“Dying is easy, comedy is hard …”
The author of the quote that led to this line isn’t known as a comedian. Actor Edmund Gwenn is best remembered for his role as Santa Claus in the original “Miracle on 34th Street,” but when he was on his deathbed, a friend visited him and said, “This must be terribly difficult for you.”
Gwenn replied, “Not nearly as difficult as playing comedy.”
Over the years, the quote was condensed to the one that opens this post.
Yes, comedy is hard. Damned hard.
Especially since there are so many different types of comedy, some completely innocuous and others totally tasteless. We go through periods when some things are allowed and others forbidden. And then sometimes they switch.
The cartoon at the beginning and the one just above came from the National Lampoon magazine, which started publishing in 1970 and was a big deal for seven or eight years. Out of Nat Lamp came some of the people behind Saturday Night Live, which debuted in the fall of 1975 with a much edgier humor than it has 46 years later.
Maybe the biggest and best movie to come from the Lampoon was the 1978 film “Animal House.”
Sadly, it’s a film that never could be made today, whether for underage drinking, casual drug use and one of the pledges losing his virginity in a sleeping bag on the football field to a girt who, just before they begin, tells him, “I’m only 13.”
The fact is, we’re not living in a time when people find things particularly funny. Both extremes have problems for different reasons. On the left, the so-called “woke culture” is particularly puritanical, while on the right it’s all about mean humor that puts people down.
We’re told “Blazing Saddles” isn’t funny because of the racism in the store, a story that by the way was partly written by Richard Pryor. “The Producers” is off-limits because it humanizes Nazis and makes fun of the cross-dressing director of the play within a movie.
“Revenge of the Nerds” can’t be OK because the nerds use hidden cameras to take pictures of topless sorority girls and “Sixteen Candles” fails because of the hilarious scenes involving “Long Duc Dong.”
“No Yankee my Wankee …”
“The Jerk” loses out because Steve Martin’s character says he was “born a poor black child.”
As for the meanness on the right, look no further than Donald Trump in 2016 mocking a reporter with a disability.
Rush Limbaugh called 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton the “White House dog,” and five years later, John McCain told an audience of donors the reason Chelsea was so ugly was that “Janet Reno is her father.”
You rarely if ever hear self-deprecating humor from either extremes, and it’s a real shame.
If I say Trump is against gay marriage because he doesn’t want to have to marry a man, the only people who will find it funny will be people who don’t like Trump. But if I say I’m really worried about gay marriage because I don’t want to have to marry a man, that’s funny.
In fact, one of the biggest problems we face is that we take ourselves far too seriously.
I guess we’re afraid that if we don’t, no one else will.
Let’s make it a point to try and turn that around.