It’s no surprise, really. Movies, more than any other medium, are the most adaptable in terms of the experience. They’re of a length that, while feeling like a long time to become enfolded in a story, also don’t take up your entire evening. They’re just as enjoyable as a night out as they are as a night on the couch. And most of all, they can be either a communal experience, or can be enjoyed in total solitude.
There’s really no parallel to the thrill a movie can provide. Books, music, television, or any other storytelling medium you can think of, all have their unique way of peeling up the corners of your psyche and digging themselves in, but movies seem to be able to do it better than any other. Case in point: a certain member of my family had a few rough years of childhood, having seen both Psycho and Jaws at nearly the same time, and subsequently not wanting to not be involved with bathing in any way. I, myself, remember the 100 minutes I spent transfixed by the slowly-dawning horror of The Wicker Man, and how I watched and rewatched the deathbed dictation scene in Amadeus, which in my opinion contains the finest acting of the decade. My favorite moment, though, was the collective gasp of the crowd both times we saw the alien mothership rising up above Devil’s Tower at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Everyone has their own personal moments, but if you were to lay anyone’s particular set out on a table, you’d have a very accurate cross-section of who they are, what they like and dislike, what really gets their mind churning. To that end, I offer you forty-five of mine…
First up, comedy. Ah, comedy. Is there anything better than sitting down to a favorite film, knowing ahead of time that it’s going to be hilarious? I propose that there is not. In compiling this list, I began to realize just how few films there are that comedically get to me time and time again, but within that group there’s a lot of diversity. Here they are (as of June 2006, at least), and I hope to prove that comedy has more to offer to us than just the chance to laugh.
1. What’s Up, Doc? (1972)
Pound for pound, this is the most entertaining comedy I’ve ever seen, hands down. There’s something for everyone in this movie, highbrow, lowbrow, and everywhere in between. The plot, brilliantly scripted by Buck Henry, David Newman, and Robert Benton, is far too convoluted (not to mention silly) to recap here, but it’s pretty incidental anyway. Basically, a series of identical overnight bags get switched between residents of a San Francisco hotel, leading to an endless and dazzling array of mistaken identities, ludicrous slapstick, lightning-fast wordplay, and the sheer joy of watching actors who obviously love what they’re doing. Since those actors include Barbra Streisand, Ryan O’Neal, Kenneth Mars, Madeline Kahn, and Austin Pendleton, you can imagine how much fun that is. In fact, I believe this would probably be one of the most quotable films in cinematic history, if only the dialogue didn’t go blurring by at a sometimes disorienting speed…
“I know I’m different, but from now on I’m going to try to be the same.”
"The same as what?”
”The same as people who aren’t different.”
“Good morning!”
“No… I don’t think so.”
“Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” (this line, of course, is spoken by Ryan O’Neal)
“Who are you?”
“I am Hugh!”
“You are me?”
… I could go on. For a long time. Seriously, if you’ve ever heard me deliver a deadpan line, or mutter an offhand comment under my breath, this is where I learned it.
I hold it in such high regard that I found myself turning to it on a day when I needed a laugh more than ever. On September 11, 2001, Amy and I spent the day like everyone else, watching the endless loop of destruction on the news, not knowing if the horrors of that day were a mere prelude to something even worse. I had come home early from work, and I was literally afraid to stop watching television, half-convinced I was seeing the very fabric of civilization collapsing around us. As the afternoon and evening passed, my eyes started to glaze over, and I began to realize that I wouldn’t be able to go to bed without some sort of resolution.
And that’s where What’s Up, Doc? did its magic. Amy and I watched the whole thing before going to bed that night, and I’ve never known a time when a film was more precisely what I needed at the time I saw it. The ludicrousness of the story and the characters were the perfect antidote to the entire day, and I went to bed, not with a feeling of contentment, but at least the assurance that the sun would come up the next morning.
2. My Favorite Year (1982)
Another function that comedy performs in our lives is to how important it is to believe in something, even if it seems ridiculous or trivial, or doesn’t even hold up to what it promises to be when you look at it up close.
Like heroes, for instance. There’s a kind of unwritten pact that we enter into with those that we look up to… they’ll continue to be the shining beacon of what we want them (and, by extension, ourselves) to be, and they allow us believe that's who they really are. But what if you came face-to-face with your ultimate hero, only to find that he’s an unapologetic drunk, and incredibly flawed in just about every way? That’s the dilemma that Mark Linn-Baker faces in this 1982 classic.
Mark plays Benjy Stone, a junior writer for the most popular live sketch comedy show in 1950’s Manhattan. He’s living every kid’s dream, hanging around "30 Rock" with genuinely funny people all day and being paid for it. When Benjy’s all-time favorite action hero, Alan Swann, is scheduled to be that week’s guest star, he’s almost beside himself. That is, until Swann shows up, in the form of Peter O’Toole, slurring and stumbling through a role that seems tailor-made for him and his off-screen bad boy image. (King Richard the Lionhearted? Lawrence of Arabia? They came later. This is how I was introduced to Sir Peter.)
Benjy continues to defend Swann’s loutishness, until he’s the only one who believe that there’s still a “silly goddamn hero” hiding somewhere inside the disappointing boor. And when that hero finally comes out in the movie’s final scene, I defy you not to start grinning from ear to ear, pretty much the way I have each of the twenty-plus times I’ve seen this movie.
What continues to strike me about this film is how jam-packed it is with great bits going on around the periphery. Often the funniest person on screen isn’t the one delivering the punchline. Of course, when you load your ensemble with Mr. Linn-Baker, Joseph Bologna, Adolph Green, and Lainie Kazan (at a mere forty years old, already well entrenched in the embarassing-ethnic-mother role she would continue to play her entire career), you’re already halfway there.
Here’s an interesting note…
I never realized, until I listened to the DVD commentary by director Richard Benjamin, that it boasts the longest single sustained special effect in film history. Seriously! It’s the 45-second shot of Peter O’Toole and Mark Linn-Baker walking and talking through 1950’s Manhattan, and the matte painting that flawlessly fills in the skyline above them the entire time.
But the heart of the film strikes deep into my own personal philosophy, which is that wholeheartedly believing in something makes it true, in a very fundamental sense, and it’s Benjy’s faith in his childhood hero that ultimately forces Alan Swann to become, well, Alan Swann.
3. The Music Man (1962)
I’ve known many a musical in my day (if you need proof, see my Musical Influences list), but this is one of the best translations from stage to screen there has ever been. It really was a bridge for me, firmly connecting the theatrical world that my parents raised me in and the realm of movies that I would move into on my own. Usually, works for the stage have to be “opened up” when it’s time to make a movie of them, adding locations so that the whole thing doesn’t come off as feeling “stagy”. This version of Meredith Willson’s show, however, uses its acute sense of place to create the illusion of a real Iowa town in the 1920’s, to the point where it appears almost tactile. River City, Iowa, is right up there with Ray Bradbury’s Greentown, Illinois as the collecting place of all American nostalgia, a warm, welcoming place that brings to life the world as you thought it was when you were five years old.
This idyll is turned sociologically inside-out when a con artist comes to town, taking everyone’s money under the pretense of being a music teacher selling instruments and band uniforms as insulation against pool-hall sin. As with musicals like this one, the stakes are never all that high, even if the characters themselves think they are. You can just settle back in your chair and enjoy all the comings and goings, the petty political intrigue and innocent romances. It must have been an anachronism even when it first came out, and it's all the more charming for it.
Robert Preston plays the con man, and Shirley Jones is the stuffy piano teacher who knows his story doesn’t ring true from the very start. In a word, they’re perfect. You would never guess that Preston had originated this role on Broadway, his reactions and timing are so fresh, and Ms. Jones, who always seemed more at home to me here than the lurid 60’s of her Partridge Family fame, is so radiant she probably lit some of the scenes herself. Actually, that could be due to the fact that she was pregnant through the entire shoot – see how her costumes become more and more billowy as time goes on? Man, these DVD commentaries really are something!
The film never suffers from the over-long syndrome that many musicals fall prey to, even when Buddy Hackett goes off on a tangent and leads an entire dance number about the virtues of prudent women. It’s also one that should be definitely seen in widescreen, since that’s the only way you can get all four Buffalo Bills on screen at the same time.
When Amy’s grandmother passed away in 1992, she had already asked that “Goodnight My Someone” be played at her funeral, and the honor fell to me to play it, accompanying the singing of one of the theater friends of her son Alex. It was incredibly difficult to get through… it’s simultaneously one of the saddest and most hopeful songs I know, full of both hope and tragic acceptance at the same time.
4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
I’ve been a fan of Michel Gondry ever since I saw his mind-bending music videos (like Kylie Minogue’s “Come Into My World” - YouTube it and we'll compare notes on how we think it was done), so it was practically a given that I would enjoy his feature films. What I didn’t expect was a story so beautifully nuanced and emotionally elegant as this.
Before I go on, let me say that I have mixed feelings about the computer-generated revolution in special effects. While it allows us to see things that would be impossible with bluescreen or miniatures alone, it’s given the most fantastic sights a casualness that I’m not entirely comfortable with. I guess it’s raised the bar in terms of how special effects are used, rather than the fact that’s they’re present at all. I’ve never seen CG effects used in a more purposeful and elegant way than Spielberg’s sci-fi movies (AI, Minority Report, War of the Worlds), but in the hands of lesser filmmakers they can be just as soulless as, say, bad stop-motion animation. The beauty of M. Gondry’s work, however, is that the effects are never obvious or front-and-center. They still have playfulness to them, that tinge of “how-did-he-do-that?” uncertainty which today’s seamless CG work tends to render moot. But in a Gondry film, the effects merely play around the periphery, framing but never detracting from the human interactions.
Take, for example, the scene in the middle of Eternal Sunshine, where Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, as boyfriend and girlfriend, are having an intense conversation in a bookstore. As they talk and argue about their relationship, the color starts bleaching from the books on the shelves behind them, one by one, until they’re standing amid entire shelves of white-on-white books. And why is this happening? Because we’re in a flashback… Jim is having his memory professionally erased to make him forget all about Kate, since their relationship did end, and end badly. The catch, however, and the hinge that the entire plot turns on, is that partway through the erasing procedure, Jim decides he doesn’t want to forget the relationship after all, and tries to find obscure memories to hide his thoughts of Kate in, so he’ll still remember her when the procedure is over.
It’s a testament to Gondry’s artfulness that this incredibly abstract plot is so cohesive and emotionally real on the screen, even amid all the digital trickery, and the final scene is one of the most tragic, and simultaneously uplifting, ones that I’ve ever seen. And it does it without any special effects at all.
5. Wet Hot American Summer (2001)
It takes a lot for a new comedy to break into my top ten list. It’s not that I’m one of those people who think that today’s comedy is nothing but gags involving sex and feces. Believe me, I can enjoy a good poo joke just as much as the next guy. But the truth is that comedy is hard to sustain over ninety or a hundred minutes. There’s got to be a living, beating heart under all the goofy reaction shots and pie-throwing, or ultimately is just doesn’t hang together.
Along with a DVD commentary track featuring the director and some of the cast, WHAS has an audio track that is identical to the original film, except that there are additional man-made farting sounds every time a character makes a sudden move. If that doesn’t sound like a completely brilliant idea to you, then you probably shouldn’t bother watching the film itself. Actually, the same goes for a character having a can of vegetables as a spiritual guru, a group of nerdy kids saving their summer camp from a falling Skylab, or a heartfelt rendition of “Day By Day” from Godspell being soundly booed at a talent show.
Still with me? Then we have much to discuss.
WHAS takes every convention from the American summer camp/sex comedy genre and twists it until it almost snaps. And that’s about as elaborate as the plot gets. But when the cast consists of alumni of defunct comic ensemble The State (Michael Showalter, Michael Ian Black, director David Wain), as well as Paul Rudd, Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce, and Amy Poehler, you shouldn’t be watching for the subtle intricacies of the story line.
This is one of the few films that have made me laugh so hard that I’ve ended up sweating.
6. Monty Python & the Holy Grail (1975)
My school theater program did several workshops with Detroit’s eminent troupe Theater Grottesco during my high school years. Malcolm Tulip, one of Grottesco’s founding members and an Englishman, once nearly flew into a rage when someone mentioned Monty Python. He said that he hated them, loathed them in fact.
“Why do you hate them so much?” we asked him.
“Because every bloody American thinks they can do them!” he replied.
And, to some degree, he was right. Just about every adolescent in this country recites entire Python routines, all in the same horrible approximation of a British accent. But where Malcolm saw it as bad impersonations, in actuality it’s done out of sheer admiration. In fact, I believe that every high school kid, in some way, needs to experience the six men that compromise that classic comedy troupe.
At first, in the late 60’s, Python became an unwitting example of the American counter-culture through their TV show "Monty Python's Flying Circus", and the way they gleefully tore down every convention they could get their hands on. By the time I got around to them in the late 80’s, however, they had come to be something a little more universal. They embodied everything that was out-of-bounds as far as comedy was concerned, pushing their way out into uncharted territory. They seemed to be totally unconcerned with whether what they were doing was particularly funny or not (in fact, I think they have about a 50-50 funny-to-unfunny-ideas ratio); instead, they simply wanted to do something that was “out there”, something that had never been done before. And in going for the ludicrous, they expanded all our minds in the definition of what could be comsidered funny.
For many of us, they were an essential part of not only our development as pop-culture consumers, but of our own senses of humor. They taught us that if handled properly, nothing is completely out of bounds. And coming themselves from a culture that prides itself on its steadfastness, it drives the point home even further.
As for the movie itself… King Arthur tops a fog-shrouded hill, skipping along in front of his manservant, who is clacking two coconut halves together to mimic the sound of a trotting horse. When the pair approach a castle, the unseen guards enter into a heated discussion with them about exactly how a person would go about getting a coconut in medieval England. And that’s just the first three minutes of this epic about rabbits of both the lethal and Trojan variety, Holy Grail-shaped beacons, sorcerers named Tim, knights whose sole desire to own a shrubbery, and a head-spinning variety of every self-referential sort of joke you can think of. The film doesn’t play by anyone’s rules, even committing the most cardinal sin of not bothering to have an ending.
This is one of those films that I’m positive will be just as hilarious and influential in the twenty-fifth century as it has been in the twentieth.
7. Just Friends (2005)
I’ll come right out and say it: I saw this movie for the first time only two days before I put this list together. Ergo, this movie might not make the cut when I get around to updating this list. But I laughed out loud so many times while watching this that I just had to include it.
There’s a fine art to comedic timing, especially pertaining to physical humor. I remember reading that the great Warner Brothers animator Chuck Jones experimented tirelessly with making the process of Wile E. Coyote falling off a cliff as funny as possible. He finally determined the perfect amount of time between the moment when the falling Wile E. disappears from sight and the thud-and-dust-cloud when he hits bottom: 17 frames. Not 16, or 15, but 17. That’s an adjustment of 1/24th of a second. That’s how exact comedic timing it. And how ineffable; you either have it or you don’t. Just Friends hits that elusive mark with a higher percentage that any film I’ve seen in a long time.
In it, Ryan Reynolds plays a big-shot L.A. record executive who is only now realizing how shallow his life really is. He thinks often of his hometown on the East Coast, and his best friend in high school (Amy Smart), who he never admitted his true feelings for. So when he’s forced to make an emergency stopover in that hometown en route to a Christmas in Paris with a bubbleheaded pop star (Anna Faris), he sees the chance to confess his love and set his life back on the course it should have taken.
There’s an inordinate amount of physical comedy and visual humor here, so much so that it seems like the entire film should fall apart as sight gag after sight gag plays out, but strangely enough, it doesn’t. Even when events border on the ridiculously implausible, it’s all done with such a sense of comedic tautness that it sometimes looks like a ballet is being performed. There isn’t anyone who can pull a deadpan reaction like Ryan Reynolds, and Anna Faris proves that she’s more than just the straight-woman from the Scary Movie movies by adapting a stream-of-caffeinated-consciousness persona as the embodiment of all pop vapidity.
But best of all is Roger Kumble’s direction, which beautifully orchestrates every sight gag to perfection, never lingering when a jump cut is funnier. One of my favorite running gags in the film is the way Reynolds’ character and his little brother mercilessly – and matter-of-factly – beat on each other at every opportunity, and how that brutality is gradually revealed to be the ultimate expression of brotherly affection. It’s one of the many ways this film demonstrates a real soul under its goofy, hell-bent mania.
8. Ed Wood (1994)
I’ve never really been a fan of director Ed Wood’s incompetent brand of filmmaking. It’s amusing, of course, to watch Plan 9 from Outer Space and marvel at the torturous, labored twists of the plot that eventually adds up to nothing, or even contradicting itself, and the endlessly looped footage of Bela Lugosi walking around (the only footage completed before the veteran star died). But what I never appreciated was the determination it took to make films like Atomic Bride or Spider Baby until I saw this film, one of the many collaborations between director Tim Burton and star Johnny Depp.
The film, in large part based on the life of the real Ed Wood, follows him through the high and low points of his career. Ed has a lot to deal with… from his own leanings toward transvestitism, to his strange friendship with the aging, morphine-addled Lugosi, to trying to find new and novel ways to raise money for his increasingly boneheaded ideas for films. That’s the part that works best in this film, because Depp makes clear in portraying Ed Wood exactly what one must remember when watching his films… the man loved making them. He loved everything about the process, from hammering out an idea on an Underwood typewriter, to getting his friends to take starring roles, no matter how inept at acting they were, to piecing everything together in the editing room.
The film’s climax comes on opening night of Plan 9, and the excitement that Ed and his band of friends feel as the lights go down and the crowd starts cheering is amazingly visceral. You even stay with Ed as he keeps watching the screen, smiling even as the cheers turn into boos and swirling storms of hurled popcorn. The look on Depp’s face tells you everything; he made the film for himself, and loves it no matter what anyone else thinks. This man believed he was talented, believed that just about any special effect could be fudged with stock footage, believed that he was making important films that would stand the test of time. He was right on at least that last point, and by the time the movie’s over, you’ll swear that you could make one too.
One of my favorite scenes is late in the film, when Wood happens to run into a world-weary Orson Welles, and the two commiserate about the harsh realities of the film business. Think about it: if everyone believed in themselves as much as Ed Wood did, and put their faith in the magic of their own creativity, what kind of world would this be?
9. Garden State (2004)
When it came time to do the write-up for all these choice pieces of pop culture I’ve selected, I had to think about specific reasons why I like each of them so much. And frankly, at first I wondered why I put Garden State, both the writing and directing debut of “Scrubs” star Zach Braff, in the Comedy category. On the surface, it seems like it shouldn’t belong there. But I instinctively listed it right along with my other laugh-out-loud favorites, and I had to ask myself why. The film is basically about a young man (played by Braff himself), coming home after the death of his mother, and follows the way in which he deals with his emotionally distant father, at the same time trying to find a way to find his life’s center after it’s been thrown as far off track as it can be.
What I finally came up with, after thinking about the film, is while the core of the story is tragic, there are bright glimmers all around the edges, the brightest of which is the character played by Natalie Portman, a girl who at first seems to be nothing but a bare construct of quirks, but eventually reveals the complex, conflicted character underneath. She’s really the antithesis of Braff’s character, who is nothing but a ball of angst to begin with. Watching the two of them circle around their attraction for each other, learning by fits and starts how to prop each other up and balance each other out, is nothing short of inspiring.
It doesn’t sound particularly funny, does it? But whether you consider Garden State to be a comedy or not probably hinges on how you consider life itself. In and around the inherent sadness of the film, there’s a warmth and beauty to even the most offhand images and dialogue that’s missing from a lot of “feel-good” films. Even when the characters seem hopelessly lost, there’s never a second’s doubt that they'll find their way back. At least, that’s how it made me feel, and if that’s the feeling you take away from this film, you’ll understand why it’s in this category. But if you find yourself returning to returning to the darker parts, the excruciating break-up scene at the end, or the bizarre idea of a bottomless pit out in the middle of the New Jersey wilderness, then you’ll probably believe that this film, like life itself, can only be considered a drama.
10. Raising Arizona (1987)
There was a time when I studied film, and my eye necessarily turned to the more technical aspects of the art form. During that period, the idea of telling a good story took a backseat to being innovative with camera angles, special effects, and whatever other forms of gonzo trickery the filmmaker could throw at me. It was during this time that I got into the films of Orson Welles, Sam Raimi (the Evil Dead films in particular), and the Coen brothers.
While most people probably prefer Fargo as the best of Joel and Ethan’s work, for me it’s this babynapping-gone-wrong story. Where Fargo has a bitter undercurrent that powers every character except the valiant sheriff Marge, everyone in Raising Arizona just wants to be happy. Even if their values are skewed enough to believe that robbery and kidnapping are required to meet those ends, their hearts are always yearning toward the right place. That attitude is probably the only way the plot could be viewed as comedic: Holly Hunter and not-yet-self-parodic Nicolas Cage are a mismatched couple (a police officer and a barely reformed ex-con, respectively), who fulfill their ardent wish to be parents by stealing one of the richest quintuplets in the state. See what I mean? They only steal the child of someone who has plenty to spare! Their attempts at evading the law are complicated by the bumbling “help” of two of Nic’s escaped inmate friends, and the constant pursuit of a burly, bestial bounty hunter who seems to have otherworldly tracking abilities.
No one can pull off a visual joke quite like the Coens, and that’s even more impressive once you find how equally adept they are at comedic dialogue. Here’s a sample of their style, set in a general store:
“Do you sell balloons?”
“Yup.”
“Do they come in funny shapes?”
“Nope. Less’n you think round’s funny.”
The comedy is all deadpan, and all of it works. You can easily forgive the usual strange inconsistencies and unexplained bits of Coen brothers movies, which I find especially tantalizing. For example, why does Nicolas have a tattoo identical to one the bounty hunter has? Are they long-lost brothers? Two halves of some fractured psyche? I’ve never found anyone who could explain that to me. And maybe I don’t want to.
Many of those films I saw during those college years, full of whip-pans, extreme zooms, and interminable Steadicam shots, have fallen by the wayside, but it turns out that there’s much more going on in this one. Through all the dubious moral decisions and weirdness, there’s a lively spirit that never fails to bring a smile to my face.
Honorable Mention – Colin Higgins
In 1981, my family began subscribing to HBO, and it was a real turning point in my film education, or at least as much of one that a kid of ten really needs. All of a sudden, movies were readily available every day, dispensed as easily as potato chips, without commercials or any other distractions. I had the pleasure of being introduced to films I’d never see otherwise (and, truthfully, some I never bothered to see again). Not only that, but I had the chance to see them over and over AND OVER, to make my first attempts to study them and figure out why they did or didn't work.
I never realized it at the time, but during those halcyon years between our first month of receiving HBO to our purchase of a VCR (about four years, as far as I can remember), my eyeballs were infused with the work of one filmmaker more than any other… Colin Higgins.
Who the hell? you’re probably asking, as did I when I recently realized the connection (thanks to the almighty IMDB). But aside from writing the classic Harold and Maude, for which he's best known, this guy must have had some kind of Faustian pact with HBO. There’s a short list of about a dozen films I’ve seen more than any others, simply because they’d run almost every other day, and no less than three of my top (technically, I should say “most frequent”) ten were written or directed by Mr Higgins. I know nothing about him, but I know that those three films (the Goldie Hawn/Chevy Chase thriller-comedy Foul Play, the Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor thriller-comedy Silver Streak, and the Lily Tomlin/Jane Fonda/Dolly Parton office comedy Nine to Five) all were the result of this one man, who I still know nothing about. But I couldn’t complete this section without giving a little tribute to this unsung hero of HBO-children everywhere, whether they know it or not. Mr. Higgins, I salute you.
And beware of the dwarf.
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