So I’m watching a movie where Adam Sandler is playing a character who is obviously designed to closely resemble Adam Sandler (in fact, much real young Adam Sandler footage is used to backstory the character) *and* I’m at the premiere where the “real” Adam Sandler is in the audience. Oh, if only I had a blunt. Ah, well, onward and upward!
This is a movie about a bunch of comedians of different generations living the life of being a comedian. Three roomates: one is the sudden star of a lame sitcom; another is starting to get gigs at “The” Improv; the third, well, he has a “real” job at the food court. At first glance, this is a form of situational comedy about stand-up comedy and comedians. But that’s really just its cover, a lame-sitcom excuse for them to tell a different story. A completely different story about an aging comedian who (spoiler alert) discovers that he is dying from a rare form of leukemia and has suddenly to come to terms with his mortality and with his failed and dysfunctional life choices; to learn the true meaning of friendship and family and Christmas, and to become a better person. All well and good, but if you stare long enough you get the feeling that this too is really just a hook to keep you distracted while they do their real dirty work.
You see, the psychonaut goes into this film fully armed with the full oeuvre of Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen and crew. We believe in secret messages. We know that anyone who can make Pineapple Express and Forgetting Sarah Marshall is going to be leaving plenty of breadcrumbs for like minded patrons. So we watch Adam pop corn into his mouth six rows down and settle-in for a bit of nudge nudge, wink wink.
And then Mr. Sandler’s character, absurdly being “talked to sleep” by Mr. Rogen’s character, critiques Seth’s ability to be funny: “Your generation had divorce, I’m sure it was tough, but its a whole different kind of funny when dad is coming after you with a baseball bat,” bing, you are in and the whole thing starts to unravel. Comedy is a weapon. Invented by little kids who needed some way to fight back. And it all goes from there – every facet of life is some kind of battle and every way of living a kind of waging war. And our heroes, in spite of all of their flaws and weaknesses – indeed because of them – are engaged in some kind of extended warfare. Although one has to wonder and decode – where is this battle happening and who is doing the fighting?
This is a story written people born in the sixties who have become pop culture machines. Sandler can crank out hit movies with a signature everyman-dope-with-a-heart-of-gold-and-edge-of-darkness formula. Apatow has responded with a reflection of that kind of success, but with a twist and a slightly more subversive set of ingredients. These guys have all kinds of mojo. And then you have the younger crew. Rogen seems to have been going gangbusters since his partnership with Apatow in Freaks and Geeks and even Jason Schwartzman seems to be plugged into some kind of magic. How did they come to be in this place that they are? When they write a movie about themselves, what do they say?
The younger crew of Rogen, Schwartzman and Jonah Hill is commenting on its generation and sub-cultures. They are lite and trite and just beginning to get a sense of edge. Your roomate fucking the girl that you imagine you might ask out is a minor crisis and the worst thing you can imagine is choosing between a sell-out career and impoverished pseudo-authenticity (importantly, Rogen’s character has assumed a non Jewish name). Pretty par for the course in an Apatow film.
But then you layer in the older crew helmed by Sandler and Leslie Mann. Their painful reality crashes right into the not-yet-having-been-there imaginings of Rogen’s youthful playhouse and fantasies of what life might become. Sandler has achieved superlative success within the boundaries that his comedic weapons allow. He can defend himself but good and can command a world of shiny things and shiny women. He cuts through Rogens life like an exacto knife, simply by fiat hiring Rogen away to become his assistant and instantly immersing him in the life that Rogen imagines to be his ideal. But Sandler’s life tastes like dust and even faced with the crisis of death and a surge of an effort to correct his bad decisions, he still finds himself lost in a game that can’t really be won. To “reclaim” his “one true love” he must break up a family – and even while the flesh is willing it turns out the spirit is too weak for even this churlish act. Turns out that in the end, maybe he didn’t get as far away from Dad’s bat as he thought.
Its a bitter pill and one delivered nicely with the sugar coating perfected by the comedian. And this starts to dig. Remember, the haute critic doesn’t need to be reminded that these are the guys who have been the strongest advocates of the ganja since Bob Marley. If there is some signal to be received from the higher perspective, it should be here. So then you have to start linking the thing in stronger. Think about the total circumstances. Judd Apatow is a self-aware guy. He grew up Jewish in New York, rubbing elbows as a teenager among the rising luminaries of the 80’s stand-up scene. This is a guy who goes on the Daily Show and talks about masterbating to a Jon Stewart interview of neo-con Bill Cristol. He understands the dark art of comedy.
Funny People doesn’t exactly stare into the abyss. But it looks deeply into the eyes of comedy and reminds us that the people who are most capable of making us laugh are often brutally damaged. Folks like Bill Hicks and George Carlin and Richard Pryor were latter-day Frank Booth’s who gave us a shot of laughing-gas before they showed us the severed heads and tortured bodies that they were extracting from the subsurface of every-day culture. At its best, Funny People is an homage to this practice and its practitioners. A subtle reminder that there is something ancient and noble and dangerous in the role of Trickster.
In the end, it reminded me a bit of an essay from F. Scott Fitzgerald quoted by Gilles Deleuze: “The Crack Up“. [Now that, my friends, is a link - if you came back from that in one piece, more power to you.] Sadly, Funny People is not quite to that level. It is not a Divine Comedy (Unless my being in the actual audience with the creators themselves, the very people I am writing about implied something spookily more fundamental in its efforts), but it is a nicely crafted mainstream-with-an-edge postmodern comedy. And, as I’m walking out on the red carpet surrounded by famous faces that I recognize but don’t know, I’m quite certain that the entire experience would have greatly benefitted from some of Saul Silver’s best stuff. Cheers!
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The Haute Critique