§ RESOURCES / FILM INDEX

Baby Cobra (2016)

Featured In

DZ-83: A Very Thematic Stand-up Special!

What can screenwriters learn from the storytelling techniques used by stand-up comedians?

AI✦Analyzes the comedic architecture of Baby Cobra, where the payoff–revealing the narrator is actively working–reframes and inverts the emotional stakes established throughout the preceding narrative about wanting to stop working.✦

⏱ 2h 31m

Character · Theme · Audience | 8 SEP 2021

Listen you want to understand how stand-up comedians grip audiences and build emotional arcs (and what narrative tools screenwriters can borrow from comedy)!

▶ More Info

Standup comedians can keep audiences gripped to their every word for over an hour, and often bring them to emotional climaxes by the end. So how do they do it and what tools can apply to scripted narratives… →

Films: Nanette (2017) , Baby Cobra (2016) , Inside (2021) , It's The Fireworks Talking (2007)

Character: Character Authenticity , Audience Complicity , Character Agency , Character Introductions

Theme: Theme , Emotional Truth

Audience: Audience Sympathy , Anagnorisis

"The punchline is she is working, right? That’s the recontextualization of the whole bit about she’s looking to retire, she’s looking to not work anymore."

— chas | DZ-83: A Very Thematic Stand-up Special!