David poses the question.
Slate started a podcast called Decorder and the first episode was about the history of the laugh track (both the laff box machine and sweetening live studio laughter). I know in the past you've talked about having to kill laughs because it made the show run long. Did you have any other say into how the laughs were "mixed."
On the shows where I was the showrunner I had total say. We would go to the final sound mix, Bobby Douglass would plug in his laugh machine, and we would sit with him frame by frame. We chose to be very sparing with the laugh machine. Whenever possible we would use the actual laugh from the show. Sometimes we would cheat if there were two takes. Just as we’d use the best performance of the two takes, we used the biggest laugh reaction.
Also, we don't write multi-camera shows that have a joke a second. We'd rather have no laughs for most of a page building to a truly big laugh. So we were perfectly content with lots of lines not supplemented by artificial laughter.
But it’s a matter of taste. There are some producers who really lean on that machine, pumping in loud boisterous phony laughs every second. Believe me, they’re not fooling anybody. All they’re doing is turning off viewers.
I see the need for them on multi-cam shows because the audience’s reaction is part of the mix, but if I ran a single-camera show I would not use a laugh track. This was our constant (and pretty much only) fight with CBS on MASH. They insisted we employ a laugh track. I used to say, “Where are these people? Is there a set of bleachers in the Swamp?” The only concession they gave us was in the OR.
A couple of concluding nuggets.
Bobby Douglass’ dad Charles invented the laugh machine.
And did you know that Bobby often adds laughs to live events like award shows? But in those cases, they’re actually needed.
29 comments :
Hey Ken!
I wonder what your thoughts are on Fox changing their sitcom schedule. For several years they've been the "young and cool" network with niche single camera comedies like New Girl, Brooklyn 99, Last Man on Earth, etc. They never became massive hits but everything put together gave them a nice brand.
Now they're clearly going a whole new direction cancelling almost all of their single camera sitcoms and picking up multi-cam comedies that are targeted for an older audience ("The Cool Kids" which stars Martin Mull and David Alan Grier in a retirement home and of course, "Last Man Standing" returning). Do you think they're making the play to go broader because of the upcoming Disney merger?
Personally, I love a loud, boisterous laugh on a multi-cam when it is earned. It actually enhances my enjoyment of the moment, as if being part of the audience itself. The early years of 'All in the Family' come to mind (and I know they cut the laughs short sometimes too). But when it's phony it's an immediate turnoff. The opening moments of that recent 9JKL show turned me off immediately when the laughs were UPROARIOUS at every unfunny line about Elliot Gould's testicles.
My friend Paul Iverson was interviewed for that podcast, and I have to tell you, Paul's obsession with the Laff Box and Charley Douglass' work in sweetening and completely orchestrating audience reactions for sitcoms may seem strange to some, but he assuredly did all the homework he could, and quite literally the information that's available on the internet today regarding Douglass and his Laff Box are the results of Paul's intense, deep, and thorough research. Why? Because Douglass was notoriously secretive about his work - almost like a man behind the curtain: he didn't want anyone to watch him work, he didn't want anyone to see his Laff Box, and even if he had to change tapes in the machine, he or one of his Laff Men (like his protege, Carroll Pratt) would often go into strange places like women's restrooms at 3:00am to do so, so nobody would see them.
Television Historian Ben Glenn, II is also an expert on Douglass and his Laff Box, and was interviewed for a separate podcast about it months ago, so it's really interesting to see there appears to be a renewed interest and intrigue in the use of laugh tracks on TV comedies. Personally, people like myself, Paul, and Ben feel that a laugh track (or audience reaction in general) is an ingredient in a bigger recipe for a good sitcom - without it, clearly something is missing from that recipe, and nowhere is that more true than today's contemporary single-cam sitcoms: so many of them are just so droll, dull, and fall flat . . . it could even be argued that single-cam sitcoms today are even almost ghastly. If I could just shamelessly plug myself for a moment, this is a satirical case study I did of the evolution (or, perhaps, de-evolution) of single-cam sitcoms, and the contrast between classic and modern:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3tSFLtYoFY
When well used, canned laughter doesn't take anything away, and possibly it helps the home viewer feel part of a larger audience? But wow, when it's badly done it's really irritating.
I, too, heard about LMS coming back. I never considered it a political show, so I dismissed the claims that it was dropped because of the character's views. If anything, his views often generated some of the funnier moments. I did think it had run its course, and assumed that's why it got cancelled. It was a show about a guy in a house full of females. In the end, there was just the wife and the youngest daughter deferring college to stretch things. Listen, I LIKED the show, and watched it quite often. But with the two oldest girls married and out of the house, moments for characters to come together were feeling very contrived.
Otoh, I like Tim Allen, I don't have issues with people having different political views, and the show was often quite funny. I didn't watch because of politics, nor in spite of them. So if they've found a way to overcome the empty nest thing, that would be great and I will be happy to watch the show again.
I know it's been mentioned before, but... just to point it out: the German dubbing of MASH (which is very well done in general anyway) has no laugh track, and I think it's great. It only ever shows when there's singing and the original audio has to be used that minor bits and pieces of artificial laughter appear. I don't know in what kind of archive format the original material of the show is being stored, but wouldn't it be great if there was a refurbished DVD/BD release with "remastered" audio where the separate laugh track is merely optional...
What I dislike about the old sitcoms which used the Laff Box is that there is laughter on those which genuinely sounds electronic and artificial, like it wasn't recorded from an audience but actually generated by a machine. Some laughs even sound like they added an echo effect to them. I like that the M*A*S*H dvds have the option of turning off the laugh track because watching them without the laugh tracks makes you realize how distracting the laugh track is. METV had been showing M*A*S*H without the laugh track but then they suddenly brought it back.
I hear a lot of "sweetening" on late-night talk shows. First I noticed it was on Letterman. Some may to be cover edits (some of which are pretty noticeable); others because the audience simply doesn't find the carefully and painstakingly-wrought joke funny.
Maybe because it was such a big part of my childhood, but I actually like the old-style canned laughter that was used from the late 50s to about the fifth season of M*A*S*H. There's something comforting and familiar about it. If I remember, those tracks disappeared altogether for a while, and certain ones came back by the time Cheers premiered.
I also liked the 'uh, oh' lady
Just heard the incredibly sad news that Margot Kidder has died.
Although she'll obviously be best remembered for playing Lois Lane opposite Christopher Reeve in the Superman films, my personal favourite performance by her was as the hilariously foul mouthed college student Barb in the classic horror Black Christmas.
Like Carrie Fisher, she struggled with mental health problems throughout her life. It's so sad that they both left us far too soon.
Rest in peace.
The old Chicago Bears quarterback?
Good question! Are the late night shows sweetened, and if so WHEN! The turn around is awfully quick.
I attended a taping of the David Letterman show a few years ago, and before they seated the audience they trapped everyone in the lobby, and for over an hour they practically ordered us to laugh at every word he said. I was amazed by that.
Many, many years earlier I went to a Tonight Show taping (Johnny Carson era), and they did nothing like that. We simply filed in and they seated us.
Guess which show made me laugh harder.
A British perspective:
We didn't have laugh-machines in "the old days." In fact, generally speaking, there were no "laugh tracks" at all, audience-generated or no.
But ... but ... I love Red Dwarf. One of the best Sci-Fi comedies ever. And for the first seven series it featured a "laugh track," which might have been a multi-cam audience or might have been just about anything, and I laughed along. Because the jokes were good.
In series 8 (I believe), they dispensed altogether with the laugh track.
I stopped laughing. It was clever, in its way. It had jokes here and there. But somehow I didn't feel compelled to laugh.
(You can of course catch up with Red Dwarf if you want to test this theory.)
OK, another stupid and intrusive question, Ken.
It's well-known that, on certain shows, you can hear the producers or writers guffawing on the laugh track. (Reinhold Weege was one. I think one of the Burrows did it too.) SO here's the impertinent question:
Did you or David leave your laugh on the soundtrack?
Is there agreement as to the first Single-Can sitcom? My guess would be "Molly Dodd' back in 1987; I certainly remember a lot of attention given to it because of the lack of a laugh track. But maybe there were notable experiments before her.
Awhile back I was watching an old Sonny & Cher Show rerun (I forget which channel has it--it appears that 20 classic-tv channels on broadcast are all owned by the same company because they rotate the same shows around between them). It was obvious that they didn't have a laugh track because the sketch I saw was just dying. Normally I watch those sketches and think "this is not funny," but in this case I actually gained a lot of respect for them going out naked like that. I wish more people would do that.
The laugh track doesn't make the show funnier. It just covers the sound of the crickets.
I've heard of people who are so studied about canned laughter that they can actually pick out specific laughs -- as in, "That laughter I just heard on Frasier was the same track they used for All in the Family." I'm not that obsessive about it, but I can usually pick out the fakes. The worst is when dialogue has a punchline, followed by a topper. Often they will only put laughs on the topper, which is a pretty obvious giveaway.
Seinfeld shot quite a few scenes without an audience in their later seasons, but I guess they don't want people to know, because they added canned laughter laughter to their blooper reels. There's even one blooper involving Michael Richards burping where they dubbed in a fake belch. (I assume the real one didn't come through very clearly on mic, so they decided it needed enhancement.)
@Dr Loser: Red Dwarf laughs are mostly real, but they did add canned laughter to scenes that wouldn't work in front of an audience, such as exteriors and sequences with a lot of visual effects.
Seasons 1-6 of Red Dwarf were filmed in front of a live studio audience. Season 7 was not - to the consternation of the cast members, who believed their performances were aided by the energy of the studio audience. The audience was brought back for season 8.
I LOVE the laugh tracks from "Night Court." I don't know where they came from but those old guys sound like they are literally rolling on the floor!
@Douglas Do you mean the first laughter-free single-cam sitcom? Because single-cam sitcoms date back to the late 1950s with shows like LEAVE IT TO BEAVER, DENNIS THE MENACE, and other similar shows. Studios like Revue and Screen Gems figured they could take a more cinematic approach to a TV show without actual audiences, then have a laugh track added to recreate the asthetic of it being watched by groups of people. This is why the laugh track is considered so abused in the 60s, because the majority of sitcoms during that time were single-cam laugh track-only: THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW, MISTER ED, GILLIGAN'S ISLAND, MY FAVORITE MARTIAN, THE ADDAMS FAMILY, THE MUNSTERS, McHALE'S NAVY, F-TROOP, BEWITCHED, I DREAM OF JEANNIE, GREEN ACRES, HOGAN'S HEROES, THE BRADY BUNCH, etc. All single-cam sitcoms with laugh tracks. In the 60s, multi-cam audience sitcoms like THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW, and whatever shows both Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were cranking out were few and far between; those didn't start coming back into vogue till the early 70s with the Norman Lear shows like ALL IN THE FAMILY and SANFORD AND SON, not to mention Tony Randall, Jack Klugman, and Garry Marshall insisting THE ODD COUPLE switch to this format after its inaugural season was single-cam and laugh track-only.
@Andy I've read very conflicting things about the last two seasons of SEINFELD. I've read somewhere online (and I can't find the source anymore, because I'd link it otherwise) that the last two seasons were laugh track-only, and as you say, the obvious canned laughter on the blooper reels and behind-the-scenes footage from those seasons would support that claim. However, the Notes About Nothing tracks on DVD indicate the episodes from those seasons were, indeed, still filmed in front of audiences - in fact, apparently the audience for the finale was kept to a minimum of mostly friends and relatives of the cast and crew, and pretty much had to sign confidentiality agreements to not divulge any spoilers of the finale. Still, the different is very noticable: the first seven seasons have much more boistorous and fuller sound to the audience reaction - particularly whenever Kramer or George are getting into trouble . . . the last two seasons have a very subdued and repetitive sound to them.
My all-time favorite laugh track on a TV series was the overenthusiastic one on THE ABBOTT AND COSTELLO SHOW. It starts as soon as the guys crack their first joke and doesn't seem to let up until the closing credits roll. It was accurately described as sounding like it was recorded at the roller derby
Trivia: THE HANK McCUNE SHOW is believed to be the first single camera TV sitcom to use a laugh track. The series ran on NBC from September to December 1950. Some early sitcoms, such as THE STU ERWIN SHOW (aka THE TROUBLE WITH FATHER) originally aired without a laugh track but eventually had one dubbed in by the time the series hit syndication.
A number of 1950s sitcoms filmed without an audience preferred, rather than dubbing in a laugh track, to play the episodes to a live audience in a theater and record their laughter and applause. That way, they got a reaction that sounded more genuine than what came out of a laugh machine. Sitcoms that used this method included THE GEORGE BURNS AND GRACIE ALLEN SHOW, THE AMOS 'N' ANDY SHOW, I MARRIED JOAN and OZZIE AND HARRIET. This method fell out of favor eventually because laugh machines were cheaper, but was revived by ALL IN THE FAMILY in its last years.
@James: THE SONNY AND CHER SHOW usually taped only the opening and closing of the show with a live audience. Often the guest performer's musical numbers, too. The body of the show--the sketches and many of Sonny and Cher's musical numbers--were taped without an audience. The live audience who came to see SONNY AND CHER didn't usually find this out, though, until they'd shown up for the taping. They were told it was done for "technical reasons."
What always seemed weird to me, when I was a kid, was hearing laugh tracks on Saturday morning cartoons.
FRIDAY QUESTION: Your thoughts on "Last Man Standing" being revived at Fox. I thought it was only a matter of time for someone to bring it back after the success of the new but similarly conservative-leaning "Roseanne." To me, the old 'Hollywood liberal bias' tag is a even less of a myth than it was 50 years ago as the large studio conglomerates are more and more interested in the bottom line. Just imagine the wife of Bob Iger saying 'hey honey, what happened to that hilarious Alex Inc. show? I really liked that one' and suddenly "Splitting Up Together" gets kicked to the curb. Hard to see that happening in today's corporate environment.
"Slap Maxwell," a single-camera comedy-drama that aired on ABC during the 1987-88 season, was also filmed without a laugh track.
Jay Tarses produced both "Dodd" and "Maxwell."
@Allen Andy Griffith tried this in the beginning as well. Don Knotts had been part of the ensemble cast of THE STEVE ALLEN SHOW, which ended up transitioning from a live audience to a laugh track, which Don felt killed the show by that point. Andy felt if there was going to be laughter on his show, it should be genuine, and some of the earliest episodes were screened in front of audiences, and their reactions were recorded and dubbed in, but as you say, the network felt this was too costly. Andy reluctantly agreed to have a laugh track on the show, but on the condition that it was used sparingly.
Possible Friday question:
In the preliminary development for 'Frasier' was there ever any talk about having his mom as a character instead of his dad, as one had already made an appearance and the other had already been established as dead? Did it have anything to do with the availability of Nancy Marchand if that possibility was even being considered?
Just was watching an old episode of The Partridge Family and I recognized one particular laugh that I heard on just about EVERY single Saturday morning cartoon show, especially the Banana Splits...and just about any show Paul Winchell was doing a voice on. Don't know why, but that particular laugh just drives me up the wall and I ended up turning off the Partridge Family even though it had a guest actor I really liked in his later shows..."Soap" & "Empty Nest"....Richard Mulligan.
Ozzie & Harriet may have had the strangest laugh track of all. They used the exact same laugh for every joke in the show! Catch an episode and you'll see how obvious this is.
When I was really young I thought that TVs had microphones in them which picked up the sound of people laughing for shows like Mr Bean. There obviously wasn't an audience there since it was mostly filmed on location so that was the only way I could think of how the canned laughter was there. It meant I would worry about talking or making noise during episodes in case millions of people could hear it.
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