I always like to give a little history of my relationship to the material when I write these reviews/recaps because I think it's only fair I show my biases. In this case, I have both anecdotal and direct history with National Lampoon, specifically with their Radio Hour.
A few years before I was born, my parents lived out in the middle of nowhere. (We lived there a few years after I was born, too.) In order to hear National Lampoon Radio Hour, they had to take their radio out on the porch and fiddle with the antenna until they could—just barely—get the signal. I grew up hearing, "That's not funny, that's sick," and not really understanding where it came from.
Years later, as a pre-teen, I was in a Hastings with my parents. That was a books-and-records store, one of my favorite places to go. Dad found a box set of the Radio Hour and bought it so I could finally share the humor. We listened, and at the point someone said, "There's a lobster loose!" I said, "That sounds like Bill Murray." (I was an SNL fan.) Dad was pleased. "That is Bill Murray!" he told me.
Thus many National Lampoon bits became part of my regular dialect. I could recite the entire "A man walks into a nightclub with a beautiful girl on his arm..." bit. I still sometimes sing, "Give Ireland back to the Irish." I love Flash Bazbo. A lot of it is hugely irreverent, but that's part of the fun—you're laughing almost because you know you shouldn't.
Okay, so there's the history, and here's this movie, which focuses on the short life of one of National Lampoon's creators Doug Kenney. I think you probably have to have a love of and interest in the material to enjoy the movie, but it's impressive the talent they got, too: Domhnall Gleeson plays Doug's fellow founder Henry Beard and nails the American accent by way of sounding (and, thanks to the wig, looking a little like) Jesse Eisenberg. Martin Mull plays the narrator, an older Doug if Doug had lived that long. And there is a list of other known faces (and voices) as well, all shining in their own small parts, as this movie is clustered with personalities and so none are given too much time.
I do wonder how Chevy Chase feels about his old co-star Joel McHale playing him, though?
Will Forte plays Doug, and of course I have no idea whether he's at all like the actual guy. If he is, I'd say Doug was a difficult personality. Not in the way of being in-your-face difficult; if anything, he was self-deprecating a lot of the time. But not easy to work with thanks to a lack of discipline, and not easy to live with because of an obsessive streak as well as being prone to addiction. His refusal to face problems lent to his downward spiral. It's a damn shame, really. That's what this movie drives home.
If you were to ask, "Is it a good movie?" I don't know what I'd say. It's a curious kind of movie, and I think I enjoyed it? But I'm not entirely sure. I would like to read the book it's based on. I suppose any time a movie makes me want to engage the source material, that's a good thing. I really don't know if it's a "good" movie, but it will stay with me for a long time.
Showing posts with label comedians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comedians. Show all posts
1.09.2018
Books: Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens by Eddie Izzard
In 2000, my then fiancé and I were visiting my parents, and my dad said, "Oh, have you seen this guy?" And he turned on Dress to Kill. Besides loving the comedy routine, I remember being blown away that my dad—a very conservative man—was kind of fine watching a transvestite. I had to wonder whether being funny somehow excused what would otherwise bother my father, or if maybe there were things (in Dad's philosophy) that were okay for transvestites? Or maybe Dad just thought it was part of the act?
We've never talked about it, so I still don't know.
But at that point I fell in love with Eddie Izzard's comedy. My husband and I have since seen him live a number of times for Sexie, Stripped, some new material he was just trying out, and Force Majeure. We pretty much try to see him whenever he's in the area (first when we lived in Boston, now out in San Francisco).
Look, I grew up with British comedy, so that's probably a large part of my enjoyment of Izzard's work. He speaks repeatedly in Believe Me about his being influenced by Monty Python, and I grew up watching Monty Python (and Fawlty Towers, Are You Being Served? 'Allo 'Allo!, Keeping Up Appearances, some weird show called Mulberry that I sometimes think I dreamed up . . . the list goes on). So I think Eddie and I have some similar tastes, you know, we jibe. So that's cool.
All this to give you a sense of why I wanted to read this book.
It's definitely Eddie Izzard writing. Even with a co-writer credited, this is his voice, and there didn't seem to be much buffing of it. In fact, there were several places where I thought it needed another editing and proofreading pass. But that's fine, no big deal, and they'll probably fix it in the paperback.
You get the definite sense that Izzard struggles a bit with opening himself up. But at the same time, he seems fairly self-aware and introspective. He goes through the major events of his life (starting with his mother's death when he was six) and discusses how he felt then and what he thinks about it now. The gist of the book is about how persistence pays off, or at least it did for him. How being stubborn and determined is basically how he got where he is today. And he talks about the circumstances that shaped him, and of course about coming out and how he dealt with that and continues to deal with various reactions from people.
The book actually made for a very good conversation with my 9-year-old daughter. She saw the cover and asked, "Is that a boy or a girl?" Which gave me the perfect opportunity to explain gender fluidity. We talked about all the different ways people might feel about their bodies, like maybe they were meant to be a different gender and might want to change their bodies or at least dress differently. I think it was a productive discussion.
Overall, I enjoyed the book, though it made me kind of sad in thinking about my own attempts to succeed. Which I think is the opposite reaction Izzard might've wanted, but . . . Well, I won't go into it. Long story short, it's a nice read, and I look forward to the next time he's in town.
We've never talked about it, so I still don't know.
But at that point I fell in love with Eddie Izzard's comedy. My husband and I have since seen him live a number of times for Sexie, Stripped, some new material he was just trying out, and Force Majeure. We pretty much try to see him whenever he's in the area (first when we lived in Boston, now out in San Francisco).
Look, I grew up with British comedy, so that's probably a large part of my enjoyment of Izzard's work. He speaks repeatedly in Believe Me about his being influenced by Monty Python, and I grew up watching Monty Python (and Fawlty Towers, Are You Being Served? 'Allo 'Allo!, Keeping Up Appearances, some weird show called Mulberry that I sometimes think I dreamed up . . . the list goes on). So I think Eddie and I have some similar tastes, you know, we jibe. So that's cool.
All this to give you a sense of why I wanted to read this book.
It's definitely Eddie Izzard writing. Even with a co-writer credited, this is his voice, and there didn't seem to be much buffing of it. In fact, there were several places where I thought it needed another editing and proofreading pass. But that's fine, no big deal, and they'll probably fix it in the paperback.
You get the definite sense that Izzard struggles a bit with opening himself up. But at the same time, he seems fairly self-aware and introspective. He goes through the major events of his life (starting with his mother's death when he was six) and discusses how he felt then and what he thinks about it now. The gist of the book is about how persistence pays off, or at least it did for him. How being stubborn and determined is basically how he got where he is today. And he talks about the circumstances that shaped him, and of course about coming out and how he dealt with that and continues to deal with various reactions from people.
The book actually made for a very good conversation with my 9-year-old daughter. She saw the cover and asked, "Is that a boy or a girl?" Which gave me the perfect opportunity to explain gender fluidity. We talked about all the different ways people might feel about their bodies, like maybe they were meant to be a different gender and might want to change their bodies or at least dress differently. I think it was a productive discussion.
Overall, I enjoyed the book, though it made me kind of sad in thinking about my own attempts to succeed. Which I think is the opposite reaction Izzard might've wanted, but . . . Well, I won't go into it. Long story short, it's a nice read, and I look forward to the next time he's in town.
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