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8 Responses to “High Anxiety”

1. 1 Luke Nov 29th, 2009 at 3:27 pm

   A post about this has been gestating, but in the mean time I’ll say that I can’t believe that in a single post you dismiss Larry David while embracing Mel Brooks. Curb is perhaps the last bastion of a kind of zany and slightly mean Jewish humor of which Mel Brooks was the high master. High Anxiety may be outside of the trajectory I’m discussing, but only barely. Check out this interview with Brooks and Carl Reiner from a couple weeks ago.. Then check out this clip from this season on Curb. There’s a continuity there, and though I find talking about why something’s funny akin to dancing about architecture, David’s humor is bursting at the seams with a tradition that I fear my kids as they age will only be able to access through archives.
2. 2 Reverend Nov 29th, 2009 at 3:41 pm

   Yeah, that scene with Larry David gets a everything I dislike about Curb Your Enthusiasm. Like Brooks he’s always acting and it’s always apparent, but unlike Brooks he’s not really funny which just makes it painful.

   His gags fall flat because he seems to be too consciously relying on the Jewish tradition of comedy of the 70s and 80s (thinking Brooks and Allen here) rather than doing anything new with it. He is in many ways an unfortunate end to that shtick, and highlights for me just how much better Brooks was.
   Sorry, but a tradition always has the good and bad within it, and liking Brooks by no means necessitates me pandering for Larry David. He’s a hack.
3. 3 Luke Nov 29th, 2009 at 4:02 pm

   Nothing new with it? His show locates that tradition of humor within a contemporary context and a bizarre world of fame, money, power, and politics, which provides ample ammunition for the absurdism necessary for the funny. David also plays more directly and dangerously with race in ways that Brooks only tried in Blazing Saddles and Allen has never touched. I’ll admit he doesn’t always pull it off– some of the race stuff is cringe inducing with no payoff– but there simply aren’t any other worthwhile voices like his out there (save Jon Stewart), and I’m glad this show exists compared to the monumental crap that passes for comedy elsewhere on tv.

   Having SAID that, I would never put him at the Brooks/Allen level as an innovator– who is, outside of Pryor? That’s a red herring. But, like Billy Crystal & Seinfeld, he echoes and plays within their tradition in the sitcom format. Didn’t you ever watch The Five Wood, or The Contest? And how can’t the phrase “Bar Misfitted” uttered by J Smoove in that context be funny??

   You want bad in that tradition? Try Jackie Mason.
4. 4 Chris L Nov 29th, 2009 at 4:05 pm

   ah, Groom… sometimes I want to drop to my knees and shake my fist at the heavens for how unlucky in aesthetics you are

   On that topic, _A Serious Man_ wholly and completely guts your Coen Bros thesis. You and Leslie will have to come up with something better!
5. 5 Scott Leslie Nov 30th, 2009 at 6:52 pm

   I was going to recommend you catch up on the last 3 seasons of “Big Love” before it starts up again in January on HBO, but that was before I saw @fncll throwing down over the Coens. Funnily enough, I have “No Country” cued up for a 3rd viewing tonight (masochist that I am) and will undoubtedly fork over my hard earned cash for “A Serious Man,” despite the fact that I have absolutely NO doubt it will simply confirm the Coen’s as the bankrupt-of-empathy masterful po-mo manipulators of plot they really are.
6. 6 Chris L Nov 30th, 2009 at 6:58 pm

   @sleslie what kind of hat do you have? Wear something tasty ’cause you’re going to be eating it!
7. 7 Reverend Dec 4th, 2009 at 4:05 pm

   @fncll If it is more of the same “Burn after Reading” drivel, spare me. The Coen Brothers are quickly becoming self-cannibalizing hacks, constantly regurgitating the same work (devaluing their good stuff) and boring the bava. But I will see their next film, and I will wear a hat to the theater as well. In fact, I’ll wear this hat:
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjsfwWZ6thE
8. 8 Chris L Dec 4th, 2009 at 8:20 pm

   It could be more different from Burn After Reading (which I didn’t like), but I’m not sure how. You and @sleslie are so going to be buying me beer…

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