Celebration: An Anthology to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop Sands and Coral, 2011-2013
Silliman University, 2013
I enjoyed the inventive zaniness of the Steve Martin comedies The Jerk (1979), Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982), The Man With Two Brains (1983), and All of Me (1984). Can you think of 1980s comedy without these classics? I've always identified them primarily as Steve Martin vehicles that it took me a while to find out there was another genius behind [and sometimes in front of, as well] the camera. Director, writer, and actor Carl Reiner [1922-2020] went for the broad, the absurd, the anarchic -- gleeful of the silly as long as it was believable. He will be remembered for his brand of comedy, for playing a con man in the Ocean's Eleven films with Steven Soderbergh, and for fathering director Rob Reiner, who also gave us some of the most delightful films ever made.
6:41 PM |
Saturday Night Live Goes Gay! and Other Instances of Humor in Faggotry
In the end, humour saves day. There is plenty of angry activism in the LGBT movement -- and there must be -- and in that regard, we are all children of Larry Kramer, the author and activist who goaded and scolded and shouted at all sorts of people, even colleagues in the gay men's health organisation he founded shortly after AIDS descended in full force in New York in the early 1980s. He believed in the power of his anger, and that anger spilled out in glorious rants in the novel Faggots and in the play The Normal Heart.
But there is also humour.
Sometimes that humour can be nasty, especially when it comes from straight comedians. Someone like Louis C.K. who once brandished the word "faggot" in a comedy routine and with such relish, too, that I could not help but cringe.
Can we excuse him for the "knowingness" he seemed to bring to the material? The "wink"? Wasn't he in fact making fun of the machismo of his audience? Perhaps. Jokes as a narrative can contain land mines. It can be used to be dismissive, and it can be used to sharply reveal the worms of a society predisposed to not talking about a "sensitive" issue. Jokes are a measure of our comfort with certain topics that galvanise us a people. To be able to laugh at ourselves is a sign of maturity.
In that regard, I do appreciate the humour Saturday Night Live! brings to the whole discussion of homosexuality.
In their "Gay Camp" featuring Ben Affleck, they make fun of conservatives' belief that you can "cure" gayness. Camps across America have been set-up to do just this -- and SNL pokes fun at this and the hypocrisy it is founded on.
They also make fun about the prohibition of gays from the military...
They also make fun of our tendency for erasure of the very gay certainty of things in some of our myth-making of the past -- and in this skit involving Spartan men (inspired by the gore and testosterone fest of movies like 300, which has since become a symbol of gritty masculinity), they magnify the little known fact that these men were probably highly involved homosexuals as befitted the culture then...
They also demolish for us the denial over the fact that rampant homoeroticism does simmer beneath celebrity culture...
And sometimes they just go for broke and glory in the fun and absurdity of gay life. In The Ambiguously Gay Duo, they parody superheroes in spandex (Batman and Robin immediately come to mind) who are really practically gay, they just don't know it. (Even the villains know it).
And sometimes they get to root of a certain issue, and in inviting laughter, we are forced to consider our stances in the culture war that is in fact brewing. Their "God is a Boob Man!" short film -- a fake trailer for a fake movie -- is a perfect example of this. In making fun of the recent conservative controversy over some "Christian" cakemakers' refusal to make wedding cakes for gay couples, they unmask the misguided venom of "Christians."
While it is true that American comedy of recent years has lost its cinematic funny bone (as this video essay by Tony Zhou clearly demonstrates, which pays special attention to the cinema of Paul Feig), it is also undeniably true that sometimes funny is just funny. There is, after all, much to love in the hilarious inanity of Feig's James Bond spoof, Spy (2015), starring the irrepressible Melissa McCarthy. Ms. McCarthy, after breaking out (and getting Oscar-nominated) in Feig's Bridesmaids (2011), has clearly come far and made for herself a unique attraction in film comedy: she has created a persona we have all come to appreciate and love, something only the best physical comedians -- Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Bill Murray, Jim Carrey, among others -- have managed to concoct and sell to an appreciative audience. In Ms. McCarthy's case, it is the generously endowed woman with pretensions of meekness who suddenly discovers a predilection for being bad-ass and foul-mouthed. She makes it work.
She has brought that persona to the shells of various characters in her movies -- including a tomboyish bridesmaid, an angry police officer, and a happy-go-lucky identity thief -- and sometimes they work, and sometimes they fall to the abyss of the uninspired. This time around, as a CIA desk jockey who finds herself becoming an active agent, the persona is fully engaged, making the pratfalls and banter that follow something in the new movie to love. The film works as a project of great comic timing, and while you are aware that everything you see is just comedic fantasy, you find yourself becoming fully invested in the shenanigans that unfold. Perhaps that is because everyone seems heavily invested in making this film work -- Jude Law and Jason Statham, for example, seem to be in serious modes deconstructing with glee their respective screen personas as suave playboy and dynamite action figure. This in turn makes the film a whole bunch of fun I did not really expect. Hell, it's a movie where you come to love Rose Byrne's villain as well while you buy thoroughly her cold-bloodedness. If that doesn't say anything about this film's appeal, I don't know what will.
Here is an uproarious and original comedy that stars one of Hollywood's genuine funnymen (Jim Carrey) and one of cinema's genuine chameleons (Ewan McGregor). Here is a movie that expands the notion of fact being so much weirder and more fantastic than fiction. Here is a movie that a lot of critics loved. But whatever happened to Glenn Ficarra and John Requa's I Love You Philip Morris [2010]? It's Oscar-bait material, but in this season of awards and top-ten lists, it's not being mentioned as a contender. Mr. Carrey is glorious here, and Mr. McGregor is something else. Already though, the film has had a checkered history: it meandered its way to theaters for months and months, but finally did not find an audience, given the haphazard way it has been handled by its distributors. (Nobody wanted to pick it up.) You have to ask: what went wrong? The marketing? The belated distribution? Or perhaps even homophobia? Perhaps. This is after all the story of the real-life Steve Russell, a gay man and a relentlessly inventive con man whose run-ins with the law have become quite legendary -- all of them a result of pursuing the love of his life, Philip Morris, a sweet-natured and blonde Southern boy he meets in prison, while serving a jail sentence for fraud. In a life rife with lies and shape-shifting (manifested as metaphor through moving clouds, a recurring motif in the film), Russell -- an ex-cop and former Bible-swearing family man -- has impersonated lawyers and CFOs and doctors and what-have-you's, and has even faked his own death by AIDS. Underneath all that is a fool for love, the only truth he has come to admit, near the end of the film. This is an extraordinary film of an extraordinary life. It is also relentlessly funny and both Carrey and McGregor deserve accolades for their chemistry and for making us believe that all these lies are the makings of magic. Too bad it is not receiving the kind of attention it deserves.
10:02 PM |
Manila's Best Improv Comedy Troupe to Hit Dumaguete
Silly People’s Improv Theater or SPIT, the premiere improvisational theater group in the Philippines, is set to conquer Dumaguete City on 15 August 2010 in an unscripted comedy showcase titled “SPIT Live in Dumaguete!” as part of the cultural season of the Silliman University Cultural Affairs Committee.
SPIT was founded in 2002 by entertainer Gabe Mercado and a group of friends after Mr. Mercado trained with legendary Second City founder Paul Sills, the acknowledged Father of Modern Improv, at the Wisconsin Theater Games Center. In 2004, SPIT spearheaded Spontaneous Combustion: The First Philippine Improv Festival at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, and then participated in the 3rd National Theater Festival where they premiered Sarskwela: Ang Sarswelang Kwela, a completely improvised twist on the traditional Filipino sarswela.
In 2009, they premiered two works at the CCP, including Cambiar!, an improvised educational environment themed show for the Earth Day Celebration, and Dingdong! Death is at the Door, an improvised long-form murder-mystery show for the 5th Virgin Labfest. SPIT also represented the Philippines in the prestigious Los Angeles Comedy Festival in Los Angeles in 2004.
Composed of thespians, teachers, and other professionals from varied fields, the group also does regular shows to packed audiences in some of the best entertainment spots throughout Manila and is a staple of corporate functions with their lap smart yet hilarious brand of comedy.With close to five hundred performances to date, SPIT has delighted local and international audiences with their unscripted unrehearsed and totally spontaneous shows.
The show is a co-production of Little Boy Productions. Tickets are available at P200 and P300 for both the matinee and gala shows. For inquiries, please call (035) 422-6002 loc. 520 or loc. 250, or 09173235953.
And yet, [Sarah] Palin still seems disturbingly unconcerned about how much she does not know.
Calling Tina Fey. Here’s Palin defending herself on the contention that she got confused about Africa:
My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars.
I thought that Katie Couric's interview with Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin was hilarious and scary at the same time, so much like listening to Miss Teen South Carolina bluff her way through that pageant question about American teenagers and maps. Then I stumbled on this SNL skit. By golly, Tina Fey -- that comedy goddess -- effectively abbreviates the horror that is Palin in her latest parody of the Alaskan governor, who surged only a few weeks ago to the top of the GOP's right-wing delight with her quote about hockey moms, pit bulls, and lipstick...
2:25 PM |
Carlin Takes His Wonderful Complaints and Grievances to the Ever After
Here’s something you won’t see in Barlett’s Familiar Quotations anytime soon: “You know something people don’t talk about in public anymore? Pussy farts.” Whaa---? That line—the first one that iconic comedian George Carlin utters for an HBO comedy special, Complaints and Grievances, not too long ago—got me for eternity and sealed one true thing about life on this side of the subversive: Carlin is the funniest white man, ever, in the history of the world. I was hooked. He went straight on with his side-splitting rants, this balding man with a white beard, giving more kick than the overrated discomforts of Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, or Chris Rock. For me, those guys were (or are) just foul-mouthed turds using comedy as a weapon for some form of insecurity or other; Carlin was positively foul-mouthed, yes, but he made you think: his humor was rarely personal, they were more a rabid form of social studies, with all sorts of expletives thrown in. Note his groundbreaking Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television:
Here’s a sample of his many taunts into our current political correctness: “You know why they got a cock up on a weathervane? ‘Cause if they got a cunt, the wind would blow right through it.” To listen to Carlin crack jokes is a cathartic encounter shredding to bits the hypocrisies we live with every single day but have no strength to even mock, perhaps simply because we don’t even smell the shit we’re swimming in because we’re so used to it. Until Carlin came along. And made us acknowledge we love to collect our lip crud, smell our toe nail clippings, wonder at the scabs from our heads—“little things… little things that come off ya, that [you’re curious about], especially if it’s something you can’t see, while it’s still on ya. Know what I mean? You’ve ever been picking your ass? … You know, just idly standing out in your driveway, picking your ass, and then you come across … an object! Honey, come here! You wanna couple of hits off these? While it’s still fresh?” Or how we secretly long to “disembowel with a wooden spoon” people who read self-help books, people who attend motivational seminars, people with bumper stickers that say WE ARE THE PROUD PARENTS OF AN HONOR STUDENT AT THE FRANKLIN SCHOOL (“What kind of empty people need to validate themselves through the achievements of their children? How’s it like to live with a couple of these misfits? ‘How’s that science project coming along, Justin?’ ‘Fuck you, dad, you simple-minded freak’.”), people who can’t seem to talk about the phone calls they’ve had without giving their shit, people who are self-important techno dicks who walk around with hands-free telephone headsets and earpieces, people who think it’s cute to let their children record their outgoing message...
... and people who send self-indulgent newsletters for Christmas...
Laurie Raymundo introduced me to George Carlin about four years ago—those long-gone and much-missed happier days when our small band of stragglers from the inanity of daily campus life used to gather in Silliman Village to have our semi-monthly dinners, and Bing and Margie would bring pot roast, Laurie would make her splendid pasta, and Wendy would bring her cake. That was the time she introduced me to Monty Python and Cheech and Chong as well, and made me realize that life may be hard, but comedy helps by coating it with icing.
3:00 PM |
Carl Reiner, 1922-2020
