BEFORE: This is a documentary that I spotted on Netflix some time last year - so OF COURSE it took me so long to link to it, that by the time I got here, it's no longer available on that service, and I had to spend 3 or 4 bucks to watch it on YouTube. What else can I do? The chain is set, and now that I know it's likely to lead me to a perfect year, I need this to make my connection to more films with Gilbert Gottfried, and one of those gets me a link to my final four documentaries in this section. Tomorrow's doc may not have many famous people EXCEPT for Gilbert (according to the IMDB, at least), so that film had to be scheduled between two other films with him.
There's another movie on Netflix now that's titled "The Last Laugh", which stars Chevy Chase and Richard Dreyfuss, and that's also on my list, but it's not a documentary, and it came out three years later. I guess Netflix had to dump this one so there wouldn't be any confusion between the two?
Joan Rivers carries over from "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work". The big debate I had was over whether she appears in this film - the IMDB said no, but Wikipedia said yes. It turns out that she died a few months before she was supposed to film an interview for this film, so they used some archive footage from her routines instead. In my book, that counts, and I've updated the credits on the IMDB as best as I could.
THE PLOT: World-famous comedians including Mel Brooks, Sarah Silverman and Gilbert Gottfried pitch in with their own views on the boundaries of comedy.
AFTER: The poster points out the similarity of the silhouettes of Chaplin and Hitler, but didn't we all know this already? Chaplin rocked the same kind of shortened mustache (I think his was fake, though, right?) and he starred in a comedy called "The Great Dictator" which totally spoofed Hitler. Something that thinly veiled can barely even be called a parody or a spoof, at that point you might as well just make a film about Hitler, right? Like, have some balls. Also, the two men were born just four days apart in the same year, 1889.
The main question asked by this film concerns the boundaries of comedy - what can comedians not make fun of? Supposedly they were going to tackle topics like 9/11 and AIDS, but this ended up being about 90% about the Holocaust. The general consensus is that it's OK to make jokes about Hitler, Mel Brooks made sure of that with "The Producers", and anything that makes Nazis look stupid or ignorant is a lock, but when it comes to the genocide of European Jews, that's still fairly taboo. A couple of comedians attempt to take it on here, but they still have to do it a somewhat roundabout way. Joan Rivers maybe came the closest with a remark she made on "Fashion Police" about Heidi Klum (the last time a German woman looked that hot...etc.). I honestly can't tell if that was a compliment aimed at Ms. Klum, or a dig against most German women.
Many of the comedians interviewed here won't do Holocaust jokes, even Mel Brooks. OK, so why is he being interviewed for this documentary again? Oh, right, "The Producers". But that itself is a great example about how humor can change over time. Nobody was really doing Hitler jokes before that, not in movies, anyway, and then after that, making fun of Der Führer became fair game. Also, the first movie version of "The Producers" made fun of gay Broadway actors, and also used a hippie character for the actor starring in "Springtime for Hitler". By the time they made the stage version in 2001(and the remake movie in 2005), hippies were no longer a cultural touchstone, so they doubled down on the gay stuff, which became even more relevant in the interim. Sure, you can still make fun of hippies, but what's the point? They all either died or got jobs and became Republicans, they're scarcer than hen's teeth now.
They also interview a fair number of concentration camp survivors in this film, and it's fair to say they have differing opinions about what constitutes funny. It's not as simple as "tragedy plus comedy equals time", because for some of them, nothing about the Nazis was or ever will be funny. Funny, like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it seems. They interview Robert Clary, who I didn't recognize at first, but he was the only cast member of "Hogan's Heroes" to have survived a real German concentration camp. If you don't remember "Hogan's Heroes", it was a TV show in the 1960's about a German P.O.W. camp, which never really detailed the Nazi atrocities, because it was written as a comedy. (Yep, that's right.). I never knew this when I watched the show, because his character was French, not necessarily Jewish, and the Americans and Brits in the camp spent their time outwitting the stupid Germans who never found the intricate tunnel system under Stalag 13 that enabled our heroes to leave whenever they wanted, smuggle Allied spies in and out, and I think they also had a rec room and a pool somewhere under the camp.
This film also examines the famous film "Life Is Beautiful", in which Roberto Benigni's character is sent to a concentration camp with his wife and son, and to keep his son's spirits up he pretends that the daily activities are all a giant game, with the Nazis awarding points for completing tasks, and all the Jews were competing for some big prize. It won a ton of awards, but depending on your point of view, this film is either intensely heartwarming, or completely nauseating. (Guess which P.O.V. the concentration camp survivors have....). And there are also some clips here from the infamous unreleased 1972 Jerry Lewis film, "The Day the Clown Cried", which riffed on the same theme, only it was released too soon, or way ahead of its time. Audiences wouldn't be ready for the "clown in a concentration camp" theme for another 25 years.
The survivors also take umbrage with the clip from "Borat" where he sings about "throwing the Jews down the well", but now I have to wonder if those people understand humor at all. He sang that song to make a point, because some of the people in the crowd were joining in and cheering, so he sang that to draw out the racism of other people. But it seems that point was lost on people who were too focused on the surface message, and not the result. My boss even made a comedy called "Hitler's Folly" with faked "found footage" that suggested Hitler was not just a failed artist, but a failed animator, and his plans to take over Europe were misunderstood, he was just trying to find land for his Disney-like theme park. (Surprisingly, this film played well at a film festival in Israel...)
I would have liked to see more clips focusing on racial humor (the clip from Chappelle's Show with the black, blind Klansman just wasn't enough) because even though black comics can do racial humor now, there's still a big boundary up when it comes to humor about Muslims or Arabics. Way too touchy, and too many possible repercussions, it seems. And the only 9/11-related humor here came in the form of the clip from "Saturday Night Live" when it came back on the air after the tragedy, and Lorne Michaels asked Rudy Giuliani if it was OK to be funny. "Why start now?" was the brilliant response from the NYC mayor, though I really doubt he came up with that himself.
We're in a brand-new age now, this film was JUST a bit too early to be relevant, because it was filmed prior to the 2016 election (but released after) and hey, Nazis are back, but they're called "alt-right" now. I correctly predicted in 2016 that Trump's election would be terrible for the world, but great for the world of comedy. How many talk-shows have spent the last three years making fun of him? He's a complete one-man comedy factory, a walking mishap with terrible spelling. The Democratic Party has become the default party of Presidential parody, and it's a booming business. Climate change isn't funny, deporting immigrants and putting kids in cages isn't funny, and the sad state of our crumbling infrastructure and attempts to criminalize abortion aren't funny, but at least there's plenty of other material to work with. But honestly, it's all just a bit too fresh, the scabs haven't healed yet.
Also starring Shalom Auslander, Aaron Breitbart, Mel Brooks (last seen in "If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast"), Larry Charles, Robert Clary, David Cross (last seen in "The Post"), Jake Ehrenreich, Susie Essman (last seen in "The Man"), Deb Filler, Renee Firestone, Abraham Foxman, Judy Gold, Gilbert Gottfried (last seen in "The Comedian"), Etgar Keret, Lisa Lampanelli, Carl Reiner (last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), David Steinberg (ditto), Rob Reiner (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Jeffrey Ross (also carrying over from "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work"), Hanala Sagal, Harry Shearer (last seen in "Life Itself"), Sarah Silverman (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Roz Weinman, Alan Zweibel, with archive footage of Jason Alexander (last seen in "For the Love of Spock"), Woody Allen (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), John Banner, Roberto Benigni (last seen in "To Rome With Love"), Jack Benny, Nicoletta Braschi, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin (also carrying over from "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work"), Jon Stewart (ditto), Charlie Chaplin (last seen in "The Great Dictator"), Dave Chappelle (also last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), Louis C.K. (last seen in "Trumbo"), Sacha Baron Cohen (last seen in "Alice Through the Looking Glass"), Robert Crane, Russell Crowe (last seen in "Boy Erased"), Larry David (last seen in "Whatever Works"), Warwick Davis (last seen in "Solo: A Star Wars Story"), Colby Donaldson, Jimmy Fallon (last seen in "I Am Big Bird: The Carroll Spinney Story"), Conan O'Brien (ditto), Larry Fine, Ricky Gervais (last seen in "Special Correspondents"), Rudy Giuliani (last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone"), Barry Gordon, David Hasselhoff (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2"), Cheryl Hines (last seen in "Wilson"), Curly Howard, Moe Howard, Jay Johnston, Leslie Jones (last seen in "Masterminds"), Colin Jost (last seen in "RBG"), Werner Klemperer, Jerry Lewis (also last seen in "Life Itself"), Kenneth Mars (last heard in "Thumbelina"), Barney Martin, Groucho Marx (last seen in "The Cocoanuts"), Stephen Merchant (last seen in "Movie 43"), Lorne Michaels, Zero Mostel (last seen in "The Front"), Liam Neeson (last seen in "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House"), Carroll O'Connor (last seen in "Cleopatra"), Mary Lynn Rajskub (last seen in "Night School"), Chris Rock (last seen in "I Think I Love My Wife"), Amy Schumer (last seen in "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley"), Jerry Seinfeld (last seen in "If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast"), Liz Sheridan, Laura Silverman, Jean Stapleton (last seen in "You've Got Mail"), Sally Struthers (last seen in "Five Easy Pieces"), Jeffrey Tambor (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), Larry Thomas, Gene Wilder (last seen in "Start the Revolution Without Me"), and the voice of Terry Gross (last seen in "The Beaver").
RATING: 5 out of 10 Anne Frank jokes (my personal favorite: That actress's performance in "The Diary of Anne Frank" was so bad that audience members were shouting at the Nazis, "She's in the attic!")
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