Letters to the Editor
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Colbert and Stewart
Interesting that there's been no mention of Stephen Colbert,whose performances are by far the funniest in over a generation, or of Seinfeld, and little mention of Jon Stewart (lack of women cited is another discussion). These men are in their forties, but (Colbert and Stewart) just getting better and better. They are both clearly happy men who use their sincere and discomforting political anger as their artistic medium, and seem to enjoy relying on their live audiences. One difference from some of the other comedians discussed is that these two are unusually smart, quick-quippers with a firm philosophical grounding, and their comedy is more wit than schtick (ditto for Rob Corddry and a couple of other Daily performers). Could it be that the trend of critical audiences is actually becoming more intellectually demanding, even though the paying ones still pony up for slapstick?
(Stewart and Colbert have also chosen, or even invented, performance settings that serve them very, very well, and chosen excellent writers. I haven't seen either of their movie performances, but Stewart's book was a big disappointment.)
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Two words...
When I heard they were remaking the Pink Panther, I had two words for the producers.
Alan Arkin.
A wonderful actor, a great actor, even. But in 1968 he tried to fill Peter Sellers' shoes in INSPECTOR CLOUSEAU (directed by Bud Yorkin), and the results were predictable. Despite a cast of English stalwarts to die for (including Frank Finlay, Beryl Reid, and Patrick Cargill), it was woefully unfunny.
Soon, I fear, we'll have another two words to warn people from attempting this character again.
Steve Martin.
(Although Geoffrey Rush did an excellent impersonation of Clouseau in the HBO Sellers biopic.)
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Full Monty
British comedies are funny.
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when was s. martin ever funny?
I was going to ask when steve (mark Twain winner)martin was ever funny but you answered my question with the one and only time : FLYDINI :
Second best martin tapdancing in Pennies from Heaven.
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Re: when good comedians go bad
Gore Vidal quoted Tennesse Williams in his book Palimpsest: " An artist dies two deaths, their creative one and then their real one". Sometimes, somewhere that reservoir of pain that enables one to laugh at the sheer absurdity of life somehow just dries up. Maybe it has something to do with becoming successful and then complacent. Or, maybe once the joke has been said once or twice it just no longer flies. But it sure seems comedians don't have a very long shelf life.
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We just saw "The Pink Panther" and loved it.
It had a strong supporting cast who did an excellent job of mirroring the "Can you believe this guy?" that was on our faces.
It reminded us a lot of "Anchorman:the Legend of Ron Burgundy" and had a similar sort of humor.
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whys and wherefores of clunkers
A couple of brief hunches-I'm a very average Sunday humourist- about Woody's situation as a paradigm of the rest-after all
he's been in the game since the era of Sid Caesar and blacklisting.
Very acutely described arc of inconsistency, Stephanie-but you don't say much about
the existential gap between the headlines and the business called show -we need a
younger-sisterhood Jane Fonda on the case too - the awareness of the ever-younger movie
punter-here in the UK too
1. Editorial control by people making concessions to the Benny Hill cap on power-broking right-wing
senses of humour-their world view engenders being perpetually amused by the 'little guy' but in a regressed, terrible-twos humourless, humility-free-way they think is folksy.
A percentage of any -eg-Woody audience I've been a part of expects a laugh every 4 minutes
and laughs robotically anyway even when theres a piquant double edge to a quip.
2.The demands of the celebrity circuit ditto plus the difficulty of keeping your
stand-up roots well-oiled when any p.a becomes a big deal for someone.
3.The demands of going behind the camera as well as giving some froissant of your
influence in the script while longing to escape from 1.
4. just growing older and more careworn
5. as Oscar Levant once said discovering the Real Tinsel behind the Fake Tinsel
6. Maybe its a question of balance-as Steph said, LA Story is a masterpiece even in
imitation of Woody ...because its unafraid and not in thrall to its subject, and
has something of a mythic quality about it (like, I think, Broadway Danny Rose or
most Python). Also there's that willingness and ability to simply observe on location, eg Jacques Tati.
Defamiliarisation, eg Woody crossing the pond,is one bold way out of this,and the guy
deserves credit for being insistently self-critical, modest and real.
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Other paths for the talented
While there certainly exist tons of examples of comedians gone aged and terrible, I still think it's worth noting the people who were ONCE comedians and continue to be edgy and provocative, but in other media: the already mentioned Steve Martin-as-writer is a good example, but I think a better one is Mike Nichols. "The Graduate" "Closer" wasn't, but it was a helluvalot better than "Match Point." Maybe shifting to other venues can help stave off the dry-rot: and I don't mean "other venues" like hosting the Oscars, I mean ones that require actual work.
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The Ten Year Peak
John Cleese once said that all artists have about a ten year period of peak creativity which is followed by gradual or sudden decline. A look at the comedians of old bears this out: The Marx Bros between 1930 and 1937 created "Duck Soup", "Horse Feathers ", "A Night at the Opera", and "A Day at the Races". This was followed by inferior product like the "Big Store" and "Go West". Chaplin between 1925 and 1936 made "the Gold Rush", "The Circus", "City Lights", and "Modern Times" followed by notable failures "the Great Dictator" and "Monseiur Verdoux". That brings us to Woody Allen the only truly great comedian mentioned in the article.Steve Martin and Albert Brooks are minor talents in comparison. Between 1969 and 1979 Allen made his best films: "Sleeper", "Love and Death", "Annie Hall" , and perhaps his greatest "Manhatten". He certainly hasn't made anything close to as good as "Manhatten" and lately seems to be just be going through the motions. I haven't seen "Match Point" but like most of Allen's current product it gets good to great reviews usally along the lines of "his best work in years", or "Woody's back!" , this is followed by general apathy at the box office and then obscurity until the next Allen release.