Humor as Bent as John Holmes Lifeline

The Aristocrats Director: Paul Provenza Subject: Really Tasteless Jokes, Comedy as Art Similar Films: Where it is playing: Adventurousness: !!!! Rating: *** At a family party this summer, while sipping an iced tea that would later send me into spasms of caffeine-related illness, I overheard someone talking about that new movie coming out. As a fan of the films, I asked, which new movie? THAT new movie; the one that is supposed to be so ridiculously foul that big theaters have refused to show it. What’s it about, I wondered? Unspeakable acts of violence? Sexual perversions that would make R. Kelly squirm? Are the girls from Full House involved, I hoped? Not exactly, came the reply. But Bob Saget is. It’s about a bunch of comedians who tell the same joke for an hour and a half. Boy, now that sounds interesting, I thought. If I wanted to see that, I’d get a Mel Brooks movie for free from the library… Fast-forward to September 10, and I’m sitting in the movie theater, anxiously waiting for The Aristocrats to begin. By now, I have seen the glorious preview, read interviews with the filmmakers, and heard nothing but good things about Bob Saget, Gilbert Godfrey, and the rest of the artists. It boils down to this: Comedic-magician Penn Jillette and veteran stand-up Paul Provenza have developed a film that explores the comedic process. They asked over 100 of the best comedians from the last 50 years to tell an improv joke so vile, that the film itself could not be rated. With these tellings (of which, we hear about 15-20 complete efforts), Provenza and Jillette have created an entertaining view of ignoble humor turned cerebral. This filthy old joke is the comedic equivalent of jazz. It’s raunchy; it’s free of constraints, yet is has a simple “melody” to hold onto. -Paul Provenza, Excerpt from the Director’s Statement It should probably be said at this point that the joke, itself, is not very funny. A man walks into a talent agent’s office and says, “Boy, have I got an act for you. A family comes out on stage and does unspeakable acts to each other.” “What’s the act called,” asks the agent? “The Aristocrats...(long pause, cough, a tumbleweed rolls past).” The fact that the joke has very little meat, means that the humor is in the delivery, and in whatever meat the comedian can add. So, how does the film stack up? Pretty good, considering what content Provenza had to work with. Because many of the comedians tell a similar joke, he chose to edit the film into snippets of the joke. With these smaller clips, he was able to explain the history of the joke (from vaudeville, to backstage, to parties, to the Friar’s Roast, etc.), and its common themes (scat, blood, incest, etc) in a detailed and humorous manner. There were no specific instances when I was doubled over with laughter (the last comedian to accomplish that response in me was the late, great Bill Hicks), but I must admit to smiling throughout the 90 minutes. Do they prove what they set out to prove--that comedy, like jazz, is an improvisational art form? Sure. But then, that’s not much to prove. It’s been done already a thousand times over (think Whose Line is it Anyway?, or Saturday Night Live even). Rather, what the directors really prove is that there is an insiders club that only stand-ups and a few select fringe elements can take part in. This is shown most accurately as Gilbert Gottfried busts-up an entire room of comics at Hugh Hefner’s Friars Roast, only two weeks after the 9/11 circus. Though the clip is pretty funny, the real humor is in watching Rob Schneider fall off a couch from laughing so hard. And it all adds up to the masturbatory nature of the film. A comedian films comedians telling jokes to other comedians (BTW, if you replaced the verbs in this sentence with “f$%”, you’ve pretty much got a good start to a version of the joke). To put it succinctly: even though The Aristocrats won’t leave you gasping for air, the movie has its moments (Kevin Pollack’s impression of Christopher Walken had my girlfriend dying). If you’re not the sort to buy a comedy album and listen to it until you’ve got the routine down pat, you might not go for this sort of thing. But if you’ve got a collection that spans back to Lenny Bruce, it would hardly be right to miss this one. On a final note, I think something should be said about the reactions to the content of the joke. This is the first film I’ve been to in ages that people walked out of. Or rather, they hobbled out, holding their colostomies. I think it was around the part where Drew Carey was explaining how the grandparents got into the act by screwing their grandkids…and then eating their own sick. So don’t be surprised if the blue hairs can’t take it. Even Gracie Allen would’ve had a hard time with that one, I’m sure. For another great Bob Saget Joke, Check out this post on imdb.