Jokes are not easy to tell, feels Jon Lucas

Los Angeles: Cracking jokes and making the audience laugh through movies is tough, believes writer Jon Lucas, who has made his directorial debut with ‘21 & Over’. "We like a thriller structure in a comedy, so you`re not just relying on jokes, because jokes are hard," said Lucas. "Successful comedies have more than just laughs, they get you engaged and caring about the characters as you`re laughing," he added. Lucas has co-directed ‘21 & Over’ with Scott Moore, with whom he wrote the 2009 film ‘The Hangover’. The duo`s first directorial, hitting Indian screens March 8, is a tale of friends, a drunk night and debauchery. It is about an American boy, who turns 21, and celebrates the fact that he can officially drink. The writer-directors prefer to share "universal experiences" through their films. "Jon and I like to write movies about universal experiences," said Moore, adding: "As writers, we try to make more out of everything. We had a checklist of a couple of things that we feel pretty much everybody has gone through." "Almost everyone has had a hangover, and at some point in life, you will turn 21. It is this little rite of passage. So we had this notion floating around and it married really well with this experience that Jon had at a musical festival and it all came together as this movie," he said. IANS