What Time is it? A clown bit from the Three Stooges
One suggestion I make is that clowns need to learn from previous masters – and the Three Stooges are a good example. In their short film Dutiful but Dumb, there’s a short scene where Moe asks Curly what the time is, and Curly does a wonderful example of clown logic to answer the question:
Moe Click (Moe Howard): Hey, what’s the idea of the three watches?
Curly Cluck (Curly Howard): That’s how I tell the time.
Moe Click (Moe Howard): How do you tell the time?
Curly Cluck (Curly Howard): This one runs ten minutes slow every two hours, this one runs twenty minutes fast every four hours, the one in the middle is broke and stopped and 2 o’clock.
Moe Click (Moe Howard): Well, how do you tell the time?
Curly Cluck (Curly Howard): I take the ten minutes from this one, subtract it from the twenty minutes on that one! Then I divide it by 2 in the middle.
Moe Click (Moe Howard): Well, what time is it now?
Curly Cluck (Curly Howard): [takes out his pocket watch] Oh, ten minutes to four.
This is an excellent example of clown logic at work – with the punchline being, of course, that he actually uses a pocket watch to tell time. There are several short points to make:
- This probably would work better as part of a larger skit
- The wrist watches should probably be as large and colorful as possible.
- The pocket watch could be as large as the White Rabbit’s in Alice in Wonderland
- Another idea for the pocket watch would be the multiplying watch, available at magic shops