Funny People

Intro

1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.

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• stand-up
• plot
• turn your life around
• premise

• terminal illness
• comedian
• find out
• befriend

• realistic
• fatal

2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

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What’s funny about terminal illness? Uh, well, you’ll have to watch the new comedy Funny People to find out. In the film, Adam Sandler plays a successful comedian who finds out he has just one year to live. He befriends a struggling comedian played by Seth Rogen, who tries to help him become a better person in his final days.

The director of Funny People, Judd Apatow, managed to make unplanned pregnancy funny in his movie Knocked Up. So if anyone can get laughs with fatal disease jokes, it’s probably him. Find out what Devan and Beren would do if they only had a year to live.

Dialog

1. Listen and Read - Listen to the audio and read the dialog at the same time.

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2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Devan

Beren

Devan:  So I just went and saw Funny People.

Beren:  Oh, that’s the Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen stand up comedy movie?

Devan:  Yeah, are you familiar with the plot?

Beren:  Kind of.

Devan:  So it’s like this guy, this comedian who’s really successful, and then he finds out he has a year to live. And he was kinda not a very good guy, but when he finds out he has a year to live he befriends this less successful comedian and starts trying to turn his life around and change it, you know? And it just made me think about what I would do if I only had a year to live.

Beren:  If you had some crazy terminal illness.

Devan:  Yeah, like what would you do if you found out you had one year left?

Beren:  See that’s the question. I don’t know, part of me…I would hope that I’d do something amazing and try to be a better person, but then I wonder if because I only had a year to live I’d just be like, “Let’s go crazy!” and like spend as much money as possible and go wild.

Devan:  I mean, that’s the thing, it seems like whenever there’s a movie with this premise, the story’s always them trying to turn their life around and help other people. But I wonder if that’s realistic, or if you found out you had a year left you’d just become really selfish and try to do a bunch of fun things for yourself, you know?

Beren:  I think that’s probably the more realistic take on the terminal illness.

Grammar Point

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Quizzes

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Lesson MP3

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