The Comedian

The philosophic heart of The Comedian may well be the scene in which the aging comedian sweeps the old folks home off into an exhilarating version of the classical ballad, “Making Poopee.” 

The inflection changes a decorous celebration into a free-form vulgarity. Like  Jackie Burke’s filthy wit, the film celebrates the mischievous energy of sexual and scatalogical incorrectness. It also fits the situation where the very old are regressing into infantilism. Aren’t we all. 

Jackie was pulled into the performance against his wishes by his girl-friend’s antagonistic father, Max, who had hoped thus to humiliate him. He seethes, rankled, when Jackie’s act not only wins over the house but becomes an internet sensation. 

Jackie’s speech at his niece’s wedding begins with his famous indecorum, then settles into a sentimentality that befits the celebration. That harmony is broken by his sister-in-law who lets her visceral hatred for her husband’s brother turn her into a shrieking harridan. Which, as it happens, Jackie’s humorous opening predicted. 

That pattern defines the movie. It starts with the socially offensive extreme of insult humour, whether sexual or scatalogical, but then turns into a comforting return to feelings. The film normalizes the comedy’s rebellion against convention but returns to value community and sentiments. 

Fortunately Jackie doesn’t end up with the lovely Harmony. He’s too raucous and uncompromising to live in or with any harmony. He wouldn’t fit into her world, though her handsome classy hubby at their kid’s recital is laughing at their daughter’s inheritance of Jackie’s profane wit. Besides, Jackie is too like Harmony’s father — a point confirmed by the casting of those two familiar sidekicks, DeNiro and Keitel as the two studs jousting over the one woman. Harmony manages her “father issue” by a more appropriate marriage. 

For the comedians here nothing can shake them out of their routine, their acerbic reflexes. When a 90-year-old Friars honouree dies at the head table the MC tells Jackie “You killed.” Jackie’s immediate grief: “I didn’t get to my best material.”  

  The film reflects upon contemporary American culture in two ways. First, its humour is almost exclusively angry and profane. It reflects a society which has abandoned any sense of decorum, manners, restraints. And yet the comedians’ success is based on our memory of those restraints, their continuing hold, and the pleasure the comedy gives us in releasing us from them. 

  Well-known Italians DeNiro and DeVito play Jewish brothers in classically Jewish professions: stand-up comedy and the deli. American comedy was characterized and propelled by the Jewish sense of an outsider viewing the orderly world that excluded him and bringing a sharp, deflating perspective to it. Billy Crystal’s cameo, in which he sends Jackie off with “Schmuck,” effectively gives the cross-cultural casting his blessing. By casting Italians as Jewish comics director Taylor Hackford defines the comedy and its metaphoric resonance as American not just Jewish.  
     Second, the film’s legitimizing of indecorous profanity and rage goes beyond the business of comedy to reflect upon contemporary America in general. The comedians’ tone and content express a society that is seething in anger, frustration, helplessness. The election passed this mood from Trump’s supporters to his opponents. But it still operates, full blast. Jackie’s venture into the RAW-TV network evokes the sadistic sensationalism of the “reality” TV shows that spawned the present so-called president.