I was watching one of those modern comedians the other day, one of those modern stand-up politically correct comedians who are really just not that funny at all. They don’t come out with jokes anymore, well, not the kind of jokes that I’m used to, you know, the two blokes go into a pub kind of joke. No, these days a comedian tells you a story; he did this, he did that and some of it might be vaguely humorous. Michael McIntyre is a comedian in this modern category and to be fair he can be quite funny but I still prefer a straight joke to his story about waking up next to his wife and him having bad breath and then a whole lot of repercussions stemming from that.
To be fair there are some modern comedians I like. People like Jack Dee, Gary Delaney, Milton Jones and Stewart Francis.
When I was a child there used to be a lot of TV shows showing the old silent comedies from the early days of the cinema. There were stars like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. What they did back in the 1960s with those old silent films was to add a few sound effects which might have actually come from the soundtrack of cartoons like Tom and Jerry. In the rumble tumble world of the Keystone Cops they added the sounds of various people being hit on the head with kitchen pots and pans, things falling from great heights and a commentary with a narrator saying things like ‘Look out Charlie’ just as Chaplin was about to get a pie in the face.
Chaplin: picture from flickr
When I first saw those films as they were meant to be shown with just a piano tinkling away in the background and no sound effects, I have to say I was rather disappointed but of course, audiences back then didn’t have much choice, the tinkling piano was all they had. Few of the stars from those silent film days ever made it into the era of the talkies but a duo who did were Laurel and Hardy.
Charlie Chaplin is one of my personal heroes and one of the greats of the silver screen, perhaps the very first movie genius ever, but here’s a flash; he never ever made me laugh. Smile, yes, but laugh, no. I look at his movies and recognise his story telling power, his movie making magic and much more but no, Charlie never really made me laugh. Laurel and Hardy on the other hand, two movie comedians who are not perhaps as lauded the world over as geniuses but who are perhaps more universally loved, well, now they do make me laugh.
Whenever some catastrophe befell Oliver Hardy, whenever he stood and looked straight at the camera after a cabinet landed on his head or a car accident befell him and he stood up straight amid the shambles of a house exploding around him and Stanley would go into his helpless ‘it wasn’t my fault’ act, that would not only crack me totally up but would leave me helpless with tears of laughter running down my face.
Way back in my school days Monty Python was on TV late on -I think- a Thursday night. It was certainly a week night and it was certainly late as I had a running argument with my Mum about staying up to watch it. The next day at school the talk would be all about the latest episode.
One day for some inexplicable reason I completely forgot about it and in my first lesson the following day one of my schoolmates approached me and said ‘Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!’ I looked blankly back at him and said something like ‘What are you on about?’ Only to get the disgusted answer ‘Didn’t you watch Monty Python last night?’ and then the lad moved on to someone else. Moments later I heard something again about the Spanish Inquisition and then two boys rolling with laughter. I was totally left out and I didn’t know what to do about it until later when I had an idea.
Monty Python Team
In my next class another friend asked ‘Did you see Monty Python last night?’ and after a brief moment I decided to take something of a chance and answered ‘Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!’ and the two of us rolled about in laughter and this trend continued throughout the day.
My friends never discovered that I hadn’t actually seen the Spanish Inquisition sketch and in fact I didn’t see it until years later when some digital channel started showing Monty Python repeats. I lied to my friends just because I didn’t want to be left out of some schoolboy banter. Funnily enough, the Spanish Inquisition sketch is one of my favourites.
One of the founder members of Monty Python, John Cleese, followed up Python with a comedy series about a small hotel and its madcap staff. The owner of the hotel was hotelier Basil Fawlty played by Cleese and his wife – played by Prunella Scales and the series was called Fawlty Towers. At the time the show had a very mild reception but these days it is considered a TV classic. Cleese and co-writer Connie Booth who played a hotel maid in the show, made only two short series. Recently Cleese claimed to be making a follow up series though it’s a pity he didn’t do that many years ago as most of his co-stars are either no longer with us, like Andrew Sachs who played the Spanish waiter, or not in a position to perform like poor Prunella Scales, suffering with dementia.
Woody Allen is a different sort of film comedian although in his early days we can see there was clearly a sort of slapstick influence on his work. One of my favourite scenes in his older pictures was from Take the Money and Run where he decides to rob a bank but the bank staff have difficulty reading his note demanding money. His later pictures are warmer and more thoughtful rather than hilarious but they are still funny but in a different way.
Two comedy films that come to mind now are films that I’ve always found absolutely hilarious – Airplane and Police Academy. Both films spawned a series of not quite so funny sequels but the originals still kill me to this day.
I thought I’d finish with a look at a few particular favourites
The Naked Gun
This is one of those laugh out loud comedies that also spawned various sequels and even a TV series. It also rejuvenated the career of actor Leslie Neilson who played the hapless police detective throughout the series.
Some Like it Hot
Some Like it Hot was written by Billy Wilder and his longtime writing partner, IAL Diamond. Wilder also produced and directed the film which starred Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon.
The film itself is something of a farce; musicians Curtis and Lemmon witness a gangland murder in 1920s Chicago and go on the run from mobster George Raft. To escape they join an all girl band dressed as women. The two both fall for singer Sugar Kane played by Monroe and Tony Curtis pretends to be a millionaire in order to pursue her. Curtis takes Sugar on board ‘his’ yacht while the real owner, millionaire Mr Osgood is diverted by Jack Lemmon still in his disguise as a woman.
The film has passed into legend for the problems Marilyn had during production. One scene in which she was required to say ‘It’s me, Sugar’ took 47 takes although another scene which Wilder thought would take three days was shot in 20 minutes.
When Harry Met Sally
This film is a very Woody Allen-esque film although Woody had nothing to do with it. It was written by Nora Ephron and directed by Rob Reiner and starred Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan as the eponymous Harry and Sally. The two make a great film pairing, much more so than Meg and Tom Hanks with whom Meg starred in two other films. It’s about a couple who start out as friends and finally become lovers.
Tootsie
Dustin Hoffman stars as an actor who always goes out on a limb to give the perfect or at least the most authentic performance possible. His big problem is that in doing so he usually makes it hard for everyone else, making shooting go over schedule and over budget. No one wants to hire him so when he tries to help his friend Sandy get a part in a TV soap opera, which she sadly doesn’t get, he decides to masquerade as a woman and try for the part himself. The crazy thing is, he actually gets the part and has to continue to pretend to be a woman even though he finds himself falling for his female co-star.
The idea of men dressing up as women has been used time and time again but Tootsie and Some Like it Hot both work because of the high standard of the writing and the performances. In one of my favourite scenes in Tootsie, Hoffman as actor Michael Dorsey has to kiss the senior doctor but he improvises and does something else. The director isn’t happy but Hoffman apologises. At least he didn’t have to kiss the doctor he thinks but then the doctor grabs him and kisses him anyway. Throw in a little slapstick which wouldn’t be out of place in a Chaplin film and the result is an outstanding film comedy.
I thought I’d finish this slightly oddball and meandering look at comedy with some classic TV comedy from the 1970’s. (I’m tempted to mention MASH here, my all time favourite TV series which was a fabulous mix of comedy and drama. I won’t say any more because a while back I wrote an entire post about the show which you can read by clicking here.) Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker were major TV comedy stars in the late sixties and early seventies when some enterprising producer decided to team the two up for a TV show called The Two Ronnies. Some of the top comedy writers of the day contributed to the show, even some of the Monty Python stars and one of the most famous sketches was the Four Candles sketch.
That’s pretty much it for this short comedy ramble. What makes you laugh?
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MASH has always been one of my very favourite TV comedy programmes. You may have read in another post about how I used to 
Now, you might be wondering about that other part of this post’s title, the bit about the emotional indicator. Yes, I thought you might. It’s not so easy to explain but here goes. Most TV shows and movies have a sort of standard emotional indicator that stays pretty constant throughout the show. Take a look at the graph over to the left and let’s put some numbers up. Say a baseline of zero for a standard, calm emotional level. Now, when the show gets funny that level goes up to something like 15 for instance and I’d even say that in a movie like Police Academy that 15 or higher would be a constant throughout the film, well for me certainly. The original Police Academy movie is one of my favourites and I tend to start laughing round about the start of the film with the scene in the parking lot where Steve Guttenberg says the parking lot is full and then the guy comes in and says ‘park the car dirt bag!’ I usually stop laughing round about the end credits but on a normal film there’s a constant up and down: up when the film gets funny and down to nil when we get back to normal.
Mash ran for 11 seasons and an incredible 256 episodes. Trapper, played by Wayne Rogers, was my favourite character after Hawkeye and he left the series after season three to be replaced by Mike Farrell playing new doctor B J Hunnicut. Colonel Blake (McLean Stevenson) also left at the end of season three. His character was discharged but right at the very end of the episode news came through to the MASH that the Colonel’s aircraft had crashed with no survivors. This episode prompted an outpouring of grief and resentment from fans at the death of the character. I could understand perhaps Colonel Blake dying part way through the episode and the second part showing the sadness and grief of the rest of the characters but it seemed to me that Colonel Blake’s death was almost an afterthought, just tagged on to the end of the episode. As time went on many of the other series regulars left including Gary Burghof (Radar) and Larry Linville (Frank Burns) and for me personally, the series was never the same.
I always used to the think the TV and movie business was full of creative people. It isn’t. Sure, there are creative people, people who write and direct and act but for the main part, the industry is full of dynamic people, people who get things done, people who make things happen.
Letters from an Unknown Author! 