"What Happened To Just Laughing?"

When you are old, every pronouncement sounds like halo-ey nostalgia.  I’ve tried not to be old, but they won’t let me.  So I guess I’m stuck with it.  And stuck with sounding like this. 

I know comedy is different today.  Hewing assiduously to their “visions”, today’s comedy writers ignore the once sacrosanct “line” between comedy and drama.

(It now occurs to me I once did that myself.  After pitching an idea for an episode of The Bob Newhart Show, the show’s consultant, comedian Dick Martin (from Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In) observed, “Nice drama.”  I just wanted it to be truer to life than “You bet your bippy!”  I guess today’s writer’s want it to be truer than me.)

Though there are numerous kinds of comedy I like, my all-time favorite is comedy that bypasses my brain and hits me right in the kishkas.  (Yiddish, for the visceral intestinal area, where the belly-laughs reside.)

The style goes beyond conventional joke structures.  Call it – loudly and proudly –

“Silly Comedy.”

Back in the fifties (and earlier) comedy was essentially “Forget your troubles, come on, get happy!”  There were, among others, Martin and Lewis, Abbott and Costello, Ma and Pa Kettle, the Bowery Boys, and “Francis, The Talking Mule.”

Nothing “gritty” or “meaty.”  But you could squirt popcorn out your nose.

My “Number One Champeen” back then – and remains still – The Court Jester, with Danny Kaye.

I don’t know if it holds up today, but is made it at least to the late 80’s, when I showed it to my then young daughter Anna, and she ate it right up. 

What stands out for me as a professional are The Court Jester’s endless overlays of comic invention.  A sweet-natured shmegeggie turns dashing and brave (and then back again) through the snapping signal of hypnotic suggestion.  As the hypnotized hero explains, “You can snap me in, and snap me out.” 

Then there is the secret musical signifier, the hero tunefully wondering, “To whom do I hum, to whom?”, the ubiquitous “catch phrase”, “Get it! – “Got it!” – “Good!” and the certifying “purple pimpernel on the royal posterior.”  Not to mention a passel of boisterous “Little People” who wind up saving the day.

And, of course, there is the pre-joust mnemonic reminder, determining which toasting cup to drink from: “The vessel with the pestle has the pellet with the poison” which then breaks and is replaced by “the chalice from the palace”, leaving “the brew that is true” in “the flagon with the dragon.”

Silly comedy.                       

Masterfully devised.

Which did not entirely depart after the sixties.  (When even the pop songs got serious, seguing from “Charlie Brown, he’s a clown…” to the mirthless “Eve of Destruction.”)

Keeping the genre alive were the innately silly Monty Python movies, and the blissful nonsense of The Three Amigos. (in which “in-famous” means “more than just famous.”)

But after that, nothing.  (Pee Wee’s Big Adventure came close.)

Unless you count “drug comedies” which I don’t.  (Though younger filmgoers may.)

One silly example of my own, because, you know… it’s my blog.

Although elements of “silly” appear in everything I write, this is the shortest example I could think of. 

I had a series called Family Man, which ran for seven episodes on ABC (but only after FOX and NBC refused to broadcast it at all.)

Surrogate “me” in the show, “Shelly” complains to his wife Andrea about his malfunctioning typewriter – that’s how old this joke is – while writing an episode assignment for Cheers.

“Something’s wrong with this thing.  Every time I type ‘N’, it comes out ‘G.’  (READING STAGE DIRECTION FROM THE SCRIPT)  ‘The door to the bar opens.  Gorm enters.  Everyone goes ‘Gorm!’”

You can’t get sillier than that.

But it still makes me laugh.

Silly comedy won’t solve the problems of the world, but it can lift the load for a moment, sending you back to the fray with renewed vigor and an unclenched perspective.

Or not.

But at least you had “recess.”

I recall a joke from Neil Simon’s Sweet Charity, where a claustrophobic trapped in an elevator says,

“If I could just get out for a few minutes.  Just a few minutes outside and I’d be all right.  Then I’d come back inside.”     

“Silly comedy” is those few minutes out of the elevator.

And I miss it.