Mr. Siegel, Your Place in Hell is Ready

Damn, yet ANOTHER humorless book on a great humorist. Thanks, Lee Siegel. NOT A LOT.

There seems to be no end to depressing professors, creepy pontificating kikes, nitwit fanboys, and pretentious windbag magazine editors who somehow get BOOK DEALS to re-hash the lives and works of famous comedians.

Since they were always the darlings of the intellectuals, the Marx Brothers have one of the bigger bookshelves of shit, especially if you add all the tomes on Groucho. Groucho (and his son) wrote plenty of books so one or two basic biographies are enough...a "Films of..." and maybe one other (Adamson's book on the brothers, or Arce's book on Groucho).

But the SHITS just keep on coming.

Now yet another. (Louvish deserves TWO places in hell, for both a Groucho and an awful, tedious W.C. Fields tome).

Fuck you, Lee. Nobody cares about your opinion. I'm SO sick of NPR-types who have to over-analyze EVERYTHING.

What, Harpo washing his feet in Edgar Kennedy's lemonade stand isn't FUNNY? Why? No, don't tell me.

As I remember that bit, it was just another example of "retaliatory violence," going back to Laurel & Hardy's memorable wars with James Finlayson (and Kennedy, too if I recall). I think Kennedy started it by stealing a bag of peanuts from Chico's wagon. Whatever, it was a satire on human nature, if you really care to discuss it. It showed how easily the veneer of civilization can be stripped away, and two people can end up acting like children. Or worse.

IF I'M BEING HONEST, if you're in a depressed or hostile mood, almost NOTHING is funny. Comedy, as Steve Allen mentioned, is tragedy plus time. The more distance you have, generally the funnier it becomes. This includes distance from empathy. We don't empathize with Margaret Dumont, Edgar Kennedy or even Thelma Todd when they're up against the Marx Brothers. We get a vicarious thrill from Groucho, Chico and Harpo insulting and abusing (verbally or visually) much-disliked targets, whether it's dowagers, bullies or even slutty teases.

It's pretty easy to look sourly at most any comedy and say, "That's NOT funny." And add, "That's childish. That's cruel. That's insulting. That's unsophisticated," etc. etc. One of the lesser comedians (and now one of the most obscure) was Joey Adams. He once told me, "Comedy is about devastation. You've got to devastate something." Indeed. There has to be a PUNCHline. Mel Brooks agreed that comedy, like a rubber ball, is liveliest when thrown against a hard brick wall. Comedy is a release. Like sex, the release is often best when it climaxes against aggression. "Making love" is often not nearly as satisfying as "having sex." The latter involves conquering, talking dirty, creating a fantasy situation that is devastated, even if it's the woman putting on lingerie only to have it ripped or stripped off her body as she's thrown on her back.

You sure don't expect the woman to say, "This isn't sexy. You've gone too far." She's supposed to cooperate out of her own needs. She wants to provoke and then be dominated for it. She wants to be bad and get punished. Whatever.

But I digress. Or something.

Comedy is building up and releasing tension. The cop keeps frustrating and chasing little Charlie Chaplin until he cleverly finds a way of literally destroying the cop. It's funny only if the cop deserves it. In "Duck Soup," Edgar Kennedy deserved it. He was a surly bully. Also, his reactions were funny, including his "slow burn," Another aspect of comedy is that it's not funny if the target is seriously hurt. Groucho insulted Dumont, and half the time she didn't even know she'd been insulted. Or she dismissed it by rolling her eyes. It sure wouldn't have been funny if Groucho offered a wisecrack and she burst into tears.

But ultimately, as you're finding out, discussing comedy is pretty boring. Having jerks like Louvish and Siegel pontificate page after page (and do it wrong) is excruciating. You wonder what the fuck is wrong with them, that they have to dissect things the way they do, and ruin things the way they do. The latter is often due to their humorless analytical and robotic personalities. Arthur Marx, son of Groucho, offered plenty of negative anecdotes about his father's faults, but Arthur was an excellent writer. There was empathy. His work was entertaining. His stories had you thinking, "Wow, Groucho was quite a character...Groucho had his problems...Groucho was like so many a creative genius, a person you might not want to live with and might have trouble keeping as a friend." But you still could enjoy Groucho's work.

These creeps who write bad books on Groucho and others, seem like people you' NEVER want to know. Jerks who write awful, dry, depressing books and for scab wages (they usually have a full time job) are almost always obnoxious. I've had the unpleasant experience of getting calls from some of them (brain-picking, cheap, presumptuous, egocentric pushy clods that they are) and almost instantly deciding NOT to cooperate, because they ARE such CREEPS.

Sadly, the publishing world tosses books out of print very quickly, can easily find some professor or magazine editor willing to work cheap for the "prestige" of being a book author, and so every few years, there's a NEW biography of a Groucho, a Cary Grant, a McCartney, etc. etc. Each is likely to be worst than the last. But never the last.