We do it #ForTheCultrs
For those who love to comedy, these articles cover everything from a ridiculous mobile phone sales manager to a film blooper involving a Jewish delicacy.
Peter Sellers was a classic character actor but this took it a step further. In 1965, on an episode of a Beatles-tribute variety show called The Music of Lennon and McCartney, Sellers did a rendition of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ in the style of Laurence Olivier’s Richard III.
Watch Olivier’s original performance for a comparison of this meta-acting delight.
If the writing and acting are still as good as this, the return of Frasier is sure to be a hit (for me at least).
Here, Frasier is trying to get some sleep but external forces (Eddie and Niles’s starter’s pistol) are getting in his way. My favourite line has to be this:
Niles: And there’s no need to get snippy; accidents happen, you know.
Frasier: Oh I’m sorry, was I snippy? I didn’t realize it was too much to ask that there not be GUNPLAY IN MY LIVING ROOM!
No one does acerbic wit and sarcasm quite like Frasier Crane.
There is/was(?) something so intriguing about DDL’s acting, allowing for some very funny parodies. This one imagines Daniel Day-Lewis as a frustrating roommate, involving his portrayals of:
Goddamn it, Daniel Day-Lewis.
We stayed wide for this entire scene so we could avoid drawing too much of the audience’s attention to Daniel’s lifeless embodiment of his character.
And if you want to read a serious review of the movie, check out Cultrface fave Dom Griffin’s for Baltimore Beat.
Have we learned nothing from the tragic events of 1998, when, under the watch of President Morgan Freeman, this nation was plunged into chaos, and hundreds of millions of people died at the hands of the deadly Wolf-Beiderman space rock? The mere fact that this country is even considering putting another black man, Barack Obama, in the Oval Office proves that we have not.
PushingUpRoses reviewed the episode of Creepshow where Bob Ross took on the Deadites from The Evil Dead. Kinda. It stars Ted Raimi and a host of other actors and it as looks weird and wonderful as you’d expect.
Like Pharaoh Khufu, I have built a great tomb. But, tonight, I’m not gonna bury you in it with me. Except with the admittedly generous mounds of peanuts that you’ll see I’ve provided. No, tonight I just want to say that this book is a disaster! It’s a travesty! It’s proof of a broken promise.
Buy a copy today (unless you’re a pathetic worthless punk).
At the end of last year, I discovered PushingUpRoses, a content creator who makes comedic introspective videos about various media including Murder, She Wrote, Golden Girls, Goosebumps, and the odd Let’s Play and retro PC game analysis. It gave me a lot of needed laughs and made me appreciate Murder, She Wrote all over again.
In the above video, PushingUpRoses made a supercut of jokes and moments from her series, That Time on Murder, She Wrote and it’s so funny. Subscribe to her channel and check out her Patreon too.
Taken from The Simpsons episode, “Bart’s Inner Child” (S05E07)
This short clip distills everything I love about The Simpsons:
I remember finding this on a day I wasn’t feeling too good and it gave me a much needed laugh.
The Wobble Dog 9003i is a hot dog sausage wobbling machine. That’s it. A peculiar contraption on the surface but watching the sausages wobble is hilarious. The phallic nature of it all adds to the childish naughtiness (or maybe that’s where the humour stems from.)
Whatever. Stream it below and laugh along at the wiggling wieners.
(via Kottke.org)
I found this series last year via a scene from an actor’s showreel on YouTube and it offered some comfort during Lockdown 1.0.
Hug It Out tells the story of Gwen, a recent divorcee from LA who restarts her life as a professional snuggler (someone who is paid to cuddle or snuggle). Cue all kinds of awkwardness, inappropriate exposure, emotions, and swearing from a host of characters.
Kincaid Walker executive produced the web series and stars as Gwen alongside Jason Eksuzian who directed.
Hug It Out isn’t relatable on the surface—I neither have the money nor the necessity to hire a snuggler, in or out of a pandemic—but the subtext resonated with me a little. Having to start again after a relationship break up and not knowing where to go or how to navigate your new life is difficult and Gwen’s character had her fair share of mishaps throughout the series. But she grew into her new job and gained some confidence back for herself, expertly shown in one episode where she confronts an old friend who she’d fallen out with after Gwen’s marriage and subsequent breakup.
All 6 episodes are streamable on Vimeo or you can watch them via the Hug It Out website. And there’s a special COVID-19 short which answers the question “how the hell does a professional snuggler survive during a pandemic that dictates social distancing?” In case you were wondering.
While looking through YouTube today, the algorithm suggested a video about Buster Keaton. He was an actor I never looked into much but knew him by name and the reverence held by so many.
Further digging led me to this episode of This Is Your Life from 1957 featuring special guests Louise and Harry Keaton (his brother and sister), fellow colleagues Eddie Cline, Donald Crisp, Donald O’Connor, and Red Skelton and his wife Eleanor.
Buster remained straight-faced throughout (not a contractual obligation as once rumoured) and relatively quiet.
Comedy actor related: My obsession with Michael Keaton’s Easter Candy-SNL skit (Michael’s choice of stage name but has no connection to Buster) and was Jim Carrey a douche on the set of Man on The Moon?
While looking for Michael Keaton movies to buy/rent on YouTube, I came across this skit from SNL Season 40 Episode 17 (2015) starring Michael Keaton.
Entitled “Easter Candy“, it shows Keaton as himself but in a very creepy way showing all the easter candy he has in his basket. He’s joined by Portia (played by Kate McKinnon) and a cameo from his friend Jordan (who’s “a nut” as you’ll see later on, played by Bobby Moynihan).
Keaton started out in comedy but pivoted towards more serious work during the late 80s and throughout the rest of his career, thanks to impressive roles in Clean and Sober, Batman, and Batman Returns. He then came back to prominence in 2014 in Birdman, winning a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
What I love about Michael Keaton is his range and having grown up knowing more of his serious stuff—that happens when you watch Batman and Batman Returns hundreds of times each in 28 years—I thoroughly enjoy his comedy, past and present. In “Easter Candy“, there are some hilariously creepy moments and some new quotables added to my repertoire.
Stream it below.
It’s been a long year and we’re only into the second week. Things are heavy for so many of us and sometimes you need a bit of light relief to keep you going.
Of the main people I follow on Instagram for that purpose, Ryan Ken is one of my favourites. His hilarious send-ups of white people in all kinds of situations are mental palate cleansers and this one is no exception.
Yesterday, Ryan donned his blonde wig to impersonate Nancy Grace reading Shakespeare. The impersonation is spot-on and Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet never sounded so American South and fed up.
Black comedy related: The TikTok meme with the dancing duck and Steve Harvey on getting fired.
David Dennis, Jr. wrote a fantastic piece for LEVEL called The Hypocrisy of Dave Chappelle’s Power Play. It discusses Netflix’s decision to pull his old sketch show, Chappelle’s Show, and the irony of Chappelle’s reasoning for the request and how he felt afterwards.
The situation stems from a standup performance he did called “Unforgiven”. Here’s Chappelle himself discussing the situation:
I like working for Netflix because when all those bad things happened to me, that company didn’t even exist. And when I found out they were streaming Chappelle’s Show, I was furious. How could they not know?
So you know what I did? I called them, and I told them that this makes me feel bad. And you want to know what they did? They agreed that they would take it off their platform just so I could feel better. That’s why I fuck with Netflix. Because they paid me my money, they do what they say they’re going to do, and they went above and beyond what you could expect from a businessman. They did something just because they thought that I might think that they were wrong.
Prior to this quote in his article, Dennis Jr. noted Chappelle’s transphobic jokes since his comeback and his defiance against those who criticised him for them. After the quote, Dennis Jr. rightfully pointed out the hypocrisy.
Read that again. Chappelle does words for a living. He didn’t say he called and asked for Netflix to remove the show because of money. He said he called to say ‘this makes me feel bad.’ And Netflix responded by pulling the show ‘just so I could feel better.’ […] Suddenly Chappelle understands the value of an entity ceasing doing a harmful thing simply because they want to honor someone’s feelings.
I’ve seen the criticism of Chappelle’s transphobic comedy and his pallying up with fellow comedians who think “cancel culture” is the worst thing to happen to the arts (spoiler alert: it’s not). But I’ve not seen a critique so succinctly put. And, as Dennis Jr. said, Chappelle had no right to complain about who aired his show when he signed a contract saying anyone could if they had the rights. But apparently Chappelle did and people like Mo’Nique didn’t (remember when she got flamed before winning her lawsuit?).