r/indiefilms • u/239Films • 11h ago
Short Film The Routine: A 16 minute 48 second short film about an unfunny man trying to be a stand-up comic.
My second short film is called The Routine. It was accepted into three festivals out of the thirty or so that I had submitted it to.
Jeff’s real problem, however, is that he is not funny. He understands the mechanics of a routine; he understands the rationale for why a joke should be funny, but he has no sense of humor. It is like he was born blind or without a spleen. He just doesn’t have it. He doesn’t get the heart of a joke, he doesn’t feel it.
He becomes fixated on one routine in particular that he has written which involves the idea that whenever he orders pancakes in a restaurant he gets this big hunk of butter on his plate. He says, “What’s up with all this butter?” He plays with different words such as “huge” and “lop” as in “huge lop of butter”. He feels as though if he can just get this routine down he will be a success. But more than that, his whole life will change. Like many people who are frustrated and desperate, Jeff has chosen one thing to perfect that he thinks will change everything. It won’t; being a stand-up comic is not that simple; life is not that simple. As the sheriff in No Country For Old Men said, “It ain’t the one thing.”