I want to be a comedian.<\/p>\n
The rock stars get all the chicks, the comedians have all the fun.<\/p>\n
Backstage at a rock concert is a boring hierarchy of self-important pricks jockeying for access to tired musicians who are barely verbal to begin with.<\/p>\n
Backstage at a comedy club is an endless visit to the fifth grade lavatory, where put-downs, insults and laughs are KING!\u00c2\u00a0 (While everybody is looking at your prick.\u00c2\u00a0 And why do they not have doors on the crappers?\u00c2\u00a0 Can you take a crap in the school lavatory?\u00c2\u00a0 Only during class, when you’re alone, right?)<\/p>\n
There’s no comedy myth.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no woodshedding alone in your basement, emerging fully-flowered as an icon on MTV.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve all seen the road to comedy.\u00c2\u00a0 In the back of the classroom.\u00c2\u00a0 Where Stevie or Adam challenged the teacher for attention.\u00c2\u00a0 Issuing a running commentary on the absurdity of life.<\/p>\n
But we lionize the musicians.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s otherworldly, they’re on a unique path, they’re testing the limits.\u00c2\u00a0 Making a living in comedy?\u00c2\u00a0 What, were you a victim of bad parenting?\u00c2\u00a0 Didn’t you get the law school memo?\u00c2\u00a0 Comedy is a leap of faith.\u00c2\u00a0 Believing you possess a gift and committing to work without a net.\u00c2\u00a0 A financial net that is.<\/p>\n
Unlike musicians, comedians are honest.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, the nineties fucked up both, TV decimated both.\u00c2\u00a0 Real musicians were replaced by good-looking automatons on MTV, who delivered vapid hits written by old farts in Sweden.\u00c2\u00a0 And legitimate comedians, like Jerry Seinfeld, defected for the big bucks on networks, making a paycheck of $100,000 a week to play a two-dimensional character more important than telling the perfect joke.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, they ruined that too.\u00c2\u00a0 With endless exposure of comedians’ acts on cable.\u00c2\u00a0 There was no longer a need to go to the comedy club, no longer a need to see an act live, you could see their whole act on "Improv Tonight", or Comedy Central, again and again and again.<\/p>\n
Then again, it was worse in the music world.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not like there was a bunch of good-looking joke tellers stealing the work of bizarre-looking class clowns.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, there was still work for people playing the role of a musician, whereas if you were a comedian, you were shit out of luck.<\/p>\n
And today, musicians and comedians are derided.\u00c2\u00a0 Shills looking to make money, not interested in perfection of their craft.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, there are still great players out there, but you can’t be exposed to them unless you hunt them down, you don’t see them on MTV and you certainly don’t hear them on terrestrial radio.\u00c2\u00a0 But, with this one movie, Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza have brought the comedians back.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve shown there’s some thinking going on, some creativity and a TON of fun!<\/p>\n
Oh, it’s not limited to the boys.\u00c2\u00a0 You get not only the late night classics like Cathy Ladman and Rita Rudner, on the couch you’ll recognize the face of someone you know so well but can’t seem to place.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s SUSIE ESSMAN!\u00c2\u00a0 Jeff’s wife on "Curb Your Enthusiasm".\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, you remember…LARRY, YOU SICK FUCK!<\/p>\n
Well, I guess that kind of disproves my point.\u00c2\u00a0 Since Susie came to my attention via TV.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is improvised.\u00c2\u00a0 Some say for freshness, but you know that Larry David is just too damn lazy.\u00c2\u00a0 Like all comedians.\u00c2\u00a0 He doesn’t want to WORK, he just wants to tell jokes.<\/p>\n
"The Aristocrats" rehumanizes TV dork "Drew Carey".\u00c2\u00a0 George Carlin illustrates why he’s the master.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, the essence is Penn’s comment.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not about the joke, but how you tell it.\u00c2\u00a0 Kind of like music.\u00c2\u00a0 You can have the greatest song, but if you don’t DELIVER IT, you’ve got nothing.<\/p>\n
So can I recommend "The Aristocrats"?\u00c2\u00a0 As Penn says on the flick’s so slow it’s almost useless website, "We didn’t make ‘The Aristocrats’ for everyone; we made it for our friends."\u00c2\u00a0 THAT’S what’s wrong with so-called art today.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s made for EVERYBODY!\u00c2\u00a0 Believe me, when I was muttering comments under my breath in class I didn’t WANT Linda Saalman to hear them up front.\u00c2\u00a0 They weren’t made for HER!\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t want the casual listener to like the same music I do.\u00c2\u00a0 If so, there must be something WRONG!\u00c2\u00a0 If we all liked the same thing, there’d be no war in Iraq, no Israeli-Palestinian conflict.\u00c2\u00a0 If Coke ever succeeded in teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony it would be over, time to kill ourselves.<\/p>\n
You know if you need to see "The Aristocrats".\u00c2\u00a0 If you don’t use the "C" word, if\u00c2\u00a0 it ruins your day when you hear it, stay home.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re a religious nut who believes four letter words are the work of the devil, stay home.\u00c2\u00a0 If you need plot, stay home.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you’ve ever heard a joke that made you laugh so hard you thought you were going to suffocate, or pee your pants, this movie’s for you.\u00c2\u00a0 If you ever marveled at how they do it, how they construct these jokes, this movie is for you.\u00c2\u00a0 If you always wanted to be a member of the club, this movie is for you.<\/p>\n
"The Aristocrats" is going to do for comedy what…NOTHING has done for music.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the power of DVD.\u00c2\u00a0 Fuck the theatrical release, it’s just about the buzz, preaching to the converted.\u00c2\u00a0 But when this flick hits disc, fourteen year olds, TWELVE YEAR OLDS, all over this great nation of ours are going to not only watch it, but STUDY IT!\u00c2\u00a0 You know kids, they see the DVD once and they know every line.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, they continue to watch it over and over and over again.\u00c2\u00a0 It becomes part of their lives, the way 45s were part of ours.\u00c2\u00a0 And just like listening to 45s made you want to be in the music business, to get closer to that power, that magic, "The Aristocrats" is going to inspire a whole cadre of young ‘uns to become comedians.\u00c2\u00a0 To hang out in the deli all afternoon trying to crack each other up rather than work in a stuffy office building slaving for the man.\u00c2\u00a0 What could be more rock and roll?<\/p>\n
It’s a hard movie to explain.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it’s so simple.\u00c2\u00a0 And although riveting throughout, not letting your mind drift, like a truly great movie, you don’t laugh hysterically from beginning to end.\u00c2\u00a0 But, when something does reach you, your body starts to writhe, you howl, it’s like hearing "Satisfaction", you’re completely infected, you can’t break loose, you’re fully alive.<\/p>\n
And it’s educational too.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not going to give up the secrets I divined, I don’t want you to steal the building blocks of my material.\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s what it takes.\u00c2\u00a0 If you don’t know the scales, you can’t play music.\u00c2\u00a0 If you don’t know what makes a great story, you can’t tell jokes and you can’t write.<\/p>\n
The absolute highlight is Kevin Pollak.\u00c2\u00a0 When he tells the joke in the voice of Christopher Walken you’re mesmerized at the juxtaposition.\u00c2\u00a0 This little Jewish guy embodying the bizarre New York actor telling this vile story in a halting voice that resembles no other.\u00c2\u00a0 How did Kevin COME UP WITH THIS?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the essence of great art.\u00c2\u00a0 Creating something so OUT THERE that those exposed can only marvel, wondering WHAT POSSESSED YOU!\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what we revere.\u00c2\u00a0 Pure inspiration.\u00c2\u00a0 Genius.<\/p>\n
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