Category Archives: Comedy

Tommy Chong: ‘We were always high. That was the job’

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How does half of stoner duo Cheech and Chong cope with coronavirus lockdown? Fine – thanks to drugs, his wife and the experience of nine months in prison for selling bong pipes

Tommy Chong has got the munchies. It’s early afternoon in locked-down LA, and last night he was on the pot cookies. “My wife, Shelby, just made a whole batch of them – oatmeal and maple syrup.” He stops to correct himself. “I put the pot in there, and of course I put too much in. Last night it got me almost comatose. Shelby got kinda mad at me. You know like when a kid gets so stoned all you do is sit there and grin.” Chong is 82 next month.

He sounds about four decades younger – his voice is deep, sexy, pulsing with life. Chong is one half of the most famous stoner comic partnership in history, Cheech and Chong. In the 1970s, they not only sold out their live shows, they topped the album charts and had huge box-office hits with movies such as Up in Smoke and Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie. The double-act were as radical as they were bonkers. And while the films were ostensibly about two aspiring rock stars in search of the next spliff, they introduced audiences to a downtown, multiracial Los Angeles rarely seen in movies.

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Czech new wave director Ivan Passer dies aged 86

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Passer was a key figure in the Czech new wave before moving to the US, where his best known film was the cult thriller Cutter’s Way

Ivan Passer, the film-maker who was a key figure in the Czech new wave and who went on to direct the thriller Cutter’s Way after emigrating to the US, has died aged 86. Variety reported that an associate of his family confirmed the news.

Passer, who was born in Prague in 1933, spent his career inextricably associated with, and to some extent overshadowed by, his friend and fellow Czech director Miloš Forman. The pair met as schoolboys and studied together at the Prague Film Academy; they both became part of a group of film-makers who took advantage of a slight weakening of the communist government’s iron grip in the late 50s and early 60s. “We were all united, one way or another, with desire to expose the regime on the screen,” Passer told the LA Times. “And we got away with it because the regime was melting.”

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‘You can always laugh’: Angola’s new wave of standup comedians

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In a country scarred by war, corruption and inequality, a vibrant comedy scene has emerged

A hot and humid Sunday night in Luanda. In a poor neighbourhood near the centre of the Angolan capital, bats wheel in the darkness and loud techno drowns out the traffic on the potholed road. A young crowd has packed into a cavernous and crumbling concrete church in search of comic, rather than spiritual, relief.

Many have come to see Artur Pop, a comedian from a tough nearby neighbourhood who draws his material from the lives of young people such as those who have paid 1,000 kwanza – £1.28 at black market exchange rates, or more than £1.55 at the official bank rate – for the evening’s entertainment.

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Sir Jonathan Miller, writer and director, dies aged 85

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Theatre director also had career in medicine and was member of Beyond the Fringe

Sir Jonathan Miller, the writer, theatre and opera director, and member of the Beyond the Fringe comedy team, has died at the age of 85.

In a statement his family said Miller died “peacefully at home following a long battle with Alzheimer’s”.

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Little Britain radio review: neutered by BBC impartiality rules

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The delay to Brexit plus strict pre-election guidelines left few chances for trenchant jokes in David Walliams and Matt Lucas’s sketch show

In the many risk assessments of the possible consequences of Brexit happening on Halloween – lorry queues, drug shortages, street violence – scant attention was paid to a significant victim of its not happening: broadcasting specials timed to coincide with departure from the EU being forced to go out, even though the UK actually hadn’t.

The special Brexit edition of Little Britain, bringing David Walliams and Matt Lucas’s sketch show back to Radio 4, where it started in 2000, was at a double disadvantage. Having been denied its calendar reason for being, it also now found itself broadcast in the run-up to a general election, when the BBC’s already contorted attempts at political impartiality become even stricter.

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The 50 best comedians of the 21st century

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From apocalyptic standup Frankie Boyle to the many hilarious faces of Tina Fey, Steve Coogan, Sharon Horgan and Kristen Wiig, we present the funniest comics of the era

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‘75% of the audience get it!’ How Count Arthur Strong conquered comedy

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As the dyspeptic old-school entertainer embarks on a tour, his creator Steve Delaney reflects on dedicating his life to one character

Comedy has its careerists: thrusting tyros zeroing in on the fame, the TV gigs, the movie roles. But there are other, more circuitous routes to the top. The fictional Count Arthur Strong certainly took one, via the dog days of vaudeville and bit parts in Hammer horrors. His creator Steve Delaney took one too, meandering from drama school to a carpentry career to the slow gestation of his alter ego, away from the circuit’s bright lights.

The Count is a star now; his sitcom – co-written with Graham Linehan – ran for three series to 2017. But he was once an oddity on the Edinburgh fringe, where I started watching him at the turn of the century – an experience never to be forgotten, for various reasons. Yes, this blithering, dyspeptic old-school entertainer was a creation of near-genius, and Delaney’s blood vessel-busting performance a spectacle to behold. But – wow! – those early shows could be gruelling. The joke was in Arthur’s frustration and confusion, as his own waning powers (of memory, movement, syntax) thwarted this or that overreaching set piece. Often, Delaney took that joke to painful, patience-fraying extremes.

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The 100 best TV shows of the 21st century

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Where’s Mad Men? How did The Sopranos do? Does The Crown triumph? Can anyone remember Lost? And will Downton Abbey even figure? Find out here – and have your say

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Terry Gilliam says he disagrees with John Cleese’s worldview

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Director says Brexit makes him ‘terminally depressed’ while fellow Python Cleese backs it

Terry Gilliam has said he disagrees with the way his friend and fellow Monty Python member John Cleese sees the world, following comments from the latter endorsing Brexit and criticising the makeup of London.

The Python animator and Hollywood director despairs of Donald Trump and Brexit, both of which make him “terminally depressed”. Cleese has previously faced a backlash for voicing support for the UK leaving the EU, and for saying London was no longer an English city.

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Dave Chappelle under fire for discrediting Michael Jackson accusers in Netflix special

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Standup comedian also takes aim at callout culture that sees public figures held to account by audiences

Dave Chappelle has come under fire for his latest Netflix special in which he claims he does not believe Michael Jackson sexually assaulted young boys, and makes jokes at the expense of Jackson’s accusers.

In a standup set that seemed designed to provoke precisely the backlash that it was critiquing, Chappelle took aim at a prevailing callout culture that sees celebrities being held to account by audiences and in the media for perceived or actual crimes and for the offensive things they say.

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For one night only: how Edinburgh’s standups spend their day off

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For performers, the fringe is a delirium-inducing month of nonstop work. They get just one day off throughout August – so they have to use it wisely…

I love my show and when you have a day off, the next day is a bit lacklustre. But I do need it because I am a queen and I deserve a rest. I’m of the “living your best life” mantra and I don’t just talk it, I walk it. I’ll have a long spa day – massage, mani, pedi, eyebrows – go for the sexiest dinner in this nice hotel on the bridge with all my girls, then get cocktails. I’m single, but I’m like Lady Gaga – she doesn’t sleep with guys when she’s writing her album because men steal her creative energy. But on my day off, I’m allowed.

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Rip Torn, cult actor, dies aged 88

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Star of a string of 60s classics fell foul of Hollywood because of his temper but found a fresh lease of life in comedy, from TV’s Larry Sanders Show to the Men in Black films

Rip Torn, America’s celebrated wildman actor, has died aged 88. Torn, who had been a constant presence on stage and screen since the mid-1950s, was arguably better known for his eccentric, and occasionally violent, antics when the cameras weren’t rolling – and on one notorious occasion, when they were.

His publicist Rick Miramontez confirmed Torn died Tuesday afternoon at his home with his wife, actor Amy Wright, and daughters Katie Torn and Angelica Page by his side. No cause of death was given.

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‘Without my daughter, drinking would have been a problem’: Patton Oswalt on bereavement

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The comedian’s life was upended in 2016 when his wife died. He discusses her role in the Golden State Killer case, the ‘shadow slog’ of grief – and the reaction to his remarriage

The sad clown. The chronic depressive comedian. It is one of the greatest cliches in showbusiness. Patton Oswalt – ebullient, life-affirming, swearing as he hurtles along the Interstate 10 highway in California – does not sound like one of those. At least, not any more.

Oswalt’s wife, the true-crime writer Michelle McNamara, died suddenly in 2016 at the age of 46. That was the second-worst day of Oswalt’s life. The worst was breaking the news to their seven-year-old daughter, Alice, the next day.

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The Trumps are coming! Expect it to go as well as a US sitcom episode set in London

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In a plot twist no one saw coming, Trump is bringing his four adult children on his forthcoming state visit. It will be like Arrested Development Goes To The UK

The one immutable law about TV sitcoms is the show should never leave its usual setting. Sex And The City’s worst episodes were when Carrie went to Los Angeles and – ooh la la! – Paris, where les français were très rude but the croissants were fantastique. That cultural insight looked positively authentic compared with the trip to Abu Dhabi in the second film, where “the girls” were terrorised by swarthy men and befriended by alluring ladies. This is what happens when a show forgets its appeal is rooted in a particular place, and when the scriptwriters have apparently never been abroad. Suddenly its site-specific references are swapped for national cliches even the makers of National Lampoon’s European Vacation would reject as “a bit obvious”.

Which brings me to the forthcoming episode of Arrested Development Goes To The UK, AKA Trump’s state visit. In a plot twist no one saw coming, Trump is bringing not just Ivanka, the daughter he once said he would date if they weren’t related, but his less date-able adult children, too: Donnie Jr, Eric… and Tiffany! Trump’s daughter with second wife Marla Maples is not a regular character, so it’s exciting when she makes an unexpected appearance. Sort of like on The Cosby Show when Lisa Bonet would come back “from college”, AKA shooting the sex thriller Angel Heart with Mickey Rourke. I’m not insinuating Tiffany is up to something similar, but I bet she’s having more fun than her half-siblings.

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Black Mirror: the five best episodes so far

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Black Mirror is back. From an 80s lesbian romance to a murderous choose-your-own adventure, here are the essential dystopian stories you must watch before the new season drops next week

Season 2, Episode 1

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It Must Be Heaven review – Palestine’s holy fool lives the dream

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The latest satire-fable from Elia Suleiman is as droll as ever, but while there’s a kernel of seriousness here it too often lapses into elusive mannerism

The Palestinian film-maker Elia Suleiman, dishevelled yet dapper at all times and never without his hat, saunters across continents in this new movie, fixing the amusingly surreal tableau scenes he comes across with a mildly perplexed gaze. He doesn’t talk and smiles just once, when a tiny little bird (a digital creation) flies into his hotel room and drinks water from a cup while is working at his laptop. Suleiman is the holy fool who is no fool.

The premise for this film that he is playing himself: travelling abroad from Nazareth, coming first to Paris and then to New York, trying to speak to producers about getting his latest film made. (In real life, he must surely be more diplomatic and persuasive than his alter ego here, the Suleiman who maintains an enigmatically satirical silence in the face of one producer’s obtuse idiocy.) Everywhere he looks, often in eerily deserted streets – surely Suleiman was shooting on very early summer mornings – he finds scenes of choreographed absurdism, gently but pointedly ridiculing the pomposity of uniformed officialdom. The title itself sounds like some lost Talking Heads track describing a place where things happen in a dream.

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‘I even loved his Twankey’: Dench, Hopkins, Mirren and more on Ian McKellen at 80

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Wild parties, stunning performances, silhouette erections and marrying Patrick Stewart twice. As the actor turns 80, friends including Derek Jacobi, Janet Suzman, Michael Sheen, Bill Condon and Stephen Fry pay tribute

Ian has been been very important in my life, even before we became good friends. When I was a young teen I remember watching Walter on the TV and being hugely affected by it. Then at Rada in the early 90s, I finally saw him live, in Richard III at the National. I was blown away. I remember him doing the opening speech while lighting a cigarette one-handed. It was brilliant, so understated. It exemplified his mastery – and his work ethic. To do something so difficult and complicated and make it look so easy. Ian has an innate sense of theatrical audacity, something I think he shares with Olivier. They both did things that would make the audience gasp self-consciously.

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‘She was our Michelle Obama’: how Gilda Radner changed comedy for ever

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The death of the SNL star 30 years ago robbed the industry of one its finest voices – but not before she had blazed a trail for women such as Tina Fey to follow

There is no shortage of excellent critical writing about the US comedy scene in the 80s, and Nick de Semlyen’s Wild and Crazy Guys, which is published in the UK next month, is a terrific contribution to the genre. De Semlyen frames his book by telling the stories of the men who forged that world, most of whom – including Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd – emerged from the comedy training ground of Saturday Night Live. But what De Semlyen’s book also shows is that this scene was dominated by men. Yet that wasn’t supposed to be the case.

This month is the 30th anniversary of the death of Gilda Radner, one of the original cast members of SNL, alongside Chase, Belushi, Aykroyd and others. Although she is comparatively little known today outside comedy circles, back then she was widely assumed to be the future megastar of that group. With her sharp parodies of celebrities and her skill at satirising her own femininity and neuroses, she set the mould for modern female comedians. Without Radner, it is hard to imagine the existence of many of the most beloved comic characters of the past 30 years, from Elaine Benes in Seinfeld to Liz Lemon in 30 Rock.

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Comedians pay tribute to Ian Cognito after standup dies on stage

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Jimmy Carr and Katy Brand among those to pay public respect to ‘fearless’ comic who fell suddenly ill during Bicester gig

Tributes have been paid to the anarchic comedian Ian Cognito, who died on stage during a gig on Thursday night. The cult standup was performing at the Lone Wolf Comedy Club night at the Atic bar in Bicester when he fell ill and took a seat. Some members of the audience reportedly thought that it was part of the act but paramedics were called to the venue and he was pronounced dead.

Katy Brand was among those to pay homage to Cognito, a Time Out comedy award-winner who was known as “Cogs” on the circuit. “I hung with him a good few times in the past,” she said. “He was always fascinating and hilarious company. RIP Cogs.” Paul Sinha said he had “deeply envied” Cognito’s fearlessness, calling him “a gentleman – a terrifying gentleman”. Luisa Omielan said he was “as epic as his reputation. Rebellious and brilliant.”

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Grounded? How Disney’s Dumbo flop could threaten its master plan

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The corporation’s buying spree has other studios trembling in its mouse-eared shadow. But are hard times ahead for the entertainment behemoth?

You’ve seen a horse fly, you’ve seen a dragon fly, you’ve seen a house fly. Now watch as a computer-animated elephant with oversized ears … crashes to the ground from a very great height. The reviews are in on Disney’s new Dumbo – reworked from the 1941 classic with “the imagination of Tim Burton” – and they are not unanimously positive, to say the least. “It transforms a gentle and miraculous tale into a routine story by weighing it down with a lot of nuts and bolts it didn’t need,” says Variety. “Floats just high enough to clear the incredibly low bar that it sets for itself,” writes IndieWire. In this paper, Peter Bradshaw calls it “a flightless pachyderm of a film” with a “pointlessly complicated and drawn-out story”. Roll up! Roll up!

If Dumbo flops, it could represent a major disturbance in Disney’s grand master plan. The corporation’s recent buying spree has left other studios trembling in its mouse-eared shadow. Over the last decade or so, Disney has snapped up plum properties such as Star Wars, Marvel and Pixar, culminating in last week’s $71bn (£54bn) acquisition of rival studio 21st Century Fox.

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