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Talk dirty to me funny
Warning: This review, like The Aristocrats, has language some (many?) may find offensive. Proceed at your own risk. Do you know a joke you can listen to a hundred times and still find funny? Probably not, so you may have been discouraged by what you've read about The Aristocrats, in which dozens and dozens of comics and others in the business tell and discuss one classic joke you've never heard. Forget what you've read. The Aristocrats is Show Business 101, a lesson in comedy, history and technique, a master class taught by three generations of the funniest people alive. Notably absent are those who don't "work blue," because the whole point of "The Aristocrats" — the joke, not the movie — is to make it as filthy and disgusting as you can. This movie's full of language that would make a rapper blush. The beginning and end of the joke are almost always the same; it's the middle that allows room for personal embellishment. "A guy walks into an agent's office..." pitching his act. No matter who's telling it the act usually involves scatology, incest and perhaps bestiality. After the guy has described a spectacle in which a father, mother, two children and a dog have sex with each other in every possible configuration while covering the stage with shit, piss, vomit and cum, the agent says, "That's quite an act. What do you call yourselves?" The guy replies, "The Aristocrats." The punch line wears thin fast but the description of the act varies with every telling, often ad libbed, and therein lies the fun. The variations in the film include telling the joke while juggling or doing card tricks; there's a mime version (but why is he wired for sound?), a ventriloquist with his dummy, a cartoon version with the "South Park" kids, Dick Smothers hearing it for the first time from his brother Tom and Kevin Pollak telling it as Christopher Walken. The editorial staff of The Onion sits around a table discussing ways to make the joke more offensive ("The guy could smear shit on his face and do a blackface routine..."), including whether they can include gay-bashing in the act when there's also gay sex. David Brenner tells a Philadelphia version. Mario Cantone tells and sings it as Liza Minnelli. Carrie Fisher works her parents ("My mother's a golden shower queen...") and Mickey Rooney ("He was into fisting") into the act. Sarah Silverman personalizes the joke in her own way. Andy Dick and someone discuss obscure sex acts (felching, rusty trombone, etc.), even some John Waters missed on the DVD of "A Dirty Shame." Bob Saget makes another attempt to puncture his clean image. Others participating include George Carlin, Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, Drew Carey, Chris Rock, Phyllis Diller, Martin Mull, Hank Azaria, Eric Idle, Jon Stewart, Fred Willard and Bruce Vilanch; and they're just the tip of the iceberg. A non-sexual climax of the film comes in Gilbert Gottfried's rendition of the joke at the Friars Club roast of Hugh Hefner. It was three weeks after 9/11 and the discomfort level in New York was high. Suddenly some material was taboo at what's usually a no-holds-barred event, until Gottfried broke the ice with a joke everyone in the crowd knew but most had never heard in a public situation before. As a rule jokes aren't supposed to be explained, but cut The Aristocrats some slack. Not everyone will care, just as some won't want to hear the comics' language, but it's an education to hear the joke analyzed, deconstructed and turned inside out by all these experts. Although no movie has ever done more to earn the appellation "one-joke comedy," The Aristocrats goes off on tangents, not only rendering the original joke nearly unrecognizable but working other jokes into the mix. One told during the closing credits deserves a movie of its own but they'd have trouble with the title: "I Didn't Know Whether to Send Them a Bottle of Wine or a Cub Scout." Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza put the project together and did a seriously good job of assembling and ordering a mountain of material. Special thanks are given at the end to people who apparently didn't make the cut. That might not hurt so much if Jillette didn't make such a point of the joke's success being a case of "the singer, not the song"; but on the other hand they've left in some versions of the joke that totally bomb. You can learn from them too. Steve Warren is a local actor and film reviewer. His reviews can also be seen weekly in the Sunday Paper. |
The Aristocrats
Directed by: Paul Provenza 
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