FOT Forum
FOT Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: yesno on April 10, 2008, 11:45:42 AM
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I've been thinking about Tom's bashing of old time comedy. I agree for the most part -- stuff like the Three Stooges is like the 1930s equivalent of Adam Sandler. One nice thing about the weird transience of what people think is funny is that new comedy always feels revolutionary.
BUT: Here are some old time laughs that I really do like.
(1) Marx Brothers
(2) P.G. Wodehouse
(3) Screwball comedies (His Girl Friday, Arsenic and Old Lace, the Awful Truth, etc etc)
(4) Ambrose Bierce
(5) Mark Twain
and (6): I like some old time things not because they are funny, but because they are just really strange to watch. Buster Keaton (my avatar) stuff is like this. Comedy that is no longer funny is weirdly alien.
Does anyone else have any old timey stuff that they think is funny?
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I agree, there are about seven quality Marx Brothers movies that are as good or better than anything that's come along since.
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I think James Thurber is a riot.
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I think Ring Lardner short stories can be pretty funny.
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Most of the supporting comedy is cornball, but I liked the husband and wife interactions of the Thin Man movies. Most old timey movies portray marriage as a humorless inevitability of life. Here it seems like fun.
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I think the plays of George S. Kauffman hold up pretty well. He's was from around the depression -- a Dorothy Parker contemporary.
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Old-timey things I find funny:
a lot of the so-called screwball comedies (Bringing Up Baby, It Happened One Night, etc.)
the plays of George Bernard Shaw and some of the movie versions thereof (Pygmalion and Major Barbara spring to mind)
the plays of Oscar Wilde, especially, of course, The Importance of Being Earnest (and the original movie version of it)
Boulting Brothers and Ealing Brothers comedies (not all of them, but a lot of them)
W. C. Fields in small doses
I know there's more, but my brain has gone blank.
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Most of mine have already been mentioned:
WC Fields short films
Marx Brothers
Laurel & Hardy's The Music Box
Buster Keaton
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laurel and hardy (watched just about every one of their flicks with my pop as a boy and they still make me chuckle)
the three stooges (i never, ever get tired of grabbing a cup of coffee on a sunday morn and watching moe, larry, and _______ bumble through whatever task is at hand.)
abbott and costello (for who's on third alone - never mind the genius that ensued when they teamed up with a morphine-happy bela lugosi and a stinkin' drunk lon chaney jr.)
do the old warner brothers cartoons count?
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Marx Bros. without doubt
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I think it's time to say that Bugs Bunny and other Looney Tunes qualify as Olde Time Comedee. Seriously, they are 50+ years old by now. But the great thing about them is how well they've aged. Wyle E. Coyote and the Roadrunner are as funny to a 10 yr old now as they were to my father when he was 10.
It's universally humorous, and the amount of detail and love that went into the animation made it funny in it's own right.
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Yeah, Pepe Le Pew cartoons are funny in a totally manic way. And what's weird is that, for all their stereotyping, by today's standards those are practically educational films about French cultural life.
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Yeah, Pepe Le Pew cartoons are funny in a totally manic way. And what's weird is that, for all their stereotyping, by today's standards those are practically educational films about French cultural life.
Or a Cautionary Tale about puberty.
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Yeah, Pepe Le Pew cartoons are funny in a totally manic way. And what's weird is that, for all their stereotyping, by today's standards those are practically educational films about French cultural life.
Or a Cautionary Tale about puberty.
or sexual predators. dude was a total perv..
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Yeah, Pepe Le Pew cartoons are funny in a totally manic way. And what's weird is that, for all their stereotyping, by today's standards those are practically educational films about French cultural life.
Or a Cautionary Tale about puberty.
or sexual predators. dude was a total perv..
Don't you mean "prev"?
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The Women has always been a favorite of mine.
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I still find "A Confederacy of Dunces" funny. Is that old time?
It seems that old cartoons are "in-bounds", so I would also like to throw Foghorn Leghorn out there. I showed it to my daughter a while back, and she asked me, "Who's the good guy?" I thought, "Oh my God, the child is right! This is like a Neil Labute play!" Everyone in the whole fucking thing is miserable...from the dog to the chickenhawk to Foghorn himself.
I never cease to laugh when Foghorn sees the pointdexter chicken putting together a Rube-Goldberg contraption for hurling a pumpkin, tells the chicken he's doing it wrong, and fixes the contraption for him. Shortly thereafter, Foghorn gets a look of confusion on his face. He turns back to ask the chicken why he's hurling a pumpkin, but before Foghorn can get the question out (as we all know, he stammers), a pumpkin slams him in the face. OBJECTIVELY FUNNY!
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I pretty much agree with everything mentioned so far, and would add Moss Hart, who co-wrote a lot of George S. Kaufman's stuff. Occasionally some of those Algonquin Round Table zingers will also make me chuckle, though they're mostly witty rather than funny.
I'm probably opening myself up to ridicule here, but Plautus, the ancient Roman comedy writer, is actually still funny, and in fact most of the gags in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum are lifted from it whole. Old Italian comedies (including those by Machiavelli) are still pretty funny if they're staged right - ditto with Shakespeare - though that's rare. I have to say, though, that the comic relief in serious Shakespeare (think Falstaff) is usually funnier than the straight-up comedies.
While I'm giving a theater history lesson here, I have yet to encounter a funny Noel Coward play, and Aristophanes (credited with writing the first recorded comedy) makes zero fucking sense to me.
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I don't know if this old-timey enough but I think Jack Lemon is hilarious in Some Like It Hot.
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I pretty much agree with everything mentioned so far, and would add Moss Hart, who co-wrote a lot of George S. Kaufman's stuff. Occasionally some of those Algonquin Round Table zingers will also make me chuckle, though they're mostly witty rather than funny.
I'm probably opening myself up to ridicule here, but Plautus, the ancient Roman comedy writer, is actually still funny, and in fact most of the gags in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum are lifted from it whole. Old Italian comedies (including those by Machiavelli) are still pretty funny if they're staged right - ditto with Shakespeare - though that's rare. I have to say, though, that the comic relief in serious Shakespeare (think Falstaff) is usually funnier than the straight-up comedies.
While I'm giving a theater history lesson here, I have yet to encounter a funny Noel Coward play, and Aristophanes (credited with writing the first recorded comedy) makes zero fucking sense to me.
I love the sudden shift from my Foghorn Leghorn post to your Aristophanes post, Jason. I think my ears popped on the way up.
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It seems that old cartoons are "in-bounds", so I would also like to throw Foghorn Leghorn out there. I showed it to my daughter a while back, and she asked me, "Who's the good guy?" I thought, "Oh my God, the child is right! This is like a Neil Labute play!"
Comparison of the Month!
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That is great, Jon. Though I actually think Foghorn Leghorn is better than anything LaBute has ever written. Or Aristophanes, for that matter.
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Aristophanes
Most Boring Old Greek Playwright Ever. We had to read The Clouds for philosophy--it's like a super-unfunny piece of philosophy fan fiction, or something the guy you know who is always doing awful Monty Python impressions would write and then read out loud ALL THE TIME. Without being asked. With hilarious Comedy Voices for each character. Yeeeeesh.
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Harold Lloyd is still hilarious.
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Aristophanes
Most Boring Old Greek Playwright Ever. We had to read The Clouds for philosophy--it's like a super-unfunny piece of philosophy fan fiction, or something the guy you know who is always doing awful Monty Python impressions would write and then read out loud ALL THE TIME. Without being asked. With hilarious Comedy Voices for each character. Yeeeeesh.
It's kind of like what Tom says about satire. The ideas are important but the jokes themselves aren't funny. Some of Aristophanes' ideas still hold up now but to me his actual comedy pretty much boils down to fart jokes and jabs at 5th century politicians who faded into obscurity. The Greek Lenny Bruce?
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He told it like it was, man! Why can't it be more like the 420 B.C.'s, when comedy actually meant something.
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Don Rickles, Jacki Gleason, Peter Cook
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Don Rickles, Jackee Gleason, Peter Cook
Peter Cook may be old by now (and arguably, dead) but I don't consider him "old timey."
Has anyone seen The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer? Should I buy the R2 dvd?
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Don Rickles, Jackee Gleason, Peter Cook
Peter Cook may be old by now (and arguably, dead) but I don't consider him "old timey."
Has anyone seen The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer? Should I buy the R2 dvd?
I thought that was pushing it
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Peter Cook may be . . . arguably, dead
You have doubts?
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Peter Cook may be . . . arguably, dead
You have doubts?
Look, I'm just saying I have questions. Some of you apparently choose to be close-minded, I don't.
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It's my curse, Chris L. I envy you. Not for the first time.
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This is Chris L's equivalent of those "9/11 was an inside job" conspiracies.
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I think some of Bob Newhart's old stand up routines are pretty great, his phone bits in particular.
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What about Jonathan Winters
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What about Jonathan Winters? I never got that guy at all.
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Groucho talking about dirty humor
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Charles Rocket of Rocket Report fame. Like a tall glass of lemon-ade on a summer's day, reminds me of my yesteryears.
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All the films the Marx Brothers made at Paramount and and the first two at MGM will alsways make me laugh.
3 Stooges with Curly
WC Fields
Little Rascals can be pretty funny.
Was Amos and Andy funny? Never really heard or saw them but I am curious.
Fleischer Popeye and Betty Boop cartoons are still very funny.
Tex Avery MGM cartoons.
Abott and Costello's tv show
Screwball comedies
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Laurel and Hardy crack me up, especially in March of The Wooden Soldiers. I love movies like The Women(which is heavy at times, but funny in that "you-go-girl" fashion) and The Philadelphia Story. The Gidget movies are also pretty funny, but more in the that's- so-cheesy-it's funny way.
I'm taking a class on Shakespeare's comedies this semester, and I must say that the man knows good comedy.
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I'm taking a class on Shakespeare's comedies this semester, and I must say that the man knows good comedy.
Well he certainly likes a good dick joke. I much prefer the tragedies and histories.
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Tex Avery's funny, that's true.
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I'm taking a class on Shakespeare's comedies this semester, and I must say that the man knows good comedy.
Well he certainly likes a good dick joke. I much prefer the tragedies and histories.
Are you really above dick jokes?
EDIT : (GOOD dick jokes)
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I will always be fond of Tom Lehrer, even though many of his songs are very dated now.
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Groucho talking about dirty humor
Groucho likes his dick jokes separate but equal.
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Before Scharpling and Wurster it just didn't get any funnier than this. Filmed in Astoria Queens, 1929 no less!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCluyRJnldo
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Hail The Conquering Hero in particular.