The Aristocrats

I watched it with my girlfriend hoping to get a bad reaction out of her. I thought she, like a lot of people out there, wouldn't get it and ridicule it and write it off. Instead...she laughed harder than i did. I knew I then we would wed one day.

Too bad i had to bury her. I miss her sometimes.

Awesome, totally awesome. Way to go, Hamilton!

Trouble is, beneath the dirty words, the movie itself is actually pretty boring.

I think it's funny, but the jokes in the bonus material are funnier.

I'm with Dan. I found the "insider joke" premise of the documentary interesting, but never found a single full or partial telling amusing. There was never anything else besides the joke itself to drive the film forward.

Some fall flat, some are just sorta...there...but the movie had more than a fair share of segments that had me in tears, in particular, Bob Saget, Sarah Silverman, Billy the Mime, the card trick guy, and whoever told the inverse version ("What do you call this act?" "The Cocksucking Motherfuckers.")

Also, by strange fate, when I saw it On Demand, I saw it with my mother in the room. I've never seen her laugh harder at a film in my life, which was both comforting and more than a little disturbing.

I have to say, I didn't find the Gilbert Godfried version at the roast nearly as brilliant as everyone else did.

As mentioned before the showed it, it was the timing (barely post-9/11), and, from my impression, it was one of the few times the joke was told in front of an audience. It didn't work for me much either, but as a show of "the healing power of laughter", it was kinda cool.

Interesting film, to say the least.

I thought it was funny as hell, even though, as most comics admit, the joke itself isn't that awful much - I think it speaks more to the reaction to some of the utterly transgressive details the comics throw in. Looking back my laughter was more of the "I can't believe they just said that, that is so RAW" than due to any wit or true humor in the joke.

I thought it was mostly dull, except for Billy the Mime and the Smothers Brothers (who literally made me CRY with laughter: "Naked children? That's... awful!").

Really? I have the DVD, just haven't bothered to watch any of the Bonus Features.

Watch them. Nick dedicated a thread to the best one. Sorry I have no link and can't remember the comedian's name. He was reduced to snippets in the actual doc(intercut with Andy Rictor, I guess because they were both with children). Fucking filthy as hell but clever too. It's just awesome.

That's one thing that pissed me off about the movie. The general lack of "clever"(well that and the fact the joke is so cut up most of the time). Bob Sagat might be filthy, and at times pretty creative, but he isn't really that funny(and he laughs at himself too much). I have a few friends that joke around about some of the wittiest, filthiest shit imaginable, and these professional comedians can't keep up with us? I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks things like that thread about defending yourself against the waves and waves of kids are hilarious.

That said, there's some great stuff in there(the Mime, for example), but I was really let down by the movie, especially after hearing(and reading) all the raves.

Wow. What a big letdown this movie was. After hearing so much about it I was really looking forward to it, too.

My biggest gripe wasn't the boredom, or Bob Saget laughing at his own joke, it was the editing. Horrible.

Freaking Richard Lewis going back and forth, back and forth, with his horrifying ping-pong bug eyes from camera to camera. Nearly unwatchable.

I couldn't bring myself to watch ANY of the bonus footage, though.

Considering that they had some ridiculous amount of footage (150 hours or something?) I really don't think they did a bad job with the editing. Hell, the Robin Williams/Drew Carey bit was genius.

I'm a huge fan of standup comedians- and have seen a lot of them here at the local clubs, so this was definitely a perfect movie for me. Love it- and I really haven't watched many of the extras- this thread just reminded me to check out the rest....

I sorta liked it, but the editing made me cringe. The Saget joke would have been pure gold, if told in the appropriate sequence and not chopped over and over again.

Chopping it killed it's delivery. Just look at what Carlin did with 30 seconds. He did tell the joke, and that's it. The effect was there. But why bother making a whole documentary over something you'll barely show ?
I haven't checked the DVD, but are there extras that showed a bit more than what we saw ?

This thing was torture. I finally ended up fast forwarding through a good chunk which I generally never do with a movie, a fact made sadder when you consider how short the film is. There’s nothing worse than comedians laughing at their own jokes and that’s all this movie had to offer.

Boy did Wayne Cotter get fat.

It wasn't so much the cutting from comedian to comedian as it was the "hey, we had 4 cameras shooting this one dude, we better use every possible angle."

Just show a single talking head shot and be done with it.

That would've been boring. And it wouldn't have conveyed the fact that both of these comedians are telling the same joke as well. Both of them telling the punchline was a thing of beauty.

I really feel that if you don't like this movie, you don't like comedy. I've had fights with friends about that. All you guys hating on this probably like Dane Cook, eh?

I like this movie but that's just because I'm an avid student of stand-up and to me this movie wasn't about the Aristocrats joke, but the many styles of stand-up comedy, the subtle differences between the tellings.

You misread my quote. I'm not talking about the scene you describe, which I agree worked. I'm talking about specific intstances when they kept cutting back and forth from angle to angle within one segment, the Richard Lewis example being a glaringly painful one.

He kept looking from
camera
to camera
back to the
other camera
and
so
on
and
so forth
back
and forth

It was brutal.

I can't recall which segment it was but there was actually one brief snippet that cut to an angle from the floor. From the side. It was like some hidden camera. Unecessary.

If the talking head ingages me with what they are saying, I don't need piss-poor editing technique to keep if from becoming boring.

But the piss-poor editing can certainly distract.

Edited to add: I'm refering to Alex's comment.

It's just not that funny, which would be okay if it was at least interesting. It is not. It's an endless parade of comics saying "The joke? Oh, well that's like a secret handshake for comics. The first time I heard it was at the (insert name of old comedy club). I couldn't believe what I was hearing."

"Andpissandshitwaseverywhereandpissandshitandpissa ndshitandpissandshit!"
*audience roars*

Exactly. There's a lot of talent in this film that I respect and admire, but an 86min in depth explanation of the amorphous machinations of one blue joke felt like a pretty pointless exercise.

NO.

Of all the hate being heaped on this film, the editing is the one that stuns me the most.

Dude- the Richard Lewis moment was like 20 seconds of the film. Lewis is a bobbly-headed freak. He was looking back and forth from camera to camera- it would've looked weird if they showed it all from one angle.

And if you were just watching talking heads for the whole movie, it would've ruined the whole feel of it. That's how comedy is- it's very frantic- back and forth.

Patrick got it down- this film is more for people who appreciate standup comedy, and everything that goes into a joke. I've been to comedy clubs literally dozens of times (Comedy Cellar!), and it's always intriguing to me to see a comedian change his act from one night to the next- depending on how the joke has evolved and how the audience is reacting to it. The Aristocrats is all about one joke, yes, but it's about how people responded to it and made it their own- and it's hysterical. I'm sorry that so many of you don't have a sense of humor, but this is one movie I won't back down from- it's probably the greatest collection of comedians put together, ever.

There are a lot of impressive comics in the film, but there are way too many hacky (Amazing Jonathan, Bruce Vilanch) comics thrown in the mix for it to be called the greatest collection of comedians put together.

How a comic gets his material and makes it suit his/her style is an interesting subject. That's just not on display here.

I also found this mostly a bore. The endless repetition of something that was only marginally interesting to start with. At least there's a laugh or two in the bonus features.

For a film on the craft of stand-up I think Seinfeld's Comedian was far superior.

The movie's ultimate failure was hyping Gilbert Gottfried's infamous "aristocrats" joke so much and then absolutely butchering it when it comes up.

The full version isn't even a fucking easter egg on the dvd!

It's no rumor, they did try to get him. Penn confirmed this on either KCRW's The Treatment or his own radio show, I forget which. Apparently Carson would've appeared had he not gone into full retirement at that point.

That's was just an example off the top of my head. But the whole thing was a chopped up disaster.

Really?

I'm glad that you enjoyed it. But my sense of humor is fine, this movie simply was poorly made.

As I stated in my first post. I was looking forward to this film. I was interested in the subject, the idea of seeing how this one joke is presented by a wide range of different comedians, and the history of this joke, but the movie covered this subject in a poor way and ultimately failed.