A dozen openly raunchy standup comedians do abridged versions of their acts in this extremely minimalist performance film. First released on a limited basis theatrically in 1988, the film first reached a wide audience in 1998, when it was released on home video. The chief selling point:
early views of comedians who were later to develop cult status or achieve fame (albeit in a much more sterilized form) on television.
The comedians, in order of appearance, are: Monty Hoffman, who does jokes about his weight and former drug use; 21-year-old Chris Rock, who does the requisite sex jokes, but takes a more surreal tack (as in a bit where he uses Aunt Jemima as masturbation fodder) and speaks about Jesse Jackson's
presidential bid; deadpan comic Larry Scavano follows with very timely (now very dated) routines about Oliver North, Madonna, the homeless, and safe sex; Stephanie Hodge, later a sitcom star, comments on her smoking and drinking habits; John Fox, who does conventionally "dirty" material about sex,
hotel rooms, and pornography; Thea Vidale (another standup who also graduated to a sitcom a few years later) discusses being married and gives the women in the audience tips on how to treat their men; future TV (and movie) star Tim Allen does his "All Men Are Pigs" shtick, covering such lovely
subjects as belching, flatulence, excretion, testicles, erections, and (for equal time) menstruation; ventriloquist Otto Peterson tries to keep his dirty-mouthed dummy George in check; Joey Gaynor does musical impressions of Sinatra, Springsteen, Ray Charles, and Joe Cocker; Bill Hicks supplies
the film's most off-beat set with meditations on the media's condemnation of drug use, the indestructability of Ronald Reagan, and a view of Dick Clark as the anti-Christ; Steven Pearl holds forth on living in New York, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the TV show "Star Search"; writer-performer for the
Howard Stern radio show Jackie "the Jokeman" Martling closes things off with a barrage of cheap one-liners ("Didja hear about the guy who couldn't come? We had to get him."), punctuating his groaners with his own, Ed Wynn-like laughter.
Besides being a time capsule of a very empty period of American history, COMEDY'S DIRTIEST DOZEN is useful as a survey of comic poses. They're all here: the topical commentator, the overweight gagster, the streetwise black man, the bawdy dame, the deadpan observationalist, the piggish bad-boy, and
the one-line joke machine.
An exercise in simple point-and-shoot moviemaking, the film does offer an interesting glimpse at what made an urban audience laugh in the late 1980s, and a few of the comedians do distinguish themselves. For instance, "family hour" star Tim Allen is the most pointlessly filthy of the whole crew
(Fox and Vidale each run a close second). Peterson scores a few solid laughs using the oldest gimmick in the world (as when his dummy notes that he was given a microphone--"stupid [asses] think I'm real"). Though he's the youngest act on stage, Rock shows the most maturity, seriously addressing
political and social issues while also slinging curses. And Bill Hicks's incisive, venomous observations give a sobering indication of what the world of comedy lost when Hicks died of pancreatic cancer at the young age of 32 in 1994. (Extreme profanity.) leave a comment
