How To Tell A Joke

In the shower yesterday I realised that I'd been telling the joke wrong. It was the joke from Blue Valentine, the one that starts off with the child molester and the child walking into the dark woods together. I'd been quite proud of my delivery (having performed it three times to fairly appreciative audiences), but I really knew I was doing something wrong when, the fourth time, somebody said 'yeah, but it's just really well told in the film.'

I can't remember how it's told in the film; I guess I could find the scene on youtube maybe. But it doesn't matter, in the shower I realised what I should have been doing. Instead of changing my voice for the punchline, changing it to a sort of over the top 'this-is-a-punchline' voice, I should have just kept talking in the 'this-is-a-creepy-ghost-story' voice from the rest of the joke. How could I have let the joke down so badly? Of course it should be deadpan.

Because the thing with deadpan is that the beat comes after the joke is told, before the laugh. Which is the opposite to non-deadpan jokes, where the beat comes just before the punchline - we already know the punchline there, because it's a pun, or something like that, which we can work out from the joke itself. But in the other kind of joke, like the Blue Valentine one, the punchline is a twist, it is really the whole joke - using the funny voice tilts your hand before you have anything to show. It's a disaster.