“For Madmen Only: The Stories of Del Close,” a new documentary now on VOD, is about the best-known funny man you’ve probably never heard of. Tina Fey says he taught her to be bold in life. Mike Myers says he learned the connection between comedy and bigger ideas from him and Robin Williams campaigns for a Church of Del. Del Close is called a living legend by Amy Poehler and yet, as the movie says, this Zelig of comedy has the same name recognition as a third-tier fast food chain.
As one of the pioneers of a new kind of theatre called improvisational comedy Close, along with a handful of others like Elaine May (who close calls a supernatural figure) and Mike Nichols, created the form and the rules of performing comedy without a net. Some were intellectual. “Always work at the top of your intelligence,” and “Don’t deny, respect the other person’s reality.” Others practical. “Remember where the object are,” and “Don’t do mime.” Most important of all, “You’re not locked into this like an actor with a script.”
Using recorded interviews with Close, who died of emphysema at age 64 in 1999, and newer interviews with many of his friends and students, like the names I listed above and Tim Meadows, George Wendt, Bob Odenkirk among others, plus recreations, (which have a “Closeness” about them because director Heather Ross based on Close’s autobiographical comic “Wasteland”), and archival footage and photographs, a story emerges of a self-destructive rebel who put human nature onstage in an attempt to explore why we behave the way we do.
By the end of the film, it’s a portrait of a complicated man whose window into human nature was both a gift and a curse. He was, as Dave Thomas describes him, “a delicate basket of eggs destined to break at any moment.” He was brilliant, but as Adam McKay points out, also a “bit of a baby sometimes.”
What remains is his pioneering work teaching improv (with a big leg up from Charna Halpern). His “Harold” teaching method, the structure used in longform improvisational theatre, is both rigid—there are a set of strict rules—but also freeing in a way that made his students, as Myers says, “get in touch with their higher selves.”
“You have a light within you,” he would tell them. “Burn it out.”
You can draw a straight line from Close to most folks who have made you laugh in the last thirty years. He was a guru, who never reaped the rewards or the recognition many of his students enjoyed but the film aims to correct the latter.
As often happens in biographies, the legend sometimes looms larger than life. Did he really give L. Ron Hubbard the idea to start a religion to circumvent taxes? Did he really volunteer to have his dreams monitored by the US government while high on LSD, leave the project early and then sent a letter saying he owed the government one more dream?
Who knows? They’re good stories though. Fact and fiction, it seems are the two sides of the coin that inform the legend of Del Close.
John Belushi was only famous for five years before his untimely death at age 33 but in that short time his unique comedic quality left an indelible impression that resonates almost forty years later. A new documentary, now streaming on Crave, looks at his meteoric rise and tragic fall.
Director R.J. Cutler uses the usual devices to tell the story. He mixes and matches archival material, animation, ephemera from Belushi’s life—handwritten letters, home movies etc—and news footage but his ace in the hole, the thing that gives “Belushi” its emotional wallop, are the audio interviews that tell the story.
In 2012 author Tanner Colby released a book called “Belushi: A Biography,” an oral history of the life and times of the “SNL” star. Colby did dozens of interviews with the people who knew Belushi best, Lorne Michaels, Dan Ackroyd, Harold Ramis, and friends and family, including John’s wife Judith. Those interviews form the backbone of the film, bringing with them a conversational, intimate and wistful feel.
The story beats are familiar. An uber talented rebel with a sensitive side finds enormous fame—at one point he had the number one comedy show on TV, movie in theatres and album on the charts—but is undone by personal demons. That’s the story in broad strokes. Filling in the small details is the expertly edited oral history who provide first hand details and impressions on Belushi’s life.
Most devastating of all are the handwritten letters from John to Judith that Cutler brings to life. From the playful tone of the early letters sent while they were courting to the final notes, written in desperation as drugs and depression debilitated the actor, these notes, written in a messy scrawl and often containing funny self-help lists, provide more insight into the Belushi’s mind frame that no talking head interview could ever hope.
“Belushi” has gaps. The warts and all depiction of Belushi’s drug habits is front and center but the misogyny of the early “SNL” days, for instance, is brushed over in a quick passage.
Having said that, the doc packs an emotional punch in its final moments as Belushi’s nearest and dearest express regret for allowing their friend to lapse back into heavy drug use. It is heartbreaking stuff on a personal level for them. For the rest of us, as Belushi fans, the cutting short of his potential feels like a cautionary tale of excess and a tragedy of a talent taken way too soon.
There’s an old saying that goes, “You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family.” True enough, but as Hollywood has taught us, you can add neighbors to the “cannot choose” list.
This weekend in Neighbors Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne star as parents of a new baby whose quiet suburban life is uprooted when unruly frat boys led by Zac Efron and Dave Franco move in next door. “Make sure that if we’re too noisy, call me,” says Zac. “Don’t call the cops.”
When a house party spirals out of control the couple has to call the cops, thereby violating “the circle of trust” and triggering a Hatfield and McCoy’s style feud between the households.
Terrible neighbors are nothing new in Hollywood films.
In his final role John Belushi starred as earl Keese in the 1981 movie Neighbors. He plays a cranky man whose regimented residential life is turned upside down by toxic neighbors, played by his Blues Brothers cohort Dan Aykroyd and Cathy Moriarty. “We don’t want any bad blood,” says Aykroyd, “especially since we’ll be living next door to you for a long, long time.”
The situation spirals out of control, but what begins as domestic warfare between the tow households soon takes a turn when Earl realizes his new neighbors are way more fun than the button–down life he led before.
The dark comedy didn’t satisfy critics or fans of Blues Brothers era Belushi and Aykroyd, but Roger Ebert liked it, calling it, “an offbeat experiment in hallucinatory black humor,” and giving it four out of five stars
Roman Polanski’s study of nasty neighbors, Rosemary’s Baby was a much bigger hit. After moving into the beautifully gothic Bramford apartment building (exterior shots were taken at John Lennon’s old home, the Dakota Building on New York City’s Upper West Side) Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) and husband Guy (John Cassavettes) soon discover that the folks next door Minnie and Roman Castevet (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer) have a satanic interest in their unborn child.
“Awful things happen in every apartment house,” says Rosemary.
The ‘Burbs may have the ultimate nosy neighbors. The action in the 1989 Tom Hanks movie really begins when one of the locals finds as femur bone in the backyard. “Our neighbors are murdering people,” he says. “They’re chopping them up. They’re burying them in their backyard.”
Rumours of a suburban cannibalistic cult spread through town, putting everyone on edge.
“Green sky at morning,” say Ricky Butler (Corey Feldman), “neighbor take warning.”
“You’re a con artist,” wrote Karina Halle in Sins & Needles. “A liar. A thief. An unredeemable soul.”
She might also have added to that colourful list really interesting movie character.
As despicable as flim flam artists may be, there is no denying they make good film subjects.
This weekend in American Hustle, Christian Bale plays Irving Rosenfeld, a con man forced to help the FBI ensnare a group of corrupt politicians in the ABSCAM sting operation.
Although American Hustle director David O. Russell says his film is a fictionalized account of events, the ABSCAM operation was headline news in the early 1980s and Hollywood took notice.
In 1982 director Louis Malle was making plans for a May start date on an ABSCAM film called Moon Over Miami starring Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi. Belushi was to play Melvin Weinberg, based on the same man as Bale’s character in American Hustle.
The movie was scuttled following Belushi’s death in March of that year.
That con man film never saw the light of day, but many others have.
Everyone knows The Sting and The Grifters, but lesser seen is David Mamet’s The Spanish Prisoner, a complicated story starring Campbell Scott as Joe Ross, a man who invents a process “to control the world market.” Concerned that he will not be properly compensated for his work he contacts Jimmy Dell (Steve Martin), a wealthy businessman who offers to help. Little does Ross know that he has just stepped into a world of deception that will change his life.
Steve Martin’s performance in The Spanish Prisoner was Oscar worthy, but it wasn’t the first time he played a confidence man on film.
In the comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels he starred opposite Michael Caine as a scruffy con man trying to muscle in on some high end business on the French Riviera. Caine’s suave grifter makes a bet with Martin. Whoever can con Soap Queen Janet Colgate (Glenne Headley) first will walk away with $50,000.
The movie was written for Mick Jagger and David Bowie who were looking to do a project together after the success of their Dancing in the Street video. The rock stars dropped out before cameras rolled — Bowie later said both were, “a bit tweezed that we lost out on a script that could have been reasonably good” — and replaced by Martin and Caine whose hilarious performances earned the movie a spot on Bravo’s 100 Funniest Movies list.
