"Joseph Frank Keaton spent his youth in his parents’ knockabout vaudeville act; by the time he was eight, it basically consisted of his father, Joe, picking him up and throwing him..."

"... against the set wall. Joe would announce, 'It just breaks a father’s heart to be rough,' and he’d hurl Buster—already called this because of his stoicism—across the stage. 'Once, during a matinee performance... he innocently slammed the boy into scenery that had a brick wall directly behind it.' That 'innocently' is doing a lot of work, but all this brutality certainly conveyed a basic tenet of comedy: treating raw physical acts, like a kick in the pants, in a cerebral way is funny. 'I wait five seconds—count up to ten slow—grab the seat of my pants, holler bloody murder, and the audience is rolling in the aisles,' Keaton later recalled. 'It was The Slow Thinker. Audiences love The Slow Thinker.' A quick mind impersonating the Slow Thinker: that was key to his comic invention. The slowness was a sign of a cautious, calculating inner life. Detachment in the face of disorder remained his touchstone.... It was only when Joe started drinking too hard and got sloppy onstage that, in 1917, the fastidious Buster left him and went out on his own. It was the abuse of the art form that seemed to offend him."

From "What Made Buster Keaton’s Comedy So Modern?/Whereas Chaplin’s vision was essentially theatrical, Keaton’s was specific to the screen—he moved like the moving pictures" by Adam Gopnik (The New Yorker).

"One of the first killer jokes in the stand-up act of Louie Anderson was about the meanness of older brothers."

"Imitating one of his own in an intimidating voice, he warned that there was a monster in a swamp nearby. With childlike fear in his eyes, Anderson reported that he avoided that area 'until I got a little older and a little smarter and a little brother.' Pivoting to the future in an instant, he adopted the older brother voice, pointing to the swamp and telling his sibling: 'That’s where your real parents live.'"

From "Louie Anderson and the Compassion of America’s Eternal Kid/He displayed an empathetic humanity that he shared offstage with his friend Bob Saget. The loss of both comics represents the end of an era" by Jason Zinoman (NYT).

When you think of the 1980s comedy boom, the first artist that comes to mind for many is Jerry Seinfeld and his clinically observational brand of humor. For others, it might be the rock-star flamboyance of Eddie Murphy or Andrew Dice Clay. But in the days of three major networks, the culture incentivized a warmly inclusive, rigorously relatable comedy that could appeal to a broad mainstream and, at its best and most resonant, had an empathetic humanity.

The outpouring of love for Bob Saget... was in part...  because of a vast audience that saw him as the friendly paternal face on “Full House” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”... Anderson fit seamlessly into an equally idealized role as our culture’s eternal kid. There was a boyish innocence and sweetness to Anderson that never left him, even when he was playing a mother on “Baskets,” a remarkable and sincere performance....

I haven't kept up with network sitcoms, so "Baskets" was news to me. I enjoyed this, showing clips from the show, him getting made up as Christine Baskets, and his very sweet account of how he's bringing his own mother back to life:

And here are Saget and Anderson in a podcast conversation (recorded last May). 

ADDED:

"Has political satire lost its power? Or has reality become so absurd that it’s now beyond parody?"

That's from the intro to "Why Are People So Mad About Don’t Look Up? Climate change is a tough subject for any film, let alone a satire."

It's a podcast — audio and transcript at the link — with various Atlantic staff people (Kevin Townsend, Sophie Gilbert, David Sims, and Spencer Kornhaber). I have seen the movie, by the way.

I think the quote I put in the post title is trite and foolish. The difference between the present and the past is the present is where you're living now. It's self-involved to believe that in the past, you could do parody and satire, but now — now! — things are already so absurd that there's nothing to add, no way to exaggerate, and we're suffering in some extreme new way that makes comedy impossible.

But let's see what these people have to say:

Sims: You could make a more straight-ahead blockbuster movie.... But... this flirts with being... more like a Dr. Strangelove kind of movie. A pure anarchic satire that is set in the real world, but every character is cartoonish, and there’s no sense of humanity whatsoever. But Don’t Look Up tries to retain this core of humanity... 

Gilbert: [T]here was the idea that Trump defied satire, because he was bigger than it could ever manage to be in its wildest imagination. I also think it’s really hard to satirize things when you’re in the middle of them.....

Kornhaber: I think this quest for movies to deliver a message that changes people’s minds is maybe quixotic. There aren’t a ton of works in history like that.... True, you can’t really satirize Trump. He’s kind of beyond parody. But you can call attention to the dynamics of the way that people relate to him and the effect he has on the world around him—and on the viewers themselves.

Comedy is hard! It's not enough to sign up a lot of stars and spend a ton of money and pick an important topic. Why would you expect it to be good in the first place? Dr. Strangelove is great, but you have to make some choices and exercise discipline. Sims reveals, based on an interview with the director....

DiCaprio was obviously interested in the project and the message but was not going to commit until they’d figured out his character. He clearly did not want to be in a cartoony pastiche movie.

That precluded the Strangelove approach. I'd like to see a comedy about making "Dr. Strangelove" in which all the actors are divas insisting on their character's humanity. 

"Jerry thinks Marc is pretentious and Marc thinks Jerry is shallow."

From a Reddit discussion a year ago on the question "Any reason why Marc hasn’t been on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee?" "Comedians in Cars" is Jerry Seinfeld's show, and Jerry hadn't been on Marc Maron's podcast either.

Now, this week we got an episode of Marc's show with Jerry. Here. I listened. I can sum it up: Jerry thinks Marc is pretentious and Marc thinks Jerry is shallow. But that doesn't mean it's a bad show. I enjoyed the conversation. I would criticize Marc Maron for pushing the theory that Jerry is compulsive when Jerry was talking about the importance of writing. But Maron succeeds in getting Jerry angry... or at least getting Jerry to admit that something on the "anger spectrum" is a necessary element of comedy.

"I had a great mom. I loved my mom and she loved me, which... is probably not easy to do."

"She was so good to me. I couldn’t do any wrong, which is a big problem. Maybe that’s why I ended up the way I ended up. I don’t know. I couldn’t do any wrong in her eyes."

Said Trump, quoted at AP.

I like his comical use of "which": "I loved my mom and she loved me, which... is probably not easy to do.... I couldn’t do any wrong, which is a big problem."

He uses "which" to signal a change in voice, from serious/positive to comical/self-effacing.

I liked it.

But Rex Parker was grumpy about the little joke in today's NYT crossword (spoiler alert):

And the sense of "humor" on this one ... I guess I'm thinking specifically of the ATTIRE clue, which ... I just don't get (11D: Difference between a well-dressed bicyclist and a poorly dressed unicyclist, in a joke). I mean, a tire, ATTIRE? Is that it? They sound alike, so it's funny? Yeesh.

I've always — since I was a kid — liked homophone jokes like "When is a door not a door?" They're so simple. They're right there. Undeniable jokes. And yet, Rex denies this one, questions whether it constitutes a real joke. Okaaay.

"Confused by This Anti-Joe Biden Meme? The Creator Says You Just Don’t Get the Joke."

"Before being censored by Twitter, the way the image was shared blurred the line between parody and misinformation"  — by Ali Breland (in Mother Jones) — about this image created by Brad Troemel:



It's a great satire, but unfortunately, many people who were sharing it took it to be an actual ad from the Biden campaign.

“The DNC and the Biden campaign are the ones responsible for your familiarity with this type of messaging, because they’re the ones who have been fucking campaigning on it,” Troemel [said]. “This image wouldn’t be shared if it wasn’t so believable.”...

Jennifer Grygiel, a communications professor at Syracuse University who specializes in social media and memes, [said] “He seems to want to cross his arms and say that everyone is so stupid,” Grygiel said on the phone, skeptically. “He may claim that he’s helping democracy, but he’s lost control of his art.”

"Beluga trip's off."

Your aunt who just now realized we should quarantine pic.twitter.com/IQ7EHWnRBQ

— Meg Stalter (@megstalter) March 17, 2020

From "Escape Our Current Hell With These (Good) Coronavirus Jokes" (NY Magazine).