| By Fred Topel
In Theaters July 29
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You’ll find no dirty jokes in this article. This article is purely about the making of a documentary. The documentary is about the world’s dirtiest joke and all the different variations the industry’s top comedians can put on it. But this article is about pure filmmaking.
Directed by stand-up Paul Provenza and produced by Penn Jillette, the film is solely Provenza’s vision. Jillette provided this kind of working environment for him, because he felt it was the only way to ensure the film’s edge.
“I think one of the big problems with movies, the ones that I go to that I really don’t like is that feeling of committee,” Jillette said. “The only thing committee ever agrees on is beige. [George] Carlin actually laid this down as a law for signing the release. He made us promise that we would not take a penny from anyone or any advice from anyone until the final edit was done and that that would not change. We promised George that because we didn’t want anybody saying, ‘You know, this is great boys, we’ll give you the money, but we need a little more Robin Williams, a little less Gilbert [Gottfried], okay?’ George has been around enough to know that once you’ve got anybody else involved, there would be that kind of stuff.”
Though the biggest names in comedy, from Williams to Carlin, Drew Carey to Bob Saget, The Smothers Brothers to Carrot Top are featured, the movie is nothing more than filmed interviews. It is their analysis of the joke that provides the film’s creativity.
“Like every other aspect of the movie that moviemakers generally concern themselves with like ‘is it in focus and how does it sound,’ we really decided early on that content was king,” Provenza said. “By going to where people felt comfortable, by sometimes just having 15 minutes to get in and get out and get the shot because they’re in between shows or something like that, that we would only concern ourselves with content and creating a context where people could be free and loose and basically just hang out with friends, not make a movie. So all we concerned ourselves with was the work that was being done and after all is said and done, we think that’s the right choice and that should always be the choice.”
The 90 minute film is culled from over 140 hours of raw footage. Provenza became obsessive about logging the footage, but that ultimately allowed him to find a movie within it.
“The way it’s put together and the way it’s laid out is I think what makes it really beautiful, and that’s all Provenza,” Jillette said. “Provenza transcribed all 140 hours himself. And not just the important stuff. He typed in Eric Idle saying, ‘Oh, you guys taping already? Where do you want me to sit?’ That’s all typed out. And Provenza’s a very smart cat, and I think he pretty much memorized it. He has this Savant thing going with The Aristocrats and if you ask him any cut in the movie what the next sentence is he can tell you. So he kind of put it together in this kind of Mozart way where he transcribed it all, read it over and then sat for three months. And then came in and said, ‘Now I’m ready to edit.’”
The joke itself involves the description if an obscene family act to a talent agent. Each comedian can make the act anything he wishes, hence the creative games of filthy one-upmanship. The punchline is that the name of the act is The Aristocrats. While it may seem anticlimactic, Provenza says it is the perfect joke.
“The joke itself, even in its basest form is a classic structure,” he said. “It is possibly the most simple comic structure which is just pure irony. It’s a 180 degree switch is what it is. It’s known as a switch which is you go very far in one direction and the punchline goes all the any in the other direction. And anybody who knows anything about comedy or has an instinct for what’s funny can see it coming a mile away. You know that it’s going to be 180 degrees in the other direction. There is an inherent structure to it which is pure comedy.”
Of course not every one of the 100+ comedians featured actually tells the joke. Some simply talk about it, which is also funny. “Jon Stewart made the choice not to tell the joke which is fine,” Provenza said. “There were people who said, ‘I’m happy to do this and this sounds like a really cool project, but you’ll never get me to tell this joke. It’s just too disgusting and I don’t really want to do it.’ And we would say, ‘Okay, that’s fine’ because in any group of comedians, you put more than two comedians in a room together, you’ll never get anybody to agree on everything. And that’s perfect and that’s part of what being in that world is like is that everybody has their own particular unique perspectives on everything. So we would say, ‘You don’t have to tell the joke. Talk about the joke’ and that’s what Jon did. He talked about the joke and it was very, very funny. Everybody was compromised to a certain degree because of time constraints but the DVD will have excerpts that aren’t in the movie of what it was like just hanging out with these people. So you’ll see Jon being really funny without ever telling the joke. There were quite a few people like that actually in the movie and that has just as much validity as anything else.”
The obscenity-filled film has already generated a bit of political heat, with the filmmakers circumventing the MPAA by releasing it unrated and some theater chains refusing to show it. But the filmmakers have no fears about the state of free speech in our country.
“I absolutely think that’s complete hype and jive,” said Jillette. “The side that wants to do censorship is about 10,000 people total. They write a zillion letters about a black woman’s breast and they try to rally together and get political power. They have none. They’re dying. They’re falling away and what you’re seeing in these flashes of power is desperate death throws. Meanwhile, the other side, Hollywood, the liberals, is about 100,000 people that think it’s really sexy to be a martyr.”
Provenza added, “My concern is really with the media’s response to that because the truth is we don’t have red states and blue states. We have 50 purple states because there’s a couple of thousand people in every state that made it red or blue. Statistically speaking, in the aggregate of 300 million people, they’re insignificant.”
Even the people refusing to show their film are not against free speech, according to Jillette. “Even the AMC guy who doesn’t want to show The Aristocrats believes very strongly in free speech,” said Jillette. “He’s just saying that for his chain, he wanted to get some publicity by saying, ‘This movie has some obscenity in it, so I’m not going to show it’ and that’s his way to play his card to get some press that says, ‘Oh, we’re very careful what we sell. We don’t mind violent anal rape in Irreversible or 9/11 images in War of the Worlds but we’re putting our foot down at people laughing at dirty words.’ And that’s a fine thing for him to do and if you asked him, do you think there should be a government agency that stops certain movies from coming out, I would guess, I’ve never met him, I don’t even remember his name, I think it’s Dick, he would say no.”
No hard feelings there, obviously. Provenza also concluded that America will always support obscenity. “The proof of it ultimately that this Christian fundamentalist swing is really a lot of propaganda is that when you go to a hotel and you check in and you get into your room, the porno is still 9.95,” he said. “The bible they give you for free. That’s everything y |
