Letters to the Editor
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French Accents
Steph, I haven't seen the movie, I'm sure you're right. No one is guaranteed to be funny, it's all about the material... and we do expect someone like SM to vet the material for us in advance. But I just had to say, Peter Sellers' French accent ALSO sounded like a speech impediment. Let's not forget that.
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Remember when movie reviews used to be about the movie?
I'm not going to go as far and say that Stephanie Zacharek doesn't like any movies. I vaguely recall a few positive reviews about this or that over the past year. However, lately it seems as if she's been drifting a bit from the actual focus of the review - the movie - to tangents related to whatever it is she's ranting about at that moment, at the expense of the actual movie review.
In this review, for example, she takes it a bit too far. There's what, a paragraph about the new Pink Panther movie in here, amidst a two-page review? The rest of the space is spent discussing another movie that is vaguely related to the one she's complaining about by virtue of its stars, and a dissection of "where Steve Martin went wrong" by touching on many of his past movies.
I think Stephanie Zacharek needs to lighten up for one, but secondly she needs to spend a little more time providing content and commentary about the reason most people actually read movie reviews - the movie itself.
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It's the money, honey.....
It's really very simple -- artists can only create when they are "hungry", whether that's a hunger for fame, money, recognition, applause, etc. It doesn't really matter whether we are talking comedians here, or musicans, painters, writers, movie directors.
The structure of our society is such that one or two successes early on bring great wealth....not just some well-deserved reward but really huge sums of money, millions of dollars. And rich people, frankly, are not funny. They aren't hungry, there isn't anything they want and yearn for. Their lives are basically one long shopping spree.
There isn't much chance you will be angry or feeling any pain on that big shopping spree, so artists that succeed in this way quickly discover they have nothing to make jokes about, nothing to complain about, nothing to angst about....and nothing to paint or film.
So we end up with dull comics, taking totally unfunny projects (Pink Panther, etc.) simply because there is a $10 million check attached to said project. How can you say "no" to such instant and extreme wealth, the culmination of all your earthly desires? And yet it is this that destroys career after career....with an Emperor's New Clothes sort of situation, because the same desperately unfunny comics keep getting cast in films by the same desperately untalented directors and screenwriters....and pundits wonder why movie attendance declines year after year.
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Face it, American movies are dead
Nobody in Hollywood would recognize a funny idea if it jumped up and bit them. They're ALL a bunch of pompous, overinflated, humorless windbags who think the sun shines out of their ass but have no idea how to make interesting movies. Their "big ideas" are flatulent, obvious as a fart, while the very concept of small ideas, which make the best movies, is long, long gone.
American movies, American movie stars -- what's the point? We have the best technology, but even that is more and more used as a tool by foreigners to make American-style blockbusters with foreign ideas -- because only foreigners are capable of having ideas. Even visual ones.
All we have left is Samuel L. Jackson in an exploding car. Electric shock treatment for stimulus-craving morons. It's popular to say that the video game generation is responsible for the corruption of the movies; but the fact is, all of the creativity of the American movie system has drained away, and a lot of it went to video games, which are far, far more interesting and developed than any Hollywood movies today.
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Old folks ain't funny
I ask you to sample the following films:
The Marx Brothers in "Go West"
Laurel and Hardy in "The Bullfighters"
Bob Hope in "Cancel My Reservation"
Jerry Lewis in "Hardly Working"
Bad movies by aging comedians are a tried-and-true tradition in Hollywood. Any writer or performer who's been working for at least thirty years will inevitably have fewer and fewer ideas and fewer and fewer things to actually say. And when the writer does not have the foresight to re-invent himself or herself and instead relies on the same old schtick, it'll get even worse because they're BORED with it. Wouldn't you be bored with it? Albert Brooks and Steve Martin are both pushing 60 and Woody Allen just turned 70 and I can't imagine that any of them are happy with The In-Laws or Cheaper-Dozen or Anything Else. It's a disservice to their legacies that they continue attempting comedy the same way they did it thirty years ago. Once this sad period is over, we can appreciate their old, great works again, just as we can appreciate "Duck Soup" again.
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Carlin Once Said...
...that it is dangerous to take comedy too seriously. This essay, and the letters in response, prove his point.
Funny is funny, period. And yes, taste does come into it; if it didn't, then seventy years on The Ritz Brothers would be considered as re-watchable as The Marx Brothers. "The Ritz Brothers who?" you ask. Exactly my point.
Those of you positing an economic argument are forgetting that several people who are still very funny are also very rich. Exhibit A: Bill Murray. Exhibit B: Trey Parker and Matt Stone (the last time I checked, "South Park" was still hilarious, and TEAM AMERICA was a noble failure not an abject one).
As for age...well, that depends. Bob Hope was funny for a VERY long time. So was Rodney Dangerfield. So is Gilbert Gottfreid and Dana Carvey and, if Parkinson's hadn't felled him, so would be Michael J. Fox (these guys aren't exactly spring chickens). And then there's Larry David. Talk about funny!
So some of you are right but most of you are wrong. Heed George Carlin's advice, laugh at what's funny and ignore what's not (like Will Farrel - how the fuck did that guy EVER get a career??).