Steve Kaplan is the author of The Comic Hero’s Journey. We discuss the difference between the dramatic hero's journey and the comic hero's journey.

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Steve Kaplan is the author of The Comic Hero's Journey, The Hidden Tools of Comedy and the Serious Business of Being Funny. Artists he's taught, directed or produced have won Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes and WGAS awards. He's cofounder of Manhattan Punch line Theatre and Creator of the HBO New Writers Project KaplanComedy.com

Pre and during interview notes

The function and value of comedy.

Comedy helps us live with who we are.

We're afraid people will find out who we really are

The great comic gesture is the shrug.

Drama vs comedy

Comedy is the art of telling the truth about people. Dramas tell a wonderful, beautiful lie. Dramas help you dream about what you could be. Drama takes out silly, ridiculous or absurd parts of drama.

What if Hamlet let out a fart?

Comedy is about being okay being human.

Comedy is the art of hopefutile, ridiculous, unattainable hope.

It is life affirming, life giving. It's the will of people to not only survive but to thrive in the face of unbelievable and inescapable problems

What's the difference between comedic movies and stand-up comedy?

Comedy movies are thematic, Movies put characters in impossible or improbably situationthe WTF stage

Paradigm

Ordinary person struggling against insurmountable odds, without many of the skills or tools with which to win yet never giving up hope.

What is a hero? What's a comic hero? What's the difference.

Hero's Journey hero has a goal. Comedic hero is dragged kicking and screaming and doesn't have goal, but ends up waking up and transforming, usually with the building of relationships, family and community.

Categories of comedy

In comedy, character determines events.

What have you learned from the history of comedy, which your book explores

What's the difference between the hero's journey and the comic hero's journey

The role of characters

Archetypes

Mentor

Trickster- colors outside the box, breaks the rules

Fool

primal

Mask to Mensch

Innocent

Object of Desire

Voice of reason: character who sees the truth and tells the truth

Animal

Stages in Comic Hero's Journey

Normal World

WTF

Reactions

Connections

New Directions

Disconnection

Race to the Finish

Normal World

Catalyst

Big lie

Develop impossible situation through and by characters

New Directions

In hero's journey, hero goes off to right a wrong.

Decision points: There's no question what the character is going to do, why even bother wasting time showing it

Discovering true goal

Disconnections

Moment of hopelessness?

Protagonist has a blip

Moment of self doubt

The moment the mask is put back on

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

Follow Rob on Twitter & Facebook.

His quotes are here

Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.

Join the conversation:

On facebook at Rob Kall's Bottom-up The Connection Revolution

and at Google Groups listserve Bottom-up Top-down conversation