Comedian (2002)

Powerful

Film Perfection

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Believe it or not, there was once a time when the world didn't know that stand-up comedians were all deep and self-loathing people. A decade before podcasts and FX shows would smother us with comedians' suffering geniuses, the documentary film Comedian set out to show that stand-up comedy, far from being a fun hobby, is a difficultyThe film does so by following two comedians -- Jerry Seinfeld, who was "as big as it gets", and the up-and-coming Orny Adams. Contrary to my expectations, Seinfeld was relatively likable, while the struggling young guy turned came off as a cocky hack. In theory Adams could make for a great documentary character, like the megalomaniac Troy Duffy of Overnight, and there are certainly hilariously clueless moments (folders labeled "JEWISH JOKES" and "DATING JOKES" stand out). But the film is never really sure how to deal with his narrative and ends up forgetting it entirely by the end.Seinfeld's portions would have made a great 20-minute short, but as a feature-length documentary Comedian doesn't really go deep enough into the creative process. There are only so many times that we can hear that comedy is hard work. Filmmaking is hard work too, and a little more of it would have made this more than a watchable but inessential travelogue.

Jerry Seinfeld is the major headliner here after leaving his hit comedy series, Seinfeld, after 9 seasons on the air. He returns to the stage to be a stand up comic. This documentary uncovers the lives of stand up comedians like Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno who doesn't touch his Tonight Show salary. Leno would rather be a comic than be rich in reality. He works a 150 shows and the Tonight Show as well. Chris Rock is surprising when he reveals his admiration for Bill Cosby's live show of 2 hours and 20 minutes on stage without intermission. We find Orny Adams to be a little arrogant but an up and coming comic. Jerry Seinfeld has returned home to the stage of stand up comedy where you spend nights at the comedy clubs in New York City, Los Angeles, and even West Orange, New Jersey. Stand up comics spend every moment trying to perfect the craft of delivering the jokes, telling stories, and delivering the punchlines all for laughs from the audience.

Follow the construction of this film closely and you will see that it is much more than a documentary of stand-up comedy. Notice, for example, how the ending is a beginning. The final word, "thanks" is precisely the advice given to Orny--the anti-Jerry of this story. Notice the film move directly into the credits, accompanied by Susannah McCorkle's heart-wrenching version "Waters of March", itself Jobim's testimony, from the perspective of early Autumn, that life is a journey. The photos that rotate under the credits, like an iPhoto photo album, are close-up studies of scenes that any comic would immediately recognize as "Comedy Club". Preceding this was Steely Dan's "Deacon's Blues" a song about a suburban New York kid who dreams of leaving the suburbs for the exciting life of show business in the city. Indeed, the choice of soundtrack numbers is worthy of Woody Allen. This movie is worth watching a few times to see how adeptly the film-makers juxtaposed Jerry and Orny in order to make this tale of rebirth. This is very, very good film-making. I only give it 9 out of 10 stars because throughout the film the dialog recording is not as clean and clear as my old ears require. Perhaps this would have been an impossibility, given the documentary nature of this film. Nevertheless, I had to go back and watch it with "English for the hearing impaired" selection in order to catch the dialog.

A catalogue of disappointments.Any film-maker who thinks the built-in mic on his hand-held video camera is good enough to provide the sound for a documentary feature should never have been allowed to graduate from film school. You would have thought the fact that many of the scenes take place in crowded, indoor spaces with reverberant surfaces (comedy clubs in basements, low-ceilinged restaurants, green rooms etc) would have given him a clue that the sound was going to need some help, but he seemed to prefer to capture his venues' authentic ambiance of inaudibility. Apart from the sheer technical incompetence, this decision also means it's difficult to know what's actually going on. What were the producers thinking when they allowed him to get away with this? Second, Christian Charles is so in love with his subject he can't conceive that not everyone will know who everyone in the film is, so he doesn't even bother with the simple courtesy of a name at the bottom of the screen the first time each person appears. Unless for some reason he specifically wants to limit his audience to the United States, that's not a very smart move. Again, the producers don't seem to have grasped a rather obvious issue.Third, the material just isn't interesting enough. Very, very seldom are we allowed to hear a joke all the way through to the punchline, and although that's not what the film's primarily about, a film-maker with any sense would realize that getting some laughs out of the experience is what would make sitting through the comedians' tediously solipsistic backstage self-examination worthwhile. Every laugh we get is like a glass of water to someone lost in the desert. It's what people listen to comedians *for*, Chris. We don't do it because they're interesting people.