Kenya Barris pointed to Eddie Murphy’s 1980s stand-up specials when trying to describe the delicate balance between gleefully explicit comedy and the need to rein it in for a wider audience.
His new scripted podcast for Audible, Big Age, is a comedy centered on a retirement community starring Jenifer Lewis, Cedric the Entertainer and Niecy Nash-Betts. “In audio, you definitely have more freedom” than film and TV, the Black-ish creator and Girls Trip screenwriter said. “I can cut things because you’re not seeing them. … And the story can still last.”
Lewis, though, is “as blue as they come” in terms of her comedy, Barris said with an admiring grin during an appearance at On Air Fest in Brooklyn. “We got so many f–ks.”
He recalled the “f–k negotiations” held by Murphy and the creative team of Raw, the special released theatrically by Paramount, with lawyers and studio suits counting every expletive. Lewis was “right there” at Murphy’s level, Barris said.
“When you’re working in film and television, sometimes if you cut too much of a scene out, you just lose perspective and you’ve lost the story. I think that because we have voiceover, because we can use sound for you because we’re going to drop these things in, you have more freedom in that aspect to create, where it still is fluid and cohesive.”
While the profanity works because of Lewis’s delivery, Barris continued, “at the same time, we want this to be open and to be accepted.” In an effort to ensure that, he joked about often asking the show’s production team, “Can I get a clean– can we do a ‘no-fucks’ pass?!”
Both Big Age and interview show The Unusual Suspects (co-hosted with Malcolm Gladwell) have recently premiered on Audible. Judging by the festival conversation, listeners can expect to hear plenty more from Barris.
Asked about the kinds of audio projects he hopes to tackle in the future, Barris didn’t hesitate, mentioning shows about divorce and street crime. The former “affects so many people” but also has “a lot of funny things in it,” he said.
A crime drama could make use of cinema-style aesthetics. “So much of that happens outside,” he said. Audio production can highlight “the idea of the danger and and you can sort of really play into the idea of a kid going into a heist and the fear he has and hiding it from his mom.” Barris cited two movie examples with exemplary sound design and editing: Heat and F1.
In the latter example, “You can hear the gear shift and you can hear the tires, the rubber literally hitting the road. You hear people breathing and the back and forth. I think bringing people into the action that way is something I’m really excited to do.”
English (US) ·