(Comedy) Takes An Editor

A few years back I stumbled across a pair of Māori comediennes on Facebook doing what all great comics do: genderfuckery. They were playing crack-up Māori uncles so authentic you could smell the Port Royal and Big Ben pie blended with a can of V burp through the screen. My reaction?

- Holy shit. I just found the Māori Topp Twins.

I reached out. The girls were over the moon. I promised them a show and I delivered.

Being a Māori TV production, however, I wasn’t allowed to produce it on my own. In my head I had thought my recruiting Māori creatives - directors and writers – would suffice. But I needed a Māori producer and production company. And from memory, they gave me 3 days to secure one.

Enter Julian Arahanga down in Wellington. You may know him as Nig from Once Were Warriors. A top man. He gave me cigars and white rum. We clicked. This was going to work. I stepped down from any producing role to focus on the writing.

Comic genius Cohen Holloway was down to play the lead. I’d written for Cohen on Find Me a Māori Bride so new how to tailor that particular suit. His gift? Playing the man who will double, triple, and quadruple down in the face of all reason until the cringe-factor reaches terminal levels. A Māori Basil Fawlty.

And then a few things started to go wrong.

Cohen pulled out. He was about to shoot a Warner Bros crime thriller called Fresh Eggs and viewed this - not unwisely - as the bigger opportunity. He still wanted to be in our show, but playing the lead while preparing for another felt too hard. Fair enough. Warner Bros paid more. But maybe a mistake. My writing was funnier. The show - Takes A Village - was as broad as a doorman’s shoulders. Mel Brooks-on-meth. Irreverent. Mad. It was about a disgraced Māori table-tennis champ who returns to his hometown of Whala Bay to run a drop-in centre. That table-tennis champ wouldn’t be played by Cohen.

We cast Jamie McCaskill who was good. No shade. But I’d written for Cohen. Jokes that kill for one performer can die in the mouth of another. This isn’t a question of skill. Dave Chappelle is one of the greatest comics on the planet. I wouldn’t cast him as Basil Fawlty. I proposed delaying production for a rewrite, but Julian wanted to plough ahead.

And then, the comedy duo turned on me. They thought that this was meant to be their show. And it could’ve been, but they didn’t deliver much material, which left us feeling they couldn’t carry the show. They wanted to be the main course and not a condiment. But the way it had worked out was perfect. They should’ve been in a supporting role. The Simpsons started as a 5-minute clip at the end of The Tracey Ullman Show. Using them just as sparingly would leave the audience intrigued and wanting more. But they didn’t have the experience to appreciate that.

And then we lost our director, Tammy Davis (George FM DJ and Outrageous Fortune’s Munter). So, Sonny - our producer - decided he would direct. Sonny was naturally funny. And a warm, relaxed dude. But not a comedy director.

Worse still, part of my deal had been that I would post-direct, like I had on Māori Bride - timing the gags, shaping the rhythm of scenes, protecting the laughs. Now Sonny was the director, I was locked out. To his credit, he still paid me for the post. And then politely kinda ghosted me. I was done.

I wasn’t bitter. I still love Sonny. But I had developed that sinking feeling and was happy to walk away with my wallet fatter than when I’d arrived.

Fast forward two years. I’m home. I’m bored. I fire up Māori TV On Demand and stumble across Takes a Village. My baby. Raised by a stepdad. Actually, that’s not right. I wasn’t particularly invested. I braced myself.

And here’s the thing: the performances and the jokes were good. Classic dad jokes - set-up, punchline, boom. But they weren’t funny. Not because of what was said, but because of how it was presented. Sonny and his cast had made a good show. But it wasn’t working. Why not?

Timing.

Comedy is music. It is the snare after the guitar riff and the space between notes. It’s tension and release. A good groove will move your body involuntarily. A joke well-timed will force a laugh out of you. The editor of this show had treated this like it was a war drama. Or worse, an Air New Zealand safety video. No matter how hard the actors worked or how golden a gag was, it felt flat.

This isn’t unique in New Zealand. Kiwi comedies are often killed in the edit. I saw it firsthand on Māori Bride. That editor kept running punchlines under reaction shots. I was constantly ordering him to cut back to the punchline. He thought I was being “basic.” I thought he was being “French.” In comedy, basic is good.

I taught my son comedic timing in a week. You know how? I got him to watch The Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup. And Rodney Dangerfield’s Tonight Show appearances. That’s all the schooling you need on comic timing. If you don’t get it by watching these two, you never will.

Editing comedy is like butchering a pufferfish. One wrong slice and you’ve poisoned the customer. I guarantee: if I could re-edit Takes a Village (or 75% of Kiwi comedy), I would put money on my being able to quadruple the laugh count. And not by rewriting a single word.

So here I am, an exiled showrunner dreaming of a recut. Anyone got the raw footage of Melody Rules? I’m serious. DM me. We may yet save New Zealand comedy, one re-edit at a time.