So this guy walks into a booking agent's office....Finally saw this much anticipated documentary last night with the wife and some friends- it was a solid, interesting film with its share of hilarious moments, and I recommend it to everyone with a moderately high tolerance for the creative verbal exploration of sexual and extractory combinations possible between a Nuclear family and their pet.
But I didn't get the same transgressive charge a lot of folks seem to from the scatalogical & deviant nature of the joke- neither did the wife.
After some discussion, we decided it was because the kind of no holds (or holes) barred full-contact humor that is the heart of the film isn't that much different from the kinds of things we use to make each other laugh, and the kind of family humor that permeates our relationship with my brother in law and sister in law.
The very thought of someone anally penetrating a retarded child is enough to send some sensitive souls fleeing the cinema (as happened to a middle aged couple seated near us), but taken in the context of a joke, I'm left saying to myself "...and?"
I've come up with much worse than that when some cell phone zombie in an SUV cuts me off, or when I forget I've put a loaf in the oven to brown and the smoke detector starts shrieking.
The two funniest parts, for me, were not traditional verbal tellings at all.
One guy worked the joke into his slight-of-hand act with two decks of cards, and earned an enthusiastic ovation from our audience.
Another one,
Billy the Mime, did the joke in mime form on a busy street...the reactions of the ladies eating at the cafe behind him were every bit as funny as his mime-tastic sexual antics with a dog.
The most interesting parts to me were critiques of the joke and why it works and its history as a 'secret handshake' among working comedians. George Carlin, our most cerebral comedian, had the best insights on the inner logic of the joke and the best way to tell it (even as his filmed delivery was a bit flat).
I don't think the movie was completely successful because it never fully delivers on its promise to show what goes on between comics when the audience goes home.
The early segments frame the joke in a jazz improv context- comics getting together and trying to top each other in depravity, creativity and stamina, a comedy version of the cutting contests between jazz musicians in New Orleans that determined the artistic pecking order.
But few of the comics involved deliver on that promise.
You get them talking about the joke like Carlin, or telling jokes
about the joke, like Martin Mull or Robin Williams, or chatting about the first time they heard it, or who told it best.
But when it comes to delivering their profane payload, most of them reacted like blushing brides on their wedding night, reluctant and coy.
The one guy who seemed to dig in with unfeigned relish is Bob Saget of all people, who works some remarkably foul, profane ideas into the joke brilliantly...but even he's cut off midway through, called away to do a show.
The impression I got was of a bunch of people who didn't want to give the game away. They told the joke, but knowing they were on camera and exposed to an audience beyond the insiders hanging around the club at 3am they pulled their punches.
The reason the joke is underground is the reason nobody with a career to protect will actually cut loose with it on film...to tell it right, you are shattering taboos guaranteed to offend the maximum number of customers. And in our modern era of digital media, an isolated clip can live forever on-line.
There's a section near the end where various folk discuss how the joke seems less dangerous in the media-saturated present than in days gone by.
Given the general reluctance to really cut loose in the telling, I'm not sure I agree with them.
