Two-hander
What the heck is a two-handed comedy? Google turns up lots of two-handed comedies, but no one explains what that means.
– jb
I don’t know if Variety invented it, but it shows up in their slanguage dictionary:
two-hander — a play or movie with two characters; ” ‘Love Letters’ has been one of the most popular two-handers of the ’90s.” (See also: one-hander)
It’s worth looking through Variety’s made-up words list to help figure out what the hell they’re saying. In about 10% the cases, they’ve coined a term for something that probably merited a word (”kudocast,” “lense”). The other 90% are just color (”distribbery,” “ayem”).
The term that gets the most play is “ankle”:
ankle — A classic (and enduring) Variety term meaning to quit or be dismissed from a job, without necessarily specifying which; instead, it suggests walking; “Alan Smithee has ankled his post as production prexy at U.”
This is probably an example of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: in Hollywood, no high-level executive is ever fired. They simply leave their job. By using a deliberately ambiguous term, Variety maintains the illusion that everything happens by choice.
Trivia: It’s hard to believe, but Variety apparently first coined the term “sex appeal.”
10 Responses to “Two-hander”
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April 2nd, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Wait. So ALL ‘Two-handers’ must have exactly two characters? I’m surprised there’s that many. I haven’t seen that many two-person plays. You learn something everyday, I guess.
Thanks John.
April 2nd, 2008 at 2:59 pm
I always read ankle in reverse - as a way to say that someone was “fired” without contradicting the make-nice press release, since that might be actionable as libel.
I always wondered how long writers had to train to produce that stuff.
April 2nd, 2008 at 4:47 pm
As someone who’s worked as a reporter and copy editor on newspapers for a long time, I’ve struggled with Variety’s made-up words. Mostly because a lot of them go against the golden rule for making up words in newspapers - to get away with a shorter word and save space (this is especially useful in headlines). For example, “ten percentery” is far longer than “agency”. So I formed the view it was to give Variety the appearance of being its own club. A paper for a narrow audience only understood by that narrow audience, and deliberately written so as to be confusing to anyone outside the club. While at the same time making the club members feel special because they’re in on the lingo.
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:06 pm
And here I thought the terms “one-hander” and “two-hander” belonged to another lexicon entirely…
So, then, is it cool to use Variety slanguage in action blocks to impresse readers with just how incredibly “inside” and “in the know” you are?
Bob, a tubthumping tuner in his own right once, is the long suffering prexy of a currently clickless low-rent diskery: Bobco. The latest round of certs are more of the same, nothing but flops for Bobco.
Bob’s new A&R guy Jim, an aspiring cleffer, senses opportunity. He tells Bob he’s got a boffo tune — a guaranteed whammo with auds and crits alike — and knows just the thrush to belt it out.
That’s a guaranteed “consider” right there — right?
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:55 am
I always understood ‘Two-hander’ to be a comedy set-piece or other small scene that only involved two players, rather than the whole piece - the term (I think) dates back to the Victorian music hall over here in the UK. Presumably then it found its way Stateside with Fred Karno’s Army and the other Brit vaudeville troupes of that era, thus passing into the young film industry as insider slang, which Variety then cribbed looking for that insider edge.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:42 pm
So, unless the scene is set in an amputee ward, the ‘two-hander’ would have four hands …
Mac
April 4th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
See, I’m thinking, if it dates back beyond music hall, vaudeville, I bet it has a literal derivation. If a travelling player was also a puppeteer, a Punch and Judy man, then it was actual fact that any scene involving two characters was a two-hander…
‘One-hander’? No, that means exactly what you think it does.
April 6th, 2008 at 4:55 am
I call BS on the trivia: ‘Variety apparently first coined the term “sex appeal.”’.
The Hollywood ‘Daily Variety’ magazine stated in 1933.
A quick search shows up plenty of usage before this.
eg:
(1) “The girls thrilled as well as the boys, for Rosaleen’s was not a mere sex appeal but practically a universal one.” (From ‘The girl and the kingdom;: Learning to teach - Los Angeles city teachers’ club. Bulletin. Suppl., v. 5, no. 6. December 1915]
(2) It was even used as a common phrase in Collier’s Weekly magazine in Wodehouse’s serial ‘The Adventures of Sally’ in 1921. (”Replete as it was with human interest, sex-appeal, the punch, and all the other qualities which a drama should possess ..”)
(3) Even boring academics were using the phrase in the 1920s. eg: “Many ancient authors and scholiasts have commented upon the looseness and sex appeal of this dance” (From Firebaugh’s unexpurgated translation of ‘The Satyricon’)
(4) It was used in 1907 in Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s poem ‘The Cure’ (Published in The Evening Bulletin [Philadelphia]) “It must be the mother’s teaching of the purpose, and the cause, And God’s glory, lying under sex appeal.”
OK - the New York ‘Variety’ Magazine started in 1905 and the earliest reference I can find is from Philadelphia in 1907 … but I’m sure with a little effort we could find an earlier reference.
Mac
April 7th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Two-Hander…sounds like sth you pay twenty bucks for on santa monica.
April 8th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Kidding aside…
As someone who produced plays in NYC — a great “two-hander” is gold. An invitation to make money if it runs. A good example would be the play “Oleanna” by David Mamet.
A “one-hander” as noted is one man or woman show. If they run talk about money makers! John Leguizamo and Eric Bogosian did several terrific one person shows, (before they started doing movies and television.)