Many people don't know that I have a Masters in Film Theory. In fact, I was a film major my first two years of college before switching over to English to pursue teaching and a life of poverty. I then double-downed on my poor economic decisions in 2015, when I started doing stand up comedy. What I learned in both my stand up journey and cinema studies is that comedy changes. In the 1920's and 1930's vaudeville and broad humor was all the rage. By the 1950's we saw the creation of late night hosts with one liners. Political counter-culture jokes were the main style in the 1960's and 1970's, and by the 1980's we saw impressionists, prop comics, and observational comedy fill the clubs and Vegas showrooms. Stand up went from the "you" to the "I" in the 1990's and 2000's, and today crowd work and one minute clips are how we digest our favorite comedians. The journey is real.
Comedy television shows and films have gone through a similar transformations. The 1950's "Father Knows Best" comedies have very little resemblance to the 1990's "Father Knows Nothing" star vehicles. Now we have no four camera sitcoms, and comedies today are drenched in melancholy. Then there's 1980's teenager comedies, filled with Porky's antics are not the same punchlines as Will Ferrell's run of films in the mid-2000's. So imagine my surprise when watching Jerry Seinfeld's passion project Unfrosted, about the creation of the Pop Tart, he broke away from the modern socially conscious comedy model to return to a mesh of Mel Brooks' classic genre spoofs and Naked Gun parodies with a hint of Stanley Kubrick's screwball antics from the 1960's. Seeing the reviews of Unfrosted, I feel the need to Moomsplain what just might be the purest comedy of the past 20 years. Today, pure comedies don't really exist. Oh, there are comedies, but they are films with the point of view to turn once taboo subjects mainstream like in the lesbian comedy Bottoms, or to reveal middle American racism in the Borat films, or the comedy is wrapped in action stories like Guardians of the Galaxy. And of course there is the popular dramedy genre like CODA or The Martian, where everyday heroes overcome great strides, which clean up at awards season. So where did the broad, bold, gag-per-second comedies go? Well, like many genres, including comic book films, westerns, and romantic comedies, there appears to be a fatigue, which other genres take advantage of and redefine the standards and expectations audiences put on actors. Why make a gag per minute film, when the the protagonist can have one comic relief sidekick, and everyone gets their kicks? So we no longer ask why the chicken crossed the road but ask how the chicken felt while crossing the road. We also see political climate change our needs for cinematic experiences. After 9/11, Will Ferrell's shtick as a George W. Bush buffoon clone in Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and Step-Brothers played well. But in a post-Obama society, where gay marriage is legal and most people support a woman's right choose, the desire to escape in simple comedy stories feels almost inappropriate. How else can you explain Ferrell doing the same thing and audiences rejecting it? You can't say "it's not funny" but you can say "it's not funny anymore." The world is changing, progressive ethos is winning; can comedy be broad and treated unceremoniously in today's post-feminist, post-gay marriage, post-Covid world? Maybe in some ways the price of moving forward is that our tastes change as we mature. Today, comedy gags are strategically placed in movies to release the tension of heavy hitting topics and drama. The days of Robin Hood and his men in tights singing songs is gone. Dr. Frankenstein's monster is not having hot food poured on his lap. Putting comics in fat suits and having them fart wouldn't get greenlit today. And Shirley has to be serious now. If you didn't get those references, then you probably won't get Unfrosted, a zany, silly, goofy, over-the-top, gag filled treat for the eyes and ears. It's basically a Pop Tart in of itself. So if you like your movies more like Grape-Nuts with some blueberries, this isn't for you. Fans of The Zone of Interest and The Lobster can go smell their own wind somewhere else. The film co-written, directed, produced, and starring 70-year-old Seinfeld is a love letter to 1960's nostalgia and an ode to a type of films we don't see anymore. Thinly layered as the story about the cereal wars between Kellogg's and Post, it's a satire and spoof of the product creation movies. Like Air, The Founder, and the Steve Jobs films, Unfrosted "recreates" history. But unlike those serious films with sprinkled in jokes, this film approaches the material like Mel Brooks approached genre westerns or gothic horror novels. Had Seinfeld not played the fictious Bob Cabana at Kellogg's, Leslie Nielson could have. At a sharp, tight 90 minutes, every scene is an excuse to recreate 1960's nostalgia or broad visual gags. Once you realize Cabana threatens Snap, Crackle, and Pop (as if they're real people) with a new, cheaper mascot or Jim Gaffigan, as the heir to the Kellogg estate, secretly yearns to be with Marjorie Post (Amy Schumer), you realize this isn't a behind-the-scenes tell all expose on capitalism and food creation. It's a big, bold, comedy less interested in historical fact and more interested in comedic possibilities involving a very bitter Tony the Tiger leading a January 6th revolt to save his job. If you haven't watched the film on Netflix yet, I'm going to give light spoilers, but nothing that ruins the film. The tone of Unfrosted isn't like contemporary comedic cinema. Filled with sight gags like boxed cereals called Grandma's Holes or a funeral with milk and cereal poured over the casket, the jokes are clear, in your face, and not hard to understand. Snobs need not watch. This isn't Poor Things, an epic feminist tale about finding your place in the world. It's not even Barbie; though both share bright, fun sets, over-the-top performances, and Greta Gerwig's best picture nominee is also a riff on the product creation genre. Yet, while they have that in common, there is no scene at the end where Gaffigan or Seinfeld talk to the Pop Tart about it's true identity. There is no pastry patriarchy to fight. But there are "Big Milk" milkmen with their farting cows. Critics are mixed, with a 39% on Rotten Tomatoes (as of writing this article) and a 57% audience reaction score. I wouldn't say it's "panned," as there are plenty of films under 20% in the reviews department. Adam Sandler's comedies seem to be the go-to punching bag for critics with films like his 2018 The Week Of with Chris Rock sitting at 27%. Though the 57% audience score does show crowds are confused, with my guess, it being people under 35 not "getting it." Unfrosted has plenty of people who do get it though. Mostly, people over 40. Here's the open secret about films: They're all made for kids, teens, and Gen Z. They all have contemporary references and try to appeal to people who are more interested in Tik Tok and Instagram drama. This film is directly aimed at people aware that the 1960's happened, that the Cold War and the space race existed, and that breakfast was once considered the most important meal of the day. My mother loved it. Meanwhile, Unfrosted is filled with topics and characters that haven't been at the forefront in comedy for decades. Jokes about JFK (Bill Burr) sleeping with The Doublemint Twins, NASA employees (Melissa McCarthy as "Stan" is a hysterical angry gem as always) creating Tang, and even the idea of organized milk men are concepts people under 40 wouldn't get. As a 42 year old comedy and film connoisseur, these popular cultural figures and gags are deep within my psyche. Younger generations might struggle to find humor in JFK calling his now dead son "slow," but to a person aware of the characters being spoofed, they'll appreciate the dark humor laced throughout the film - it's a refreshing breath of sugary air. A type of comedy cocaine - it hits hard and forces you to react in some way. Another clear influence on display is Stanley Kubrick's brilliant Cold War satire Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb - with important men in suits also being over the top and ridiculous. In that film a soldier rides the bomb after it's tossed from a plane. In this one, the man who created the Schwinn bicycle gets a tragic ending in similar fashion. In fact, Unfrosted plays up both the Cold War and contemporary political turmoil, but without judging. It's as if those events happened just to be spoofed. Where Aaron Sorkin or Adam McKay would have taken January 6th material into hard social commentary, Seinfeld & Co. see it as a way for mascots to climb buildings like inefficient Spider-Men. It is just a sight gag to admire, not a point to be made. I dedicated my newsletter to this one silly yet funny film because I think its important to remember that while socially conscious comedy is important, so are jokes. As humor changes, our sensibilities change too. "Seinfeld," the TV show, was another silly comedy with little to no social commentary. In fact, the show about nothing spoofed the assassination of JFK, used Junior Mints as a medical device, and mocked those who made you wear the ribbon in protest marches. No moral lessons were ever learned, and that was the charm. So when Unfrosted hit Netflix, why would we expect any different from the master of nothing? I mean who are these people hating on a pure comedy about Pop Tarts? And when did they lose their sense of humor?
0 Comments
Over the past thirty years there have been a lot of TV shows and movies about stand up comedy. A few get it right. Some are just blah. And a lot just suck. With Netflix's dark comedy "Baby Reindeer" becoming a hit and Emmy contender, and "Hacks" back on HBO/Max, there are a few shining beacons on a hill, but generally speaking, trying to translate the emotional and physical journeys of life on the road has been a tough cookie to crack for even the best producers, writers, and actors. There are a lot of reasons why, but let's look at the problematic structure of trying to create art that glamorizes the sad clown and ends up disrespecting the work that goes into the process of telling drunk people jokes.
Time to Stop Romanticizing the Sad Clown I remember I was a couple years into stand up when HBO's show "I'm Dying Up Here," about the rise of The Comedy Store in the 1970's, came on air. The pilot episode is about a good looking comic who got The Tonight Show, kills it, and then kills himself. Now his comedy buddies continue their journey to also reach the top of the mountain in some type exercise of self-torture. While the show was well acted and well produced, I kept asking myself, "Why is everyone so sad?" While there clearly depressed comics, like there are depressed teachers and depressed accountants, this archetype cannot be the norm. Out of that 70's era came Steve Martin, Jerry Seinfeld, Albert Brooks, Jay Leno, and David Letterman. While I'm sure they faced their demons, the general attitude is these guys are well adjusted comics. Sure, many others fell by the wayside, but the show was focusing on the top comics, not just open micers. So to play it off like they were all desperate and drug infused and empty feels lie a mythology that never really added up. The movies Punchline and Funny People also addressed this mythos, but failed with critics and audiences. How? One stared Tom Hanks and Sally Field in a retelling of how housewife Rosanne Barr became a comedian, and Adam Sandler played an egomaniac comedian who becomes Seth Rogan's boss in the other. Both should have been huge hits. Both flopped. Because the little dark secret is that audiences DON'T want to see that our court jesters are these awful, dark people. People see comics as the life of the party. If Van Gough is a depressed misunderstood artist - fine. If rock stars are drug using poets - whatever. But leave the funny guys alone. These quiet cries for help doesn't feel real. Shouldn't they be enjoying some of this success? And not simply in a hedonistic self-serving way? Stand Up Scenes in Scripts is Cringe Go watch any Netflix comedy special you like and you'll probably laugh a little if not a lot. Same goes with a late night set. I can watch a few favorite comics do their "Conan" sets multiple times. Now go watch a movie or TV show where a comedian is doing the same thing on stage, and I DARE you to laugh. You won't. In fact, it comes off as cringy and forced. Why? Because there's no life or energy in staged stand up. You cannot stage forced laughter. The high wire tension is gone in a scripted series or film. Chris Rock in "Bring the Pain" is a walking firecracker challenging his crowd with every setup and punchline. Watching Chris Rock do stand up near the end of the film in Top 5 is so different. The crowd throwing their head back just doesn't feel real. He's maybe the funniest comic in the world, but in a feature film or TV show, somewhere in the editing and sound mixing his punchlines just don't land the same way. This is across the board. "Hacks," a very solid show, gives a lot of insight to the comedy world, but the parts I always find less authentic is the stand up portions. The show's character banter could be taught in a UCLA screenwriting course, but when the characters get on stage to tell zingers, all believability goes out the window. It becomes like those poorly edited sport film shots in slow motion where the basketball flies through the air and all the characters look up to watch it swoosh or bounce off the rim. While these moments move the plot forward, and are necessary evils, they are not how we actually experience these moments. Stand up comedy included. Stand up is a personal experience. Having everyone laugh NEVER happens in real life. It might feel like everyone is on board, but every comic knows when you hit the big laugh and it comes back to you, all you see is the one guy NOT laughing. Film never translates that well. Bombing Can Be Filmed is Done Correctly If there is one aspect of stand up that can be shown correctly, it's the art of bombing. Joker, "Baby Reindeer," and The King of Comedy do nice job of showing the horrors of bombing, while also embracing the delusion of believing the set went well. While I cringe at bad staged stand up, my heart aches empathetically when they show the sinking ship of bombing on stage. In the new show "Baby Reindeer," our protagonist goes to Edinburgh Fringe, only to be met with small crowds and confused patrons. This felt real, and played into the real journey comics deal with. When his show suddenly becomes a hit, I was utterly confused. What was the difference? The TV show, for all its successes, lost me in that moment. Maybe the best example of bombing in a film is in Albert Brooks brilliant afterlife comedy Defending Your Life. When the Brooks' character Daniel finds himself in purgatory, he visits a comedy club and the comic is dying on stage. Which is beautifully ironic because they're in the afterlife. I guess hell is a never ending open mic. The Fast Track To Success Isn't Real Maybe the greatest sin is the way these shows and movies give people a fast track to success. "The Marvelous Mrs. Mazel," "Crashing," "I'm Dying Up Here," and even Man on the Moon hint that we are all like the female lead in A Star is Born. If just one person sees us, we can be headlining in days. Or getting writing jobs. Or crowd warm up jobs. Or cruise ships. From a story point, it makes sense. Exposing the workings of bad open mics do not make good TV. But the illusion of overnight success is a caricature that actually promotes the false narrative that comics can "just make it" if they get up on that one magical night. It's also why so many comics beg for stage time, thinking after their 5 minute showcase a big agent will discover them. That's just not true. And these stereotypes create expectations that are unfair. I've written before about comics maxing out credit cards thinking they'll make it big later, only to find themselves thousands in debt and still making $25 a show. I've actually had people give me career advice saying, "on Miss Mazel this is what she did..." and I have to remind them that it's a fake show about a fake person. The reason "Hacks" works is because the main character is being showcased at the end of her life, and her writer Eva is just starting out, with roommates and struggling to create her own voice. It feels real. It feels like they really are struggling artistically. Final Thoughts Recently, reports came out that biopic movies about Chris Farley, Richard Pryor, and other prolific comics are coming out. Plus Hulu just dropped The Dark Side of Comedy with 20 documentary shorts about everyone from Robin Williams to Dustin "Screech" Diamond - focusing on the pain and tragedy of comics. While these stories are sad, they are really not the norm. Most comics who make it have a good run. Most don't die of drug usage. In fact, most don't really make it all. Most work full time jobs and do stand up as a hobby or they are road comics with families and kids back home. Most make very little money in comedy and drive Uber or wait tables. Most live relatively mundane lives with a splash of artistic expression through stand up, five minutes at a time. So when I see movies and TV shows want to exploit the internal struggle with outward expression, it frustrates me. When I see the overnight success motif play out, it disheartens me. When I see the uproarious laughter of an unfunny joke so we can establish the character's growth, it irritates me. Maybe I sound like an old man yelling at a cloud, but I'd like to think my righteous indignation is more real than anything Hollywood has produced about the tragically glamorous life of stand up comedy. One of the biggest mistakes a comic can make is treating every set the same, as if every crowd is the same. Every crowd won't be the same until you have a clear fanbase showing up for you specifically. Until then, you are a sailor out to sea waiting to respond to the type of waves the comedy gods through at you. Even then, you aren't even guaranteed to have a crowd on the same page. The other night a very nice restaurant show had a very tight crowd. The host even called them out for being dry - yet they sat quietly, not acknowledging their role in the success of the show. Was the host doing their best material? For the situation, it was fine. But hosting is rough and no reason to juggle sticks of fire if the crowd seems uninterested and timid. Yet, when the next comic came up, after watching ten minutes of silence, he didn't appear to make any adjustments and just started his ten minutes like the previous ten of silence didn't occur. What he should have done is "host for himself" by resetting the room to the level he needed and then take it from there. So let's look at what "Hosting For Yourself" looks like so you don't make that same mistake. Tip One: Teach Them to Respond to You The responsibility of the host is to have clear crowd expectations. The host says clap for the waitstaff, they clap for the waitstaff. The host tells a joke, they laugh. The host tells them to put away their phones, and magically the phones disappear. This puts the crowd in the place to understand their role in the evening's activities. The comic speaks; they respond. When the host isn't able to properly set up that contract with the crowd, the next comic has to develop that pattern or they will lose them even faster. And that is exactly what happened. The comic jumped on stage and started doing very generic "you ever notice..." jokes to dead silence. What he should have done is get them to clap for the host, then tell the crowd to clap for the venue, and then say something silly like "thank you for coming out on a Monday, traditionally the strongest night for a comedy show." Instead, he just sunk deeper and deeper into a funk before finally giving up and asking everyone where they lived. TikTok viral crowd work it was not. Had he just taken on that responsibility to host for himself the first two minutes, then he might of had a better set. Tip Two: Acknowledge the Awkwardness of the Situation Clearly, if the host has a rough opening set, the room is not going to fall for easy laughs. And there is now an elephant in the room - a bad set or in this case two rough sets before I got on stage. These days I'm either hosting my own shows or featuring/headlining longer sets, so doing the LA showcase style isn't my normal jam. But I liked the producers and needed to work on a few new jokes. So when I got on stage I first made fun of the fact that clearly only half the crowd knew there was a show. I also noticed there were small kids in the crowd and overheard the mom say her five year old's can handle the comedy because they won't pay attention. So I joked "I heard the mom in the back with two kids tell the staff their kids aren't paying attention, which makes them like every other audience I've ever had." Big laugh. The awkwardness was now gone. The set was in no way perfect, but I got them on board by hosting for myself. Teaching them to respond. Making myself the victim of jokes. Acknowledging the vibe in the room of mixed excitement and confused patrons. When a show doesn't start hot, look for all the reasons why. The mixed crowd. The awkward seating. The attractive waitstaff ("I wouldn't pay attention to me either, sir"). All is fair game in comedy and war. Tip Three: Ease into Material Hopefully, once you've spent a few minutes training the crowd to respond, you start to hit them with some strong quick jokes. Do not rush into a story. Every comic should have a bag of 1-2 sentence jokes, preferably personal, they can shoot off rapid fire. This will help maintain the new momentum you've created. I have a few weight loss jokes that are pretty quick and that gets the crowd going. Any identity jokes with CLEAR setup-punchlines are best. Remember, this isn't a headliner set; you're performing "comedy rescue" and need to ease into the material if you want to go that route after turning the tide. The problem with going back into long form bits and material is you're asking them to get comfortable in a way that might put them back in that comatose state you found them in. If you're showcasing, you might have to stick with an in-the-moment style, being that funny off the cuff version of you to survive the set. If you are featuring and have time, you might have more freedom. But read the room and remember, no two crowds are the same, and you might have to sacrifice some material to save the set and the show. Final Thoughts Recently, Jerry Seinfeld told GQ that he loves comedy because you never know what is going to happen. His thesis: Regular life is boring. Eating chicken with friends is boring. Comedy is exciting. And its exciting because you never know how crowds will respond. But if you find the show isn't the energy you want or need, it becomes your responsibility to up the vibe and make it the room you need to succeed. Because sometimes the host can't, so you have to host for yourself. |
Paul Douglas Moomjean Blog's About What's on His MindBlogging allows for me to rant when there is no stage in the moment to talk about what's important and/or funny to me. Archives
May 2024
Categories |