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  The crazy idea of this performance anarchistic documentary, therefore, is that Tito has returned to Yugoslavia after being dead for fourteen years, knowing nothing of what has happened since his death. No preparation or warning is given to the public; from their point of view, someone who looks very much like their departed leader has returned, and the video camera crew following him simply reinforces this "documentary game."

  At this point humor, improvisation, pathos and history meet. The actor skillfully asks questions of those he meets and tries to answer questions they have for him, in what becomes a carnival or instant community of "Tito's Return." Half the people say, "We need you back again. You were the best." And the other half shout, "You bastard, it's because of you that we got into this mess." Many moments are touching, as some are moved to tears, but humorous scenes rule, as Tito ex amines old partisan uniforms and hats for sale at the flea market and talks to hip teens about their culture. There are also numerous laughs as Tito tries to understand: "Why is there a war?" "Who are our friends?" "But I took out international loans, why is there a blockade and sanctions now?"

  In chapter io I suggest an exercise based on Zilnik's clever and entertaining film. The very concept should, for writers of comedy, open up our imaginations to all kinds of possibilities that do not need major studio or network funding but that could be very effective and hilarious "homemade" films, with social or even political implications as well. (For information and requests for copies of the film, contact The Yugoslav Film Institute, Belgrade. Fax: [38111] 63 42 53. E-mail: [email protected].)

  The Comedy of Improv within Narrative

  Tito for the Second Time among the Serbs is, for all its "performance," clearly a documentary. But consider how much laughter can be generated when a narrative film includes significant improvisation, or unscripted documentary moments. Alan Parker deserves a lot of credit for breaking away from his usual commercial fare, including Midnight Express, Angel Heart and Mississippi Burning, to make The Commitments (1991), about an unlikely bunch of Irish working-class guys and gals who get together to form an American-style blues band. With a very funny script by Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais and Roddy Doyle (who went on to do the related "Barrytown" scripts for The Snapper and The Van), Parker had the good sense and courage to use a cast of Irish unknowns for this ensemble anarchistic comedy.

  Yes, there is a script, but much in the spirit of Srdjan Karanovic's Social Games (see chapter 1o), a large part of our pleasure in The Commitments is in enjoying these fresh faces interacting, singing and "acting" as only "real" characters can. Thus, while the script sets the boundaries and may even provide many of the lines, you can be sure that with nonactors, so much of what Parker finally captured depended on the music and the energy level of the performances. Parker had, after all, mixed documentary, improv and humor when he shot Fame (1980) using real dance students at the New York High School for Performing Arts. The fragmented nature of that film was tightened up by the time he got to The Commitments ten years later. The film is worth studying to see how you can script a film with a lot of humor for what could be a very low budget and a lot of fun in the making, if you accept the spirit of wishing to script a tale that takes advantage of such improvisational documentary moments.

  The Humor of Fake Documentaries

  Documentaries that are faked can, of course, be yet another source of humor. We could mention the insertion of Gump in historical footage of President Kennedy as one example. And a highly original candidate in this category is Peter Jackson and Costa Botes's Forgotten Silver (New Zealand, 1996). Jackson, the director best known for Heavenly Creatures and Bad Taste, managed to make a fake documentary so convincing that many in New Zealand were at first taken in when it aired on national television.

  This forty-minute film has to do with an investigation of a certain Colin Mackenzie, who singlehandedly invented, the documentary claims, such cinematic techniques as the first talking film, the first tracking shot and the first biblical spectacular and shot a series of highly successful silent comedies with a Kiwi comedian named Stan the Man.

  To help make his hoax legitimate, Jackson himself appears on camera explaining his discovery, based on old reels of film recovered from the trunk of one of his aunts. But there is more to this hilarious cinematic joke. Botes and Jackson got Harvey Weinstein of Miramax Films, Leonard Maltin and a host of New Zealand experts on camera, testifying to how impressive these old films of Colin Mackenzie are.

  Botes and Jackson clearly had fun faking the old films; they are very professionally done to appear authentic. As we see a "clip," Jackson explains in voiceover narration that the first sound film was Mackenzie's movie about Chinese workers in New Zealand, but the film was a financial failure because no one could understand Chinese, "so audiences left the theater in droves."

  Of course we can point to another effect of such a fake documentary, especially since many initially believed this one: the fact that documentaries can be falsified can be a frightening realization as well as a comic one, as the history of totalitarian filmmaking and the altering of a nation's history have often proved. Forgotten Silver will, however, be long remembered for its ability to make us laugh through the manipulation of the medium, done with a droll poker face and a razor-sharp sense of comic irony.

  If anyone among you think that he is wise, let him become a fool that he may be wise.

  Saint Paul

  We can now cast an eye more closely over how the various comic elements actually work in seven very different comedies: Sullivan's Travels, Big Night, A League of Their Own, Get on the Bus, The White Balloon, Clueless, and Fargo.

  Space does not allow for a complete breakdown of each film, but for each we will cover the following questions, based on what we have learned so far:

  • Does this comedy lean more toward anarchistic or romantic comedy?

  • How would we describe the comic climate or type of comedy in this film?

  • Which audience is it aimed at, and what special acknowledgement of that audience is made?

  • What kinds of characters are established?

  • What comic plot elements are involved?

  • What of the balance of visual and verbal humor?

  • And the ending: how much of an "embrace" is this comedy leaving us with?

  Finally, we will list a few comic highlights that make each film special.

  Romantic Anarchistic Comedy: Preston Sturges's Sullivan 's Travels

  We introduced Sturges in chapter 5. Let us briefly take a closer look at one of his most celebrated films, Sullivan's Travels (1941), which is an absolute must-see for anyone writing comedy. What Sturges pulls off is a rare comedy that seamlessly blends anarchistic and romantic comedy in one glorious film that both critiques Hollywood and American comedy and celebrates them at the same time. Thus the comic climate moves between irony, farce and affectionate, embracing humor.

  The plot is a picaresque journey film and a fish-out-of-water tale, ever so loosely inspired by Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels in that our main protagonist, Sullivan (Joel McCrea, in the performance of a lifetime), who is a popular Hollywood director of comedy, sets out like Gulliver on four different journeys. But the plot is also Aristophanic in that Sullivan has a Big Idea that he wishes to carry out: to go beyond Hollywood and discover Real Life. And in the tradition of anarchistic comedy, he meets his goal.

  Yet, truth be told, he only half succeeds. The other half brings in the romantic tradition. For not only does Sullivan wish to discover Life, he also wishes to make a "serious" film about the dark sides of life called Oh! Brother, Where Art Thou? This he does not do. His encounter with real life on the road-and the love of "the girl," never named but engagingly played by a sultry Veronica Lake, who shares his travels-has taught him that ultimately he wishes to continue to make comedies. For as he says at the very end, "Laughter is all some people have in this cockeyed caravan."

  The ending: A total and glorious festive embrace. Sullivan
has his arm around Veronica Lake, he is surrounded by his eager producers, and he is back in Hollywood, his voyages finished and his career as a comic filmmaker about to continue.

  Clearly there is a lot of Sturges's own soul-searching and satire of Hollywood wrapped up in this film, but Sturges keeps it all light and bright, except for a Chaplinesque scene among the homeless. In fact, Sturges delights in shooting (and scripting, of course) each journey in a different film style. Journey #1 is a mad silent comedy chase sequence, as a caravan of reporters tries to follow Sullivan as he sets out on foot as a hobo in search of life beyond Beverly Hills. Journey #2 starts with a farcical sequence, as an old widow tries to entrap Sullivan in her late husband's bedroom, but quickly turns into romantic comedy, as Sullivan and the Girl meet up in a Los Angeles diner. Journey #3 is Sturges's playful and moving tribute to Chaplin, as the Girl and Sullivan hit the road-or rather the boxcar-together and wind up handing out free money to the homeless in a misguided effort to help them out. This brings on Journey #4, as Sullivan is robbed and beaten, loses his memory and becomes a prisoner on a country chain gang.

  Characters: Sullivan is really something of a purposeful holy fool, and thus a fish out of water or a total innocent outside of Hollywood. Does he change? Yes: he learns that there is nothing wrong with making comedies.

  And he learns this through one of the great scenes in American comedy: Still suffering from amnesia, Sullivan joins his fellow prisoners in a poor black church, where they are invited for a gospel service and a screening of some silent cartoons. As the Pluto cartoon unrolls in the church, the men and the congregation burst into uproarious laughter. And Sullivan, in spite of himself, starts laughing too. Sturges's point is thus simply and powerfully made. Comedy is a kind of healing and communal catharsis.

  Veronica Lake is the romantic interest, and she is very much in the romantic tradition of being as sharp as or sharper than Sullivan, and like Shakespeare's women she is able to trade joke for joke, pun for pun, soothing line for soothing line.

  Audience: Broad. I've shown the film dozens of times to various audiences, and they all "get it." Once again, proof of Sturges's message of comedy's wide appeal, reaching prisoners and African American parishioners within the film.

  Special highlights: too many to elaborate, but here are a few.

  • The playful send-up of narrative structure. As in The Palm Beach Story, he begins with an ending: what we see is actually the ending of the serious social drama Sullivan is trying to release, Oh! Brother, Where Art Thou? It ends with two men killing each other as THE END appears on-screen and we learn we are in a Hollywood screening room.

  • Romantic screwball dialogue at its best: the diner scene, in which Sullivan and the Girl meet as she buys him breakfast, includes some of the most memorable of Sturges's fast-paced lines.

  • The wonderful understatement of the scene in which the Girl and Sullivan try to catch a boxcar train, as two real hobos watch the new couple's clumsy efforts to jump aboard and one says to the other, "Amateurs."

  • The handling of the "silent" Chaplinesque sequence, as a rich musical score adds emotion to their efforts to hand out money, thus dropping the laughter for a few minutes to touch a deeper nerve.

  • Finally, the church sequence with the projected cartoon-inspired writing and directing all around.

  Add to this that Sturges manages to make this both a "couple" film and an ensemble comedy with his usual gang of wonderful characters-William Demarest, Franklin Pangborn, Jimmy Conlin, Robert Warwick and others-and you have an added treat that makes this timeless viewing.

  Fresh Variations on the Buddy Comedy: Big Night, a Culinary Comedy

  Big Night (1996) is that small, unusual independent comedy that you are impressed got made at all and that manages, seemingly against all odds, to find a "cross-over" audience and make some money. The script, written over five years by actor and co-director Stanley Tucci and his author cousin, Joseph Tropiano, is absolutely an act of love that celebrates the comic spirit of taking chances. A familiar face from secondary roles in such films as The Pelican Brief and Kiss of Death as well as a lot of television, including Murder One, thirtysomething and Wiseguy, Tucci originally teamed up with Tropiano with a vague idea based on the mammoth Italian American lunches their grandmother used to prepare every Sunday when they were kids. What they finally ended up with, I think, is the best Ameri can script and film ever about food, but also a very touching and funny buddy film about two brothers who, despite all, remain family and friends. And it breaks through the stereotypes of Italian American men as gangsters to present, as Tucci has said, "Italian-Americans with frying pans rather than machine guns" (NPR interview, October, 1996).

  The plot is clear and simple. Two Italian immigrant brothers, appropriately named Primo (Tony Shalhoub) and Secundo (Stanley Tucci), in a small New Jersey town in the 195os are trying to save the Paradise, their gourmet restaurant, before it goes under financially. The main narrative thrust is thus a difficult task to be performed, with a strong anarchistic bent to it: they are refusing to "give the customers what they want." This is a character-driven comedy in which the main humor comes from our delight in getting to know these two brothers and the fine ensemble of characters around them. As critics such as Bob Greene have noted, "This is very much an actors' movie" (13).

  More specifically, the story gains comic tension as the clock ticks, for the brothers have one night to prepare the feast of a lifetime in hopes that their special guest will be the popular singer Louis Prima and members of his band, as arranged by rival restaurant owner Pascal (Ian -Holm). Naturally they discover by feast's end that Pascal has double-crossed them, and after a fight between the brothers on the nearby beach, we are left with one of the finest endings I can remember in an American comedy.

  The romantic element is worked in as a double subplot. Secundo is caught between his affair with Pascal's fiery forty-something Italian American mistress, Gabriella (Isabella Rosselini), and an attractive, no-nonsense younger American girlfriend, Phyllis (Minnie Driver), while Primo, bashful and inept when it comes to women, is attracted to Ann (Allison Janney), the local florist who supplies the restaurant with flowers.

  But Big Night is much more than a "save the farm" film with a restaurant in the role of the farm. It is, as Terrence Rafferty notes in his New Yorker review, very much "a fable of art versus commerce" (loo), with commerce winning for the immediate future but brotherhood and art being the moral winners in the end. Primo is established as a master chef, and thus as a character he is an artist of the highest order, unwilling to compromise. This fact alone makes him something of an anarchistic holy fool. He is not just unwilling to compromise, but he seems truly clueless as to how America and capitalism function. Secundo, on the other hand, is in every sense the immigrant attempting to adjust to the New World, as seen in the wonderful sequence in Pascal's office and in his joy ride in a Cadillac with the salesman (played by co-director Campbell Scott). The brothers are, therefore, a study in contrast: we can see Primo as the introvert and Secundo as the extrovert in every sense, from business to sexual politics. And yet they are united not just as buddies but by blood: they are, bottom line, brothers.

  The comic climate of the film balances between warm humor and clearly etched irony. Directors Tucci and Scott manage to keep the pacing fast enough to hold our interest without turning the film into the pie-in-the-face food farce it could easily have degenerated into. In fact, Tropiano notes that part of the evolution of this script was from easy farce to character-centered comedy. "When we first started writing this, it was more of a farce. These brothers ran this restaurant, and there was this goofy Pascal guy across the street" (48). More specifically, the script took shape as they realized they wanted to go beyond the stereotypes of Italian gangster men in American cinema, such as in the films of Martin Scorsese and in the Godfather films by Francis Ford Coppola. "All these stereotypes are really insulting," comments Tropiano (48).

  What emer
ged was a script that takes chances by going against the Hollywood wisdom of dumbing down comedy or bending to ethnic stereotypes. Thus Tucci and Tropiano were very much aiming for an intelligent audience covering both the art house and the discerning mainstream theaters. And they found it!

  Highlights include:

  i. A fine balance between ensemble group scenes and quieter small scenes, either between the brothers or, especially, between Secundo and his women or between Secundo and Pascal.

  2. Well-constructed dialogue that rings true. The following scene sets up the whole core conflict of the film and suggests the fine comic insight and timing. It occurs after the brothers have just lost the only customers of the evening because Primo will not serve meatballs with spaghetti.

  SECUNDO: What do you think about that? Take risotto off the menu?

  PRIMO: I'm sorry, what did you say?

  SECUNDO: Forget it.

  PRIMO: No, I no hear what you say. Tell me what you say.

  sECUNDO: Look. Risotto costs us a lot. And it take you a long time to make ... I mean, you must work so hard to make, so, then we have to charge more, and ... these customers don't understand really what is a risotto, and so there always is a problem.

  A beat.

  PRIMO: Sure. Good.

  SECUNDO: OK. Good.

  PRIMO: Yeah, that's good.

  A beat.

  PRIMO: Maybe instead we could put ...

  SECUNDO: Yeah, tell me, tell me ...

  PRIMO: I was thinking ... uh ... what do they call them ... You know ... hot dog? Hog dogs, hot dogs. Hot dogs. I think people would like that. Those.

  Secundo stares at him.

  SECUNDO: Fine.

  He gets up and begins to gather the money.