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How to Write a Comedy Script: Screenwriting Tips from The Hangover

Comedy Writing Tips from The Hangover

If you’re wondering how to write a comedy script, look no further. This post will give you an overview of comedy writing secrets by examining the 2009 summer blockbuster The Hangover. While The Hangover is known for its R-rated humor, don’t worry. These screenwriting tips are applicable to screenplays for children, adults…and adults who behave like children.

Comedy Script Screenwriting Tip #1: Employ reversals

Writing a comedy script is actually pretty easy because the basis of the humor–a one-liner, a complicated joke, repartee, sarcasm, slapstick and comic set pieces–is rooted in reversals.

All comedy is based on reversals: taking audience expectations and subverting them.

How do you create humor by going against expectations? Some examples from The Hangover should help clarify:

  • Phil, Alan and Stu wait at the valet stand expecting the valet to bring them a 1969 Mercedes–instead he drives over a police cruiser
  • When Phil drives the cruiser, he doesn’t act at all like an officer of the law…remember the lady in leopard print?
  • Stu plans to propose to his uptight girlfriend and instead marries a stripper
  • Alan goes into the suite bathroom, normally a sanctuary for both men and women, and finds a giant tiger inside
  • The boys use roofies to drug the tiger–not exactly approved by a big cat veterinarian
  • The guys drive the drugged tiger back to Mike Tyson’s house, believing the animal to be sedated–but he wakes up and he’s not happy
  • Phil, Stu and Alan hear a sound in the trunk of the Mercedes. Believing it’s Doug, they open it–and a completely naked Chinese man springs out and hits them with a crowbar.
  • When the Chinese man reenters their lives, now fully dressed in a tracksuit, he says he has Doug and is holding him for ransom. When the crew raises the funds through blackjack wins, they make the exchange, only to find that the Doug they rescued wasn’t their Doug, but a black drug dealer Doug.

As you can see, understanding reversals is the key to writing a comedy. The rest of the comedy screenwriting tips in this post are actually just nuances of this basic principle; reversals are the blueprint that your screenplay will be built on. So when you’re sitting down to write your comedy script, ask yourself how can I create a reversal of my audience’s expectations?

Comedy Script Screenwriting Tip #2: The big build up

To increase the humor in your comedy script, have your characters anticipate the exact opposite of what’s about to occur next. Why do that? When you widen the gap between your character’s expectations (and therefore the audience’s) and what happens, you widen the scope of the reversal…hopefully producing bigger laughs.

Here are two examples from the Hangover:

When the guys are waiting at the impound lot, they muse about how wrecked the Mercedes will be. But when the car is brought to them, it was in pristine condition (although maybe a little dusty). If that didn’t make you laugh, at the very least it should have made you smile. Plus, when you witness the tiger waking up in the backseat of the car and mauling it to pieces, you should laugh harder because of what the characters anticipated several scenes earlier.

The tiger also plays a part in another example. The gang has returned the tiger to Mike Tyson’s home and are reviewing security camera footage in order to see if Doug was with them then (he was). While watching the tape, Phil says, “you know, I just have to say, I have never seen a more beautiful, elegant…just regal creature.”

This buildup is followed by Phil pretending to do lewd activities with the majestic beast. As an animal lover, I’m not a big fan of the tiger joke–but I do think it’s funny that Phil goes on and on about how amazed he is by the animal, and then is exposed as a fraud a few seconds later. Whether you think the tiger joke is funny or not, whatever humor is there is made funnier by the buildup that preceded it.

So if you’re looking to inject more humorous notes into your comedy screenplay, look for opportunities for your character to shoot the breeze…share some expectation or observation…and then show the exact opposite happening a few moments later.

Comedy Script Screenwriting Tip #3: Location, location, location

The setting that you name in your slugline is super important.

How to Write a Comedy Script: the Location Slug

In 13 Screenwriting Tips from Sherlock Holmes, we saw that choosing a dockyard as a backdrop for a huge action sequence/set-piece paid off in the mystery adventure movie. The dockyard was such a great setting because it was chock full of items Holmes and Dredger could use to battle each other.

The same principle applies to writing comedy scenes. Choose locations in your comedy script wisely–and humorous ideas will flow easily. Think of places that are visually interesting and that also are full of objects that your characters can interact with in funny ways.

Think of it like this: if Vince Vaughn is trapped in a room with someone who’s not funny (about 80% of the current Saturday Night Live cast), you wouldn’t expect comedy gold, would you?

But if on the other hand, you stuck Vince with someone with a sense a humor–Robert Downey Jr perhaps–they could riff off each other. The same applies to your characters. Put them in locations where they can “riff off” of the objects and people in those places.

Let’s see how this screenwriting tip applies to The Hangover. Most of the movie takes place in Las Vegas. Visually interesting? Check. Full of objects and people our three amigos can riff off of? Yes, and in spades, my friend. In spades.

While we’re on the subject of location…

Comedy Script Screenwriting Tip #4: Look for the less obvious joke

The chances are that when you’ve decided upon a location that will yield comedy gold in your screenplay…somebody else has already thought of it. Las Vegas isn’t a particularly original location for a movie, and yet it has a lot of potential…so what’s an aspiring comedy writer to do?

Look for the less obvious joke. Most likely it’s not the first funny scene that you write, but more like the fifth, sometimes even fiftieth. Do some research on that setting, and mine those details for all the potential funny moments and set pieces you can think of. In the original screenplay of The Hangover, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore had included a few sequences that made use of the Las Vegas ambiance, but even though they were funny, they felt stale because they were too much like stuff we’ve already seen.

One sequence occurred at a strip club. The boys get so distracted by the dancing women that they forget they only have a few hours left to recover Doug. The other scene took place at an all male dancing revue and was supposed to be a big payoff for some homosexual jokes made way earlier in the screenplay.

Strippers dancing in Vegas? Yawn. A bunch of straight guys partying the night away end up making homo jokes? So last decade. These scenes, thankfully, were dropped from the final movie. Instead, the guys found a tiger in the their room–a tiger that belonged to Mike Tyson, and whom they had to drug with roofies in order to return him to the boxing champion.

The tiger & Mike–those are elements that seem in keeping with the Vegas vibe (I wouldn’t really be able to suspend my disbelief if this happened in let’s say, Dallas,) and they’re elements that I haven’t seen in any other comedy I’ve seen or screenplay I’ve read. And wasn’t it ten times funnier than any gay joke?

You might be thinking that while they dropped the strip show, they still kept the stripper angle since Stu married one. And that worked…didn’t it? Having a bachelor marry a stripper in Vegas isn’t an original idea; it’s been overdone in fiction and real life. But the screenwriters added some nuances to the stripper wife concept that made it more fresh.

First, Stu couldn’t remember that he was married. When he did get married, he was missing a tooth and he was wearing a blue polyester tuxedo. (In the original screenplay draft, he was actually in armor and bought a shield to commemorate the blessed event which I think is pretty funny.) Finally, long-suffering Stu was supposed to propose to his uptight girlfriend at Doug’s wedding. Instead he gets married to a stripper with a sunny disposition. That twist was, drumroll please, a reversal which added some fresh humor to the canon of Vegas stripper jokes.

So the takeaway lesson here is: if you end up choosing a location that’s been done a million times before in other screenplays and movies, try to add some twists to the set up so the humor isn’t exactly like all the other comedy set pieces we’ve encountered before.

Comedy Script Screenwriting Tip #5: Irony is king

According to Wikipedia, the definition of irony is having a disparity or incongruity between intention & expression or intention and results. Since irony is just a specialized reversal, it makes sense that it’s going to be a strong weapon in your comedy arsenal. The nice thing about irony is that it can be applied in a variety of situations–at both the micro and macro levels. Hapless Stu can be our guide to using both when writing comedy scripts:

In the original screenplay draft of The Hangover, Stu woke up to discover that he had a mullet. And yes, while that is definitely funny…is that as funny as him losing his tooth? His “lateral incisor” to be exact (that line is my favorite of the movie!). I don’t think so. Losing the tooth isn’t just funny. Since Stu is a dentist, it’s ironic–and that adds a greater comic edge to the scene.

How to Write a Comedy Script: Use irony lik Stu in THE HANGOVER

Ack! My lateral incisor is missing!

When you’re trying to write funny scenes, ask yourself what is the most ironic thing that could happen to my character? What is, for him or her, personally the worst thing that could happen? And if you answer that creatively, you’ll have comedy gold.

You should also keep irony in mind when brainstorming the overall concept of your screenplay. When you’re writing a thriller or action-adventure movie, you want your hero to be a person with an amazing skill set that will help him masterfully overcome the obstacles in his or her path a la Jason Bourne or Evelyn Salt.

But when you’re writing a comedy, oftentimes, your hero should be the person who’s voted LEAST likely to succeed.

This situation will create the most irony, and therefore has the most potential for humor. In Stu’s case, he is a very uptight person who’s bullied by his girlfriend, so he’s the person least likely to adapt to the craziness found in Vegas. That’s why I think his experience is the funniest out of all of the Hangover dudes.

This technique is probably one of the most common ones used in blockbuster comedy movies. For example, in the romantic comedy The Proposal (also wildly successful), Sandra Bullock’s character is a neurotic Type A devil of a New York boss. She’s the least likely person in the world to appreciate the small-town charm of Sitka, Alaska. This irony is at the root of a lot of that movie’s comic set pieces.

Over at Scriptshadow, Carson Reeves analyzed a comedy spec called I Think My Facebook Friend is Dead. (Great title, right?) Anyway, the heroes of that screenplay were these agoraphobe tech geeks who banded together to rescue a Facebook friend. I haven’t read it yet, but according to the comments, while the concept was really good, the execution needed work, especially with regard to the locations of their search and rescue mission.

One commenter, Claude, gave some really good advice…yep, you guessed it. He increased the irony factor by suggesting that the girl was abducted by Amish relatives. Now, our tech friends have to find her–in the middle of Amish country, which may be chock full of fireplaces, but certainly not Facebook addicts. That concept has a ton of potential because of the wise use of irony.

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • darnell June 15, 2011, 2:45 pm

    this is all good and nice, but the hangover was stupid. it wasnt funny at all.
    it is not a classic. sasha cohen is at the forefront of real new fresh comedy. he’s doing things weve never seen before with borat and bruno.
    and the hangover 2 was even worse. dumb hollywood writers who arent funny.

    ive met so may hollywood writers that think theyre funny but are boring losers at home with wife and kids. and their jokes are all stale and stupid. and they still think black jokes are funny. or in the case of the hangover- a little naked chinese guys jumps out the truck. totaaly not funny.

    • scribemeetsworld June 15, 2011, 11:48 pm

      Hi Darnell,

      Thanks for visiting Scribe Meets World! You made some very valid points, and here is my response:

      Humor IS subjective. What one person thinks is funny, another person might think is stupid. There are probably plenty of Middle Eastern men who find Borat extremely offensive and not at all funny.

      I, for one, didn’t laugh once during Dumb and Dumber although that movie is on a lot of people’s top ten lists. That being said, if I watched the movie again, I could probably learn some comedy script writing tips from it because the principles of humor behind the jokes should be universal.

      Although you seem to despise the Hangover, the tips in this post should help you write your own comic masterpiece…

      As for the “boring losers at home with wife and kids,” someone can be funny on paper but not in real life (and vice versa). They’re like the romance writers who are very shy and retiring, but boy do they know how to write scenes with sizzle!

      • arabella December 27, 2015, 2:58 pm

        Borat is from Kazakhstan, which IS NOT in the Middle East, but in Asia.
        And whoever gets offended by Sasha Baron Cohen, should end their small miserable sad and pathetic lives, as they clearly, have no place in a world with laughter.

    • Kelly October 14, 2016, 11:02 pm

      I totally disagree the Hangover was hilarious! The second funnier than the first. I think the box office would agree.

  • cigar box guitarman July 31, 2011, 8:33 pm

    There is noticeably a bundle to know about this. I think you made some great points in other posts also.

  • Web October 14, 2011, 10:43 pm

    I found this very informative. I’m working on my first comedy screenplay, and my approach has been to go by intuition for the most part, just doing what makes me laugh without really getting into the mechanics of why it makes me laugh. Thankfully, as I reflect on what I think are the funniest moments in my own script, I’m finding that I’ve intuitively used these tips all along. Now, though, when I’m in a tough spot, I can actually vocalize what needs to happen to get a laugh. Thanks.

    • scribemeetsworld October 18, 2011, 11:49 pm

      Hi Web,

      I’m glad you found these comedy writing tips helpful! I think you’ve made a really good point — a lot of screenwriting is intuitive. We all have an ingrained sense character/plot development as well as humor.

      But when you get writer’s block, our writing intuition often fails us, and that’s when it becomes helpful to really articulate why some screenwriting techniques work so well.

      Thanks for reading Scribe Meets World and good luck in your comedy adventure!

      • arabella December 27, 2015, 3:00 pm

        Same exact thing here: so cheers. Very informative and helpful, for us lay(wo)men intuitive first-timers.

  • fahad September 21, 2012, 12:40 am

    hello there .. im a writer from kuwait, i love hangover and i enjoyed it so much it was amazing .. thanks a lot for the helpful tips !! im sure that i will use every single word you wrote here in my next project specially thats its my first “comedy” script .. thanks again … and cant wait for hangover 3 hehehe :p

    • scribemeetsworld September 22, 2012, 8:55 pm

      Hi Fahad,

      It’s so cool to have a fan from Kuwait! The Hangover has a lot of great comedy writing tips, whether you go for R-rated humor or not, so you should be good shape. You might also find this post, on Comedy Secrets from Bridesmaids, to be helpful.

      The Hangover was really successful because of the mystery element…but most successful comedies balance humor with heart like Bridesmaids…so don’t forget to put in the time developing your characters as well as your comedy gags.

      Good luck – and please let me know if you have another comedy favorite you’d like to see analyzed on the site!

  • Jailourei Gonmei November 23, 2012, 4:10 am

    thnx for your idea.

    • scribemeetsworld November 24, 2012, 8:46 pm

      Good luck with your comedy, Jailourei!

  • Patrick November 28, 2012, 4:43 pm

    Thanks for the great content! They say that writing comedy (and shooting it) can be more difficult than drama! With your tips hopefully the road will be easier for newer writers.

    • scribemeetsworld November 30, 2012, 5:44 pm

      Hi Patrick,

      I’m glad you’ve found the site helpful–I definitely agree. Comedy is harder than drama! I think it’s much easier to learn how to prune the melodrama out of a drama than it is to learn how to be funny.

      Good luck with your comedy script. Let me know if there’s a specific comedy you’d like to see analyzed on the site.

  • Joseph Thomas May 4, 2013, 3:33 pm

    Hey!

    Awesome..I loved how you broke it down. Would it be possible for you to break down other real cool comedies like old school, road trip, or any others you found funny? I would love to read more. Or if you have any other good links for aspiring comedy writers, that would be just fab.

    best,
    J

  • Robert June 20, 2013, 5:50 pm

    Long time reader and first time writer. I thought this was a very well written article with great examples.
    After reading ‘A Confederacy of Dunces’ I recently have picked up the hobby of writing my very first comedy script. I constantly use Step #1, though I refer to it as Misdirection Comedy. Ill include an example at the bottom. I was wondering how I could read more of your articles. Do you have a column or write for other websites?

    Employ Reversals AKA Misdirection –
    I was born in England from a caucasion father and Asian mother. When i moved to the United States it was very tough since i had colored skin and an accent. People did not treat me very nice, they would call me names like “Nerd” “Wanker” and even “Fa**ot”.. Geez, were my parents mean!

    • scribemeetsworld June 20, 2013, 8:43 pm

      Hi Robert,

      Thanks for writing a comment for the first time! I’m glad this article has helped you.

      I like your example of misdirection too. From the wording, it comes as a complete surprise that the kid’s parents are the ones harassing him!

      Good luck with your comedy script. Since it’s your first one, you may be tempted to give up. Don’t!!! Stick with it. You’ll be very glad you did, and you’ll learn a lot in the process.

      Everything I’ve written is here, on this site. Go through some of the archives. You’ll definitely find articles which can help you. As a starting point, you might like these:

      6 Comedy Tips from Bridesmaids
      10 Screenwriting Tips from Wedding Crashers

  • Eggnognog May 14, 2014, 5:51 am

    Great tips. I have to admit I wasn’t a big fan of hangover, it had amusing moments but it wasn’t consistently funny, and it seemed to be trying too hard for laughs. Don’t care much for boart either. Juvenile is the best description at times, also wildly inconsistent in its execution. To this list I would add the importance of rewriting. I am directing my own comedy short, and it is currently at draft 27, as we are just about to film the last 2 scenes. Writing is craft and rewriting again and again. It also helps if you have watched as many comedy films and shows as humanly possible and acquainted yourself with all forms of humour, although that should really go without saying. And having someone to bounce ideas off..always useful… One small suggestion can help you elevate an idea to a better level than you thought possible.

  • mario September 2, 2014, 5:33 pm

    wonderful..helpful

  • Richered August 23, 2015, 12:10 pm

    This was very helpful I appreciate you taking the time out to helping the newbies in this writing & Superbad would be a perfect movie to analyze

  • Pepe October 20, 2015, 1:54 am

    I just wanted to take some time to thank you for all of the great articles! This has become one of my favorite sites! Great job 🙂

  • mike smith August 5, 2016, 6:51 pm

    I am writing a script .I have not understood 3act structure.i found this very easy to understand.so can u help me out

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