Tribeca 15: Misery Loves Comedy

Stand-up comedy is a tough racket. When you’re on, you’re killing and when you’re off, you’re dying—and you’re rarely anywhere in between. What kind of person is drawn to this business? Depressive neurotics. At least that is the casual thesis of Kevin Pollak’s riff-heavy interview documentary Misery Loves Comedy (trailer here), which had a special Tribeca Talks screening at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival, ahead of its official opening today at the IFC Center.

To explore the notion that comedy is either some kind of cathartic therapy or sick compulsion, Pollak interviewed over sixty comics and performers, as well as Jimmy Fallon. Of course, everyone was “on.” That is the whole point. Nevertheless, they said some revealing things. After all, they just can’t help themselves.

Pollak and editor Robert Legato went for and nailed the rat-a-tat pacing. They never linger long enough after a punchline for the audience to supply their own rim-shots. As a result, there are a lot of laughs in Misery. A good deal of attention will be focused on big name like Penn Jillette, Steve Coogan, Tom Hanks, Jim Gaffigan, Mike Birbiglia, Christopher Guest, Martin Short, and Richard Lewis, as well as filmmakers like Jason Reitman and James L. Brooks. Fittingly, Lewis Black and Jim Norton are also prominent in the film, considering they joined Pollak for the Tribeca Talk and will also represent at the IFC Center. However, some of the best material come from unlikely sources, like journeyman comic Dana Gould getting in a killer bit about his struggle with depression and Freddie Prinze, Jr’s reflections on his father.

Listening to Black and Norton after the screening really helps underscore Pollak’s general point. Clearly, they are both gallopingly neurotic, but in vastly different ways. It also provided Pollak with an opportunity to respond to criticism regarding the alleged lack of diversity in the film, but such charges are completely unfair. For instance, he features Whoopi Goldberg and she isn’t even funny.

Sure, you could ask about dozens of absent well-known comics, but a film like Misery is largely captive to people’s schedules. You get who you can get and then you go. Pollak’s film never delves too deeply into serious pain (arguably, Adam Carolla’s Road Hard offers a more revealing look into the trials of life as a comedian), but so what? It’s breezy and consistently amusing, which is what most people want from a comedy doc. Recommended for stand-up fans, Misery Loves Comedy opens today (4/24) at the IFC Center.

Allah Made Them Think They’re Funny

After the violent protests and death threats provoked by the publication of a handful of relatively benign Danish cartoons satirizing (Heaven forbid) Islam and the Prophet Muhammad, it is safe to say fundamentalist Muslims do not have a reputation for a sense of humor. However, three practicing American Muslim comedians have banded together for a series of comedy albums and tours, documented in Allah Made Me Funny (trailer here), opening today in select cities for a limited one week release window.

How funny you find the comics seems to depend on how closely you share their world views, which suggests their stand-up routines are less about getting laughs and more about hearing an “Amen” from the audience. The three comics of AMMF are logically presented in increasing order of mirth. I laughed exactly once during Mo Amer’s set, twice during Azhar Usman’s, and a respectable nine or ten times for Preacher Moss.

Clearly, Moss, a former SNL writer, is the class of the film and tour. His strongest material describes his family experiences during his conversion to Islam. It worked so well because it is an experience somewhat unique in the particulars, yet involving the sort of family drama everyone can relate to.

Much of Amer and Usman’s material by contrast, offered up stale Bush jokes that could have come from anyone on MSNBC. They also treat us to jokes about “flying while Muslim,” which even Amer referred to as “obligatory.” Particularly after screening Bliss, the Turkish honor killing film, their frequent riffs on how ferocious Muslim women really are in private seemed disconcerting in a “doth protest too much” kind of way. Though benign, much of their slice-of-life material sounded fairly shop-worn. Amer’s olive oil routine for instance, suggests strong parallels with Chris Rock on his father’s use of Robitussin as a cure-all.

There is no question Islam desperately needs a satirist—one capable of casting a gimlet eye inward as well as outward. At times, Moss showed hints he might have that in him. However, his colleagues were content to simply preach to the choir.

Even with a brief running time under ninety minutes, AMMF still feels padded. The material here would work better edited down for an hour long cable special, if the majority of the time was allotted to Moss. As it is, AMMF never feels like a special event, rather just another night on the tour. It opens today in New York at the Quad, with Moss in attendance for a Q&A following tonight’s 8:00 screening.