Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Too funny for words

There is tremendous opportunity for humor when strong personalities were involved in a tense situation. The audience has to believe in the characters, and when things get heavy a little gag gets a huge response as it temporarily breaks the tension. A little nothing bit becomes memorable in contrast to the emotional strain around it. Putting the dwarfs walking to the mine after the wicked witch all set up to poison snow white made everyone love the dwarf scene super lots and not want it to end, because once it's through, so is snow white. The laughs are not so much a release from tension as an expression of the tension itself.

In fact it was all infused with a spirit of love and tenderness to ease us over the sad parts, and magic and luaghter to live with us throughout our lives.

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