There are myths surrounding doing a roast about a person that can ruin all the fun.
Dispelling the Myth
I’m sure you, as so many of my students have confessed, have sat through roasts and squirmed in discomfort. Why would that be? I believe it is primarily because of the myth of the roast. The myth is this: that a roast has to be based on REAL LIFE EXPERIENCES of the individual being roasted.
WRONG!
While the boast should be based on true stories, a true, fun roast is based on kernels of truth about an individual and then greatly exaggerated. The guest comedian roasters and behind-the-scene writers for the Dean Martin Celebrity roasts were well aware of this truth and applied it religiously.
One night Jimmy Stewart was the man of the hour. Jimmy Stewart has the reputation of being a kind, gentle man. There wasn’t any dirt about Jimmy. He was certainly not a person you would not think to talk negatively about. Lucille Ball, who happened to be a neighbor of Jimmy Stewart for many years, opened her roast of Jimmy commenting on what a kind, quiet man he was, and that she was surprised he was still up that late at the roast because he goes to bed so early. Then she went on to roast him about his vegetable garden. These words are not exact, but pretty close (my husband and I own many of the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts DVDs)
“Jimmy has the most beautiful, magnificent, glorious vegetable garden. But he’s so kind he can’t even spray the plant-eating insects. Why, one day I walked over there, and Jimmy was on the ground lecturing a snail….”
In these few comments, Lucy entertained the audience by exaggerating a few kernels of truth about Jimmy Stewart:
- He is a kind, peaceful man
- He has a vegetable garden
- He talks slow, deliberate and oftentimes for too long
What if you aren’t a comedian or a comedy writer? We will explore the easiest and most effective way to exaggerate those kernels of truth – the JOKE in another post.
