#A-TO-Z CHALLENGE – LETTER “W” – WOODY ALLEN

WOODY ALLEN

I was about 15 when I discovered the zany intellectual comedy of Woody Allen. His discourses on existentialism, the philosophy of Kierkegaard, mixed with the slap-stick comedy of Chaplin, made his movies in the late 60s and early 70s, gems of the cinema.

Woody Allen (born Allen Stewart Konigsberg, December 1, 1935) is an actor, director, screenwriter, comedian, musician and playwright whose career span more than 50 years.

He worked as a comedy writer in the 1950s, writing jokes and scripts for the Tee Vee and publishing books of short humor pieces. In the early 1960s, Allen began performing as a stand-up comic emphasizing monologues rather than traditional jokes. As a comic, he developed the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which maintains is quite different from his real-lie personality, In 2004, Comedy Central, ranked Allen in fourth place on a list of 100 greatest stand-up comics, while a UK survey ranked Allen as the third greatest comedian.

"To you, I'm an Atheist. To God, I'm the loyal opposition." ~ Woody Allen

By the mid-60s Allen was writing and directing films, first specializing in slapstick comedies before moving into dramatic material influenced by European art cinema during the 1970s. He is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmakers of the mid-60s to late 70s. He often stars in his own films, typically in the persona he developed as a standup.

"Life doesn't imitate art. It imitates bad television." ~ Woody Allen

Allen was born in the Bronx and raised in Brooklyn. His family was Ashkenazi Jewish; his grandparents immigrated from Russia and Austria, and spoke Yiddish, Hewbrew, and German. Allen spoke German quite a bit in his early years. He would later joke that when he was young he was sent to inter-faith summer camps, where he “was savagely beaten by children of all races and creeds”.

"I can't listen to any more Wagner, you know. . . I'm starting to get the urge to conquer Poland." ~Woody Allen

Allen originally started writing for humorist Herb Shriner, earning $25 a week. At 19, he began writing scripts for The Tonight Show, specials for Sid Caesar post-Caesar's Hour (1954-1957) and other television show. He also wrote for Candid Camera later on, and appeared in some episodes.

Allen branched out, writing short stories and cartoon captions for magazines such as The New Yorker; he was inspired by the tradition of four prominent New Yorker humorist, S. J. Perelman, George S. Kaufman, Robert Benchley and Max Shulman, whose material he modernized. Allen is an accomplised author, with four published collections of his short pieces and plays. I can attest to the humor and zaniness of his written comedy; Getting Even is one of the funniest books I've ever read. Looking at the Table of Contents for Side Effects now makes this a must read.

"I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100." ~Woody Allen

Of all of Allen's movies, his earliest resonate with me the most. His first foray into film, was more like some comedic brew of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and horribly-interpreted sci-films, complete with commentary, called What's Up Tiger-Lily. The plot, according to Allen involved the theft of the recipe for the world's greatest egg salad and the recovery of said recipe from evil-overlords by brave Secret Agent. This is all plunked down on top of a cheesy Japanese spy movie, dubbed with idiotic dialogue and crazy sound effects and the results are hilarious.

Compilations of clips from "What's Up Tiger Lily?"

I realize my humor hit some of it's maturation at around the age of 18, but the ludicrous dialogue and funny voices still amuse me. Allen went from here to produce and release several more movies in the late 60s, Take the Money and Run, Bananas, Sleeper and Love and Death, which is still one of the best satirical pieces on Russian Literature and characterizations of all time. He followed that up with Manhattan, (all music by George Gershwin, here) Annie Hall and Hanna and Her Sisters. 

The Marching Band Cello Scene from Take the Money and Run

As a passionate fan of jazz, Allen has featured New Orleans jazz in most of his movies and performed publicly since the late 60s, most notable with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, on his soundtrack for Sleeper. He continues to perform most Monday nights with his jazz ensemble at the Carlysle Hotel in NYC.  

The revival scene in Sleeper, where Woody Allen discovers he's awoken 200 years in the future.

His later movies and projects have garnered him much in the way of fame and innumerable awards; in film direction, production and writing. He has established himself in both America and in Europe as a man of Arts and Letters, and he continues to this day to write and produce plays, movies and play in his jazz ensemble. One of my favorites for his wit and literary style, and for his slapstick, he has proven himself in both sophisticated circles and as a favorite alá his Chaplinesque style in his earlier films. In all of his earlier movies, as well as his later ones, he questioned authority, relationships, and the existence of God. You thought as much as you laughed, which I always enjoyed. In my opinion, the very best humorists, whatever the genre do this; they make us think; they may make us uncomfortable, but that is the only way we develop and expand our own views.

#A-TO-Z CHALLENGE – LETTER “S” – SATIRE

SATIRE

Satire done well, is probably one of my very favorite forms of humor. The very best satirists will showcase a weakness, or something that is utterly foolish within a society or government, to an extreme. It is an extremely sophisticated form of humor and one that is hard to pull off, whether it be in a movie or in books.

sat· ire noun \'sa-,tī(-ǝ)r\

: a way of using humor to show that someone or something is foolish, weak, bad, etc. : humor that shows the weaknesses or bad qualities of a peson, government, society, etc.

: a book, movie, etc., that uses satire

Two of the finest examples of this interestingly enough, lampoon both Russian government and Russians themselves. The first is the awesome Love and Death, a 1975 movie by Woody Allen. 

 

Love and Death, theatrical trailer. The musical score is by Sergei Prokofiev and is the Lt. Kije Suite, in itself a satirical piece about a Lieutenant who never existed in the Russian Army.

Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls is one of the most interesting reads in Russian Literature. First published in 1842, Gogol died before finishing it, and parts of it were destroyed, but from his notes, it's an amalgam of The Iliad and The Odyssey, Dante's Inferno, and the third part was to have been a poem. Gogol destroyed part of it, before his death. Gogol himself saw it as an epic poem in prose. I rather thought it like a sort of anti-Candide, but then Gogol's main purpose was to expose the moral rot of the Russian landowner and the exploitation of the serfs, despite what modernist critics like Vladimir Nabakov had to say. They felt that the book was not satirical in tone or content, regarded the work as unimportant and Gogol as a great writer.

Nevertheless, the plot belies such statements. Chichikov is the modern equivalent of a middle-class gentleman. he arrives in an unnamed village and turns on the charm, to quickly make friends with the local officials and important townspeople, but without letting on what he's about. 

Chichikov in the house of M. Korobochka, dickering for her Dead Souls.

The government would tax landowners on the number of serfs (or 'souls') the landowner possessed, determined by the census. Censuses in these periods were infrequent, so landowners were paying for souls that no longer existed. Chichikov was seeking to buy these dead souls, existing on paper only, telling the current owners that he merely has a use for them, and that the landowners will be spared the burden of paying for souls that they no longer own. 

He travels to surrounding estates and manages to purchase 400 such dead souls. Upon his return to the village and turns on the smarm. Thinking that the locals are really buying into this, when they agree to throw a celebration for his purchase of 400 dead souls, he begins to spin more and more elaborate yarns, which then become misinterpreted for everything from "He's Napolean!" to "he's going to marry so-and-so's daughter!" Chichikov is summarily run out of town on a rail, until he pops up somewhere else with another get-rich-quick scheme. In reality, Chichikov is a disgraced mid-level government worker, always trying to make a quick buck.

The locals are no dumber or smarter than any found in any other country. Gogol's satire is pointed squarely at the government, and he, no less than Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, Feodor Dostoevsky and Alexander Pushkin would lampoon and satirize the government, until it became lethal to do so. 

                                                                                                                                                                     courtesy: The Nation

I don't know if satire has ever changed a government, or society, but as one who lived through eight years of George W. Bush, I can honestly say, as much as it was a disaster, it was a field day for the comedians and satirists in this country. About as much fun as the Brits had with Edward Heath, I understand.

 

A-to-Z Challenge 2014 - Amusement

(Warning: Containts Adult Language)

I participated in this challenge last year on the spur of the moment and had a great time. I didn't exactly have a theme and although I have one this year, it is broad in scope; I picked “HUMOR AND HUMORISTS” because I am a “pantser” in that I write by the seat of my pants, seldom edit, and just go with whatever comes into my head. This can be terrific if one has a good grasp of vocabulary and sentence structure and can write essays or mediocre short stories fairly quickly. It sucks when you write novels; believe me. I am the voice of experience in this. I have a great novel on paper and a great novel running around in my head; however, they are not the same book. I just haven't worked up the gumption to sit my happy ass down in my writing chair and put them together. I've been too busy lolling about in my gaming chair, which is the same chair, by the way, as my writing chair, playing Runescape and giving people hell, who deserve having hell given them, to do any editing, but that is neither here nor there and has nothing whatsoever to do with humor, but is one HELL of a run-on sentence, which should be avoided at all costs, which if I were teaching English grammar, I would admonish my students to avoid. But, I digress. Still. Damn! My mother, the English teacher would have been proud of the above , right there!

Just what does make us amused? By amused, I mean of course, what makes us laugh and tickles our funny bones? I think it is fair to say that a sense of humor is almost as personal as a person's concept of what faith they follow or why they vote a certain way. There is no general formula for a sure-fire laugh-getter and I find, at least in my case, the more obvious the joke, the more stale and failed the attempt becomes.

                                                                                                    courtesy: blog.pavelife.com

I think, that certain forces come into play when it comes to things that make us laugh. Universality for one. One of the reasons people like a comedian like Bill Cosby, or Jim Gaffigan are funny, although they are completely different is that we can relate to them. Bill Cosby used to do stand-up about his childhood and it resonated with every kid I knew growing up in the 60s. Jim Gaffigan and his absurdities with “Hot Pockets” is just as funny, because it is absurd, just in his voicing of it. 

                                                                                               courtesy: thrillist.com                                                                          

Some people are just bowled over by physical comedy, which more sophisticated comedians in the 30s, 40s and 50s dismissed as low-brow, but I defy anyone to not laugh at the stupidities presented on America's Home Videos. I will also sit down and watch the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers, who are screamingly funny, to this day, and the physical comedy of Chevy Chase, particularly his “Fletch” series. Woody Allen's earliest movies combined sophisticated angst, Freudian dread with slapstick in a way that has never been paralleled.

courtesy: clclt.com

"Love and Death" by Woody Allen is a great movie and a huge joke on Russian Literature; from Pushkin to Gogol to Chekhov, no one got out of this movie unscathed! This is a reference to Dostoyoevsky's "The Idiot"

But what of more sophisticated comedians and humorists? George Carlin was probably the best of those, as profane as he could be. He was also taught by Jesuits, as was Bill Maher and myself; I have found that anyone with any kind of Jesuitical background, (maybe it's something in the rarefied atmosphere) leaves us with a playfulness for the language, which does take a certain flair to appreciate. Be that as it may, I appreciate a good pun, which as my long-suffering mother used to say to my father whenever he came up with some tin-eared horror, “Glenn Wallace, enough pun-ishment!” And so it goes.

Randomness and random anything cracks me up. Stuff that just pops up out of the blue will have me on the floor rolling around, holding my sides in a red-hot minute. When I was homeless, I had two roommates, and one had already gone to bed, and I was already in bed. The third was getting ready for bed, and I heard her say, “Okay, I'm going to eat this turkey now, and go to sleep!” I laughed like a hyena for 15 minutes. She finally walked into my little cubby-hole to find out what was so funny. I wiped the tears from my eyes. “You're eating a turkey? At 11 o'clock at night?” She looked at me and snorted. “A cookie, you asshole.” Off I went again. “I liked it the other way.”

Amusement is to be found in stunts in movies. I love Jackie Chan movies. I have never seen such well-timed or closely-executed stunts in moves, save “A Fish Called Wanda,” with people disappearing in the nick of time, behind doors, into closets underneath sinks, all while the unsuspecting person is kept completely in the dark as to their presence! It's a marvel to behold, while you're laughing at the ridiculousness of the whole preposterous plot.

With Owen Wilson as some kind of Zen-Surfer-Cowboy. Can't miss.

The last are the authors and writers that have amused me, past and present. I have admired Robert Brockway at Cracked.com for years and we have struck up some sort of passing-back-and-forth-of-Tweets-and-snarky-notes-thing,-that-doesn't-really-qualify-as-a-friendship,-but-more-of-an-awareness-of-one- another-thing. I will be honoring him with a post on my letter “B” whether he likes it or not. I haven't told him yet, because, as per usual, I didn't get around to it. I am sure he won't mind. I think. He is one HELL of a writer and a very funny man and I truly, truly respect him and his craft! Have a great and fun, A-to-Z challenge, 2014 everyone!