Jan252005
And Then the Mother Fing… Wait, I’m Telling it Wrong.
Filed Under Movies, Stand-Up Comedy
Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette premiered their new film “Aristocrats” at the Sundance Film Festival. The film is primarily the telling of one joke over and over again by comics as varied as Phyllis Diller, Steven Wright and Jon Stewart. The punchline is revealed in the title of the film. But even if you didn’t know it, the real humor comes from how darkly filthy the joke is told, with some versions including incest, bestiality, coprophilla and whatever else the comic can improvise at the moment.
The MPAA will likely rate it NC-17. If the language doesn’t kill ‘em first.
Shecky Magazine speculated that the film is a hoax, but the traditions of the joke are well established. Probably the most famous telling of the joke was by Gilbert Gottfried during the Friars’ Club Roast of Hugh Hefner… the joke never made it to air of course.
At 87 minutes of the same joke over and over again, the film could be close to a Bataan Death March of comedy, but it might be of the Mike Myers‘ school of extended joke, where it because funny because it is so relentless. Personally, I can’t wait to see it. If you want to sample a segment of the film, a link to the “South Park” version of the joke can be found here (highly adult language, you have been warned...).
It strikes me this can be almost a comedic Rorschach test, with the improvised middle section revealing something of the comedian’s own dark weirdness when he or she starts describing the Aristocrats act. Or just a really good excuse to curse. Either one.
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