Where Do Good Jokes Come From?
Catching up with Sofía Manfredi, Staff Writer, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Thought Enthusiast is an editorial project from AdHoc, a New York experiential agency exploring the people, ideas, and cultural currents shaping what’s next.
Sofía Manfredi is a staff writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. She previously wrote for Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj and for ClickHole. She lives in New York.
This week, we caught up with Sofía to talk about musical comedy in Antarctica, the importance of sibling bits, and feeding your comedy brain.
Promo Tour Ick
The way that people have to promote their work now is so different from what it used to be. It's weird now that the interview circuit is, "I'm going to do an activity on camera with X or Y person." Why are you not allowed to just ask somebody something in a normal format? Why do we have to be doing things? I am such a sucker for a good old-fashioned interview. When people have fun with it, it's so fun. We should have done today's interview going under Niagara Falls on the Maid of the Mist while making pasta salad. But a lot of times I'm watching this and thinking, Oh, I wish they were sitting on a sofa and talking to each other. Interviews are too involved now and often feature crafts or activities in a way that I don't need.
The Balancing Act of Comedy
The way that I view the format of comedy has evolved because there are a lot of new ways that people do comedy and share comedy. A lot of that was just the advent of TikTok and social media and all these new ways for people to put comedy out there. Sometimes I feel I will always be a comedy nerd and always take in comedy, but sometimes I want to make sure that I am consuming things broadly and reading widely, just to make sure I’m not in one specific area of writing or of entertainment.
Whatever book I do read, I try to have it be very different from the last one that I read. I read this book of short stories called Siete Casas Vacias (Seven Empty Houses), which is this sort of unsettling collection of dreamlike short stories. It has a little bit of magical realism. Then after that, I moved to The Journalist and the Murderer, which is a nonfiction book about a a guy who was convicted of brutally murdering his wife and children. He invites this journalist to come to his defense team in advance of his trial, with the understanding that that journalist believes there’s been a miscarriage of justice. They hang out for years and become really close, and then when the journalist’s book comes out, he’s painted the other guy as a confirmed psychopath who for sure committed the crime. The murderer then sues the journalist for fraud, and that fraud trial is what the book is about.
Polymath Envy
I am very inspired by polymaths because I’m not one. I was watching a YouTube documentary with my grandma about Federico García Lorca because she loves him. He was an incredibly talented musician, then he decided to do playwriting instead, then he decided to do poetry. Just someone who does a zillion different things. I’m not a musician, but I admire that, and I’m aware that I don’t have that. I draw inspiration from things that are not the format I’m working in at the moment. Sometimes the best inspiration is to leave the arena that you’re in and go check out what other creative people are doing, and trust that it’ll make its way in somehow. I also think it’s inspiring when people write from different settings.
You can take in art from whenever. I am a big believer that stuff from the past can be as relevant as ever and can be a nice way to take a break from feeling overwhelmed by everything in front of you that’s coming out right now. A big mix of genres and time periods is very rewarding, and it leads you down unexpected little mental hallways sometimes. I feel everything you take in informs your writing, but when it's fun and exciting and surprising, a lot of it can be for your writing and still make you feel like a kid again. That is just the best place to be.
The World’s Coldest Writers’ Room
Something I've always been interested in—and would love to learn more about at some point—is that on Antarctic expeditions back in the early 1900s, because there had been a series of failed expeditions where the sun would go away for four months and everybody would go insane, they started deliberately finding ways for these guys to pass the time. So on one specific expedition, these extremely rugged sailor types who were eating elephant seals all day and living on this frozen ship wrote and put on a musical comedy at the bottom of the Earth. Part of me feels like you could make a serious scholarly argument about art and survival. Part of me is just like, that's just funny. Those guys did it. They made the costumes. That's just a great time. They really committed to the bit in a historic way, and I find it inspiring. If I feel like I'm in my apartment and not able to get stuff done, I'm like, "People have written in the craziest contexts imaginable." Just get a coffee and start typing.
The Importance of Long Standing Bits
There was a period of time where my brother was given this book by someone on the street called From Prison to Praise. It was this religious revelation by a guy who had reportedly been in prison. It was this pretty clearly self-published book about finding God. I don’t know if any of his life story was real. Someone saw my brother when he was 18 and was like, “Here, kid.” He put it in my room, and I was like, “What is this?” Then I put it back in his room, and it kind of escalated. We’ve just kind of been forever giving each other this From Prison to Praise book that neither of us has ever even cracked open. I have it right now, which means I need to hide it in his attic so he finds it in 20 years. Congratulations to that guy who found praise in prison. He’s changed my life by giving me a good bit.
My sense of humor is a little absurd, a little dry. Sometimes absurd gets mistaken for nonsensical, but absurd comedy still follows rules—it still has setups and punchlines, they just come at stranger angles. I definitely have a soft spot for dry satire. Growing up I was most into The Onion, and I still think ClickHole is scratching an itch that no one else is. I feel like some of the stuff on social media now veers a little bit toward cringe, but that also might just be that it’s for someone younger than me. It’s just taste. I might just be an old crotchety person who’s like, “Oh, I literally don’t get the joke.” Humiliating.
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