The New Comedy

It occurred to me the other day while we were flying across the desolation of southern Utah or maybe northern New Mexico that there has been an important shift in comedy in the last 10 years or so. Basically, I was reading Premiere magazine, which I never read, but bought because I was hurting for a magazine to read on the plane to the East Coast and it had Steve Carrell on the cover. After 40-Year-Old Virgin and watching this last season of The Office, I’ll pretty much watch whatever the guy is in. Anyway, this particular edition of Premiere magazine was entitled (either explicitly or by obvious implication) The Comedy Issue. It had a big article about Mr. Carrell and also an oral history of comedy through the movie ages.

In reading these materials, it struck me that something has really changed in comedy since my comedic perspective developed. Basically, in high school, my friends and I were total smart asses, largely because the comedy that we liked revolved around smart-ass behavior, this idea of finding humor in the belief that you are smarter than just about everyone else. Now every 15-year-old boy thinks that he is smarter than everyone else. But I think that there was more to it than that.

We were basically the first generation of teenagers who had come up simply marinated in the early glory years of Saturday Night Live. Yeah, yeah, those 1975-1980 years of SNL were the first time that baby boomer humor was released to roam free, but that little group of comedians really set the entire tone for what came after in comedy for, I don’t know, 15 years. Basically, even when that group was being out-and-out stupid – see Samurai Deli, the Killer Bees, “it’s a dessert topping and a floor wax,” Bass-o-matic – it was with the underlying theme that they were smarter than everyone else. This theme then played out in a ungodly number of comedic contexts over the nest couple of decades. You watch Blues Brothers and that whole movie has the feel that Joliet Jake and Elwood have got it figured out and everyone else basically is stupid. Carrie Fisher (ah, Princess Leia, post-Star Wars, pre-gold bikini) blows up their apartment building, Belushi and Ackroyd just dust themselves off and continue on their mission from God. Even in Animal House, when Belushi is behaving basically like the Tasmanian Devil, he is doing so with this arched eyebrow, like he knows he is going to get away with all of it. Seven years of college down the drain? No problem. He still gets the hottest sorority babe and is a U.S. Senator at the end. More than just SNL alums bought in on this vibe. Without this vibe, there is no David Letterman, no Stupid Pet Tricks, no throwing melons off of roofs, no Alka-Seltzer dunk tank, no Larry Bud Melman, no Biff Henderson in a pencil suit and certainly no jumping against a Velcro wall in a Velcro wall to see if you stick. Perhaps most importantly to my particular consciousness, there is no: (1) Bruce Willis in Moonlighting (at the end of this post if my recollection of the ever-classic “man with a mole on his nose” scene from about Moonlighting 1987); and (2) Bill Murray in Caddyshack (“this Cinderella story about to win the Masters, oh, it’s in the hole, it’s in the hole!”).

But, in the last 10 years or so, something changed. As one of the Premiere articles put it, “Ben Stiller and Will Farrell are the next generation’s comedy icons.” And it is undoubtedly true. I will still: (1) watch everything Bill Murray does; (2) mourn the premature loss of John Belushi; and (3) stare in horror as Bruce Willis buries what could have been a brilliant comedic career under lots of put-upon, regular-guy-being-the-noble-action-hero roles. However, the big laughs these days are with the guys who commit, totally, completely, to a character without ever winking, no matter how humiliating or ridiculous the situation. Beans and franks in There’s Something About Mary? (The funniest movie of the last 15 years.) No problem, Ben Stiller is there. Running down the street butt naked (literally) in Old School? Will Farrell is your man. Behaving like an elf for two hours in Elf? Farrell again. The entire two hours plus of ridiculous behavior in 40-Year-Old Virgin (runner-up to There’s Something About Mary in the last 15 years) and behaving like a self-delusional butt every week on The Office? Let me introduce you to Steve Carrell.

Somewhere around the turn of the century, the dominant form of humor shifted from the “we’re smarter than everyone” mojo that my friends and I completely bought in the mid-80’s (when people asked us if we knew some guy, we would say things like “you mean the one with the eyes?”) to complete commitment to humiliation.

Why did this happen? Is it a natural consequence of having Presidents say things like “that depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is” and “people misunderestimate me”? I mean when the big bosses are saying things like that, what is the point in trying to show that you are smarter than others? Are we now focusing on humiliation as humor because that is the best way to get attention in an infinite media source kind of world? (Check out MXC on Spike TV.) Don’t get me wrong, I find Stiller, Farrell and Carrell really, really funny – particularly Carrell – but will my brothers Intensio and Guitar Guy be able to remember snappy wordplay like the following 20 years after it was on TV:

David Addison (Bruce Willis): “We’re looking for a man with a mole on his nose.”

Secret Service guy: “A mole on his nose?”

DA: “A mole on his nose.”

SSG: “What kind of clothes?”

DA: “What kind of clothes
do you suppose?”

SSG: “What kind of clothes
do I suppose
would be worn by a man
with a mole on this nose?
Who knows?”

DA: “Did I happen to mention that I vowed to disclose
that this man that we’re seeking with a mole on his nose,
I’m not sure of clothes
or anything else,
except he’s Chinese, a big clue in itself?”

SSG: “I’m sorry to say
I’m sad to report
I haven’t seen anyone of that sort
No Chinese with a mole on his nose
With some kind of clothes
That you can’t suppose
So get out of this door and leave this place
Before I have to hurt you,
Put my foot in your face.”