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THE ART OF COMEDY
(continued)
"What a weird thing comedy is," Werts muses. "It's an odd art; you can't learn it."
However, if Rudner is any proof, it may just be possible. Trained
as a dancer, Rudner describes herself on THE COLLEGE OF COMEDY III
as someone who "didn't talk until I was 25." But when she was bitten
by the comedy bug, she enrolled herself in "school" by going to
stand-up performances with a pad and pen and taking notes throughout
the performances. Maher lovingly describes her as "the perfect kid
in class." Hearkening back to the 1980s club scene, Maher tells
how the other comedians would be drinking and carousing, but "Rita
would be at the end of the bar with her notebook, she had been doing her
homework. ... Then she would go onstage and she always had killer stuff ... her work paid off, she did great jokes."
The program was born of the same impulse: the desire to marry a
serious examination of the elusive thing called humor with a thorough
demonstration by some of its ablest practitioners. "I had seen a
tape where Alan was invited to be part of a debate at Oxford," Werts
recounts. "Alan and Steve Allen were on one side, and two British
comedians were on the other. This was at the Oxford Debating Club,
and the proposition was, 'The Yanks Are NOT Funny.' Alan had this
great line: 'The British are not only not funny, they're carriers.
Because Canada isn't funny, Australia isn't funny, and South Africa
certainly isn't funny.'"
Werts goes on to explain that this debate's mixture of scholarship
and silliness gave him and King the idea to start a series of master
classes where some of the country's funniest people would gather
in one place to explore a subject that has always resisted analysis.
On this third installment of THE COLLEGE OF COMEDY, King's star-studded
panel fields a string of questions that leads them to talk about
the first laugh they ever got, how they feel about the audience
("Are you out there to please them, to make them love you, or is it like lion taming?" King asks), the importance
of an authentic performance, and whether there is something in their
psychological makeup that forces them to be funny.
Creative consultant Michael Gerber was assigned the task of coming
up with questions that would provoke thought -- and laughs. Although,
he hastens to add, "I was not suggesting jokes! Alan has 50,000
jokes in his head. My role was to come up with the questions Alan
was to ask: 'Can funniness be taught? Do you think humor is genetic?'
I had to try to figure out how we could get the best vignettes out
of the performers." Then, once all the elements were in place, King
and his court repaired to the auditorium to turn all the preparation
work into laughs through the alchemy of humor. "It was a great time,
a great experience," Gerber says.
Indeed, it all adds up to an evening of rhapsodic fun, where the work is serious play. Werts concludes, "Laughter is sublime, it's one of the pleasures. What do you need in life? You need love, you need art, you need laughter. You just have to have it." And with THE COLLEGE OF COMEDY, you not only get it, you also learn a little something. Now, why can't school be like that all the time?
Top banner photos: Bill Maher; host Alan King; Rita Rudner; Shecky Greene. |
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Bill Maher and Alan King. |
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Alan King and Rita Rudner. |
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The program is not available from Shop Thirteen or Shop PBS. |
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