July 28, 2005
SILLY IN SUITS
There hasn't been much to giggle about at Casa del Salad the past few days. (See previous post)
But last night, when laughs were at a supreme deficit, we clicked the DVR and punched up an episode of "Stella" that I had recorded off "Comedy Central."
It saved the night.
Salad Boy, who had been in an understandably mournful funk most of the day, started launching high-pitched chortles. His mother tolerated it at first, then threw in a few laughs. I kept shaking my head and uttering, "This is soooooo stooopid." But in a highly complimentary way.
It's not a show for everyone. We do not live in absurdist times. This might not be the decade where people get the joke that three simpletons in suits put on blackface so they can hide the scars of an assjacking they got from a band of juvenile delinquent paper boys. This is "The Hudson Brothers" only dumbed down - in a very smart way.
But it becomes funny once you surrender to the stupidity and let it flow over you. You'll probably feel a little dirty afterward, the kind of guilt you get when you laugh at graffiti on a bathroom stall or the reverse playback of an old man falling off a swing set and losing his teeth and trousers on "America's Funniest Videos." But it will happen. Trust me.
Anyway, I found an interesting Q&A from Newsweek with one of the cast members on the "Stella" site. Seems to explain the reaction to the show pretty well:
What are you trying to do with "Stella"?Posted by Jeff at July 28, 2005 05:40 AM | TrackBack
Michael Showalter: We’re really just trying to make a funny show. We don’t have any real agenda or target audience or any larger thing we’re trying to accomplish. It’s a sensibility we’ve developed over the last seven or so years. It seems to have somewhat of a broad appeal. It’s really rooted in old-school slapstick comedy. Really it’s a love for silliness.
Dumb comedy dressed up in a suit, as your tagline goes. There is hopefully an intelligence to what we’re doing. It’s not just being thrown against the wall, but we’re not trying to be too serious about it.
What’s your take on feedback so far? There have been really mixed reviews. People seem to either love it or hate it.
It does seem to be that people are kind of taking sides, doesn’t it? Most of what’s been said has been really positive. There are a lot of people who say “I think it’s great but I don’t know if you will.” For a show that only just started being on TV, already there’s this debate: is this funny or not? And that’s such a funny debate to me. Of course it’s funny. We’ve been doing this now for a long time. I think the debate should be: why is it funny? I don’t think we know or understand what’s so challenging about this material.
Well you say yourself that over the years you’ve developed your own sensibility. In "Stella" that can come across as overly silly and inside-jokey.
Probably. That’s what was said about "The State," and that’s what was said about “Wet Hot.” I’ve only done this once—and once was enough: I went to Netflix to read the audience reviews of “Wet Hot American Summer,” and it’s either [five] stars or no stars. Nothing in between. Either people absolutely love it and think it’s the greatest thing they’ve ever seen, or they think it’s [an] absolutely unwatchable, worthless, completely unnecessary piece of film.
When you see stuff like that do you think “well obviously we’re doing something right?” I would imagine it’s hard not to second-guess yourself.
Of course. Part of me just has to throw my hands up in the air. It’s a strange position to kind of have credibility and yet to continually be in this place of having people debate the material that we’re doing. A comment that I heard from a friend about "Stella" that resonated for me was that a lot of the jokes need to be understood on a second level. A lot of the jokes need to be thought about. "Why was that funny?" That may be something that people don’t want to do. They just want to be made to laugh.
Can you give an example?
There is a joke where we see a flier advertising that there’s going to be an open house for an apartment. The flier is around the corner—we couldn’t have seen it from where we were sitting. I read something by someone who didn’t see it until the second time he watched the episode. So I think that there’s a lot of moments like that—there’s a joke that people don’t see the first time. In “Wet Hot American Summer” there is a scene I’ve heard people criticize where my character slips on a banana peel. Our joke is: we did a banana-peel joke. That’s kind of an esoteric joke. It’s a joke about comedy. That movie came out in the summer of 2001 and we’re now four years later and people are starting to really get it. It’s been a really slow build.
Does that mean it will take four years for people to get "Stella"?
I hope that’s not the trajectory for it. I hope people get it faster than that. There was one review that said in the year 2008 people will love this show. I hope people get it right away because it’s really funny.
I've been contemplating a similar post about "Stella." There's a dadaist quality to the show; it's so stupid it's brilliant. Took me a couple of episodes before it clicked.
Very sorry about Hobart.