[lbo-talk] Warm summers or dark ages?

[Carl Remick]

>From: "Dennis Perrin" <dperrin at comcast.net>
>
> > I apologize for gross overposterism, but a thousand times no.  Bob 
>Elliot
>as
> > Wally Ballou interviewing Ward Smith, cranberry grower, is a bit I could
> > listen to daily for the rest of my life and find funny, but a single
>viewing
> > of Chris Elliot having a "comic" zit attack in There's Something About 
>Mary
> > sent me fleeing from my TV set in horror.  The Farrelly bros. (and 
>equally
> > unfunny Coen bros.) I rate as key contributors to the collapse of 
>American
> > comedy in our times.
> >
> > Carl
>
>Well, I won't defend Chris Eliot's non-"Cabin Boy" film work -- those were
>paycheck gigs (though he's not bad in Harold Ramis's excellent "Groundhog
>Day"). I said what I liked about him, which is primarily TV. But the
>Farrelly Bros., who I'm not crazy about, dig deeper than mere gross out
>humor. There's always a human and humane element to their work, couched in
>lowbrow humor.

Whatever "human and humane element" the work of the Brothers Farrelly has 
isn't couched in lowbrow humor so much as interred in it.  I think, e.g., of 
Jim Carrey (suave as a humus pile as always) playing a R.I. state cop in Me, 
Myself & Irene, showing how stressed-out he is by pooping on a neighbor's 
lawn.  Har-har-HAR-dee-har-har, as Jackie Gleason was wont to say.


>Now Carl -- you don't like the Coen Bros.? How angry are you? "Miller's
>Crossing"? "Raising Arizona"? "O Brother Where Art Thou"? One of my fave
>films ever is "The Big Lebowski." You hated that?

Didn't see The Big Lebowski, but if it's any consolation I did hate O 
Brother, Where Art Thou? -- which, like the Coens' Fargo, had a creepy way 
of ridiculing people the film was ostensibly sympathetic to.  I think of the 
Coens as representing the perma-smirk school of comedy.

Carl