This week’s newsletter is indebted to character comedian extraordinaire and the nation’s favourite cyclist wanker Kathy Maniura (her show The Cycling Man was one of my favourites at the Fringe this year and I’m sure will be announcing London and/or touring dates soon, go see it if you haven’t yet). Earlier this year, Kathy played the role of my ex-wife (alongside Lachlan Werner as my estranged son) in a piece of promotional content so good it rewrote the rules of what promotional content could be. Afterwards, she told Lachy and I about something she’d recently picked up from a screenwriting course she’d been taking, and I’ve been thinking about it on and off ever since. It’s popped back into my head again since the end of the Fringe, so I’ll unpack it here to see what y’all make of it (do you mind my calling y’all “y’all”? Ahh, it’s done now anyway).

The idea is this – if you look at the output of any film writer/director, you’ll see them recycle the same basic story outline over and over again. I’d written about something similar here last year, so it struck a chord, but I really enjoyed chatting to Kathy about quite how granular and specific you can get with this idea. Her example was Christopher Nolan, who keeps making films about tortured men who become obsessed by having lost their wives, before eventually realising they were responsible for the loss. (Perhaps one day he will overcome his clear obsession with the fear of driving his wife away by, say, writing a good female character, but until then it’s great to see him continuing to mine the seam of wives principally serving as motivational props for brilliant men, oooh, sick burn, nice one Joz).

My favourite example of this level of granular detail in the reusing-idea stakes is Sting, who has used the lyric “If I could tell the story of a million rainy days since we first met/It’s a big enough umbrella but it’s always me who ends up getting wet” in at least three different songs. It’s such a long and absurdly specific lyric that it doesn’t feel like a simple case of homaging his own back catalogue. Every time he uses it it feels as though there’s something in that lyric that he feels he hasn’t quite made sense of yet, so he’ll keep using it in different contexts until somehow he’s scratched the itch in his soul that it keeps aiming for. Either that or he has simply had so much exhausting tantric sex over the years that his memory is fucked, and he genuinely forgets using the lyric every time he uses it, and keeps finding himself inevitably writing it out again every time he sits down at his desk, only for his eyes to pop out of his head as he reads it back and thinks “Wow, that’s a great lyric, I should use that in something.”

Anyway, as I wrote last year, I’ve been aware for a while that each thing you make is in many ways a refinement of the previous thing you made, but Kathy’s idea didn’t stop there – far from it! She said that not only is there a single story that anyone who makes things likes to tell over and over again, we also all have a single story that we like to hear over and over again, that calls out to something in us, and if you draw up a list of your three favourite films, you can work out what it is. If you’re also someone who regularly writes or tells stories or makes things, then you’ll probably find that in many ways it’s the same story as the one you’re telling. Essentially, you can use this as a way to work out what shape it is you’re looking for in all your dealings with storytelling. As long-time readers will know, I love converting my favourite things into data sets and then getting overly invested in the secret meaning revealed by the data, so this game was catnip to me.

After some consideration, I decided that my three favourite films are:

1. The Birdcage
2. Up
3. Toni Erdmann

On the face of it, three fairly different films – a children’s animation about an old widower tying a house to his balloon collection, a 90s comedy about the owners of a drag club pretending to be conservative cultural attaches in order to impress a right-wing senator, and a three-hour German comedy about a man putting on a wig and fake teeth in order to visit his daughter who works in the corporate sector in Romania. But it didn’t take me long to realise that all three are also, to a certain extent, about:

An obsessive character who has shrunk their world until it’s very small gradually being reminded how to have fun.

When this clicked, it really clicked, because I also think this was the story I’d been telling in my own shows for a decade. On some level, all my shows have been about someone who is obsessively trapped in their own head who overthinks how other people see them gradually learning how to overcome their own self-limiting bullshit and submit to how it feels to give yourself permission to be an idiot.

Now that You Wait. Time Passes. is finished, I find myself wondering whether this is still the story I need to tell going forwards. Of course, the whole point of this thought exercise is that you can’t help but tell the story you always tell – any conscious effort to change direction is likely to see the same story finding its way out in a new disguise. But I’ve also found it interesting to look at some of the critical reactions to the show and notice how many of them either directly or indirectly suggest that what really worked about it was that it self-consciously served as an attempt to close the lid on something I’d been trying to say for years.

And ironically, in the wake of this show, I no longer feel like someone who is trapped in their own head and needs to overcome their own self-limiting bullshit and remember how to have fun. I feel like someone who’s just having fun. The last time I did the Fringe I found it hard, and because it was hard I desperately wanted a reward at the end of it. This time, I found it fun, so I feel no need for reward. I no longer feel like someone striving for something. Maybe I’m kidding myself and I currently feel like this just because it went well, and in three months I’ll start to retreat into my own head again, craving structure and substance and meaning. But for the time being, I feel ready to try telling a different story, just to see if I can.

That’s kind of the thinking behind this Hugh Jackman/Phantom of the Opera idea I keep circling around (I keep having to tell people this genuinely is the idea for the next show and I’m not messing around). I don’t know whether I would make it for next year’s Fringe or the year after – it all depends on how busy this year ends up being, really. But when I do allow myself to consider the idea of what I might do after this show has fully receded into the rear-view mirror, it occurs to me that there is absolutely no point in following up a show that a lot of critics actively responded to as though it was the culmination of all the ideas I’d been exploring up to that point with something that tried to do the same thing again. There really is nothing to be gained from trying to make another show that uses absurdity and nonsense as the metaphor through which to explore the psychology of artistic obsession, as I have done for a while now.

So why not just make something where the explicit goal is to make something dumb and fun? I’ve never really tried to do that. There’s always been a part of me that has actively been trying to be meaningful or clever or subversive. But what if I’ve told that story now? What if it’s time to try making something out of a completely different impulse?

Mind you, I’ve just reread that first post from last year about making the same thing over and over, and noticed that one of my goals with You Wait. Time Passes. was to make something very different from Blink that had minimal tech, musical sequences and big setpieces. I was already beginning to notice the goalposts moving with this intention, but I probably didn’t anticipate quite how much the show would come to revolve around tech, musical sequences and big setpieces. There was a point near the end of the development process where I had to wearily resign myself to the fact that we needed to put a fart sound into the Qlab again. I’d been hoping that the crucial fart that occurs in the show could be a silent one, because Blink had ended with a cacophony of fart noises and I had to do something different this time, something acoustic, something real. But Jon was adamant – “The moment is not landing as it is. There needs to be a fart noise, or we need to cut the fart.” I could not countenance making a show without a fart in it, so the sound cue went in, further corrupting my initial artistic intentions. It may amuse anyone who has seen You Wait. Time Passes. to learn that every time I heard that fart sound effect during the show, I felt depressed.

So perhaps even as and when I do commit to making Joz Norris Is Hugh Jackman Is The Phantom Of The Opera, it will inevitably end up being a meaningful meta-theatrical exploration of artistic obsession about an artist trapped in his own head who needs to remember how to have fun, that ends with me doing a fart. But I’d really like to think it might be time for me to just make something really silly, with maybe no farts in it. Can it be done?

Anyway, I really enjoyed this thought exercise from Kathy and I’d love to know if it strikes any chords with readers! What are your three favourite films? Is there the outline of a specific story that repeats across all of them? If you also make stuff or tell stories yourself, can you see that same outline in your own work? I’d love to know what else it unlocks, so do get in touch if it leads to any interesting discoveries!

A Quick Plug – We’ve just announced the first half of the lineup for our next Eggbox show at the Pleasance on the 4th of November, and it boasts short films by Aruhan Galieva & Benjamin Adnams, Jack Barry & Tom Levinge, James Button, Miranda Holms and Lola-Rose Maxwell; and live readings of brand new scripts by Andy Field & Kieran Murphy and Christian Brighty & Amy Greaves. Do book ahead if you’re planning on coming, these shows tend to sell out!

A Cool New Thing In Comedy – Mitchell & Webb are making their return to TV sketch comedy this week, and this time they’re bringing Stevie Martin, Kiell Smith-Bynoe and Lara Ricote with them! I can’t wait.

What’s Made Me Laugh The Most – I was lucky enough to attend a screening of the first two episodes of the new Alan Partridge series this week, and there’s a fantastic gag about grasping the nettle that I think wins this accolade this week.

Book Of The Week – I’m reading Parade by Rachel Cusk. I absolutely love Cusk, the Outline trilogy and Second Place are some of my all-time faves, but this one might have tipped over into being a bit too Cusk even for me. I have quite frequently had to go back and reread the page I’ve just read because I’ve realised I haven’t been able to follow what she’s saying. Maybe I’m becoming more thick, I dunno, but this currently feels like too much inward philosophising about the nature of art and representation and identity even for me. Maybe I really am changing.

Album Of The Week – Euro-Country by CMAT. I’m finally actively making an effort to listen to artists who are currently popular, rather than getting round to them a decade later like I usually do. I don’t want to be saying “Is anyone here into CMAT?” in 2035, so I’ve been listening to Euro-Country and really enjoying it.

Film Of The Week – I have to give this to The Naked Gun because in terms of exceeding expectations, it absolutely blew me away. I was expecting it to be either fine or bad, but I genuinely cried laughing several times, and I don’t think a single gag fell flat for me. Liam Neeson is no Leslie Nielsen, but he’s actually very good in it, and it’s the first time in years I’ve watched a film in the cinema that made no effort to do anything other than make me laugh, and that was such a joy to experience again.

That’s all for this week! As ever, let me know what you think, and if you enjoy the newsletter enough to send it to a friend or encourage others to subscribe, I’d really appreciate it! Take care of yourselves until next time,

Joz xx

PS I have no plans to actually charge for this newsletter or put it behind a paywall, but I do write it for free and the comedy and media industries are in a tricky state right now, especially for freelancers. If you value the Therapy Tapes and enjoy what they give to you, and want to support my work and enable me to keep writing and creating, you can make a one-off donation to my Ko-Fi account, and it’s very gratefully appreciated.

PPS Look at this nice parade of animals I found near St. Paul’s. Not sure why the dog and the rabbit have clothes on.

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