The comedian Stewart Lee is a comedian that I like the comedy of TIMING IN COMEDY IS ESSENTIAL and I think that his comedy is an interesting mix of structure and timing and bitterness but he absolutely does not tell jokes TIMING. He will repeat pieces of information and mock the implied cultural logic of other comedians and will repeat pieces of information and mock the implied cultural logic of other comedians will repeat pieces of information and mock the implied cultural logic of other comedians but do you see how when I did it (TIMING!) then it was really boring and you got annoyed? He does it and 95% of people will still get bored but the other 5% will laugh. All of that 5% are in the house tonight and repetition is another thing his comedy uses.
As a quasi-Marxist who will probably look like the collapsed remnant of several pop stars of my era I will not mention that Stewart Lee looks like Gene Vincent on crisps that is ardently political as well. Stewart Lee is subtly arguing a leftist point of view and I fully expect or even demand given a certain level of beer that his next show be called STEWART LEE'S COLLECTIVISED FARMING CO-OPERATIVE or STEWART LEE'S FIVE YEAR PLAN or perhaps even STEWART LEE WILL DEFEND THE MOTHERLAND WITH RECOURSE TO DIDACTIC AND EXPLOSIVE CINEMATIC TECHNIQUES THAT ACTUALLY MOST REGULAR CITIZENS WILL FAIL TO UNDERSTAND. The last would work best because it is truer. Reptition! Timing!
What does he hate? He says: other comedians named Russell, the dilapidation and homegeneity of the UK high street, Twitter, you, some people who insult him on the internet, the audience he has accrued in the wake of being a more famous comedian of comedy in the last 10 years where his comedic comedy-style comic parody with words as well has been on the television. In reality and according to the fundamental(ist???????) logic of the comedy stylings of the comedian Stewart Lee he does not hate anyone, even the business man in his suit and tie (a reference bordering on oblique very much in keeping with the Stewart Lee phenomenon sweeping up and down UK pubs and clubs) because he wants society to be made of carpet remnants. Hence his show title: CARPET REMNANT WORLD. Timing?
Where are the jokes asks the 95%? Stewart Lee he no Bernard Manning of the racism. Bernard was timing in human form. Stewart eats up time like a hungry clock. Bernard would say 'jokes up your mother-in-law's bum'. Stewart would say 'no jokes'. Jokes are beneath him and beyond him. He cannot tell a joke to save his life. His body, sick from operations, will not allow him to tell a joke. That is why his crowd and I love him. He loves people and loves comedy by hating people and telling no jokes with timing. Timing. Timing. And repetition. And structure. And cadence. And repetition. And hate. And timing. And love. And love. And love. And love. And love. And a man with a mind made out of those hole reinforcers you can buy for ring-binding. And repetition.
There are films about love written and produced by some of the most loveless people you could ever hope to meet. There are films about death written by people who have never experienced it in the family or friends. There are films about racial tension written by some of the most privileged around. But when it comes to films which mock the pretensions and politics of entertainment industry insiders, I tend to believe those the most. You write what you know, and in some cases, this is all some people know.
One such film is Funny People, which depicts the life of struggling and successful people in and around Hollywood's comedy scene. This is not a bad film, so please do not read on if you are expecting a humorous panning. It is frequently funny (though notably not-so-much in the stand-up comedy scenes which deign to give the film some kind of authoritative voice) and contains a good half-dozen memorable characters engaging in a not-too-unrealistic series of events. If that isn't praise, I don't know what is.
What it absolutely is is a mess. A confused hurricane of ideas that don't all quite pay off. For instance: I like a lot of music, so when I have a band, there's not this idea of 'oh, we will sound like this or that'. We will begin as a style (let's say energetic post-punk) and then I will bring a song that sounds slow and sad and perhaps a little bit country. This may be a contributing factor toward none of my bands being successful and quite jarring. It doesn't all quite fit – but that's ok, because all I ever was was some dude in a bar. Judd Apatow was 41 with a lot of money at his disposal. There are moments in this work that are pure Curb Your Enthusiasm-style improv. That will sit next to a glossy hi-def/tightly-scripted scene of emotional outpouring. The cinematography is similarly disjointed, as is its observation of certain maxims such as the 30-degree rule, moral consistency of characters and their ability to flip between sincerity and joking.
Adam Sandler plays the version of himself his detractors hold true: a decent comic, inexplicably likeable, who has made a barrel of money playing the kook in increasingly inane and flimsy comedy films – who is now Sad and Alone (and dying). It's a believable premise. RZA, he of Wu-Tang fame, plays a man who works in a salad bar and is happy with it. It is not a believable premise. It is not a believable premise because it is OBVIOUSLY RZA and this film wants you to recognise this as much as it wants you to be familiar with Adam Sandler and his personal story. Somewhere in the middle is Jason Schwartzmann, who is believable as a smug, shallow bedder of the opposite sex, but is not believable as an actor of a desperately uncool sitcom, being the man in Hollywood who has landed on his feet the most times ever. And as a brief aside, looking for a good female character? Well, there aren't any. There's a pretty lazy “fuck-this-chick omg-i-wanted-to-fuck-that-chick-how-could-YOU-fuck-that-chick-dude-hey-man-if-you-don't-fuck-this-chick-then-i'm-gonna” going on that is gross and weird and the more I think about it could bring the whole film down. Of the five women I can remember with speaking parts, two are 'starfuckers', one is Sarah Silverman (playing herself as comedy insider), and two are main characters – one that Schwartzmann & Rogen have the aforementioned 'dialogue' about, who fulfils the indie-film sex object du jour role well – and the girl that is the object of a tug of love between Sandler and a hilarious Eric Bana that the film can't decide whether she's dreadful and only in love with someone because of mitigating factor X – or whether she's The Woman We All Secretly Want. Ugh.
And maybe this confusion in characterisation is deliberate, a comment – but I can't see it – not when the film contains sage advice spoken by Eminem, playing a version of himself as sage giver of advice caught in the role of celebrity he never wanted. All these scenes do, with moments where we are intimate with some of the world's most recognisable people, whether they are 'real' or 'comic', is add weight to the film's status as 'insider'. That's why it contains so many men of status.
The classic touchstone for such movies would be Robert Altman's The Player, the king of insider movies, not only apes industry mores and dialogue, but pays homage to movies and directors of the past. But recent years have seen television and films that also attempt to show the inside world of 'the industry'; Entourage, Action, The Critic, The Larry Sanders Show, Moving Wallpaper, Boogie Nights, Lost in La Mancha, Man Bites Dog. A whole series of Seinfeld is given over to this; we can even stretch back farther to Dziga Vertov, Michael Powell, Hitchcock and Fellini. Even now, as I write, the episode of Glee quipped “you need to do a real investigation. I'm taking CSI-real.”
Which kind of throws contemporary television into a series of post-modern conundra – about the way that they are contained by and almost cannot exist without reference to the issues they comment on. Film is eating itself. We're not just talking simulacrum and versions of reality. We're talking about the future of art as a landscape whose entire series of reference points is simply other art.
That is exactly what Funny People is. Every scene does not simply stand for itself or its place in a narrative – but for its place outside the film as well, about its relationship to what you know about the actors and their lives, the conventions of plot, etc. And you might say “well, nothing new there, asshole – musicals are totally knowing and people just dance and know routines.” The inherent post-modernism of musical-theatrical performance at least serves to propel the plot. The post-modernism of Funny People serves to say 'Hey. We're being post-modern. We know what this is.” And it's kind of boring. And smug. And massively self-serving.
Fortunately there's enough of a film hanging out in close proximity to these instances (it's long enough) to make it worth a watch. And it's nowhere near as problematic for reality as The Hills – and it's pretty funny. But post-modern looks at the inside of things have sidelined music, movies and TV for long enough. It's time to get back to talking about things.
