THE MEDIOCRITY…..IS THE MASSAGE.

“Don’t work blue…”
– RED SKELTON

“PC crap is hurting comedy.”
– JERRY SEINFELD

“Fuck that bullshit.”
– ALI WONG

To my genuine surprise, I really dug Jason Reitman’s SATURDAY NIGHT.  It’s messy, quite intentionally I have to believe, in a heartfelt swing, along with the film stock and jittery camera, at an attempt to capture at the very least a perspective, a defining breath of that era.  We all know how it turned out, but, that said, the picture comes to an affecting and, again to my surprise, moving conclusion.

I am clearly in the minority in this regard, as the picture seems to have died theatrically.  Perhaps it will find a home on television, which, to be honest, seems a likely better fit for it.

It might be worth mentioning that I am not all that enthusiastic a fan of the show, and have never been more than a casual viewer.  I’ve watched it over its long run, but not for decades, and never religiously, bereft of that must see TV mindset that so many seem to bring to the show and its performers.

On the suggestion of people whose taste and opinion I generally trust, I have tapped into replays of “Weekend Update with Colin Jost and Michael Che,” and I have actually laughed out loud at these, more than once.

But, as I should indicate, an exception, rather than a rule.

Back in those dim lost days of my twenties, when Saturday Night Live was the thing, I did watch most of the MTM situation comedies—they were all on the air before I left to hit the streets for real amusement.

The Norman Lear stuff, not so much.  I always found them so self-satisfied and smug, and nowhere nearly as funny as they thought they were, encouraging self -and smugly agreeable clapter rather than laughter.

Not to mention, but mention I will, my suspicion that an awfully large part of the viewing audience for ALL IN THE FAMILY thought Archie Bunker was right on the money. Not that Lear ever acknowledged such an unfortunate idea for public consumption.  Ratings are ratings, after all.

As for Saturday Night Live, it was just there, like furniture.  If I happened to be home, I watched it, but, as noted above I had a life, and was thus often out on Saturday night, leaving my apartment just before it went on—New York City didn’t really get underway until midnight—certainly in those years when the show was pitched to me and my contemporaries.

Coincidentally, my regular drinking spot back then was a joint called Ashley’s, and for a few years, the then tiny SNL cast after party ended up in the saloon’s window booth. Significantly, or not, no one drinking at the bar seemed to give much of a fuck about this, acknowledging the presence, but leaving it be. The joint was, to be sure, the epitome of contemporary louche.

I can surely recall aspects of the show’s repeated gags, most of which were barely more than amusing once.  But I have little or no recollection of any standout moments of high comedy that remain in my head or heart, other than, say, the Dan Ackroyd/Julia Child business.

In retrospect, those repeated gags both served a culture and delivery system of that culture that were gradually becoming attuned to a bumper sticker consumer audience, which valued familiarity and comfort over transgression and surprise—clapter over laughter—and further aided and abetted that cultural shift, commodifying what might be called outrageous lite, mild amusement that misrepresents itself as comedy gold.

I saw the show live, once, I seem to recall along with the currently dead Byron Preiss, and found it as middling entertaining in person as on television.  In those long-ago days, SCTV was always a far more consistently funny experience.  That said, I revisited the Canadian show a few years back, and it just didn’t hold up any better than, say, TOP SECRET!, a picture I found a scream back then but now just sprawls there like death.

And the less said about FRIDAYS, ABC’s misbegotten and dreadful attempt to compete with SNL, the better.  With all the shit thrown at Aaron Sorkin and STUDIO 60 ON THE SUNSET STRIP, for what seemed to be a terribly unfunny show that the show was about, it was always FRIDAYS that came to my mind in that regard.

In the case of SNL, and its place in culture, certainly in its first decade or so, despite his all around deep seated loathsomeness, I tend to agree with Tony Hendra, whose bitterness at not being brought along to join Michael O’Donaghue, Ann Beatts, and the rest of the Catholics and Canadians, metastasized into a book which insisted, an insistence I tend to agree with, and not all that grudgingly, I might add, that rather than being the apex of the new emergent comedy of its time, SNL was actually a leveling of that sensibility, a democratizing of outrage, making its homogenized distillation of transgression accessible to the mass cult.

The end of something, rather than the beginning.  The blunting of the cutting edge, as The Baffler once billed itself. The commodification of a dying and soon to be calcified and coopted counterculture, already bought and sold, to be sure.

So, the movie, despite my familiarity with its subject—I watched that first episode, which, like so much of what followed it through the decades, wasn’t all that funny—was, for me, separable from its inspiration.  Furthermore, I wasn’t expecting it to be funny, any more than I expect laughs of any kind from Aaron Sorkin.

The picture’s performances—in some cases, impersonations—seemed, for the most part, right on target.  The only one of those portrayed that I knew personally was Michael O’Donaghue. Tommy Dewey delivers a terrific take on O’Donaghue, who was, and trust me on this, a truly awful human being, a dreadful man who somehow miraculously managed to avoid being beaten to death.

O’Donaghue died instead of a cerebral hemorrhage, which, in retrospect, might very well have contributed to his awfulness.

The movie’s exchange between O’Donaghue and George Carlin, which acknowledges the ghost of Lenny Bruce, the spectre hovering over all comedy that seeks transcendence in transgression, whether such a confrontation happened or not, seems on the money.

Friends are often surprised at my indifference to Carlin, whose reputation and legacy seem to have a far greater shelf life in memoriam than his lifetime would have led me to believe.  I think my uninterest stems from having been aware of him early on from his post Joy Boys of Radio days, the Al Sleet, Hippy Dippy Weatherman routines.

I recall clearly a number of comics, contemporaries of his, caught speaking their minds, dismissing Carlin as pretentious and overwrought.

His transformation seemed, to me at least, to smack of performance, zigging when zigging looked like the correct career correction.  In this regard, see also Bob, the former Bobby, Darin.

And speaking of exchanges, the ghost of Comedy Past and Comedy Future confrontation between Milton Berle and Chevy Chase, two reputedly awful men, was also dead on, despite the unfortunate big swinging dick nonsense, which seemed to me to be unnecessary, lazy, and on the nose in a way that much of the rest of the movie is not.

Which, I think, finally identifies and locates my typically buried lede.

When I was a little kid, my mother, who resented me and my two brothers, four and seven years my junior—all three of us children of different fathers, I would learn some thirty-five years later—as reminders of the miserable choices she’d made in men from the get go, would shove us into our shared bedroom as early as possible, to avoid seeing us any more than she absolutely had to.

And, just to interject, any distaste for my mother that might emerge here derives entirely from the fact that she took the secrets of our fathers to her grave, a truth I only found out by a bizarre and unforeseen circumstance well after her death nearly thirty years ago.

And to add to the comedy, when I hipped my brother to this, his reaction was, almost without a pause, “Holy fuck—it’s just like BONANZA!”

I kid you not. Now that’s funny.

This shut up in a bedroom well before sunset lifestyle all but abruptly changed shortly after I turned eleven, when she started going out, often on weeknights, with men I rarely met, leaving me in charge of my kid brothers and the apartment.  I stayed up ‘til all hours, and spent those hours watching television.

Movies, of course, but also, and of the utmost significance here, THE TONIGHT SHOW, hosted by Jack Paar—from whom, apropos of next to nothing, I first heard the phrase, “I kid you not.”  History, along with the current spate of plagiarism allegations, has taught me to acknowledge sources.

So here I am, this barely articulate, repressed, and enraged kid, with an accent that would make Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall beam with pride, caught up in translating and interpreting televised conversations conducted by the cool and slyly mischievous Paar, with his guests Dodie Goodman, Alexander King, Peggy Cass, and Oscar Levant—and yes, of course, Jonathan Winters.

But Winters was goofy and odd, accessible to a kid in a way that these others were not.  It was those others who invaded my available consciousness, and left behind seedlings as yet at that point unidentified or comprehended, for that matter.

In my efforts at translation, I was transfixed, and came to identify, without having a name for it yet, a presentation, a demonstration, an attitude that I would absorb, but would remain dormant, to finally be awakened by marijuana some six years later, which served as my gateway to and for far more than drugs.

This was, to finally name it, wit.

My High School graduation picture, taken in the autumn of 1966, depicts what only those of a certain age and cultural temperament will recognize as the Larry Kroger of my class—look it up—a still inarticulate, repressedly enraged blurry thumbprint with glasses.

A year later I was transformed, that rage released—no, harnessed—by drugs and alcohol, setting me well on my path to becoming the beta version of the now completely clean and sober 2.0 I am today.

And lest you think this was always and necessarily to the good, allow me to disabuse you of this notion.  Even a half century ago, being clever and quick, a smartass in a world overpopulated with the hostilely facetious was often a sluice to a potential ass kicking. I have, at least to a certain degree, learned to read the room and keep my fucking mouth shut.

Most of the time.

And lest you think even further that I was ready for an evening of cocktails and chat with Noel Coward before I got my draft card, forget that foolishness.  Alongside all this wit in training, we also must include Steve Allen, a vastly influential comic talent—there could be no Letterman, or Conan, or heaven help us Fallon, bereft of Steverino—who, before he squandered his legacy by devolving into a late life scold, was frequently as surreal and batshit as the more revered Ernie Kovacs was, but, to be brutally honest about it, more accessibly funny.

To me.

And that’s the hinge.  It’s all subjective.  One man’s wittiness is another man’s wince worthiness.

So.  I am a tough, and yes, contradictory audience.  I love Laurel & Hardy and the Marx Brothers, and/or/but, I loathe the Three Stooges.  I am a lifelong fan of classic screwball comedy, but, or perhaps and, I could never stand I LOVE LUCY.

I’m not going to do anything comprehensive in regard to a list of what I find funny.  Such things are completely subjective, as noted, filled with what would be a lot of familiar names, as well as obscure and long forgotten stuff.  And fuck that all too common misrepresenting ‘favorite” as “best.”

I will say, however, that over the years, when anyone has offered variations on such things as “You’re so funny!” or “Why don’t you do standup?”  my answer is always the same.  I am occasionally amusing, frequently clever, often quick, now and then witty.  But funny is a job, more acting than many seem to notice, even in the context of improvisation.

So.

It’s those now long dead and gone to dust chatterboxes I watched, listened to, and absorbed as a preteen that are the ghosts who inform my writing, my thinking, and my public speaking, both of the previously considered and constructed beforehand as well as the adlib and off the cuff variety.  Add the names of Lenny Bruce and Gore Vidal to the list of spiritual godparents, and you’ve got my posse of skeptical shoulder whisperers en toto.

And as for comedy, I remain a tough audience.  With very few exceptions, I’ve never been a devoted regular for situation comedies, and I’m not all that interested in standup comedians, either.

Not to litanize, but a few are worth mentioning.  COMMUNITY, in the hands of its creator, Dan Harmon—with that Harmon bereft season excruciatingly demonstrating his genius by his absence.  BIG MOUTH, which continues my appreciation of and admiration for the work of Nick Kroll, not least of which for his self-confidence, featuring as the show does a cruel animated caricature of Nick Kroll.

As much as I admire Drew Friedman’s work in general, and his Old Jewish Comedians portraits in particular, I have to say that beyond an ironic appreciation of these Alter kockers’ performance, I find Friedman’s work considerably funnier than most of his subject matter.  Except for Phil Silvers.  And Myron Cohen…

…And, okay, fine, more than a few more.  I stand self-corrected.

As for contemporary standup, I watched the original iteration of @MIDNIGHT, and was thus exposed to a new generation of standup talent.  I investigated many of these people, and found a very few laugh out loud funny, and a bare few barely amusing.

Most of the latter seem to be part of a growing comedy culture in film and television made up of actors who seem to be having a far better time than the audience.  See, as an example of this, the David Wain oeuvre.

Ali Wong is certainly an exception, as is John Mullaney, who I have come to appreciate.

And as much as I loathe the whole ROAST franchise, from its dimwitted and idiotic Dean Martin days to the modern iteration—the overtly phony presentation and pretense of mistaking attention for affection never convinced me—seeing Steve Rannazzisi brutally destroyed on Jeffrey Ross’ ROAST BATTLE was breathtaking, as was Anthony Jeselnik’s evisceration of the clueless Whoopi Goldberg without her being in the least bit aware of what was happening in that moment on that same show.

Thinking of Jeselnik brings to mind where I started here in the first place, in regard to the commodifying of comic outrage, and the comments of Jerry Seinfeld in regard to what can and can’t be said in comedy today.

I have never seen an entire episode of SEINFELD.  What little I have seen was and remains utterly uninteresting to me.  I didn’t hate it—the way I loathed, say, FRIENDS, or TWO AND A HALF MEN, or THE BIG BANG THEORY, for three—but, whatever the nothing it was allegedly about held no appeal to me.

I did come to generally loathe CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM, which seemed to me about the kind of Jews I find as insufferable as I do the whiny self-deprecating sort.

All that said, I am familiar with Seinfeld as a standup comic in his television work, and that work always struck me as anodyne and toothless, which colors his issues with modern audiences in an odd and resentful palette.

Anecdotally, I did a very little bit of work for SPY MAGAZINE back in the 1980s, and I was invited to a party to celebrate SPY’s partnering up with NBC—specifically, to conjoin the magazine with Jerry Seinfeld.  If I had to come up with a list of comedic names of that era that were akin to SPY, Seinfeld would never have been on that list.  The collaboration bore no fruit, and the magazine died soon after.

Coincidence?  I think not.

In retrospect, as I read over what I’ve written above, I have come to understand that I am a more available audience for comedy than I considered myself when I started this ramble.  Yes, I’m picky, and there are just some things, in the name of contempt prior to investigation, that I will avoid like the plague…the majority of situation comedies, with or without laugh tracks, the majority of modern attempts at romantic and/or screwball comedy, and anything Hannah Gadsby adjacent or related, of course.

Naturally. I mean, really now.

And to return—finally, right?—to where we started, SATURDAY NIGHT, regardless of its inaccuracies, its conflations, its fictions, is, at its core, about one thing.  Not the comedy, not the cast, not even the culture of the mid-1970s. The movie is about the show’s producer, Lorne Michaels.

Here he is, this Canadian kid, selling the newness, the nowness, the outrage of what he’s got cooking to the powers that be, in a running battle with the corporate suits of the previous generation, and a conniving shmuck of his own age.  And, of course, since it’s couched in the recognizable language of a David versus Goliath underdog story, Michaels’ vision, performative as it soon demonstrated itself to be, won the day.

It might have been interesting, but, considering the parties involved, utterly impossible, to wrap the movie with a framing device in which the latter day, contemporary Michaels is portrayed in all his chill, famously affectless glory.

Those two confrontations, between Berle and Chase, and between O’Donaghue and Carlin, indicate a point of view thematically underpinning the movie; the acknowledgment, or perhaps more specifically a gratitude, for the passing of an era, and the wresting of the baton from the dying hands of calcified and corrupted ancients by new and pure agents of joy to carry us into a newly minted era of comic enlightenment.

In MY OLD ASS, a lovely little recent picture which nobody saw theatrically and it is to be hoped will find an audience via streaming, an eighteen-year-old girl, about to leave home, somehow manages to connect and spend time with her thirty-nine-year-old self, whose experience informs her younger self’s expectations.

This brought to mind the potential of what might have been a less hagiographic and self-congratulatory coda for SATURDAY NIGHT; specifically, an acknowledgment that we find ourselves in our own calcification, a cautious and timid state of affairs which likely began its lifetime on that October Saturday in 1975.

Rosebud, indeed.

As ever, I remain,

Howard Victor Chaykin…a Prince.