Thoughts On Comedy

[poliphilo]

Comedy is a young person's game.

Ok, there are some comical old people out there, but I can't think of many.

Most comics lose it as they get older. Steve Martin anyone? A lot of the smarter ones retire or find something else to do. Michael Palin, for example, has reinvented himself as an "explorer".

Comedy works by surprising us. The longer a comedian is in business the less likely it is that we'll find his/her schtick surprising.

All comedy is subversive. Even the gentlest. It challenges things as they are. The older, more comfortable, more embedded in the establishment a comedian becomes the less unsettled and unsettling s/he's likely to be, the less in touch with the zeitgeist and the less essentially funny. Witness the career of Bob Hope.

The more you have to lose, the less willing you are to issue the challenge.

The comedians who last the longest are those who are funny by nature. Those who can't help it. Frankie Howerd for example. Frankie's comic longevity had nothing to do with his material and everything to do with who he was- that shamble, that long rubbery face, that unique combination of campness and misanthropic gloom.

The comedian is always a misfit. Out of kilter. Peculiar. Shamanic even.

Comedins lose it because they get scared. They get scared of the weirdness. They get scared of themselves.

Every great comic is a Yorick- that is to say, a death's head.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think there's a difference between being a comic actor and being a comedian. It's something like this- that a comedian creates a persona and is then stuck with it, whereas an actor moves from part to part. Also the comedian is a lone wolf, creating comedy by him/herself or with a stooge whereas the actor creates it in co-operation with other actors as part of an ensemble. OK, there's no hard and fast boundary and some performers move to and fro accross the line, but I think we usually know what it is we're watching. Cary Grant was one of the funniest performers of the 20th century, but he was an actor not a comedian.

Being a comedian, I would suggest, takes a lot more out of a person, which is why many comedians move into acting as they grow older. Bill Murray and Robin Williams are prime examples of this. Comic actors (like Pat Routledge and the cast of Keeping Up Appearances) can go on and on and on.

[senordildo.livejournal.com]

Comedy mostly is a young man's game. Some of the vaudeville comedians broke into movies only in middle-age, so we can't quite say if they'd have been much funnier when younger: W.C. Fields was in his 50s and 60s when he put out his classics, and the Marx Brothers were in their 40s when they broke into movies.
I've lately been watching episodes from the later seasons of Spike Milligan's "Q," when Spike and the cast are running around with grey hair and beards, and to me seeing all these older gentlemen running around acting silly is rather endearing. I have to admit that I enjoy Q more than The Goon Show.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Milligan was a comedy genius. Most of the things the Python team got credit for pioneering- like dispensing with punchlines and letting one sketch bleed into the next- had already been done by Milligan in Q.

[senordildo.livejournal.com]

I agree entirely, and Terry Jones has admitted that on multiple occasions. If Python is more poular, I think it's because it's smoother and more accessible than Q. The impression I get from Milligan's show is one of great impatience with any form and with any prolonged suspension of disbelief. I can watch the Flying Circus and see well-crafted sketches strung together (especially in the first season), but Q is a blizzard of thoughts seemingly emanating from one consciousness.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm old enough to remember the first airing of the first episode of Monty Python.

And I thought, yeah, these guys are Milligan wannabees.

The BBC has never repeated Q. I think they're afraid of it.