My review after the break.

Spoilers and offensive themes included.

On the whole, I liked it, though I was suprised to find that even though I knew full well what I was getting into, there were moments when I was pretty damned uncomfortable. I found myself laughing when someone would find a particularly novel twist on the joke, but cringing when the sole purpose of a comedian’s delivery was shock value. Sarah Silverman was brilliant. So was Andy Dick. Bob Saget was painful. Saget’s telling was probably the most vile version in the film. I suppose the comedy there was to show the “Full House” guy getting raunchy, but it came off as a guy deserately trying to shake off his wholesome public personna.

I counted fifteen people who left before the movie was over. Other than that, the theater was packed. And a long line had formed for the next showing when we left. Many of the people who left in disgust got up toward the end, when Andy Richter started telling the joke to his kid, who looked to be about a year old. This was also the one point in the movie when I really took offesne (and I love Andy Richter). I’m sure the kid hadn’t the slightest concept of what was going on, but to hear a guy describe to his own kid, in first person, a list of deviant sexual acts he was going to perform on the kid, his mother, his relatives, and the family pet was, well, pretty friggin’ unsettling.

The most intersting part of the film is the recount of Gilbert Gottried telling the joke at the Friar’s Club Roast of Hugh Heffner, just a few weeks after September 11. Friar’s Club Roasts are notoriously filthy, tasteless, and boundary-stretching (they’re also usually very funny). But that particular roast took place at a time when much of the country wasn’t yet ready to laugh. Gottfried took the podium, and began with a couple of September 11-themed jokes (something about his flight catching a layover at the Empire State Building). The audience groaned (one guy screamed out, “Too Soon!”). So Gottfried — who’s more fearless than funny — ditches his 9/11 material and launches into the Aristocrats.

The movie suggests that Gottfried’s telling of an inside-baseball joke at that time, at that place “united” the audience. My guess is that it provided some cathartic release for the comedians, but that most of the rest of the audience was bewildered, if not a little offended (though I’d image a good percentage of the audience at a Friar’s Club Roast are comedians). At any rate, the movie offers up some fascinating footage of Gottfried’s delivery (which was obviously edited out of the roast before Comedy Central aired it). It’s interesting to watch as the other comedians realize what Gottfried’s about to do, and to see their faces laugh, release, and wait in anticipation of just how far he’s going to take the thing.

On the whole the D.C. audience with whom I saw the movie seemed to love it. With one exception (I’ll get to it in a moment), every version of the joke was met with laughter. You could tell a few people were uncomfortable, and perhaps much of the laughter was a little nervous, but I don’t think there’s any question that the vast majority of the people I saw the show with were happy they went.

But I do wonder if many of the people laughing weren’t laughing more to show their open-mindedness, or to show that they “get it” than because they actually found the jokes funny. Truth be told, this isn’t all that funny a joke. The audience was mostly self-selected, of course, and came to the theater knowing that a couple of hip guys had made a movie about the world’s dirtiest joke. Who wants to be the only one not laughing? In contrast, my guess is that if you’d gone to a conventioanl comedy club, even to see a particularly profane comedian, and he let loose with one of the fouler versions of the joke, most of audience would leave.

I’m sure a politician or two will make an issue of this movie, and I’m sure a cultural critic or two will take that some audiences were able to laugh at rape, incest, and other unspeakable nastiness a good indicator of our continued cultural decline. Maybe they’ll be on to something if they do. But I also think this was a situational kind of thing. The movie is pitched as a documentary (correctly, I think). I think much of the audience laughed to show that they’re “with it,” hip enough to be on the inside of this joke, and that they’re open-minded and tolerant of even the most offensive kinds of speech.

With one exception.

One strong piece of evidence in support of this idea came at the only time in the night when most of the audience didn’t laugh at a version of the joke, and in fact seemed genuinely offended. A comedian (his name escapes me) told a twist on the joke in which three black women come into the talent agency. One sits down and plays the cello. Another reads a work of great literature. The third paints. The talent agent asks the inevitable question: What do you call that act? Answer: The N____ C___s.

This was the only time during the entire movie when the crowd seemed taken aback. This was apparently too much. The odd thing is, in that the guy completely turned the premise of the joke on its ear, it in theory was one of the funnier versions of the joke (a similar twist, in which the family does wholesome things but takes on a filthy name (sans racial epithet), got a great reaction).

On one hand, I think the audience’s reaction (which was largely consistent with mine, by the way) makes sense. The truest test of tolerance may well be how well one tolerates intolerance. In that respect, this was the most offensive joke in the movie. The comedian described black women with the two words you’re never, ever supposed to use to describe black women. Oh, and he was white. Amoung a white audience in an urban area with progressive politics where most of the white population suffers from white guilt, this was probably the most boundary-pushing moment of the evening. I suspect Jillette and Provenza knew that. Race-based humor by far gets the least amount of play in the movie, perhaps indicating that even the producers know the limits of an audience’s ability to “tolerate intolerance.”

On the other hand, one could probably write a dissertation exploring why an audience that spent eighty-five minutes howling at scatology, necrophelia, pedophelia, and various combinations of the three found itself taken a back only when someone slipped in a racial epithet. In the history of the bawdy, X-rated Friar’s Club Roasts, the only one to ever provoke real public outrage was when Ted Danson showed up at the podium in blackface to roast Whoopi Goldberg (the two were dating at the time). Even the comedian who told race-inspired version of the joke seemed a bit embarassed, and immediately apologized for it. Every other incarnation of the joke was delivered with enormous creative pride. Hell, I can’t even bring myself to spell out the actual punchline.

I’ll make no prounouncements on whether the fact that the audience I veiwed the movie with found racism — even in jest — more offensive than, for example, shooting a ten-year-old boy in the head, then sodomizing the bullet hole (a joke most of the audience found pretty funny) is a good or bad thing. I’m not sure, frankly. I do happen to think it’s an interesting reflection of our values.

In that sense, I think, the movie is an enormous success. It’s a documentary about edgy comedy that accomplishes what edgy comedy sets out to do — test our limits, and in so doing, show what values, ideas, and mores we still hold sacred. I left the movie wondering why I laughed in parts, felt uncomfortable in others, and offended in others — and why the rest of the audience did the same. That’s more reflection I’ve done upon leaving a movie in a very long time.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 14th, 2005 at 9:45 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.