Saw "The Aristocrats"...
Sep. 4th, 2005 09:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cherydactyl...and loved it.
If you have no idea what this movie is, don't just go because I say to go. At least check it out on the IMDB first, please!
I first found out about this movie accidentally while looking up Penn Jillette on IMDB for something unrelated and noticing the 2005 credit on his list. This was about a month before I heard Penn do an interview on Fresh Aire about The Aristocrats to promote its release. I was instantly intrigued.
I went tonight expecting a lot of talk about sex and incest and all manner of obscenity and profanity, including f-, s-, c-, b- and d- words galore. (I was actually wrong about the b-word. I don't think 'bitch' is uttered anytime during the entire movie.) I did have a moment near the beginning of the film when it seemed all the versions were going to centrally involve eating human excrement and smearing it over bodies and stages, but the anxiety passed.
There were definitely uncomfortable moments, especially Steven Wright's version of the joke, which was about violence in a way none of the other tellings were, and Sarah Silverman's which made me squirm a lot because she made herself into a victim in the telling and didn't drop the act at all. But maybe that was the editing.
My favorite moments were those with the guy who did a card manipulation routine while telling the joke, and 'The Aristocrats' as performed by Billy the Mime. I wondered aloud why the mime was wearing a mike, since the soundtrack for his entire sequence was just a barely audible mike hum. Watching Billy mime fucking various people, animals, and possibly objects...just hilarious. His performance wasn't in a soundstage somewhere either: it was on the street, with people walking by and some others sitting at a cafe a dozen yards away!
The couple in the row in front of us actually walked out after about two thirds of the mime routine, which was kind of surprising. Did they not know what the premise was going in?
Also great was the footage of an Onion staff meeting discussing what makes the joke obscene and what makes it work, dispersed throughout the film. Some comics and others had very perceptive things to say about the joke, the types of barriers a particular teller crosses, and society's ability to be shocked. I wish there had been a bit more discussion about what constitutes the edge or line that the joke is meant to cross, especially in light of some of the references to the post 9/11/01 atmosphere. The Onion staffer segments give the merest hint of what that might have been like. As it is, they tantalize but do not satisfy this particular desire. However, I can forgive Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette this little fault, since they are hardly trained documentarians.
I do wish Teller had spoken , and that Sarah Silverman had broken her victim persona or given us the equivalent of a wink at some point. The barriers that comics don't want to cross are ones that should be crossed, too.
If you have no idea what this movie is, don't just go because I say to go. At least check it out on the IMDB first, please!
I first found out about this movie accidentally while looking up Penn Jillette on IMDB for something unrelated and noticing the 2005 credit on his list. This was about a month before I heard Penn do an interview on Fresh Aire about The Aristocrats to promote its release. I was instantly intrigued.
I went tonight expecting a lot of talk about sex and incest and all manner of obscenity and profanity, including f-, s-, c-, b- and d- words galore. (I was actually wrong about the b-word. I don't think 'bitch' is uttered anytime during the entire movie.) I did have a moment near the beginning of the film when it seemed all the versions were going to centrally involve eating human excrement and smearing it over bodies and stages, but the anxiety passed.
There were definitely uncomfortable moments, especially Steven Wright's version of the joke, which was about violence in a way none of the other tellings were, and Sarah Silverman's which made me squirm a lot because she made herself into a victim in the telling and didn't drop the act at all. But maybe that was the editing.
My favorite moments were those with the guy who did a card manipulation routine while telling the joke, and 'The Aristocrats' as performed by Billy the Mime. I wondered aloud why the mime was wearing a mike, since the soundtrack for his entire sequence was just a barely audible mike hum. Watching Billy mime fucking various people, animals, and possibly objects...just hilarious. His performance wasn't in a soundstage somewhere either: it was on the street, with people walking by and some others sitting at a cafe a dozen yards away!
The couple in the row in front of us actually walked out after about two thirds of the mime routine, which was kind of surprising. Did they not know what the premise was going in?
Also great was the footage of an Onion staff meeting discussing what makes the joke obscene and what makes it work, dispersed throughout the film. Some comics and others had very perceptive things to say about the joke, the types of barriers a particular teller crosses, and society's ability to be shocked. I wish there had been a bit more discussion about what constitutes the edge or line that the joke is meant to cross, especially in light of some of the references to the post 9/11/01 atmosphere. The Onion staffer segments give the merest hint of what that might have been like. As it is, they tantalize but do not satisfy this particular desire. However, I can forgive Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette this little fault, since they are hardly trained documentarians.
I do wish Teller had spoken , and that Sarah Silverman had broken her victim persona or given us the equivalent of a wink at some point. The barriers that comics don't want to cross are ones that should be crossed, too.
