Documentaries are making money now. In their push for mainstream acclaim and profit, they’ve taken to aping Hollywood: “Spellbound” was staged as a suspense picture, while glorified National Geographic specials like “Winged Migration” and “March of the Penguins” were turned to bright visual spectacle, the special effects film as documentary.
So it’s something of a relief to find the real thing in “The Aristocrats,” a film about a dirty joke. It’s an ugly movie, shot on handheld cameras, close enough to homemade that you can spot the film crew reflected in Robin Williams’s sunglasses or in a mirror at a restaurant. It couldn’t have less commercial ambition. It’s a movie that’s built like an essay.
The joke in question is ancient (we’re told it came from vaudeville). It was told among early comedians as a sort of test of comic fortitude. The joke goes like this: A family walks into a talent agent’s office, tells him they have a great act. An improvised, graphic description of their act, containing as much obscenity as possible (with no lack of scatological and incestuous reference), is the body of the joke. When they finish, the agent says “That’s a hell of an act. What do you call it?” The answer is always the same: “The aristocrats.”
“The Aristocrats” the film is the only intellectual documentary to emerge from the recent fad, and its true subject is interpretation itself. The joke is nothing but the telling; the punchline is inconsequential, the setup boilerplate. We hear it taken in every direction by the comedians interviewed: it’s the worst joke in the world, the funniest. It’s about show business, freedom of speech. It’s a post-modern exercise, it’s about surprise. It’s a secret handshake for comics. Their tellings of the joke are edited, quickly and deftly, to suggest a single mutating performance, the same concept from every angle.
And in spite of its intellectual heft, the movie is pretty damn funny. It works only after we’re familiar with the joke and recognize the ingenuity of the best versions -Sarah Silverman’s deadpan, Kevin Pollak mimicking Christopher Walken’s delivery, the South Park “Aristocrats” segment, and a wrenchingly filthy take from Bob Saget, of all people. It’s not all good–there are some terrible physical comedians in the world-but 90 minutes of stand-up comedians can’t avoid being uneven.
For all the analysis heaped on it, the joke remains, as Jon Stewart acknowledges in the film, ultimately opaque. The appeal of “The Aristocrats” the film is easier to get a handle on: we’re fascinated with an idea that lasts, whether it’s the Iliad or a story about an incestuous family wallowing in their own shit and spunk.
Speaking of which, “The Aristocrats” is unrated, and contains a lot of the worst words you’ve ever heard, to say nothing of the ways they’re combined, alongside lovingly rendered descriptions of felching and all manner of obscure behavior. I figure anyone who goes knows what they’re getting into anyway. On the other hand, I saw this guy walk out of the theater and throw up into a trash can, so there’s that.