So, Joe and I were playing basketball, and we couldn't sink a shot no matter what we did.
Dad: Know what happened? Here's what happened. An alien landed in the night, and it knocked down the basketball hoop and dragged it away. But the thing is, the alien looks exactly like a basketball hoop, and so now it's getting all mad at us. It's refusing to let us get the ball into its hoop.
Joe: Or maybe it likes it. It's like, thinking, "Cool! DODGEBALL!"
See, now? That is FUNNY.
The 40-Year-Old Virgin turns out not to be a movie but an idea. The idea is this: Not having sex until you are 40 is funny. Well, no it isn't -- it's OK. Joke after joke equating sex to hipness, to adulthood, to ease of being, to grace and to delight, all of these jokes can be ignored, because it's OK that Andy is a virgin. Except that it's NOT actually OK, and it can't be, because that's why the movie got made. OK?
The skits that illustrate, alternately, that this OK and not OK, are sometimes funny. They are sometimes, in fact, VERY funny. I laughed out loud. I like funny. But the real idea that is lurking in the movie is the massive dominance that sex has in day-to-day life -- in advertisements, in social interaction, in friendship. It's a fool's game to say when this became real. (Kids today! I tell you -- when I was nearly two years old, we had the Summer of Love! Now that was sex! Probably not for my parents, though.) But the movie abandons this. I know it isn't news, but it is real, and it is something that really matters. And the movie sets it on the wall, sets the crosshairs on it, and walks away.
In the movie, sex is on huge TV screens. Electronics are essentially used to promote sex, or, occasionally, spectacular violence. It's on the sides of buses (and is called out in jokes for it). And the realness of sex is held nicely up to the pretend sex. It's a sleeper notion, a Fast Times at Ridgemont High sort of insidious sneaky funny. The movie is really about what it says! It's just that the message is kind of tangled, like in Fast Times, or Scream, or one of the other not-so-dumb dumb movies.
But it's skits. There's a vomit joke (check), some nice product placements (check), a poker joke (check), and a transvestite (check, please). There's no real connection between characters -- no real ability to set up a real alternative to sex as a deity. But there are funny skits. Race and money and maleness are skewered much more effectively, with a sharp hammer's head swung fast, than sex ever is. By the end, I wanted more of that -- more of the vigorous improv and dialogue, like it was written by Barry Levinson's angry teenage son, who lives in LA and isn't happy about any of it. That was solid and shocking and a flare of real impact.
Alex was over on Friday night, and we got to talking about The Aristocrats. I went down to New York earlier this summer and went to the movie with my uncle, who is of a mind with me about funny, and it was what you might think. It was filthy. It was unimaginably filthy. It was shockingly hairball filthy.
Lots of comics told the joke, which may or may not have been an actual phenomenon before the movie. And then there was Sarah Silverman. OK, Gilbert Gottfried told the joke very well. But Silverman, oh, lord, Silverman. I lacked the sophistication to truly grasp at the instant when I saw her do it how well she had done it. But time passed, and I thought about it more, and more, and I saw her expression -- not deadpan, but sweetly brightly self-effacing and almost fey -- and I realized I had seen something really special.
And by "special," of course, I mean, "unimaginably hideous."
You may get "The Aristocrats," or you may not. I did get it. I told the Joke to some people in the U.K., and there were three of them, and two of them got it and the third just looked at me and said, "It's just not funny." Well, DUH.
So when I was talking to Al, I couldn't figure out how to describe how well Silverman got it. I think I said she hit the big bell, and she just kept hitting it, until your teeth rattled in their sockets. But what I think now is that the joke was like a long jump, and depending on how well you related to the jumper, that was the angle at which you saw the jumper jump. So, if you didn't really relate to the style, you were watching the jumper jump toward, or away, and you couldn't see what they were doing or how far they went.
And time rotated for me Sarah's jump. (Silverman's.) And now I see her delivery tracking away from where she takes to the air, in slow motion, her arms and legs pumping like a jumper, like a spider spinning. And you're watching, and you're thinking how absurd she looks, but then you see her face, that blithe stubborn facade like an athlete's, and the absurdity is your own thoughtless sophisticate's conceit. And you realize how far she's going, and how well she's done it, and you're up, out of your seat. You don't watch track and field all that much, just at the Olympics, and on that day, in that statium, all of it comes together. She got it. The damage she does is catastrophic. It's over. She's torn out huge gouts of sand and the earth is riven. But she never hints at it. You know they turn off the camera and she won't even ^%&^& smirk.
That's funny.
Talking to Joe in the car today.
Joe: "A big duck up on a tree." Is that funny?
Dad: Not really.
Joe: Tell me how to be funny.
Dad: It's not that easy, really. Funny's hard.
Joe: Well, how can you be funny?
Dad: Well, you try to find out what other people think is funny, and then do something that's similar but different enough so it seems new. And it has to seem funny to you, too.
Joe: What I think is funny is a ghost and some poop.
Joe: Knock knock.
Dad: Who's there?
Joe: Banana.
Dad: Banana who?
Joe: Banana Banana.
Joe: Knock knock.
Dad: Who's there?
Joe: Banana.
Dad: Banana who?
Joe: Banana Banana.
Joe: Knock knock.
Dad: Who's there?
Joe: Banana.
Dad: Banana who?
Joe: Wooden you like to know?
