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.

Very cool to have this!

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.

standing in front of her card index for comedy, built into a wall of other files.

In the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, she explains how she kept and filed records of her jokes.

Example typewritten jokes from Joan Rivers' card index of comedy:

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.

quote by Journey Gunderson, the executive director of the National Comedy Center

Ignoring Bob Hope's collection or possibly that by Sid Caesar.

Joan Rivers card index of jokes spans material covering the 1950s to 2015.

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.

Joan Rivers' card catalog of ~65,000 cross referenced jokes will be housed at the National Comedy Center, a museum in Jamestown, NY.

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

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.?

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

https://pasadenamag.com/people-places/out-and-about/altadenas-coffee-gallery-backstage-a-historical-labor-of-love/

Re-reading the novel after viewing Persuasion (2022), I was partly focused on finding the kind of comedy that Cracknell's adaptation foregrounds, which verges on slapstick at different moments, especially when Anne is involved. Anne's humor in the novel remains in the familiar realm of the satirical. But this scene with Charles Musgrove, Mary, and Anne is one of the few moments where it's possible to see some silliness in the narrative. The image of Charles chasing after this small animal to disengage himself from Mary's complaints is charming and makes him look quite silly: he is disarmed by her tenacious complaining and rather than endure them prefers to run after a small animal. The humor is turned against the couple, not at all an exemplar of marital respect. These two spouses might be found bickering but they are also conflict-averse, unable to enter into honest dialogue. The movie is inclined to giving Mary the upper hand. In the novel, Charles' possibly threatening masculinity is suggested through his persona as an avid sportsman. Hunting for weasels was not silly in and of itself at the time. These small and slender creatures had (and still do) a reputation for being ferocious predators. Thomas Bewick, who Austen would have known, describes them as follows in his A General History of Quadrupeds (1790): "The Weasel is very common, and well known in most parts of this country; is very destructive to young birds, poultry, rabbits, &c.; and is a keen devourer of eggs, which it sucks with great avidity" (219).

To make the action of a film where the bad guys' goal is to kill or harm young children, one can make the plot more palatable to viewers, particularly parents and their children, by making the heavies bumbling and buffonish like the gang that couldn't shoot straight.

A bit of this is also seen in some thriller/comedies like A Fish Called Wanda which has comedic threats.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwzjlmBLfrQ

https://dailynous.com/2021/08/13/bits-laughing-matter-guest-post/

Comedian Phyllis Diller collected over 52,000 3x5" index cards in a gag file. Each card contained a typewritten joke or gag of some sort which she organized alphabetically by subject.

For Joan Rivers scraps of paper, receipts, laundry lists, and matchbooks served the function as waste books. She would eventually transfer them to 3x5" index cards using a typewriter.

Joan Rivers kept a Zettelkasten of jokes in her Upper East Side apartment. They spanned over thirty years and over a million items, most of them typed on 3"x5" index cards and carefully arranged by subject.

Bob Hope's commonplace book of jokes has been scanned digitally and available at the United States Library of Congress.

Compare and contrast the materials of comedians versus magicians.

Collection was an important piece. Protection/secrecy was relatively similar, though with a joke, the item was as ephemeral as a magic act which would have been confounding on it's nature.

Link to Ricky Jay's collection of magic acts and pieces. Other comedy collections include George Carlin, Joan Rivers, etc.

https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/bobhope/images/vcjokes1.jpg Annie Leibovitz. Bob Hope in his joke vault. Photograph, July 17, 1995. Courtesy of Annie Leibovitz

Bob Hope amidst his commonplace book of jokes.

A description of how George Carlin collected material for his comedy. No discussion of how he further worked on or refined it.

George Carlin's file system for jokes and ideas.

another example of a joke Zettelkasten!

Origin of Lindy's Law or the Lindy effect.

A discussion of the life expectancy of a comic.

What they miss here is that it's easier to produce if you're also consuming a lot of material, particularly in a group. The output is proportion to the input, and at the time there was only so much input that one could take in in a much sparser media market in comparison to 2021.

There's something discordant here in a scholarly article about having academic participants with names like SenorG and actualham. It's almost like a 70's farce starring truckers with bizarre CB handles. It's even more bizarre since I know some of the researchers behind these screennames.

Is the pseudonymous nature of some of these handles useful in hiding the identity of the participants and thereby forcing one to grapple only with their ideas and not the personas, histories and contexts behind them?

Some great illustrations from Dante's Divine Comedy via https://www.openculture.com/2021/01/rarely-seen-illustrations-of-dantes-divine-comedy-are-now-free-online.html

Victor refers to Italian Dante Alighieri's (1265-1321) Divine Comedy in which the poet journeys through the nine circles of Hell.

Malvolio's self righteous personality is shown through this phrase. He mentions that "some have greatness thrust upon 'em," referring to his view that he is destined for nobility and eminence. He speaks of himself in third person displaying the egoism that he contains. After Malvolio finds the letter that he believes was written by Olivia, he automatically assumes that it is from Olivia and that its true that Olivia wants him to declare his love. This displays the theme of how desire can make someone a fool. Malvolio's egoism as well as his desire for Olivia makes him do all of the foolish things that the letter told him to.

Comedy/sarcasm/satire is often viewed as a means of avoiding real issues, but I agree that these can be key societal preparatory tools when revolutionary change is needed. Looking forward to Yomna's work!

Too true!

Sobald also Kebekus über Sachen herzieht, die Rützel nicht gut findet, fehlt Kebekus der rote Faden. Was erdreistet sich diese Kebekus eigentlich, ihren eigenen Humor zu haben, anstatt komplett auf Mainstream-Propaganda-Linie einzuschwenken? Frau Rützel, ihr Verständnis von Meinungsvielfalt ist wirklich bemerkenswert!

Demetri Martin

Shakespeare uses they for singular in comedy of errors.