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| The Pink Panther – Evolution of a Hypno Show Gag |
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Jaydee had invented a gag based on an invisible, sleeping pink dragon that was not to be woken by his chosen hypnotized candidate, or mayhem would ensue. He played it up well, and later in the show, woke the dragon. The terrified person then had to put the beastie back to sleep by singing a lullaby. As a modern creature though, the lullaby had to be rapped. The gag worked well, and Jaydee carried it off with aplomb. The audience found it funny, but it did not click with me for some reason. Point Number One: Only do gags that you yourself enjoy. What struck me most was the colour pink and the lack of a sound track. What came to me next was Henry Mancini’s Pink Panther Theme. I remember this next bit distinctly. When talking on the phone to Jaydee I suggested that I might borrow his idea (if he didn’t mind), but substitute the Pink Panther instead. That way I could use that really cool music in the background. Jaydee said it probably wouldn’t work because the Pink Panther wasn’t scarey. He was right too. It wasn’t scarey – but that was the bit I didn’t like about the original gag – I didn’t want to scare anyone. The Pink Panther isn’t scarey, sure, but he is sneaky. So I thought about it some more, bought a Henry Mancini album, and got ready for show number two. I liked the feeling of the idea. Point Number Two: If you have a gut feeling for an idea, and others tell you that it will not work, that means you’re about to have a breakthrough. For me, show number one was really hard work (See How to Learn Comedy Stage Hypnosis). I watched and cringed through that first DVD 20 times or more. Show number two was very, very different, had more people, and I had learned a lot from watching show number one over and over again. After the induction and the deepenings I start with, the Pink Panther was the first gag I tried. (Yes, “tried” - at that time I was not yet fully confident of myself as a stage hypnotist, nor was I sure of the gag). As luck would have it, I picked the most amazing woman as the Panther. She was expressive, and charmingly cute as a sneak. Here’s some video: So now I knew two things. The gag works extremely well, and I knew how to do it. So I did it again, and again. I told Jaydee about the gag – and he had forgotten our earlier conversation. He didn’t seem much intrigued by the Panther. Point Number 3 – Sometimes a gag doesn’t click with you until you see it, or you try it yourself. Words alone sometimes do not do the trick. Then I sent another DVD to Jaydee, and as with all my shows, there was a Pink Panther in it. Jaydee asked if he could use the gag and tried it. Now Jaydee is the Callback King. He will not use just one callback like the Panther, he likes stacks of them, well, chains of them really. He added Inspector Clouseau to the gag, and got Clouseau to follow the Panther. *** Jaydee is ripping his video and I’ll post it here as soon as I get it *** Jaydee does it slightly differently to the way I do it. He is giving it his own style. He told me of Clouseau and I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t thought of it. It works really well. Around that time I was gigging regularly at a local club. At the end of one Pink Panther skit someone in the audience was humming the tune. This was the next idea. It’s a great tune, and almost everyone knows it. I told the audience that the tape was broken (like we use tapes?), and got them all to hum the tune, while the panther snuck about. Jaydee took that idea onboard as well. Simon (the sound engineer for our show) added a graunching, tape breaking sound effect when he crashes the music, so the story of the broken tape sounds true. So now we have the Pink Panther, Clouseau, and audience participation. And that’s the gag as it stands today. I’m certain that we’ll improve on it more as time goes on. If you found this blog informative, please let me know, and what kinds of information you’d like more of. Should I write up other gags? Have you any ideas you think would be worth playing with? |
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