Today on TCM, with only a couple of exceptions, it’s a day for comedy. Comedies run from morning until night so, naturally, one may assume, it’s a day for laughter. For some people. For others, like myself, it’s a day for appreciating comedy while we laugh inside, right here [points to heart]. Laughing out loud at comedy has never been, oddly enough, a prerequisite for me thinking a comedy is good or not. The reason is because I may not find the same thing funny from day to day, hour to hour, or even minute by minute. I may laugh heartily at certain jokes, in certain movies that I find rather abysmal, and sit stone faced in another comedy that I find absolutely superb.
Comedy works the same as any other genre in that it’s the story, the characters, and the situation that makes or breaks the piece. When I watch a horror movie, I may be taken in by it, scared and exhilarated, and thrilled with every new shock. Then, when I watch it again, knowing where all the shocks are, I may not feel the same thing but still understand it’s a good horror movie. When I watch a movie with a twist, like The Sting, I still enjoy it every time I see it even though only once, the very first time, was I ever surprised by it. Sometimes, as with Psycho, a horror movie with a twist, covering both previous examples, I not only wasn’t particularly scared the first time I saw it, I knew Norman, not his mother, was the killer. So, no frights and no surprises. Nevertheless, I knew I had watched one of the cinema’s very best and having now seen it a couple of dozen times, find it as amazing as ever. And so it goes with comedy. After the first experience, you know the jokes but the movie’s still good, even if you’re not quite laughing anymore. Or in my case, ever.
In the opening scene of Lost in America, as the camera pans across the room of David and Linda Howard (Albert Brooks and Julie Hagerty), David’s clock radio turns on playing an interview by Larry King of Rex Reed. Reed is talking about comedy and remarking that he doesn’t agree with the old adage that comedy requires an audience (as someone with stage experience, let me just quickly insert that stage comedy absolutely requires an audience). He says, “If it’s really funny, I’ll laugh.” With films, Reed is right. Films have no idea what the size of their eventual audience will be. It could be a packed house or it could be someone sitting in front of their computer screen in their bed. The comedy, the timing, all has to be done with no regard to audience. One of the mistakes of early sound film was the interminable holding for laughter that many early comedies did. Anticipating massive audiences rolling with laughter, they waited two or three beats between punchlines, usually killing the joke outright. It may have worked for those showings with packed houses but for viewings with a couple of people in front of a television, things can quickly become painfully awkward. By the mid to late thirties, the best directors knew to tell their actors to speed things along, leading naturally to Howard Hawks having his actors move through dialogue at lightning speed, ensuring that a classic like His Girl Friday remains a classic because Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell didn’t spend every ten seconds staring at each other in silence for five seconds while the unseen audience laughed. Seriously, thank you Howard Hawks, you don’t know how much we owe you for that.
So I agree with Reed, a good comedy doesn’t require an audience. In fact, a good comedy is good precisely because it’s not thinking of the audience at all. It’s making sure it works even if it’s just one person watching in the dark. And that’s how I like it because, frankly, I rarely laugh out loud at comedies anyway. I usually laugh afterwards. Allow me to explain.
I’ve seen Young Frankenstein several dozen times. I think it’s an excellent comedy that, surprisingly, I don’t think I ever laugh at when I’m watching it. When I re-tell the jokes with a friend later, however, I often can’t stop laughing. Recounting the comedy makes it funny even when watching it does nothing for me. This applies to other genres as well. An emotional drama may not affect me as much watching it as it does when I remember it. A horror movie may not creep me out when watching it but make me peer over my shoulder two days later when I think of it again. I attribute a lot of this to the fact that I let movies live in my head for days or weeks after seeing them. The initial viewing is often just a way in, and additional viewings bring more rewards, even though I now know how everything turns out. Also, in the case of comedy, I prefer deadpan humor in my everyday life. There are plenty of people I find funny who don’t know it because I never laugh at anything they say, I simply give a deadpan rejoinder. Mainly, though, I think I lose myself in the comedy, if it’s good, inside my head where, I swear, I’m laughing really hard. So if the comedy’s really good, I may not laugh at all. I guess I’m just funny that way.