In Defense of Year One

I have been extremely busy lately, but I was able to find the time to finally check in.

I recently spent time working on a spoof Final Destination 3 trailer that combined clips from Final Destination 3 with clips of various slapstick comedy mishaps. But, frankly, it came out looking like a mess. I have decided to do the web community a good deed and stop wasting people’s time with my choppily edited clip compilations. I simply do not have the right software at my disposal.

I am glad to say that, in the last few months, I have seen a number of new comedies that were original, clever and, most of all, funny.

I want to start off by recommending World's Greatest Dad, a social satire with depth and meaning. I have never seen Robin Williams give a better performance.

The Hangover is a unique comedy. Unlike most comedies, it is not dominated by a single star performance. It is, instead, a story-driven comedy. The story is a mystery and, as any good mystery story, it is stocked with riddles, clues, suspense, danger and revealing flashbacks. Three men who have come to Las Vegas to throw their friend a bachelor party wake up in their trashed hotel suite with no memory of the previous night. A tiger is the bathroom, a baby is in the closet, and the groom is nowhere to be found. The audience is left to wonder what these guys did the night before and what happened to their friend, who is due to be married the next day. The characters launch an investigation to find answers. The narrative is propulsive in that it makes the audience anxious about the men finding the groom and making it to the wedding on time. This is similar to The Out of Towners, where Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis are also visitors to a notorious city. They become trapped in a nightmarish world and need to find their way out in time for Lemmon to make a crucial job interview. It may or may not be a coincidence that, in either film, one of the out of towners ends up missing a tooth. In the end, Lemmon turns down a lucrative new job as he does not want to relocate to New York. Lemmon and Dennis are relieved to be leaving New York and never want to visit this terrible place again. The Hangover crew has a different reaction to their unnerving experiences. When it's all over, they act like a group of boys getting off a terrifying roller coaster ride - they want to get back on and do it again.

Funny People, described by Lisa Schwarzbaum as "furiously anguished. . . tragicomedy about a sad showbiz clown," was widely criticized for its lack of structure. Betsy Sharkey, critic with Los Angeles Times, wrote, “Sandler and Rogen and the rest are left to wander aimlessly. . .” Stephanie Zacharek, Salon critic, wrote, “Funny People is an ambitious, misshapen picture that feels like two, maybe even three, separate movies uncomfortably jammed into one.” Keith Phipps of The Onion wrote, “It's refreshingly unformulaic, but a rambling mess. It's also tremendously funny.” Village Voice critic Scott Foundas wrote, “There's so much that's so disarmingly good and sharp about Funny People that you wish the whole movie weren't so much of a shambles.” Cliff Doerksen, critic with the Chicago Reader, wrote, “Messy but engaging comedy.”

Personally, I enjoyed the film and did not get hung up on the lack of story structure. I was particularly impressed by the fact that the film was able to blend comedy and drama by simply putting wisecracking professional comedians into a health crisis situation. The film, in the end, mocks dying, or at least the idea that there's an art to dying. The supposed ideal is that, when death approaches, a person should focus on what's important in life, gain greater depth in their thinking, and seek out spiritual peace. The film suggests that that is a false ideal. Sandler's character looks for truth and meaning beyond the fame and groupies, but his search leads him in the wrong direction and puts him into an undignified situation. An undignified situation can feel, at the time, even worse than death.


I visited a lot of museums with my son while I was up in New York recently. This is a picture from our trip. It is a special moment where I was able to prove to my son that I possess classic features.

In the end, I was struck by the lack of comedy in these museum exhibits. As hard as I tried, I could not find a humorous character in a single museum piece. It disappointed me that I didn't at least come across a dribble goblet. History is grave business. It is my guess that the classic painters did not see a funny idea or offbeat observation as being suitable for historical preservation. A sculptor was not going to spend months chipping away at a hunk of marble to create the image of a man leaving a public latrine with toilet paper stuck to his sandal.

These serious artist types did not see comic incidents as having value for future generations. Weird as I might be, I am interested in knowing what tickled the funny bone of a person in the Tang Dynasty. But the historical record suggests that these people were preoccupied with cartography, structural engineering and pharmacology, which are not known to be fertile areas for comedy. The woodblock printing of the Diamond Sutra does not, to my knowledge, include a single joke. I have not read a single surviving gushi that ends with a well-turned punch line.

The Vikings loved Tug of War. As they sat around the campfire, they derived great satisfaction telling stories about heroic champions who demonstrated their strength and endurance in Tug of War contests. But the Vikings never told a story about the anemic, weak-kneed fool who got yanked into the mud. The best that I can make out is that civilizations prefer to be remembered for their triumphs and accomplishments rather than their foolishness and failures.

This brings me to Year One, which was released on DVD this month. The makers of Year One looked to find humor in history. Whether they found humor is another question.

Mick LaSalle, critic with the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote, "Dawn-of-time music thunders portentously from the soundtrack as a band of primitive hunters track down a wild boar. For about 30 seconds of Year One, we could be watching a drama. . . And then one of the hunters screws up, badly, and we meet Jack Black as Zed, an overly confident, loudmouth caveman who somehow can't find his place in prehistoric culture."

Black's character, Zed, throws a spear at the boar but his aim is off and the spear gets stuck in the shoulder of a fellow hunter.

Later, Black is banished from the village after he eats forbidden fruit off the Tree of Knowledge. Black convinces his best friend, Oh (Michael Cera), to join him and the two outcasts embark on a journey through the ancient world. They meet a number of Biblical characters, first brothers Cain and Abel and then Abraham and Isaac. It isn't long before the pair end up in Sodom.

Critics did not respond well to this comic adventure. Michael O'Sullivan, critic with Washington Post, described Year One as a "knuckle-dragging comedy. . . unevolved, unapologetic and mostly unfunny." Joe Neumaier, critic with the New York Daily News, wrote, "Talk about a disaster of Biblical proportions." Robert Calvert, critic with Premiere, wrote, "We've seen funnier cave paintings." Robert Wilonsky, critic with the LA Weekly, wrote that Year One was "unbearably painful." Kyle Smith, critic with New York Post, wrote, "THOU SHALT NOT SEE IT."

The critics had three main complaints about Year One. I think it would be interesting to examine these complaints.

First, the critics did not find Year One to be original. Marc Savlov, critic with the Austin Chronicle, wrote, "Year One reimagines the Book of Genesis as a warped Hope and Crosby comic travelogue – The Road to Sodom." Owen Gleiberman, critic with Entertainment Weekly, thought that the film should be called Bill & Ted's Old Testament Adventure. Calvert wrote, "We loved this movie the first three times we saw it, when it was called Life of Brian, Wholly Moses, and History of the World Part 1." It made it worse that, for many critics, the silliness of Year One compared unfavorably to the biting satire of Life of Brian.

Critics were generally surprised considering the successful track record of director and co-writer Harold Ramis. They could not see how the man who made Groundhog Day (1993) could have made this film. They looked through Ramis' resume for clues. Michael Phillips, critic with the Chicago Tribune, thought the film coasted on an "easygoing appeal" much like Ramis' Stripes (1981). That, though, was one of the kinder observations. Robert Wilonsky, critic with the LA Weekly, believed that the film was as "unfocused and unhinged" as a long-forgotten Ramis flop, Club Paradise (1986).

Calvert was correct to equate Year One to Wholly Moses (1980). Wholly Moses, as a Biblical spoof, is surely a precursor to Year One. Dudley Moore plays Hershel, the cowardly brother-in-law of Moses. Herschel goes through a series of jobs - shepherd, slave in a salt mine, food taster, sculptor of graven images, and star gazer for the pharaoh. It is a historical film written by a career counselor. Along the way, Hershel recreates a number of Bible stories - Moses, Sodom, and David and Goliath. He is leaving Sodom when his wife turns into a pillar of salt. This unfunny film, far from original itself, makes use of a number of situations that turned up fifty years earlier in the Eddie Cantor comedy Roman Scandals (1933).

Other critics likened Year One to Caveman (1981). Caveman features Ringo Starr and Dennis Quaid as Atouk and Lar, cavemen expelled from their tribe by a muscle-bound leader, Tonda. The outcast cavemen wander the countryside and encounter an odd assortment of characters. Yes, this sounds more than a little like Year One. Tonda is played by former Oakland Raider defensive tackle John Matuszak. Marlak, the muscle-bound leader of the hunters in Year One, is played by 6' 7" retired NFL player Matthew Willig. Atouk, more inventive than his tribemates, is working hard to perfect the wheel. Cera’s character, Oh, is proud to have invented the shelf unit. Caveman, like Year One, includes flatulence jokes, poop jokes (a midget caveman falls into dinosaur poop), and narcotic fruit growing off trees. In a scene straight out of the Bible, Atouk vanquishes a giant by catapulting a rock into the giant's head.

It is probably that dumb minds think alike. Certain ideas float around in the ether just waiting to be snatched up. In time, ideas are passed around either consciously or unconsciously. The fact is that Caveman has even more in common with another derided comedy of the summer - Land of the Lost. Atouk gets high on red fruit like Land of the Lost star Will Ferrell. Atouk becomes plagued by an oversized mosquito like Ferrell. The cavemen feast on a dinosaur egg that fell into a geyser and got cooked. Ferrell and his pals feast on a giant crab that fell into a geyser and got cooked. Atouk rides a carnivorous dinosaur into his climatic battle against the villain. Ferrell rides a carnivorous dinosaur into his climatic battle against the villain. Ferrell and his friends have a series of absurd encounters with a cranky T-Rex. Atouk and his friends have a series of absurd encounters with a cranky T-Rex. The height of absurdity occurs in Caveman when a blind old caveman (Jack Gilford) unknowingly bumps into a T-Rex. He reaches up to find out what it is that has obstructed his path and ends up unintentionally stroking the dinosaur's penis. Land of the Lost, for its many flaws, should at least be commended for avoiding dinosaur masturbation.

Year One is, in many ways, similar to an obscure film no critic bothered to mention. In 2006, Adam Rifkin wrote, directed and starred in the caveman comedy Homo Erectus. The plot revolved around scrawny, intellectual caveman Ishbo who, according to Imdb, "yearns for more out of life than sticks, stones and raw meat." Rifkin, who wears eyeglasses in the film, acknowledged that his character had been modeled after Woody Allen. Ishbo struggles to get inventions to work. His failed inventions include pants, a bicycle, a fishing net and a fork. He, like Oh, suffers from feelings of inadequacy. It depresses him to be unable to muster the confidence and determination he needs to club the woman he loves. Ishbo is frustrated that muscle is valued more than brains in his tribe's courtship rituals. He simply does not have the muscles needed to be a caveman. Besides, he thinks that clubbing women is "needlessly violent and disrespectful." He tries to club a woman but he ends up knocking her off a cliff and killing her. Ishbo, like Black's Zed, proves inept on a mammoth hunt. During the hunt, he falls into a large pile of mammoth dung, then is eaten by the mammoth, and is eventually excreted by the mammoth. Rifkin did not want to miss a single nuance in depicting Ishbo falling into dinosaur poop. The poop is made to look as wet, messy and disgusting as poop can possibly look. It makes it even worse that the poop attracts a thick swarm of buzzing flies. This scene actually brings us back to Land of the Lost, which features Ferrell being eaten by a T-Rex and then excreted. Homo Erectus, like Land of the Lost, provides a giant mosquito scene . Tribal leader David Carradine spears a giant mosquito and stuffs it into his mouth. Big insect wings hang out of his mouth as he crunches down on this tasty snack.

The most direct influence on Homo Erectus came from Buster Keaton, a filmmaker greatly admired by Rifkin. "To me," said Rifkin, "Keaton is the pioneer of the action comedy. . . Keaton movies are really exciting, really innovative and really funny. . . Seven Chances, with the rocks and the hundreds of brides chasing him - it's unbelievable, that stuff, it's huge. You know, he jams dozens of gags into a 20-minute short - if you took five of them and put them in a full-length movie today, people would hail you as a revolutionary comedic genius." A tribe of women standing above Ishbo on a mountain ridge toss spears at him as he runs for his life. At the end, Ishbo has managed to repeatedly get people angry at him and he is chased across a barren plain by three different tribes. Rifkin's film was never able to obtain theatrical distribution and was instead released on DVD in 2008 as National Lampoon's Stoned Age.


Ramis claims that the idea for his movie predates Life of Brian, Wholly Moses, Caveman and History of the World Part 1. He explained that, while working with John Belushi and Bill Murray in improv theatre in the early seventies, he wrote a sketch which paired up Murray as a hip-talking Cro-Magnon Man and Belushi as a grunting Neanderthal.

Three Ages, which shows Buster Keaton in the Modern Age, the Roman Age and the Stone Age, is the granddaddy of all these films. The film had an immediate influence on Keaton's competitors. Harold Lloyd, in particular, borrowed ideas from the film. Keaton races to a church to stop a girl from marrying a man he has uncovered to be a criminal. This predates a similar climax seven months later in Lloyd’s Girl Shy. Keaton proves to be an acrobatic player on the gridiron. This was two years before Lloyd's similar acrobatics playing football in The Freshman. The influence of this film was still catching up to other filmmakers decades later. The imitators and adherents that arose in the subsequent years are too numerous to mention. Keaton's gags could turn up when least expected. In the climatic chase of Three Ages, Keaton escapes the police by climbing into a car, exiting on the opposite side and slipping inside a second car. Richard Lester used this same gag with the Beatles in A Hard Day's Night (1964). Despite its many copycats, Three Ages remains amazingly fresh today, as inventive and funny now as it was in 1923.

Keaton certainly cannot rely on his muscles as a caveman in Three Ages. Keaton has to compete with a much larger caveman for a pretty young lady. The young lady’s father decides that, to test the sturdiness of his daughter's suitors, he will see which one can withstand being pummeled by his club. His rival withstands a barrage of blows. Keaton collapses after taking one good rap on the head.

Land of the Lost climaxes with Will Ferrell riding in on a great CGI Tyrannosaurus rex. But, when Keaton shows up riding atop a brontosaurus, Three Ages is only getting started. The brontosaurus lowers his head to the ground so that Keaton can step off. Keaton waves goodbye to the brontosaurus, who turns around and leaves. This scene may lack CGI but it's a lot funnier than the scene in Land of the Lost, which is designed to excite an audience with action and special effects rather than make them laugh.

Keaton shows up in a funny, ill-fitting Roman helmet much like Cera. Keaton, too, lapses into Bible stories, enacting his own variations on Samson pulling down the temple and Daniel becoming trapped in the lion’s den. Keaton looks heroic pushing down pillars, but then chunks of loose brick and mortar conk him in the head and he stumbles around in a daze.

The historical dramas tend to stress high principles and goals to create battles between good and evil. It is all very idealistic. Also, studios executives figure that, as long as they are spending lots of money to recreate historical scenes, the scenes might as well look good. So, these films showcase extravagant sets and elaborate costumes. The satirist is often better at getting to the truth of matters. For years, films about the medieval times led people to believe that the poor farmers, who lived off their own labors and enjoyed the great abundance yielded by the earth, had nothing less than an idyllic existence. At times, these films conveyed pastoral scenes where peasants danced around Maypoles and sweethearts laid together in soft green meadows. It took Monty Python to let us know that the peasants in medieval times did backbreaking work in the fields and were usually covered in manure. A film about medieval times that does not have peasants scratching at the lice and fleas on their body is not at all authentic. Victor Mature looks regal wearing his centurion helmet in Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954). But, maybe, it wasn't all pride and splendor wearing those bulky headpieces. Keaton and Cera may have been more authentic as ancient soldiers than Mature. By the way, helmets were seen as comical years before Keaton came along. Gaumont Film Company produced an early comedy film that addressed the helmet issue all on its own. A Heavy Headpiece (1909) was entirely devoted to a soldier's experiences managing his weighty headgear.

The historical comedy is, by no means, an exhausted genre. Quite the contrary, not enough people have taken the time to examine our origins from a humorous perspective. So, Life of Brian should not be the last word that comedymakers have on human history.


This is not to say that Ramis went for gritty realism with Year One. Cinematographer Alar Kivilo was instructed by Ramis to watch Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957) to get an idea how he wanted the film to look. In the end, Kivilo created these burnished images with golden hues. Also, Zed may be a caveman who eats dung but he was given stylish hair with pretty blond streaks.

The second complaint of critics was that the humor of Year One was juvenile. Kyle Smith, critic with the New York Post, asked, "Is Fred Flintstone writing this stuff?" James Berardinelli, ReelViews critic, wrote, "Filled to the point of overflowing with gross-out humor, Year One might get some belly laughs from six and seven year olds, who can't resist giggling at the image of someone farting. . ." Frank Scheck, critic with the Hollywood Reporter, found that the film "[offers] a plethora of poop, sex and fart jokes and vulgarity without a smidgen of wit." Robert Wilonsky, critic with the LA Weekly, wrote, "[N]o laugh’s too cheap." Liam Lacey, critic with the Toronto Globe and Mail, was deeply disturbed by the sight of "Zed snack[ing] on some poop." He was also bothered by a eunuch who carries his petrified testes around in a cloth bag and later tosses the testes at Black. A few critics singled out a scene where it is implied that a sheep herder is having sex with his sheep. Ty Burr, critic with the Boston Globe, wrote, "There’s ... the scene in which Oh, hanging upside down in a dungeon, urinates on his own face. Are you laughing yet?"

The urine does, in fact, stream down on Cera's face for an awfully long time. Ramis, himself, looked at the scene while recording the DVD commentary and remarked, sounding almost astounded, that it was a "prodigious amount" of urine. Ramis started the script on his own but later called in two young writers to help him finish it. The writers admitted that they took Ramis' insights about religion and built a lot of gross gags around it. The dominance of these gags is the weakest feature of the film and it is not something I am unable to defend. Still, it should be explained to anyone who failed to appreciate the urine scene that Cera broke blood vessels in his eyes while hanging upside down. It amazes me what an actor will do for their art.

The cavemen remain stylish throughout their gross travails. At one point, Zed compliments Oh on his hair. Oh attributes his urine shampoo to his hair's fine body and sheen.

The third complaint of critics was the performances of the leads. Black and Cera, described by Washington Post critic Michael O'Sullivan as a "first-century odd couple," did not win over most of these commentators.

A number of critics suggested that the comic pairing had inherent humor that never fulfilled its promise. Stephanie Zacharek wrote, "The initial sight of Black, with his sexy barrel belly, and Cera, in all his innocent scrawniness, both decked out in vests of shaggy fur, is momentarily amusing." Derek Malcolm, critic with the Evening Standard, wrote, "Black’s ebullient over-playing and Cera’s nervy wimpishness make a partnership that often seems about to make you laugh."

Joe Neumaier, critic with the New York Daily News, wrote, "No one’s idea of a classic comedy team, Cera sing-songs his way through his stammering-victim moments while Black — whose performances have become so arch and flip we should worry he’ll break his back the next time he shows up — is insufferable almost from his first scene, his every line spoken with air quotes around it."

Many critics complained that Black had worn out his act. Ty Burr, critic with the Boston Globe, wrote, "Black is way past his expiration date. The actor’s unvarying comic shtick - blubbery egotism and over-enunciated dude catchphrases - has never seemed feebler." Scheck wrote, "Black does his Jack Black thing well enough, but the results are by now unfortunately predictable.

Critics were, overall, kinder to Cera. Phillips found Cera's "deft, improvisatory underplaying" to be an asset. Scheck wrote, "Cera garner[s] genuine laughs with his deadpan pained reactions to the endless indignities suffered by his character." Kevin Maher, critic with the UK Times, wrote, "All hail Michael Cera, worker of unprecedented movie miracles! For here, in this biblical comedy, the. . . former Juno heartthrob takes a weak concept. . . and some weaker material. . . and, wherever possible, adds some much needed flashes of comedic genius. . . Watch him stare, for instance, at a sultry denizen of Sodom doing unspeakable things with fresh fruit — 'Wow,' he says, with a nervous, Allen-esque stutter, 'She’s really making that banana last!' He may, for some, be an acquired taste, but without him Year One would tank."

This is not to say that the praise for Cera's performance was unanimous. Stephanie Zacharek, Salon critic, wrote, "Cera, who's building a fledgling career on his shy, deadpan demeanor, gives a performance that's merely watery and indistinct."

The greater issue, more important than whether Black and Cera performed well individually was whether they bonded together and acted as a solid team. The risk certainly existed for their comic styles to clash. Black's brash character hardly seemed compatiable with Cera's tenative naif character. But Black and Cera did, in fact, manage to meet in the middle - Black is less manic than usual while Cera is more goofy. The fact is that, even if not every critic agreed, the most favorable responses to the film came from critics appreciating the teamwork of the two actors.

The naysayers included Zacharek, who found that the film was "hobbled by the lack of chemistry between its two lead actors." Peter Rainer, critic with Christian Science Monitor, believed that Black and Cera "did not know how to riff off each other." Liam Lacey, critic with the Toronto Globe and Mail, wrote, "Black blusters and Cera bumbles in very familiar ways here, and they react to a sequence of humiliations with their contrasting speech volumes."

Other critics were enthusiastic in their praise of the duo, recognizing that their teamwork offered more than contrasting speech volumes.

Betsy Sharkey, critic with the Los Angeles Times, wrote, "Zed has a hero complex, while Oh's issues are with inferiority." The character with the hero complex paired with the character with the inferiority complex does make for an intriguing contrast.

Michael Sragow, critic with the Baltimore Sun, enjoyed the "image of rotund Jack Black and willowy Michael Cera in animal-skins." He liked to see the “rotund” one and the”willowy” one “pratfall in and out of Bible stories.” This can't help but bring to mind Laurel & Hardy. But Sragow, himself, did not have Laurel & Hardy in mind. He found Black's Zed to be "all wiliness and appetite" like a Mel Brooks character while Cera, “intelligent but strangled in a continuing tussle between his erupting id and his feelings of inadequacy," was "more like an elongated Woody Allen.” Sragow found the duo, who shared "a loopy chemistry," to be appealing.

David Hiltbrand, critic with the Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote, "The actors make a surprisingly effective comic team, with Black's manic energy trampolining off Cera's deflated passivity."

Dana Stevens, Slate critic, wrote, "The essential question of a buddy comedy, of course, is whether and how the two leads bounce off each other, and while they may not be the next Laurel and Hardy, I found Black and Cera's teamwork to be reasonably bouncy. Black's me-so-crazy shtick can get grating. . . but he's a natural collaborator, that rare comic who actually listens to his interlocutors instead of just waiting for his turn to riff. And I can't get enough of Cera, a sad-eyed beanpole whose delivery is so dry it's almost uninflected. He has a way of stepping on the very end of Black's lines with quickly blurted put-downs that gets me every time; it's the comedy of passive-aggression, a tart counterpoint to Black's oleaginous self-assurance. Cera's critics complain that he always plays the same role, but I've said it before and I'll say it again: We need Michael Cera to keep being Michael Cera. Nobody else knows how."

LaSalle wrote, "Black and Cera's comic styles are quite different. Onscreen, Black's persona tends to be self-promoting and easily exasperated, a character in constant collision with his environment, who acts before he thinks and tries to get by on bluff. Cera, by contrast, is watchful and paranoid, sardonic and full of dread, and thinks hard before he commits himself in any direction. These contrasts make them a superb comic duo, and so does their one similarity: They both operate under the implicit assumption that the world is a threatening place that must be mastered, either by forceful action (Black) or careful thought (Cera)."

This makes Black and Cera very much like Laurel & Hardy, who were always united in fear.

Fat comedians who act manic are automatically seen by some as “Bluto” from Animal House. But Jack Black, as fat and manic as he may be, is not a clod, a slob or a mad man like Bluto. Black can be found at his best in The School of Rock (2003), where he poses as a substitute teacher at a prep school. Black, as Sragow pointed out, is filled with “wiliness and bluff.” It is important to him to keep his mind working and understand the people around him. In his efforts to understand people, he develops sensitivity and affection towards them. In The School of Rock, he expresses a genuine affection for the children in his class. He shows compassion in his scenes with the principal, Ms. Mullins (Joan Cusack). He doesn’t simply fool the principal but, in fact, establishes a close friendship with her. For a long time, he is truly resourceful and does fairly well in a bad situation. He is not inept or foolish, demonstrating true talent as teacher. At the end of the film, he makes a speech about how much the children have touched him. It isn't a phony speech tacked on to give the film a message. It is just the sort of heartfelt speech we can imagine this character making. Mike White, who wrote the screenplay specifically for Black, clearly understood Black's strengths and knew how to develop characters with real feelings.

I have a great deal of respect for Black and I found that Year One put his talents to better use than Nacho Libre (2006) or Be Kind Rewind (2008). Black did not turn out to be a grunting caveman as Ramis originally envisioned. Black and Cera’s rational, forward-thinking characters are both a lot hipper than the other cavemen in their tribe and they are more morally developed and sympathetic than people they encounter in Sodom.

Unfortunately, Year One lacks the passion and focus of a great comedy. The cast spoke about Ramis being a Zen master for his tranquil behavior on the set, but Ramis in fact looks tired in behind-the-scenes footage and sounds even more tired speaking about the film on the DVD commentary. It is possible that Ramis failed to provide this film with a sufficient driving force and allowed the poop jokes to overwhelm the proceedings. Still, Year One has much to offer and is, in the end, an entertaining film.

Disclaimers and Clarifications

Reed Tucker, a columnist for the New York Post, acknowledged the proliferation of the male sexual organ in big screen comedies in a recent article, "Flash in the Pants.” Tucker declared Ken Jeong to be the newest member of the “rod squad” for flaunting his “family jewels" in the summer comedy hit The Hangover. The film also includes a scene where Zach Galifianakis has his pants down while receiving oral stimulation from an elderly hotel maid, but Galifianakis admitted in interviews that the penis in the scene was a prosthetic. I'm sorry, a prosthetic penis does not get you into this exclusive club.

I mention this article only because Tucker pointed out that this trend started with Sideways (2004), in which M. C. Gainey interrupts sex with his wife to chase after an intruder and ends up chasing a car down a neighborhood street with his penis dangling in the wind. I am embarrassed that I failed to mention Sideways in my own recent dissertation on the comedy penis. Sideways is one of the best comedies of the last ten years and I do not know how I could have overlooked it. Maybe, I was so traumatized by Gainey's penis that I blocked it out of my mind . In any case, I stand corrected.

Numa, Clown Cat

In the 1920s, lion trainer Charles Gay exhibited more than 200 lions at the tourist attraction Gay's Lion Farm in Los Angeles. His lions were featured in a number of films. Gay's biggest movie stars were Slats and Numa. Slats, pictured below, was the serious thespian assigned to jungle adventures.

Numa, a friendly lion able to perform funny tricks, was used in comedy films for Sennett and others. Here is a picture of Numa looking as if he is ready to take a pie in the face.
Numa was such a big deal that he got to co-star opposite Chaplin. I found these pictures while researching my new book, which will include a passage on Numa.

I am looking at a wide range of material for this book. One early film that attracted my interest was How It Feels to Be Run Over (1900), which is first film to use a car crash for comedic effect.

Hamilton Biography is on Sale

My Lloyd Hamilton biography is now available for purchase on the McFarland website. It will soon become available through Amazon and other booksellers.

I have been in New York for the last two weeks researching a new book on silent film comedy. I want to thank Steve Massa, Susan Selig, David Massa, Ben Model, Robert Arkus, Bruce Lawton and Charles Silver for the hospitality they showed to me and my son Griffin during our visit. I also thank Eddie, the projectionist who ran films for us at the Museum of Modern Art.

The trip to New York gave me an opportunity to visit with my family. I was especially interested in seeing my 79-year-old mother, who complained to me recently about health problems. My mother will never tell you if she is feeling sick, which made me realize that this might be serious. Hours before I arrived in New York, my mother was hospitalized after blacking out, falling into a bureau, and breaking her nose and orbital bone. Throughout my visit, my mother kept telling me that the doctors did not know what was wrong with her and she had to wait for them to get the tests results. I could sense that she wasn't telling me the truth and that only made me more worried. When I returned home yesterday, I found a large box outside of my front door. The box contained copies of my Hamilton book fresh off the presses. I got inside my home, turned on my computer, and found an email from my sister asking me to call her right away. I called my sister and learned that my mother has Hodgkin's lymphoma. It was a strange feeling to be sitting next to a box filled with copies of my new book while hearing that my mother has cancer. I need a few days for this to sink in. In the meantime, I have lots of notes and recordings to transcribe.

Voyages with the Comedy Time Lord

I am the Ghost of Comedy Future. Come aboard my ship and I will transport you across the years. We will float on the winds of time to discover the state of comedy in the coming years. 2010. 2011. 2012. Hold on, I don't want to lose you.

Wait, this cramped little ship ain't working for me. We need a more modern and imaginative time machine, something cool and comfortable like the modified DeLorean in Back to the Future. How about a hot tub time machine? Well, actually, the first stop in our journey just happens to be the upcoming comedy Hot Tub Time Machine. Hot Tub Time Machine, starring John Cusack and Rob Corddry, is about a group of vacationing buddies who get drunk sitting around in a hot tub and end up having the hot tub take them back in time to 1987. It's The Hangover meets Back to the Future.

Another film that centers around a group of middle-aged male friends is Grown Ups, which involves five friends who get together at a 30-year high school reunion. The friends are played by Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider and David Spade.

Do we see any important new trends in comedy? The action-comedy buddy cop movie is looking to make a comeback. Kevin Smith is directing Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan as cop buddies in A Couple of Dicks. Frankly, this project fails to excite me. We have been up to our eyeballs in these movies since the 1980s - 48 Hours, Running Scared, Lethal Weapon, Rush Hour, Red Heat, Tango & Cash and Bad Boys, among many, many others. The movie that started it all, as far as I'm concerned, is the unjustly forgotten Freebie and the Bean (1974). Some elements of these films go back even further. The idea of zany cops getting into wild car chases can easily be traced back to the Keystone Cops. So, what's new about A Couple of Dicks? In a recent interview, Smith emphasized, above all else, that the film will be R-rated and include lots of "salty language." Wow, that Smith is a groundbreaker! Smith had a problem with the salty title as he filmed on location in Brooklyn and had to post production signs with the title changed to "A Couple of Cops." Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg have teamed up for another cop buddy movie called The B Team. The premise of the film is that two desk cops abruptly get thrust into a high-action crime investigation. Wahlberg is gung-ho about the gunplay and car chases while Ferrell could not be more terrified.

Post-apocalyptic comedies, basically The Road with laughs, are also on the schedule. Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel are set to combat zombies, radiation and wild animals in Jay and Seth vs. the Apocalypse. Ben Stiller is in development with CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, which finds our good country in a ravaged state. Stiller's character, struggling to get by in this toxic wasteland, manages to hold down a job at a Civil War theme park. He soon finds himself having to protect guests from a roving band of marauders. I imagine the marauders are like the bad guys in Road Warrior. Except in Road Warrior the marauders wanted to rob gasoline from a refinery. I'm not sure what these marauders want from a Civil War theme park. Do they want to plunder the plush Stonewall Jackson dolls? Do they want unrestricted access to the "It's a Small Wound After All" ride? Stiller must love tourists to do all these tourist-themed comedies set in museums and theme parks.

Young Americans, a 1980s retro comedy, spotlights Topher Grace as an aimless college grad who gets involved in various misadventures at a wild Labor Day party. Roscoe Arbuckle's misadventure at a wild Labor Day party has become known as "the day the laughter stopped." This vehicle for Grace may have stopped the laughter at Imagine Entertainment, who have held off the film's release. The film, completed in early 2008, is not scheduled to reach theaters until 2010.

Anna Faris, who has a supporting role in Young Americans as Grace's sister, has established herself as a box office draw with last year's The House Bunny. Recent promotion for Young Americans has in fact emphasized Faris' role at the expense of Grace. Faris, herself, has been working on What’s Your Number? based on the Karyn Bosnak novel "Twenty Times a Lady." Faris' character holds to the strict belief that a woman should not have more than 20 lovers in her lifetime. When she reaches her quota, she realizes that she won't be able to marry and have children unless she makes a commitment to one of her twenty sex partners. Her quest to track down past lovers sounds similar to the premise of the failed television series The Ex List. To be honest, this whole quota deal sounds like the kind of chick logic that completely loses me. I am definitely not in the target audience for this film.

The schedule includes a number of comedies for women. This trend needs a name as catchy as rom-com or chick flick. Hmm. . . let me think. Wom-com. Dame-camp. She-hee-hee. Molly-jolly. I have a long list of these, but they are either too stupid or too offensive for me to mention them all. Look, Roger Ebert became a famous film critic for coining the phrase "idiot plot." I am desperate for a little celebrity myself. Anyway, the audience for these films are presumably women interested in falling in love, getting married, having children, and being successful in a career. Getting drunk in a hot tub or shooting at bad guys is nowhere on this list. Sandra Bullock falls in love in All About Steve. Bullock's character becomes so obsessed with Steve, a news cameraman, that she pursues him across the country as his news team covers breaking stories. Uma Thurman plays a mother of two having a chaotic day in Motherhood. The Back-up Plan features Jennifer Lopez as a single woman desperate to have a child. Lopez becomes pregnant through artificial insemination just as the man of her dreams enters her life. Morning Glory presents Rachel McAdams as a news producer who tries to save a failing morning show by getting control of feuding anchors Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton. Valentine's Day sounds like Crash reformatted into a romantic comedy. The film, directed by Garry Marshall, is about 10 people in Los Angeles who find their lives intersecting in diverse ways on Valentine's Day. The all-star cast includes Julia Roberts, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Jennifer Garner, Shirley MacLaine, Bradley Cooper, Ashton Kutcher and Topher Grace.

Ashton Kutcher has a new romance comedy but it's hard to imagine it will appeal to either women or men. The comedy, with the crude title Spread, presents Ashton Kutcher as a gigolo who falls in love with a golddigger. L'Chaim.

What do the heavyhitter male comedy stars have coming our way?

Sober Buddies, in development at Universal, has Jim Carrey attached to play a court-appointed sober buddy. Carrey's character is determined to keep a hard-partying software exec under control during a critical business trip to Las Vegas but, despite his good intentions, he manages to fall off the wagon himself. Carrey has been cast opposite Jake Gyllenhaal to play the Devil in a remake of Damn Yankees. Carrey signed to star in Pierre Pierre, which is about man who goes through personal changes while transporting a stolen Mona Lisa from Paris to London. In March, 2007, Carrey picked up a spec script for Me Time, which involves another personal conversion. Carrey's character is working on a book about the frontier life of his great-great-grandmother. The woman's diary becomes an inspiration for him when his pregnant wife falls ill and he has to take on additional responsibilities to care for his family. It has been rumored that Carrey will star in The Beaver, the story of a man who walks around talking to a beaver puppet on his hand. Carrey definitely should mix it up like that - do one film about a sick pregnant wife and another one about a beaver puppet. That way, all his fans are happy.

Kevin James, fresh from the success of Paul Blart, plays another lonely misfit looking for love in The Zookeeper. James trades a mall for a zoo, which isn't much of a stretch considering the people I've seen at the mall. James gets along so well with the animals that the animals reveal to him that they are able to talk. Soon, the animals are helping James with his love life by instructing him on their mating rituals. Didn't Eddie Murphy's Dr. Dolittle movies exhaust this old Mr. Ed premise? Before you tell me that the Dolittle books came before Mr. Ed, I want to point out that the Dr. Dolittle movies owe a great deal more to Mr. Ed than the Dolittle books. As originally conceived, Dolittle was a naturalist who treked off into the jungle by himself to learn to speak to animals in their own language. Murphy's Dolittle, a subdued family man who lives far away from the jungle, is shocked to suddenly find animals talking him. This is straight out of the Wilbur Post playbook.

Stiller was talking for a long time about teaming up with Tom Cruise for a Hardy Boys update, The Hardy Men. Script problems eventually sidelined the project. Another Stiller project that has apparently stalled out is In Deep, which was to feature Stiller as a man who starts out fighting a parking ticket but soon finds the situation escalating out of control and ends up being charged with serious criminal offenses. This sounds like the situation that Stiller had in Meet the Parents where his character is simply trying to fit a bag into an overhead compartment and he ends up arguing with a flight attendant and being arrested by airport security. In 2006, Carrey and Stiller contracted to play obsolete pleasure clones in Fox's futuristic comedy Used Guys. Fox pulled the plug when the budget escalated past $110 million. But Stiller, who must really like the Used Guys script, revived the project last May. Will Ferrell may have run the sports comedy into the ground - Semi-Pro was a big nail in the coffin. Yet, at least one sports comedy is on the schedule for Stiller. Stiller is producing and may star in Big Wave, which is about a retired surfer who returns to the waves in order to save a convalescent home for old surfers. Stiller is considering starring in The Return of King Doug, a comedy fantasy based on an Oni Press graphic novel. The story revolves around dark forces taking over the magical wonderland of Valdonia. An 8-year-old boy, Doug, escapes to the relative safety of our contemporary world. Doug learns twenty-five years later that he must return to Valdonia because he is the kingdom's only hope to defeat the dark forces. Stiller is involved in a top-secret Cameron Crowe project tentatively titled Volcano Romance. Crowe will only say that the film will be a romantic comedy pairing Stiller with Reese "The Chin" Witherspoon. At this time, Stiller's most high-profile project is Little Fockers, a second sequel to Meet the Parents.

Possible projects upcoming for Will Ferrell include Neighborhood Watch, which would have Ferrell battling aliens that have invaded his quiet suburb, and Two Face, which is about a man with a split-personality disorder swinging back and forth between Blue State/Red State political extremes. Ferrell was recently signed by Columbia Pictures to play Dr. Watson to Sacha Baron Cohen's Sherlock Holmes in an untitled feature. Finally, Ferrell has an Anchorman sequel on the boards for 2012.

In 2007, bestselling author Mitch Albom got Adam Sandler interested in a script about a professional baseball player. The script was described in a press release as a "comedy with emotional elements." This was no surprise considering the content of Albom's books. Albom's best known book "Tuesdays With Morrie" recounted the final days of a sociology professor dying from Lou Gehrig's disease. The author's other books have focused on death, loneliness, unrealized dreams, divorce, alcoholism and estrangement. In reporting on this collaboration between Sandler and Albom, the website zap2it.com appropriately reported, "Yukmeister Adam Sandler and schmaltzmeister Mitch Albom will join forces." In recent years, Sandler has played characters facing death in Click and Funny People. Cleary, he shares a fascination with Albom when it comes to death themes. A few months ago, Albom sold another script to director Kevin Smith. This script, titled "Hit Somebody," is based on a Warren Zevon song about a hockey player who gets coldcocked by a hockey stick and falls dead on the ice. The lyrics end as follows:

The big man crumbled but he felt all right
'Cause the last thing he saw
was the flashing red light
He saw that heavenly light

Gee, this Albom guy is a laugh riot. Look, I am going to do the world a favor. I am going to post a picture of Albom. If you are a producer looking for a comedy script and this morbid little guy shows up to pitch a script, you need to grab him by the seat of his pants, haul him to the nearest door and throw him out on his ear.

In the meantime, Sandler has moved on to another baseball script. This year, the actor bought a factually based script from Jason Keller and Steven Christopher Young about Eddie Klep, the first white man to play baseball in the Negro Leagues.

Sandler's Happy Madison company holds the option on the script "Take Me to Your Leader," which concerns a NASA janitor who accidentally takes flight in a futuristic plane and is mistaken for an alien when he lands in a small Iowa town. The script was written in 1997 and has been with Happy Madison since 2003. A storyline has to be pretty dumb if, after six years, it hasn't been grabbed up by Happy Madison's Rob Schneider. Happy Madison, like other production companies, buys a lot of spec scripts that never make it to the screen. Last year, the company bought the script "I Hate You, Dad" about a father who moves in with his son on the eve of his son's wedding. Columbia expressed an interest in the script but no one has moved on the project in the last year. In 2003, Happy Madison bought the movie rights to "Jingle Belle," a comic book that proposes what it would like if Santa Claus had a spoiled, sexy teenage daughter. That project seems to have fallen into development limbo. I wouldn't expect "Take Me to Your Leader" to ever see the light of day. So, be content to sit back and watch your DVD's for Don Knotts' The Reluctant Astronaut (1967) and Harland Williams' RocketMan (1997).

Eddie Murphy, unhappy with the performance of Meet Dave (2008) and Imagine That (2009), has indicated that he may retire soon. In the meantime, he is in production on A Thousand Words. According to DreamWorks, this film is about "a glib man who finds out that he has only 1,000 words left to speak before he dies." Murphy is set to star in a remake of The Incredible Shrinking Man and a sequel to Beverly Hills Cop. Within the last few months, Brett Ratner has been in talks to team Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock in a heist film. In 2007, following the success of Norbit, it was announced that Murphy would team up with Katt Williams for a comedy western called Marshalls. At the same time, Norbit writers Jay Scherick and David Rom told the Hollywood Reporter that Murphy would play multiple roles in a Fantasy Island remake. I can imagine Murphy as Mr. Roarke. I can imagine Murphy as Tattoo. I can even imagine Murphy wearing a big fat suit to play the island. I hear that he is a very versatile actor. No announcements have followed on Marshalls or Fantasy Island in the last two years.

Who is the next big comedy star? Could it be Jay Baruchel? Baruchel, who got a good amount of screen time as part of the Tropic Thunder ensemble, has the starring role in Johnny Klutz, a slapstick comedy about an accident-prone young man who is unable to feel pain. It sounds like a Larry Semon comedy.

Another potential new star is Broadway sensation Michael Stuhlbarg, who has the lead role in the Coen Brothers film A Serious Man. Stuhlbarg's character, Larry Gopnik, is a physics professor who loses his wife to a pompous colleague. But this is only the start of his problems. To make matters worse, Gopnik is having trouble dealing with an unruly teenage son, learns that his daughter has been stealing money out of his wallet for a nose job, and finds his career in jeopardy when a failing student threatens to file a defamation suit against him. The Coen Brothers' last film, Burn Before Reading, also had a woman trying to steal money for plastic surgery. Why does this idea hold such fascination to the Coen brothers? A Serious Man shares similarities with The World's Greatest Dad, an upcoming comedy starring Robin Williams. Dad, like A Serious Man, has an unhappy educator at the center of the action. Williams' character, high school poetry teacher Lance Clayton, is dejected at his inability to get his novels published. Also, he is dating pretty art teacher Claire but he is frustrated with Claire's lack of commitment to their relationship. All in all, Clayton has his most serious issues with an unruly teenage son. A Serious Man and The World's Greatest Dad are both black comedies, although a plot twist halfway through Dad may make this film the much darker of the two. I have to say that the trailer for Dad is extremely funny. I relate to this bitter, sarcastic character more than I care to admit.

Gilmore Girls regular Matt Czuchry has his first starring role in a movie, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. Czuchry plays a young man who regularly gets drunk and acts like a jerk to anyone he meets. The book on which the movie is based has a number of fans, who find this inebriated fool shockingly funny even though he is less than sympathetic. I once had a drunk vomit on me in a movie theater. I failed to see the humor.

The action-comedy The Spy Next Door situates Jackie Chan in a quiet suburban neighborhood. The story begins with Chan's character agreeing to babysit for a neighbor. When the neighbor's children inadvertently download a secret code, Chan finds himself fighting off secret agents. This sounds like the 1987 comedy Adventures in Babysitting, which has Elisabeth Shue contending with a car theft ring after a boy in her care gets his hands on incriminating notes.

Adventures in Babysitting has similarities to another upcoming comedy, Date Night. Date Night, helmed by Night at the Museum director Shawn Levy, stars Steve Carell and Tina Fey as a married couple who go out on a routine date night and become involved with dangerous criminals. Babysitter Shue also expects an uneventful evening, but a series of troubling incidents compound one on top of the other. This succeeds in creating bigger and bigger complications for Shue and her charges. This concept, where a simple situation goes wrong and the frustrations build until the situation mushrooms into a total disaster, goes back to the earliest days of film comedy. Let's consider Laurel & Hardy's Perfect Day (1929). Plans for a Sunday picnic go wrong - a platter of sandwiches is destroyed, the car gets a flat tire, a neighbor gets into a brick-throwing melee with Stan and Ollie, and the car sinks into huge puddle of mud. The "perfect day" ends up a disaster.

We might do better to isolate one segment of Perfect Day. It takes just one small nail in the road to make the duo's best laid plans go awry. The nail punctures the tire, which goes flat. Stan and Ollie have a series of problems changing the tire. Stan has to pull off a seat cushion to get to the jack and he ends up slamming the cushion down on Ollie's fingers. Then, Stan opens a door to step out of the car and he slams the door into Ollie's head. Ollie, at the height of frustration, throws the jack at Stan, but the jack misses Stan and crashes through a neighbor's window. The neighbor grabs hold of the jack, marches over to Stan and Ollie, and throws the jack through their windshield. Stan gets a brick and hurls it at the neighbor's home, breaking another window. The problems continue to escalate for the remainder of the film.

Lloyd Hamilton also constructed comedies in this manner, making sure that the incidents had a logical progression. In fact, Perfect Day shares a number of similarities with the Hamilton comedy One Sunday Morning (1926). This escalation of comic situations has been used by many filmmakers over the years. The escalation was taken to nightmarish proportions in films like The Out of Towners (1970) and After Hours (1985).

Dinner for Schmucks features Steve Carrell and Paul Rudd in a remake of Francis Veber's French comedy Dinner Game (1998). I love Monsieur Veber, but Hollywood has never done the writer justice. Veber's story centers on an "idiots' dinner." This is where prominent businessmen bring a person they deem to be an idiot to a weekly dinner and the one who the group decides has brought the biggest idiot is declared the winner. The latest prize idiot, Francois Pignon, ends up creating a series of problems for his sponsor, a publisher named Pierre Brochant. During the course of the evening, Brochant loses his wife, wrenches his back, and reveals to a tax auditor that he is guilty of tax evasion. Bhob Stewart, AllMovie critic, wrote, "Pierre is trapped in a situation where Francois' stupidity turns his life into a comic hell."

Marc Lawrence, the writer of the Miss Congeniality movies, is currently directing a comedy about marital turmoil called Did You Hear About the Morgans? The Morgans, played by Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker, are on the verge of ending their marriage when they witness a murder and are whisked away by means of the Witness Protection Program to a small town in Wyoming. The slower pace of their new town gives the couple a chance to reconnect. I like this premise. I think we should have a Marriage Protection Program where couples are given a chance to get away from stressful situations and renew their relationships. Did You Hear About the Morgans? reminds me of Some Like It Hot. The two lead characters change their identities and go into hiding after witnessing a murder. Their new lives lift them out of their rut and allow them to find happiness.

Dinner for Schmucks is not the only remake of a foreign comedy on the schedule. Death at a Funeral, a 2007 British comedy about death, blackmail and hallucinogenic drugs, has been adapted for an African American cast, including Chris Rock, Tracy Morgan, Martin Lawrence, Loretta Devine, Ron Glass, Danny Glover and Regina Hall.

Five-Year Engagement, which stars Jason Segel, is about a dysfunctional couple. "It's definitely an extension of our desire to explore the depth of human misery," explains director and co-scribe Nick Stoller. "If Sarah Marshall and Jason's character had stayed together, this might be the sequel."

Speaking of sequels, we have already mentioned the Meet the Parents, Anchorman and Beverly Hills Cop sequels. It was recently confirmed that Ghostbusters 3 will start shooting this winter. Kal Penn's status with the Obama administration has come into question since Penn signed to star with John Cho in A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas. Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush have signed on to do a Pirates of the Caribbean sequel. The script currently in development has Sparrow and Barbossa taking sail to find the Fountain of Youth.

Two fantasy comedies are on the schedule. Steve Oedekerk, the director of the Ace Ventura movies, is in an early development stage with a Stretch Armstrong action-adventure comedy. Jack Black is currently filming a comedy version of Gulliver's Travels. Black is working under the direction of Rob Letterman, the director of Monsters vs. Aliens.

Okay, all, the hot tub is heading back. 2012. 2011. 2010. 2009. Please keep your hands and feet inside the tub until the ride has come to a complete stop.

Fight Club

"When the fight was over, nothing was solved, but nothing mattered. We all felt saved." - The Narrator, Fight Club.

Yes, my friends, welcome to the original Fight Club. Watching the rough and tumble antics of the Three Stooges put me back in touch with my masculinity.



Well, yes, except for that.

Oh, yeah, and that, too.

The point is that I was reminded of the power of the smack as I watched the new Sony release The Three Stooges Collection, Volume 6: 1949-1951. This two-disk DVD set offers 24 digitally remastered shorts, including fan favorites Who Done It? (1949) and Scrambled Brains (1951).

Who Done It? is one of the Stooges better "dark old house" comedies. Duke York plays a menacing, barrel-chested giant named Nikko. The Stooges running from room to room to evade Nikko, including their efforts to barricade a door, largely borrows action from Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, which came out a year earlier. The resemblance does not end there. In Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Lenore Aubert is an alluring vampire trying to seduce Costello in an attempt to sink her teeth into his neck. Similarly, Who Done It? features Christine McIntyre as a spooky femme fatale who acts seductively towards Shemp in an effort to get him to drink a poisoned cocktail. Shemp goes into convulsions after gulping down the poison. It wouldn't seem as this would be a funny scene but only Shemp could act as if he is in death throes and make it into a wildly funny routine. The good news is that Shemp has a tough enough constitution to survive the poisoning.

Scrambled Brains, a zany and fastmoving short, is about Moe and Larry trying to help Shemp to recover from a nervous breakdown. Shemp's hallucinations allow for surreal comedy, such as Shemp sitting down to play a piano and suddenly imagining that he has four hands.

Surreal humor is also dominant in Three Hams on Rye (1950), which features the Stooges as stage hands aspiring to become actors. Larry is supposed to put on an inconspicuous disguise to conceal his identity from a theater critic. Of all the costumes available in the backstage wardrobe, Larry drags out the strangest disguise for himself. He starts out putting on a long black overcoat and then he finds an oversized stovepipe hat with eye slits, which he pulls down over his head. Only someone as spacey as Larry would think that this disguise is sensible. Shemp, taking one look at him, calls him a "black banana."

Here is another surreal gag from that same comedy.

The opening scene of A Snitch in Time (1950) is set in a workshop, where the Stooges are busy making furniture. This proves to be a dangerous place for the Stooges to be messing around. At first, the mishaps are minor. Shemp nails his glove to a highchair. Larry struggles to fit a drawer into a bureau. But then Shemp accidentally smacks Moe in the head with a board, sending Moe's face into a buzzsaw. Then, the Stooges suffers various injuries from the misuse of a hacksaw, a chisel and a wood-shaver. Shemp shoots glue into Moe's eye, which seals Moe's eye shut. The ensuing action causes Moe to get more glue on his hands. First, the glue causes a brush to get fastened to his hand. Then, when Moe simultaneously smacks Shemp and Larry, he gets his hands stuck to their faces. This comedy frightened me as a child. To this day, I shy away from home improvement projects for fear of accidentally gluing my hand to a brush or getting my nose grinded down by a buzzsaw. If not for the Stooges, I could have turned out to be one of those buff construction workers that the women love.

Or, I could have turned out looking like this.

The Tooth Will Out (1951) has more than its share of laughs. Shemp, as a student in dental school, creates a set of dentures both homely and feisty. The snaggletoothed dentures can laugh, sing, hop around, and chomp down on people's fingers. The aggressive dentures also manage to bite a tongue depressor in half and get themselves latched securely onto Moe's nose.

In Dopey Dicks (1950), it is not only the dicks that are dopey. A scientist is so batty that he constructs a mechanical man too tall to fit through doorways or get under hanging lamps. As a result, the mechanical man keeps losing his head. At the end, when the Stooges finally escape the clutches of this mad scientist, they frantically flag down a car. They scramble into the car as fast as they can and slam the doors shut behind them, only to turn around and find that the car is being driven by the headless robot.

Love at First Bite (1950) may be the worst comedy that the Stooges ever made. A running gag has to do with Shemp leaving wads of his used chewing gum around the apartment. Moe gets gum stuck to his ear when he answers the phone. Shemp tosses away a wad of gum, which lands on the tip of Larry's nose. These scenes, rather than making me laugh, grossed me out. Nothing funny about a gummy mess.



The truth is that Moe, for all his abusive behavior, is a kinder and gentler person than mean mom Kate Gosselin.

Later in Love at First Bite, the Stooges overplay a drunk scene, acting more brain-damaged than drunk.

Pest Man Wins (1951) is a remake of one of the Stooges' early comedies, Ants in the Pantry (1936).

1936

1951

The Stooges are pest exterminators who infest a mansion with mice, moths and ants to bring business their way. In the original, a grumpy boss forces the Stooges to create the infestation to keep their jobs. The Stooges decide that an appropriate site for their critter invasion is a mansion where a high society dinner party is being held. In the remake, Moe comes up with the idea of the infestation on his own. The homeowner is hosting a party to promote her catering business. Now, rather than destroying a snooty party to save their jobs, the Stooges are offhandedly destroying a woman's business. These simple changes in plot points and motivations shift the sympathy from the Stooges to the party hostess.

Still, it isn't the story or set pieces that make this short funny. The humor largely comes from incidental business introduced as the Stooges interact with household staff, party guests and each other. Shemp does a funny dance with a maid. Vernon Dent does an even funnier dance after a mouse has crawled down the back of his shirt. Moe snatches cheese away from Larry, managing to chew up the cheese and swallow it before Larry is able to tell him that he treated the cheese with rat poison. This last scene is interesting. The poisoning is made especially outlandish by the fact that Larry fails to display the slightest bit of urgency. Larry doesn't wince and try to grab the cheese away from Moe. No, he just stands alongside Moe with the goofiest grin before he is able to explain that the cheese is poisoned. This is markedly different from the original film, where Larry purposely feeds the poisoned cheese to Curly to test its potency. But now, fifteen years later, Larry has evolved into this daffy and clueless character.

Most of this latest batch of Stooges shorts do not work consistently from beginning to end. It is isolated scenes and random bits of business that make these comedies worth watching. Hula-La-La (1951) gets my endorsement just for a scene where Moe and Larry get beaten up by a four-armed idol. Merry Mavericks (1951) is sufficiently pleasant based on a number of funny moments, including a brief exchange where Moe challenges Larry to explain what the word "apprehensive" means. Larry responds, "It means you're scared - with a college education." And Shemp's hair is always good for a laugh.

A personal favorite of mine is Fuelin' Around (1949), which features the Stooges as carpetlayers. Moe crawls under a carpet to remove an object creating a bulge while Shemp and Larry, unaware of his whereabouts, continue tacking down the carpet. Moe becomes trapped underneath the carpet. He is struggling futilely while Shemp, trying to flatten bulges in the carpet, pounds him with a hammer. Later, Armenian spies mistake the frizzy-haired Larry for a frizzy-haired rocket scientist modeled after Albert Einstein. The idea of Larry standing in for Einstein is funny stuff.

Larry and his partners are locked in a laboratory and told they will not leave until they concoct a batch of rocket fuel. Eventually, the Stooges attempt to break out of the laboratory. Larry uses a corrosive chemical mixture to burn a hole in the floor. Moe and Larry climb down the hole first, but Shemp is only halfway down the hole when the Armenian general (Vernon Dent) grabs him around the neck. The general pulls Shemp up by the head while Moe and Larry pull Shemp down by his legs. Shemp, pulled in two directions, finds his neck and legs being stretched to impossible lengths.

The film ends with the Stooges using their very special brand of rocket fuel to start a getaway car. The car belches out a fiery backfire that disintegrates the uniforms of soldiers, leaving the military men in nothing except their long underwear. This, for sure, is an all-around funny short.

I have a couple of other complaints about the collection. They are minor complaints, but complaints nonetheless.

The Stooges' comedy had always been enhanced by sounds effects but now, in weaker scenes, a variety of sound effects was the comedy. In Hokus Pokus (1949), the Stooges are going through their morning routine. Shemp's back makes a horrible cracking sound as Shemp bends over to touch his toes. The Stooges gather together in a circle to shave. An unsettling scraping noise accompanies the sight of these straight razors running up and down their faces.

The fact that the Stooges were getting older meant that, when the action got more physical, stand-ins for the Stooges were likely to be called in. Obvious doubles became an irritating presence in these comedies. Doubles were used even for this simple scene in The Tooth Will Out where the Stooges get tossed out of various businesses.

Real Shemp

Fake Shemp

All in all, though, watching this collection of comedy shorts was a spiritual experience. "Yes," said the Narrator, "these are bruises from fighting. Yes, I'm comfortable with that. I am enlightened."



Thank you. Come again.

Ham and Bud on TCM

Here is the clip of Ham and Bud featured in the Chuck Jones documentary on TCM. The quality of this clip is a little better than most of the footage available on Ham and Bud. The Ham character was made popular by the nuances of Hamilton's performances and these nuances tend to get lost in prints that are murky or washed out. You can see in this clip the boyish glee in Hamilton's face as he and Bud decide to move in on a paperboy and take over his corner. Hamilton pushes his derby to one side and moves forward with a jaunty step. If you know anything about Ham and Bud, you know that they will soon chase off the paperboy and the paperboy will have to bring a police officer to the scene to get his corner back.



Last week, I learned that my publisher has received the corrected proofs for my Hamilton biography. They expect the book to become available to booksellers next month. I can't say enough good things about the McFarland staff. These wise and patient people gave this book a great deal of care. I love the layout. I love the photo reproductions. The editorial staff, including Natalie Foreman and Lisa Camp, far exceeded my expectations in the product they turned out.

As long as I am in a grateful mood, I want to take this opportunity to thank those people who have left comments on this site. It means a lot to me to get acknowledgment and encouragement for my work. I am about to get busy with my second book on silent film comedy, but I will still make the time to update this blog regularly.