Caddyshack – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Caddyshack – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Yes, everyone in Western civilization can hear the word “Caddyshack and immediately think of a few lines. But has anyone ever thought about what a strange film it is?

For one thing, it’s clear from reading the Wiki entry here — which is well-sourced with a few things available elsewhere — that the movie they envisioned on the first day of filming was nothing like the film they ended up with. Bits of that original concept exist. But Rodney Dangerfield, Chevy Chase and Bill Murray essentially took over, starting doing improv, and there you have it.

The result is almost a train wreck, a strange collection of sketches in which characters seem to be in two movies at once — one about caddies, one about a nasty conflict of snobs and slobs. They share a couple of characters but are otherwise disjointed, like the scenes in Pulp Fiction that intertwine but do little more.

The parts, thankfully, are far greater than the sum. A film about the caddies — Maggie of the wavering accent, the dude who says “Noonan,” Brian Doyle-Murray’s character — surely wouldn’t have been as well-remembered as the final product.

But the funny thing is that you have to root for the obnoxious people for any of this to succeed. In the film, you root for Dangerfield, though you wouldn’t want him behind you on an actual golf course. Behind the scenes, you’re also rooting for Dangerfield and the other comic geniuses who took over Harold Ramis’ film.

AMC often pairs this film with Blazing Saddles for some reason. Sure, they’re both packed with semi-relevant gags like a Family Guy episode (as I type, Sheriff Bart is greeting Count Basie for reasons that probably made sense to Richard Pryor when he was working on the screenplay). But Blazing Saddles is a well-crafted satire in which most of the events are related somehow.

To me, Caddyshack is a good collection of gags. Blazing Saddles is a work of art. Seriously.

 

HAMLET (FACEBOOK NEWS FEED EDITION). Written by Sarah Schmelling.

HAMLET (FACEBOOK NEWS FEED EDITION). Written by Sarah Schmelling..

This is almost as good as the 10-hour Kenneth Branagh version.

Already shared it on Facebook — sharing it here for those who dislike such things. But you’ll still find it funny.

 

Tunes … well, tune-related stuff: Aimee Mann

In case you couldn’t get to Aimee Mann’s Christmas show this year, here’s the film she showed in several parts.

Good stuff, full of celebrity cameos and Mann’s terrific deadpan delivery.

Merry Christmas to all.

 

How to deal with copyright infringement

Join the party, be up front about why you’re doing it, and be funny.

It helps if you’re Monty Python.

 

"It reminds me a joke I once heard about upper-middle-class people …"

Poor Celia Wren. It seems that her writing career took a wrong turn somewhere, and she was forced to earn money doing a Washington Post theater review that forced her to be sequestered in a room with the sort of person who would find historical and literary farce amusing.

This blogger, also a professional journalist, should warn you that the review to which I’ve linked describes a situation so desperate that you may be unable to stop weeping. If you’re especially sensitive to the plight of reviewers stranded among uncouth men and women of the evening who watch comedy, do not click that link. Just limit yourself to a sampling of her words …

At the Lansburgh Theatre, you once stood a good chance of encountering a classic drama. Now, though, it’s playing host to the Reduced Shakespeare Company, a troupe that has built a cottage industry out of undergraduate-quality literary sendups. …

Judging by the gales of laughter that greeted performances Saturday, many theatergoers find this sort of thing hilarious. …

In an era when even HBO is taking the Founding Fathers seriously, “The Complete History of America” might seem nearly as sacrilegious (as “The Bible”). …

The horror … the horror …

It’s important for Ms. Wren to take a stand against such “entertainment.” Why, we could end up like the British, where students at Oxford and Cambridge traditionally perform “skits,” often in drag,” and the ones who are deemed good at it turn professional! One young man was doing research on Chaucer and ended up doing some sort of nonsense in which people bang coconuts together and search for the Holy Grail!

( /sarcasm )

This is the sort of condescending crap that makes the world hate journalists. I’m unabashedly elitist, with very little patience for stupidity, and yet the Post sometimes cranks out content that can’t possibly appeal to anyone other than D.C. residents (not those curious people over in Virginia) who are pretentious and have no sense of humor. Government workers generally aren’t pretentious, so they’re out of the target audience. And the popularity of Reduced Shakespeare — not to mention the big theaters’ tendency to book big-time comics — proves that someone here must have a sense of humor.

So perhaps we really should pity Ms. Wren and her editors. Their demographics aren’t good, and they’re too full of themselves to enjoy a good laugh. That’s sad.

 

And more classic comedy

If you’re a Monty Python fan AND a philosophy major AND a soccer fan, then this is your ideal sketch.

And possibly the only time I’ll concede that Marx was right.

 

Nee pudak poy Feelyat!

I’ve always been fascinated with the creative process. As a kid, I read a lot of music magazines. Today, that interest extends to technology and even some Food Network shows. In between, I majored in philosophy, which technically means “love of wisdom.” In retrospect, I think the wisdom is OK but the ideas are the key. The Socratic method of refining and revising ideas through frank questioning by guys in togas is fine and necessary, but without the initial ideas — from systems of government to methods of cooking — the human species is no better than any other.

Sometimes, I wonder how a particularly offbeat idea survived the Socratic method. Every idea has to be pitched to become reality — even on a blog, the idea doesn’t really take off unless someone reads and appreciates it.

And so I sometimes picture the members of Kids in the Hall, pitching ideas for their fifth and final season, having some sort of conversation like this:

“OK — imagine a game show in which you’re suppose to feel an object with a pair of oven mitts and guess what it is.”

“Hmmmm. Could be interesting. So what happens?”

“Well, Scott could play an old contestant who’s not really aware of what’s going on. Mark could do his Darill character. And then we could have a young kid whose head is too small for the bucket.”

“Um … bucket?”

“Yeah — when you get an answer wrong, you wear a bucket with a sad face painted on. And we could introduce that when we return to the game after an interruption for a news bulletin about flooding on the Rhine, mixed in with some footage of hammerhead sharks.”

“Wait, wait … sharks? And why are they on the Rhine?”

“Oh, did I mention this is in Europe?”

“OK, I suppose we can get away with that. Might be one way to explain why it all seems so weird.”

“Yeah, and they’ll be speaking some language that falls somewhere between Dutch, German and gibberish.”

(long pause) “A whole sketch. In which language? German?”

“Not exactly. It’s sort of German, sort of Dutch. We’ll have a bunch of people counting the time remaining by clomping wooden shoes — let’s call them the Nederlander Foot Choir.”

(longer pause) “Sort of German, sort of Dutch?”

“Sure! I’ve even got a catch phrase.”

“A catch … in Dutch? German? … (sigh) … OK, what is it?”

“Und specifica, ut kunder meat?”

(blank stares) “Do you think our entire audience is high or something?”

I’m not sure what impresses me more — the open-mindedness of the other Kids in seeing just how funny this sketch was going to be or the devotion of some fan who took the time to transcribe the whole freaking thing phonetically.

Whatever your expectations are at this point, you won’t be disappointed. Here are The Kids in the Hall circa 1993 with “Feelyat!”:

 

Song du semaine: Police, "Synchronicity II"

“I would like all of you to come out and support my new band, Scrantonicity II. We are in no way associated with Scrantonicity.”

Synchronicity II was much more than a convenient pop-culture reference for Kevin’s band on The Office. It was the Police’s hardest-rocking song, a distinct departure from their playful punk and righteous reggae. Andy Summers cranked up the squealing guitar, Sting’s bass brooded like Roger Waters (the man, not his bass), Stewart Copeland went for full power, and Sting’s lyrics unleashed the inner demons of a family bring crushed by an unfulfilling life.

It’s brilliant. And everyone loves the video, which seems to be set in a post-apocalyptic trash heap:

Sting’s way with words is on full display here. The narrative — a simultaneous telling of suburban frustration and a monster rising from a dark Scottish lake — is compelling in its own right. But Sting makes it better with impeccable word choice. Mother chants her litany of boredom and frustration. They’re packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes. The factory belches filth into the sky.

Surely there’s a grammatical term for using a verb as a metaphor as he does with the factory belching. Sting uses that technique beautifully in The Wild Wild Sea: “The grey sky, she angered to black.” This is why I finally realized, somewhere around my senior year of college, that I’d never be anything but a hack songwriter by comparison, thereby sparing the world some awful late-80s whiny alternative bullshit about 20something angst.

(Sting does use two references to suicide. I’m not nit-picking. I’m just looking for an excuse to reference a great Robert Wuhl bit on making Born to Run the state anthem of New Jersey. He notes the double references to suicide and builds up to the great line of any state anthem, “We gotta get out while we’re young!”)

Brilliant stuff, brilliantly delivered by a sneering Sting while Copeland and Summers thrive outside their punk-reggae comfort zone.

 

I’m white, and I’m capitalizin’ …

From YouTube’s tireless efforts to archive everything on video, it’s pre-stardom Jim Carrey on In Living Color with the definitive Vanilla Ice parody …

Now if only they’d find Kelly Coffield’s Paula Abdul impression.

 

Official Update

We interrupt this blog to bring you this official announcement:

I am officially over Sarah Silverman.

Not just in the “mythical top five” sense. Just in general.

I once thought she was hysterically funny and terrific in many other senses. I’m over that.

Resume regular programming.