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78 Plays3 months ago
Joe and Mark welcome their first return guest: writer and editor Ira Nayman!
Ira has returned to help Mark and Joe understand the importance and fun of the early Marx Brothers films, including Animal Crackers (1930), Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932) and Duck Soup (1933).
Ira makes the convincing case that if you love Monty Python, and you haven't seen the Marx Brothers, you really should give them a try.
If you enjoy comedy, you cannot afford to miss this edifying and funny conversation.
For more information, check out the show notes for this episode.
Re-Creative is produced by Donovan Street Press Inc. in association with MonkeyJoy Press.
Contact us at [email protected]
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Transcript
Introduction and Comedy Influences
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello, Mark. How are you? I'm, I'm a magnificent bastard is what I am. You are, you are. you um how are you I'm good. I'm good. I have a question though. Of course. All right. Okay. I'm rolling out my Cs. and I am ready. tonna stuff Okay. Favorite comedy group. Go. Well, I have to say the arrogant worms, don't I? Because they've been on this podcast. I i think they have to be at least in the top three. Yes. Yeah. But, uh, those aside, I mean, you know, we all have such a fondness for, you know, Money Python.
00:00:45
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm thinking of I'm thinking of my friend ah john pellet who had his own comedy group. But yeah, Monty Python, I think is right. Obviously way up there. I think that would probably have to be mine too. But I've got some other ones that are, you know, are close to my heart, like, you know, the arrogant worms for sure. Another Canadian group Bowser and blue. Did you ever see them? No, but you are reminding me of others like ah the Frantics, you know, love the Frantics in ah in their time. Corky and the Juice Pigs. I know that name, but I have not seen them. no Okay, there you go. Well, anyway, so I thought this might be a question that Ira would have some answers to as well.
Return of Ira Naaman and Canadian Comedy
00:01:20
Speaker
Expect your correct. Yeah, Ira Naaman, welcome to the podcast. Welcome back. Good to be back. Yeah, pleasure. I'm both with you. ah Monty Python is
00:01:30
Speaker
ah probably the best. In terms of Canadian groups, you of course haven't mentioned SCTV, which I think is- Oh gosh, sure yeah. there or Or Kids in the Hall. Or Kids in the Hall, or my second favorite Canadian group, Codco. Codco was very- Right. Maritimes. like They did stuff that I just totally over my head because it was so culturally specific. But they were also fearless. I remember going to a performance slash ah video a festival with CODCO members and they showed a sketch that they did in the 80s about two priests who
00:02:18
Speaker
Just as the sketch progressed, you got the sense that it was very much about their attitudes towards children, shall we say. And it was a very funny sketch, but the thing about it was, it was a funny sketch about something nobody was talking about at the time. And it just struck me that KODCO was such a brave comedy group going going there, right? Just when nobody else would go there. um So I always have a fondness for KODCO. And they have spawned a lot of talent, KODCO.
00:02:56
Speaker
They're the predecessors of why this hour is 20. Yeah. Yep. 20. This, this hour has 22 minutes. Rick Mercer report. Yeah. A lot of things came out of
Ira Naaman's Work and Storytelling
00:03:05
Speaker
that. Yeah. So before we go any further, so you are the very first guest that we've ever had twice on this podcast. So I'm not sure what the, what's the protocol there, Mark? Does, does Ira have to reintroduce himself or, or do we reintroduce him this time or, or did we just assume everybody already knows who Ira is this time? I think we should let Ira say something. I mean, most of our listeners probably will remember you, but you know just in case. I'm a comedy writer, have been since I was a kid, basically. I've had eight novels published, roughly 30 short stories. I'm also an editor. I edited Amazing Stories magazine and The Dance, which is my first anthology as editor, actually was released on April 1st.
00:03:50
Speaker
So you know in a brief nutshell, that's me. Is there a reason it was released on April Fool's Day? Is there really an anthology? There really is. I mean, I hope. So what's the dance all about? It comes from an epigram that I can't find the the origination of, but so it may be original, but I'm pretty sure somebody else said it. First, life is the dance between choice and chance. So when I put the call out for stories, what I was asking for were stories that explored how random chance events or just something that we have no control over, like the world we're born into,
00:04:32
Speaker
or the choices we make from the choices that life give us shape the the course of our lives. And one sort of wrinkle to that is that every story had to take place in at least three separate universes, three different universes to show how either different chance events or different choices ended up actually causing lives to take different shapes. And I must say that, um you know, all of the writers ran with it in very different directions. When I had originally conceived of the book, I had been working off of something that I had been writing for a couple of years, what I call multiverse triptychs.
00:05:19
Speaker
which are stories which take place in three separate universes but in three distinct chunks. And the point was that each of the three chunks would interact with each other but only in the imagination of the reader. Many of the writers who submitted to this wove their different universes into a single storyline, which was quite fascinating to me and worked, as I say it, on in multiple different ways. One of the things that I try and promote as a writer and and certainly promote in writers when I'm an editor
00:05:58
Speaker
is that I'm really looking for stories that surprise and delight. And I was delighted that so many of the stories in the dance surprised me. That's a great recommendation, I think. Of course, that's self-serving of me to say. and Did you find it hard you sifting through the submissions and picking which ones you wanted to include? Good question. um In this case, no. ah It was a very sort of weird experience because when I was editor of Amazing Stories, of course, it was a fire hose of stuff and there were so many stories to choose from. For this anthology, not so much. It was actually fairly straightforward and fairly easy for me to to choose which stories to take. Yeah, and it's available at all the usual places, I assume, online. It is, yep.
00:06:51
Speaker
So shall we get right into the subject at
The Impact of Marx Brothers on Comedy
00:06:53
Speaker
hand? As listeners know, we always have our guests that choose a piece of art that inspires them. Ira, what is your choice of art today? ah My choice were the early films of the Marx Brothers, particularly the four they did with, I believe, Paramount, ah which are Duck Soup, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business and Horse Feathers. Excellent choices. So we're supposed to be some of the funniest films of all time, which i I imagine you agree with that assessment. Well, yeah, I find those kind of assessments, you know, difficult. I mean, different people have different senses of humor and will choose very different kind of films for those sorts of things. I will say that I think
00:07:40
Speaker
four or five of the Marx Brothers films are on the AFI's list of 100 funniest films of all times. So ah that is a recommendation for sure. Why did you pick ah these particular films then? um I had a very particular film education when I was a kid, and it's something that the young people don't get now. It was just a very specific moment in history, in in media history. Television was not ah that old. It was only about 10 or 15 years when I started watching.
00:08:19
Speaker
And the production companies had not, the film production companies had not really geared up to fill an entire TV schedule. So what happened was all of the TV networks frantically bought up all the old movies they could find going back to the silent era. And then I remember, you know, on the weekends in particular, but also late at night, they would air them. Because at that point, it's worth noting that the film studios really didn't have any idea of what their back catalogs were worth.
00:08:59
Speaker
right? They thought we put the movies into theaters once they have their run. And that's it. That's why so many so many um silent films are no longer available. The studios literally didn't maintain them because they didn't find any value in them. So I'm a kid, ah you know, I'm like six, seven, eight, nine, and I'm watching Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin and W.C. Fields and the Marx Brothers. Eventually, when I get a little bit older, I start respecting Frank Capra and Preston Sturgis and some of the screwball comedies of the 30s. It was an amazing education in
00:09:44
Speaker
film comedy history, right? And it was just there for me to do. Today, if I wanted to see these movies, I would have to find them on YouTube or yes on a service, right? But I would have to know that they were there to be found, which I think is a bit of a problem for people today. Would it shock you to know that I had never seen a Marx Brothers movie before I knew you were coming on the show to talk about them? um Not at all, no. because because yeah Because they were not on television when I was a kid. We did occasionally see Laurel and Hardy stuff and Abbott and Costello, but those, I guess Laurel and Hardy is about the same time, but Abbott and Costello is later obviously. So I just wonder if like they went through that early stuff.
00:10:33
Speaker
A bit earlier on television. Or did you guys grew up in different places or maybe? Yeah, that could be it too. Yeah. Cause I grew up in London. So, uh, we had our television stations were, uh, Detroit mostly. Okay. Yeah. Mine was Buffalo. Yeah. Right. so And mine was Bangor, Maine. That's where I was getting all those old great movies. Oh, really? Yeah. So the movie what old movies did you get, Joe? ah There was a lot of Abbott and Costello, and yeah we had something called the Great Money Movie. but ah There was a host ah out of Bangor, Maine by the name of, I think his name was Eddie Driscoll's son, I think.
00:11:12
Speaker
And he would put on these movies and then they would like draw for for money. And it was all these old classic black and white movies. It's just exactly the kind of movies that I was talking about. Yeah, it's awesome. I should point out that although my focus is on comedy, we also got, you know, all of the classic dramas. We got, you know, Casablanca. We got the things that stuck with me were like German expressionist films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, right? Wow. Because I mean, you know, For a nine-year-old, that's a bit mind-blowing, right? Yeah, it wasn't just comedy. It was everything from the classic era of film. So of all of those, you could chose choose from. We've got lots to choose from there. Buster Keaton, especially to me, is like, he's amazing in terms of what you do. Why the Marx Brothers? Like, what is it about them that you love so much?
00:12:03
Speaker
Just about Buster Keaton, Keaton might have been somebody that I would have chosen as a subject for this because I'm a huge, huge fan of Keaton's as well. But I didn't actually come upon Keaton. There was the occasional compilation of ah silent comedy stars other than Chaplin. So I would get just a snippet of Keaton here and there. It wasn't until the Rep Theatre in Toronto had like a week long retrospective of Keaton when I was a little older. that i really got immersed in his work and now of course i have the keaton box set so you know i can always go back to the films cuz yeah a huge huge fan and the whole keaton chaplain debate is an interesting one but it kind of takes us away from what we're supposed to be talking about tonight so yeah you maybe for a future show who knows yeah um yeah of course yeah and of course old man brain i've now
00:13:00
Speaker
wandered so far away, I've forgotten the question. Well, I guess the question is really, so so why did you want to specifically talk about the Marx Brothers today? Yeah. OK. So and he's like, i don't I don't anymore. Now I want to talk about Buster G. And Charlie Chaplin. And they're going to fight with chainsaws. so yeah That's right. Ooh.
00:13:25
Speaker
Now I want to use the um video generative AI to make that film. ah yeah yeah Give it a few years, it'll it'll be there. Yeah. Yeah. Not that much actually. So the Marx Brothers and when I was a little bit older, Monty Python's flying surface circus. Circus. We'll edit the surface out, right? Sure, that's right. They were the kind of laboratory for the kind of comedy I would end up writing.
00:14:00
Speaker
And there are two specific, very specific things that both of those groups do that are fundamental to the things that I write. I think of them as the two Vs. One is volume and the other is variety. So with the early Marx Brothers film, as well as with Monty Python, jokes come at a very, very rapid pace. You don't get that one joke. That's fine. Because five seconds later, there's another one and another one and another one over and over again. Just constant humor, which, you know, if you look at a lot of other comedy films, particularly very narratively based comedy films,
00:14:47
Speaker
They tend to alternate between humorous set pieces and character pieces or other things, which you know are necessary for the telling of the story they want to tell, but reduce the volume of the actual humor. right But here's the thing about volume. One of the very important elements of comedy is surprise. the audience can't see the punchline coming. And the thing about volume is that if you're telling the same kind of jokes, if you're using the same comic device over and over again, the audience is going to catch up with you. They're going to figure out how your humor works and it's going to be blunted. It's not going to work as well as it could.
00:15:34
Speaker
So the second V variety is very, very important. In Python, it's very clear you have some of the most so sophisticated sketches right up against some of the most crude humor you can imagine, right? And everything in between. So, Python constantly kind of puts the audience member, kind of left foots the audience member, right? they like They cannot tell what's coming. The Marx Brothers, again, an earlier influence of mine, do more or less the same thing. Each of the three brothers, who are the main comedic drivers,
00:16:08
Speaker
has their own brand of comedy and you can't tell from moment to moment which one is going to dominate and which one is going to, you know, kind of be set in the background while the other is brought to the foreground. So it's constantly funny and it's constantly surprisingly funny. So the comedy doesn't wear out, does it word? I never had a chance to catch up with what they were doing. Yeah. So I watched duck soup. I did some homework. I watched duck soup last night so that I could have context for this. Cause I, like I said, I i'd never had a chance to watch them before. And that's exactly what I thought when I was watching is like, Oh my God, they still, this is just madness and relentless. Yeah. But I did figure it out by the end of the movie. Oh, I get it. I see they've got, there's three different kinds of clowns at work here. So I wanted to fit. That's partially why you picked it. Cause you know, it's going to freak me out a little bit when I realized there were clowns. yeah He knows I'm scared of clowns, Joe. So I just got to ask, what's up with Harpo? What what is his deal? In in what sense? are Are you talking about the silence? Oh, he's so aggressive and anarchic. I actually found him a little disturbing more than funny.
00:17:27
Speaker
I'm like, oh God, here comes Harpo. Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit. It's Harpo. He's back on the screen. He's just the look at his eyes is total. It's derangement. There's no other way to describe it. He's just like, he's, he's like Loki made flesh.
00:17:45
Speaker
For my um preparation for the interview, I actually watched Monkey Business and I think it was Animal Crackers. Yeah, Monkey Business and Animal Crackers again. And there's actually a scene in, I think, Monkey Business where One of the plot lines, such as they are, of the ah of the film involves a stolen painting. And at one point, there are four different versions of the stolen painting, and they all disappear from the guest house where the film takes place.
00:18:21
Speaker
And it turns out that Harpo has taken all four paintings, all four versions of the painting, to use as insulation because he ended up sleeping on a park bench outside of the house, because he was not comfortable being in the house with actual people. One of the ah female protagonists in the film finds him and finds the paintings, and she asks him, how old is he? And he holds up five fingers, right? So the thing you have to sort of appreciate about Harpo is that he's a child. yeah Sometimes a very aggressive child. No question about that. So, I mean, seeing the films again after many years, you know, you kind of worry, am I going to find this as funny as I did? Are there going to be, you know, i'm am I going to find
00:19:15
Speaker
things that offend my current sensibilities that maybe I didn't, I wasn't so sensitive to when I was younger, right? And one of them is the way that I remembered Harpo chasing women ah all around the set. And one of the things when I saw that scene where, you know, he's introduced as a ah basically a child in a man's body, it's like, okay, A lot of what Harpo does is trying to mimic adult behavior, but getting it wrong, basically. So the whole, you know, running after women, for instance, is
00:19:54
Speaker
a kind of exaggerated masculinity, a kind of exaggerated idea of that, which is actually, I wouldn't necessarily say belied, but there is a different way of looking at it that comes through in the in the end of that film. For some reason, the film ends with Harpo filling ah um a bug sprayer, the kind of thing you would spray plants with, but filling it with ether and putting the entire cast to sleep. So Harpo is the only person left standing on the set. He's kind of walking around. He doesn't know exactly what to do until he sees this pretty girl, you know, lying unconscious on the, you know, on the floor and among a crowd of people. therere There are like two dozen people. And what he does and the way the film ends is he ethers himself so that he can fall into her arms.
00:20:51
Speaker
And it's actually kind of a sweet moment and you realize that beside the anarchy, there is a kind of childlike sweetness to that character, to to Harpo's character in a lot of ways as well. Yeah, I think that's a little, I think that's true. Yeah. There's this, there's this repeated thing he keeps doing in um duck soup where it's the weirdest little move. Like he, he keeps holding up somebody's leg. Yeah. It's just, it's just the craziest and it's just, it's done. It's done amazingly well. Like it's, it's, it's really clear. He's.
00:21:25
Speaker
He's extremely talented with not just his body, but in terms of being totally spatially aware of where everyone else is and what he can do with them. And the scene where he, um, he pretends he's Groucho's reflection in a mirror. Yep. Is, is amazing from, like, I know we've seen that in other things, but I'm guessing that was the first time it was done. Yeah. Yeah. And you're right. they' been not Better than I've ever seen it done anywhere. That's the thing. I'm like, okay, this is where this meme comes from. This is where this trope originates clearly. And why would anyone bother doing it again? Cause this is so great. Yeah. So I can sort of see that that, that childlike side of him is, is, is there for sure. And the fact that he doesn't speak ever, I guess, is that that's the shtick, right? He doesn't ever speak.
00:22:14
Speaker
um Yeah, yeah. In fact, his autobiography is called Harpo Speaks. Oh, that's great. That's really good. Address that that very issue. Yeah. There's a lot more going on in these films than I think people realize. I think so. Yeah. ah Monkey Business, I believe. three quarters of the film takes place on a cruise liner, wealthy people kind of going off on a cruise. ah The four Marx Brothers, because at that point, Zeppo was also a ah part of the act. And actually, just to clarify, there were five Marx Brothers, there was also Gummo.
Cultural Reflections in Marx Brothers' Comedy
00:22:53
Speaker
Gummo only appeared with them on stage when they made the transition to film, Zeppo went with them, but Gummo did not.
00:23:00
Speaker
Okay, but vote the team was was actually five brothers, all of whom were expert players in a ah musical instrument. And you see that in some of the films as well. there There usually are some kind of musical numbers. But so what's going on in a Marx Brothers film? So The Marx Brothers, the four Marx Brothers, are stowaways on the ship. Lots of craziness ensues from that, obviously. And that, although it's their second film, actually, of The Coconuts, was their first feature length film. That's really the film about what the Marx Brothers are about. The Marx Brothers are about the Jewish immigrant experience of the United States. And each of the brothers adapts to it in a different way.
00:23:47
Speaker
Groucho is the hyper-intellectual, hyper-verbal kind of character who usually is identified by a non-Jewish name. right? he's He's Captain Spalding in Animal Crackers. He's Rufus T. Firefly. He's got a lot of personas, but none of them are clearly identifiably Jewish. In many ways, and my thesis on this is that all of them in one way or another mask their Judaism. ah They do not want to be identified as Jews. And when you think about
00:24:23
Speaker
the post-World War I American landscape, Jews were not welcome in the United States. Jews were not allowed to study at universities. There were a whole bunch of them public places that would not have Jews in their place. And so my thesis is the Marx Brothers, in each of their three ways, are trying to ah assimilate might be ah ah too strong a term, but they're they're definitely trying to fit in. by downplaying their Jewishness. Harpo, he doesn't even speak. He doesn't talk about his background. You don't know, you know, who he is, where he's from. Chico, for me, is the most interesting of the three. And because I found something in one of the movies that I had not recognized before, and it just fascinates me.
00:25:11
Speaker
Chico was another one of these characters that I was a bit concerned about before I started rewatching. He's kind of a stereotypical Italian tough guy, right? Yeah, yeah he's he's the guy who's, you know, a little bit shady, maybe he'll be into violence, you know, which To me, especially you know now with all of these post-Godfather, post um-Sopranos, I mean, the whole criminal Italian guy you know borders on a very ugly stereotype.
00:25:50
Speaker
But there's a scene in Monkey Business. Again, it's about, you know, paintings and artwork. And there is a character named Chandler in the film who is a an art dealer, a very respected art dealer among the well-to-do. And Chico looks at him in one scene and goes, I know you. I've seen you before. and you know, Chandler is like, no, it it couldn't possibly be. And Chico goes, no, I remember you from the home country. You were Abe the Fishman. And Chandler is like, no, no, you've got to be mistaken. And Chico, being Chico, he's like, he gets increasingly aggressive about publicly outing Chandler as Abe the Fishman to the point where he finally has to admit, yeah, okay, fine, you knew me.
00:26:45
Speaker
And Chico sums it up, I knew you before you were Chandler. And Chandler retorts, I knew you before you were Italian.
00:26:58
Speaker
Yeah, and it's like, okay, now I get it. Okay, Chico. was a shtetl Jew. He was an East European Jew who took on the Italian persona to mask his Jewishness. That's how he dealt, that that brother dealt with. Yeah. He's like, but I'm an immigrant, but not from, you know, a young place in Italy. yeah Yeah. Not the immigrant you totally hate, just the immigrant you partially hate. yeah Right? And on that basis, you know, I'm still a little wary of some of the stuff that that Chico gets away with, but I at least understand better, you know, sort of where that character is coming from. Do you find them laugh out loud, funny?
00:27:43
Speaker
I still do, yes. um Maybe it's just because of the passage of time so that, um you know, I've forgotten a lot of the jokes. It's true, I probably could um repeat a lot of the routines verbatim, but they still, when they perform them, they still work. The timing is impeccable, the diction is spot on perfect. When they work, yes, they still make me laugh out loud. Yeah, I will say that it took a bit of a tuning for me. Uh, when I started watching duck soup, my first thought, I think about five minutes in was like, how long is this movie? And oh my God, it's 90 minutes. But so ah that was my first like ah introduction. Um, so not a good start, but at about, I can't, I can't remember exactly where it was. There's a big, it's a kind of, it's a weird movie. They spoof, obviously they're spoofing musicals.
00:28:42
Speaker
like those 30 musicals. And there there's this big long number about how Rufus T. Firefly is always on time. And it's just absurd. And then ah that's I started laughing at that point. I said, OK, I get it. I get it. It's just a really still stupid movie doing clever things. But it's just like really anarchic and dumb. And yeah, probably by a minute 10, I was like, OK, I get this. And then yeah. And then I started laughing because Groucho is very funny in that first scene. when he starts insulting the matron who's in charge of Fredonia.
00:29:16
Speaker
It's interesting what you say about tuning, Mark. has a I remember ah showing my wife, Legend of Drunken Master, Jackie Chan. And in the first five minutes, she's like, what what is this? you know and She's obviously not into it. and But then another five or 10 or 15 minutes goes goes by and she's you know tuned to it and then enjoyed it so much that the next night we decided to watch a movie again. And I'm like, what do you want to watch? And she's like, let's watch that Legend of Drunken Master again.
00:29:48
Speaker
So she's obviously, you know, tuned completely to it. So, but yeah, I think that, yeah, especially if you're not accustomed to, you know, the the tone or the style of the movie that you're watching. I think for me, part of it was like, I'm a huge Monty Python fan. Actually, and I'm going to pull another director in here because I think it's pertinent. I'm a huge Mel Brooks fan. And obviously, Mel Brooks was highly influenced by these guys. I just was looking at, you you mentioned the 100 AFI list of the funniest movies. And I note that Duck Soup is number five and Blazing Saddles is number six. So there's a direct, yeah but there's like a, like literally a direct. And then the the next one down is Mash.
00:30:34
Speaker
which also robert altman yeah Yeah, but it also seems very connected because um Hawkeye is basically Gretchen Marx, right? He's written that way. So yeah, so it's funny that i had to I had to be attuned, but I still did, I think. And I think it's because of the setup, right? The that the setup is very stiff. of that movie because it's like it's making fun of those stiff setups in those Hollywood, you know, musical movies. They all start like that. So they're doing the same thing. and I'm like, okay, I get it. Well, that's once the music started, and it's like, this is a ridiculous song. I was in at that point. As I think I mentioned earlier, but just to to
00:31:15
Speaker
to you know, bring this point to the fore in this at this particular point in the discussion. The first two or three Marx Brothers films were based on stage plays, and they were musicals, right? Okay, yeah. So, you know, that that may well have been ah kind of a holdover from where the the film originated. Now, what I will say is that with the coconuts that released five films that they did, And then the Marx Brothers moved over to MGM. They got a new studio. And the nature of their films kind of changed a little bit. Because yes, the early films are musicals, but the musical numbers themselves are absurd. So they yeah they are part of the comedy, right? At MGM, the musical numbers almost start taking over. They become much more elaborate and much less funny.
00:32:12
Speaker
right which essentially what it does is it kind of stops the humor dead so that we can have this great visual number and I mean they're great numbers and probably would have worked much better in other films. films that were not Marx Brothers based, but they were intrusive. The other thing MGM does, which again, very problematic is they saddle the Marx Brothers with actual romantic storylines. The Marx Brothers themselves are not like that the the closest they get is um and Groucho wooing Margaret Dumont for her money. That's the closest they get to romance. But
00:32:57
Speaker
ah There's always a handsome young man and a pretty young woman who have to have a romance. And again, taking the romance seriously undermines the comedy. Now, having said that, I will also say that every Marx Brothers movie, even the least of them, usually has something to recommend it.
Evolution of Marx Brothers' Style
00:33:20
Speaker
So for instance, in A Night at the Opera, you have the stateroom scene. seen on a boat where Groucho actually has a room on the boat because he manages an opera singer, but Chico and Harpo are stowaways on the boat. So he's got them in his room, doesn't want people to know about it, and the room starts filling up with other people. And it to the point where it is impossible, you you can't imagine it filling up with any other people, but
00:33:51
Speaker
They still keep cramming people into it. And this is particularly ah problematic for Groucho because he has a tryst with Margaret Dumont that's supposed to be happening five minutes from from when the sketch starts from when the scene starts. So at the same time as he's filling the the room is getting filled up, he wants people to leave. And it's justs it's a crazy signature Marx Brothers set piece. There's also ah just an amazing scene there, Groucho and Chico negotiating a contract, an opera singer's contract, and they start ripping clauses out of the contract because they just don't agree on stuff. and So there's always you know something really hilarious going on. The one other thing I'll say about the MGM thing
00:34:40
Speaker
particularly about the romance, is that in the first five films, the pre-MGM films, the Marx Brothers are, as as has been mentioned, they're anarchists, they're they're agents of anarchy. When you get to MGM, they actually become important parts of the love story. They become agents of Amor, which to me just is the wrong thing. that That is not the way that they should be going. So mg MGM just didn't get it somehow. ah MGM, particularly with Irving Thalberg. Thalberg's films, um he was a
00:35:21
Speaker
He had a very specific idea of what a film should be like. And it didn't interfere too much with the, I think, two films that he made with the Marx Brothers during his lifetime, but then he dies and non-Thalberg people come and take control. And yes, at that point I would say they didn't really know, you know, what to do with the Marx Brothers. I will say having said that, that the worst crime against a comedian was actually against Buster Keaton, bringing him back into the conversation. When sound film came in, Buster Keaton was paired in a series of films with Jimmy Geranti. Two more different comedians you can't possibly imagine, and his talent was just totally wasted in those films.
00:36:12
Speaker
A lot of people think that Keaton, like many silent film stars, um his career ended when sound came in. Actually, Keaton had a nice baritone voice. He was not a bad fit for sound. But there's a whole story about how basically the studios didn't know what to do with him when sound came in. again maybe a discussion for another time. Yeah. Well, it's ah and it's interesting though, because harpo Harpo didn't talk, right? And I guess i he did talk a little bit. I mean, in Duxupi does a little bit with thorns. So he he does, he's got these little like cloud horns that he plays and he mimics talking.
00:36:51
Speaker
But he doesn't actually talk, so that still requires sounds. I was going to say he could have been a silent film star, but yeah his his humor requires some sound, I think. ah But no. Okay. So like the MGM films were were later. So they'd been successful up to this point. And presumably they were responsible for a lot of their own material. How did they lose control, you know, when it came to like MGM and how did they even feel about it? I just I'm just going on what I saw last night. I mean, when I looked at the movie, it was not written by any of the Marx Brothers from what I could see. There was like six or seven names and none of them were their names. So I i can't imagine, though, that they're not involved, especially all the Harpo bits like
00:37:36
Speaker
those things are so intricate and involved that he would have to be coming up with that, I guess. Yeah. So how did that work? i mean I'm guessing maybe the writer says Harpo does his thing here. I don't know. Would you write that, Ira? Well, keep ah deep in mind, again, going back to the stage plays, one of the things that the Marx Brothers were famous for was ad libbing. And their reputation was that no two performances were ever the same. right So yeah, I'm sure somebody wrote a script and then when they got on to set, the Marx Brothers kind of made it their own with their own sort of take some things. So that would be my get best guess as to how that worked. But it is a shame. I'm wondering if that MGM thing is just like Louis Mayer's, like, you know, it has to be an MGM picture, like that kind of branding thing. is And they're trying to make the Marx Brothers into something that they really weren't.
00:38:35
Speaker
That was, yeah, undoubtedly part of it. yeah Or had they simply gone through their best material earlier and were losing steam, maybe, dare I say? Well, like I said, there's still some great scenes in A Day at the Races, the Tootsie Fritzy scene, where Chico has a ah cart where he's supposedly selling ice cream, but what he's actually selling is tips on the horse races. So Groucho, you know, gets involved and and pays him a little bit of money, and he gives Groucho this huge volume, of ah this huge volume this huge book. And Groucho says, well
00:39:15
Speaker
What am I supposed to do with this? And he says, oh, yeah, you'll find the the winner of, you know, the next race on a certain page. But to find the page, you're going to need another book. And he sells them about 20 books or something over the course of the sketch. Again, there's brilliant stuff in just about every film that they do. But you're right, particularly in their later films, you can see it's starting to thin out. Maybe the inspiration, yeah, just wasn't there.
00:39:48
Speaker
So you mentioned that one of the things that you learned about about humor from them was
Comedy Lessons and Film Exploration
00:39:53
Speaker
was volume. what What other important, really useful lessons about comedy have you learned from the Marx Brothers? Oh, also variety, um right? So they they mix up the different types of comedy. I also think that timing, they and I think I may have mentioned this in passing, they they were masters of of comic timing. Groucho, one joke follows another, you kind of wonder sometimes when he breathes in the midst of some of his monologues. But then there are interactions with Chico in particular, where Chico will say something and Groucho will just kind of look for a second or two, like,
00:40:36
Speaker
How do I yeah respond to that, right? And it's that's that moment of silence which is funny. um And then usually he has a pretty good one-liner to come back with it, right? So I mean, knowing how to how to grind the dialogue and also how to how to use the silences, And there were you know people like, say, Jack Benny, who who could stretch the silence out hilariously for longer periods of time. But again, these were the kind of this was my introduction to to comic timing, I guess. And some really clever wordplay too, right? Like one of my favorite lines ever is, ah time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
00:41:17
Speaker
Like who comes up with that? and
00:41:22
Speaker
That's Groucho Marx, right? That's Groucho Marx. Yeah, that's right. Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too hard to read. Yep, exactly. Have you guys read Cerebus by Dave Sims? Only the first 150 issues, but I know where you're going with it. Yeah. Because there's some serious riffing off of Groucho Marx in that, right? Amaging. It was an Amaj. Amaj, yes. Yeah. No, I didn't say ripping off. at Riffing. Riffing. Riffing off. Oh, okay. Okay. No, no. Yeah, i've nothing, nothing but admiration. It's been a long time since then since I read those, but, um you know, when wonders, you know, did Grocho Marx get paid any ah royalties from from that material?
00:42:13
Speaker
i I tend to doubt it. um I also seem to recall and you'll have to forgive me because I had planned on looking into this. There was a Marx Brothers inspired film where they got three actors to kind of play the different Marx Brothers that that they were never, it wasn't a biography that they were trying to recreate recreate the personas and the the humor. um And as with most efforts like that, it was kind of Frankensteinian and it didn't really work all that well. But it does speak to just how seminal, you know, the Marx Brothers were. Oh, one other thing I wanted to point out, just just to be clear, on the AFI list, a day at the races and a night at the opera are
00:43:01
Speaker
two of the Marx Brothers films that are considered, you know, the funniest hundred of all time, both MGM films, right? So, ah you know, it wasn't that they totally lost their footing, at least certainly not in the early MGM days. And they're the ones that people remember, actually. And so there is a certain sense like I'm obviously drawn to anarchic humor. ah But not everybody is. Some people like their humor leavened with love stories or or, you know, big musical numbers that that seems to be popular with a lot of people. So, you know, MGM may have had a point. So yeah, and yeah it comes down to a a question of taste at the end of the day.
00:43:48
Speaker
So Mark, will you be watching more Marx Brothers? Yeah, I think if I the problem is access as as I are pointed out at the start. um So yeah, there was a couple that I could get on Amazon Prime and I'm like, I knew duck soup was considered their sort of best one from the early days. So I watched that one. ah But yeah, for sure. Yeah, I'll continue to watch them. yeah I just got to give myself a little break before I ah i inflict Harpo on myself again. Yeah, there was a horrible moment when I realized, wait a minute, these guys are all basically clowns. It is especially Groucho's mustache. the mustache It's upsetting, man. It's just upsetting. It's just painted on. It's just like, oh, God. And then when they all dressed up like gart Groucho.
00:44:34
Speaker
There's one scene where they're all look like Groucho is like I can't freaking out a little bit here Well, and how many how many comedians have actually had glasses designed to look like them? Yeah, that's that's amazing. Yeah Wow Wrapping things up. Are there any any final thoughts on or lessons learned from from the March brothers? Um, I hope people will will hear this and and you know go seek out their films. I think when the whole sort of colorization thing happened in the 80s, we got a sense that a lot of audiences today don't really care for black and white films, but
00:45:23
Speaker
The level of creativity that went into the early film industry is just as great as as the level that it's at now. and and There's a lot of pleasure to be had, ah particularly for, say, Monty Python fans. Check out you know Monty Python 40, 50, 60 years before Monty Python. It's it's really worth really worth looking for. I think that's a, yeah, a great, uh, thought to end on because yeah, that the older films are not any, they're not worse than the films of today. You look at, uh, Buster back to Buster Keaton, Buster Keaton is the general. Yeah. sound film makingking Made in the twenties. Yeah. And not these twenties, a hundred years ago, twenties. Yeah. Yeah.
00:46:13
Speaker
IronAmen, thank you very much for being on our podcast Recreative. Great to have you back. It's been my pleasure. Thank you. We'll have you back again. You'll be the first guest to be the third. Make a three-peat. A three-peat. Yeah. Okay. All right. Next time, let's have it be about Buster Keaton so we can talk more about the Marx Brothers. All right. It's a date. All right. Thanks, guys.
00:47:03
Speaker
You've been listening to Recreative, a ah podcast about creativity and the works that inspire it. Recreative is produced by Mark Reiner and Joe Mahoney for Donovan Street Press, Inc., in association with Monkey Joy Press. Technical production of music by Joe Mahoney. Web design by Mark Reiner. You can support this podcast by checking out our guest's work, listening to their music, purchasing their books, watching their shows, and so on. You can find out more about each guest in all of our past episodes by visiting recreative.ca. That's re-creative.ca. Thanks for listening.