BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: HUMOR & COMEDY

MACK SENNET’S KEYSTONE KOPS

A male gynecologist is like an auto mechanic who has never 
owned a car. 
              Carrie Snow

THE TRICK IN PLAYING COMEDY
“The trick in playing comedy is to make an audience believe what is going on and for this you have to believe it first yourself. This is why I think a comedian is basically an actor. The art of comedy is like the art of acting – except that in comedy, the actor has to believe the most preposterous and exaggerated things.”

Jack Benny

Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story by
Jack Benny and his daughter Joan (New York: Warner
Books,1990
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THE COMEDIAN'S JOB

Since the days of Pigmeat Markham, not to mention Lenny Bruce, the comedian's job has been to say the unsayable -- to give voice to the things that stink or bite us in the heart.

Hilton Als. "Bros' Night Out," in The New Yorker (February 10, 2020)
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ABORTION

President Bush was against abortion, but for capital punishment.  Spoken like a true fisherman: Throw them back, kill them when they’re bigger.

     Elayne Boosler


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“As to humor, I can only tell you what Schwanzleben said in his
Work, Humor After Death. He hits on this point indirectly when
He writes, “All laughter is as muscular rigidity spasmodically relieved by involuntary twitching.”

Robert Benchley

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WOODY ALLEN’S NIGHTMARES

“….I’m not an active sleeper. However I have experienced dreams on rare occasions. In one I am attacked by a cheese. In another my body is dipped in a vat of feathers. In yet another, I make love to some moss formations. A fairly common one has me straying through an empty field, kissing rare minerals while my mother, symbolized by a penguin, smokes a Kool and wrestles the Harlem Globetrotters. During the filming of Casino Royale, I dreamed I was Ursula Andress’ body stocking.,

Playboy Interview with Woody Allen (May 1967)



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MARILYN MONROE DISCUSSES HER FAMOUS NUDE PHOTO FOR THE
COVER OF PLAYBOY

Marilyn Monroe “told us the studio had instructed her to deny that the photograph was her body, to which she had asked, “Okay to claim the face as mine?”
   “Just deny everything,” was their final direction.
  “Later the first reporter to inquire asked,” Why did you pose in the
Nude?”
    “Her answer: ‘That’s the kind of picture they wanted.’
    “Next reporter: ‘Is it true that you had nothing on?’
    “ ‘Not true,’ she said. “I had the radio on.’
    “Reporter: ‘Oh, you know what I mean.’
    “’If you mean was I wearing anything, well, I was, said M.M.’
    “’What?’ he asked.
   “’Chanel Number Five,’” she said.”

Joseph Cotton. An Autobiography: Vanity Will Get You Somewhere
(San Francisco: Mercury House, 1987)
    
In his biography of Wilson Mizner –Rogue’s Progress –
John Burke writes “The wisecrack is supposed to be a uniquely American contribution to humor.” He goes on to quote
some of Mizner’s witty remarks (whether or not such quotations are wisecracks, I leave it to the reader to judge):

“Be nice to people on the way up because you’ll meet them on the way down…. Treat a lady like a whore and a whore like a lady…. He’d steal a hot stove and come back for the smoke…. If you copy from one author, it’s plagiarism. If you copy from two, it’s research….The first hundred year are the hardest….Most open minds should be closed for repairs….The life of a party almost always winds up in a corner with an overcoat over him….I never saw a mob rush across town to do a good deed….”

John Burke. Rogue’s Progress: The Fabulous Adventures of Wilson Mizner (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons,1975)



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BERT LAHR

Bert Lahr—
His career went very far
(You may skip this 3rd line)
After he played The Cowardly Lion).

LJP

I try not to play characters that ever have ever have any self-awareness that their conviction is boneheaded. And I think that can either be funny or dramatic. After all, a character doesn’t know whether they’re in a comedy or a drama.

 Steve Carell, in an interview with Ana Marie Cox  New York Times Magazine (December 6, 2015)