In the traditional comedy duo, one is straight, the other is a clown. This pairing creates an ideal context for comedy. The straight person grounds the concepts and puts up a framework. The clown mocks, ignores, or tears it all down.
There’s a lesson for the creator life in there.
As a creator, you’re a clown. Even when you’re editing, marketing, and doing traditional “left brain” stuff, you’re still creating. You’re in loosey-goosey head-in-the-clouds land, conjuring worlds out of pixie dust, and living in the boundless world of your imagination.
Some creators revel in this state. They go off on flights of fancy and take years to produce a project, pursuing whatever whimsical madness their muse inspires.
The act of creativity needs a straight person. It needs an opposing force to ground it and put up a framework—that is, if it ever hopes to produce anything tangible.
For creativity, that straight person is the order we impose on it: parameters, limits, outlines, structure, and discipline.
The best creations are done on deadline, with constraints, and with the crack of one’s own whip.
For a genie to work, it has to be in a bottle once in a while.
This is the constant battle between the left and right side of the brain that makes us creatives delightfully miserable!
Does comedy even work without a contrast? Without a "straight-man"? Costello wouldn't have worked without Abbott, the Palin/Cleese sketches worked so well because Cleese kept it straight. Even without an identified "straight-man", there's still contrast. If you slip on a banana (to be cliche), it's not me slipping on it - contrast. If it's a stuffy suit slipping over, it's not you AND there's the dignity contrast.
The genie can take many forms. Excellent insight Scott.