“Dying is easy, comedy is hard,” goes the quote, often attributed to one actor or another on their deathbed. And whether some thespian, in his (and yes, it is always a man) final moments, actually saw fit to utter this immortal phrase, it is often repeated and widely given credence: except on awards night. If you are a director or actor and your ultimate goal is an Academy Award you may want to write about a cancer patient who finds a cure for obesity, and do so in all seriousness. A battle against alcoholism also works as does having a mentally handicapped lead.

Saul Austerlitz, a writer and critic living in New York, will shortly release Another Fine Mess A History of American Film Comedy and explore the history and the now of the American comedy. The fact that comedies are given short shrift at award time was part of the impetus to write this book.

“The types of movies that win Oscars are serious. I have nothing against those movies but think it is interesting how some performers are deemed ‘ineligible’ to win these awards,” he says. “Comedians understand how the game is played. Look at Jim Carey twisting himself into a pretzel to play dramatic roles.”

Austerlitz allows that Carey did a fine job in some of his more serious roles but adds; “It isn’t really his forte.”

Think of all the comedic talents, directors, actors and those who wore both hats that never won an Oscar. Charles Chaplin never won an Oscar. Honorary or “special” Oscars don’t count, those are usually, Oops-you-are-really-great-and-might-die-soon.” awards. The dearth of major awards for comedies is easy to trace. Go to the Academy Website.  Less so are the roots of American Comedy.

“The thing people might find surprising is the interconnection of people within the book.  It was more than an abstract idea but a sort of guild. One comedian passed on to another, stocked one another.” says Austerlitz.

Comedians also change and adapt over their careers.

“Jerry Lewis in the 50s began as an incredibly low-brow, eternal child to go solo and try to take on high comedy,” says Austerlitz. “I would probably argue that in his middle period work he was still playing, for lack of a better word, a ‘dipshit’ but he is taking on multiple roles, director, actor and more.”

Austerlitz says this is a reflection of the Chaplin influence. But how many of Lewis’ films really stand the test of time?

“There are probably two of them worth checking out again before he goes about being famous in France and telethons. His most successful film is Nutty Professor,” says Austerlitz. “His plays a second role, understood to be Dean Martin but a better way to reflect on the film is as two sides of Jerry Lewis. It has a lot of fun balancing those two roles.”

And it doesn’t suck like the Eddie Murphy remake either.

Another film Austerlitz recommends from Lewis is The Bell Boy.

“The Bell Boy is a much more low-key film. It is less hectic and loud. It is almost silent. His character has one line.” says Austerlitz. “The film is an attempt to bring back or update the silent film”

The film also has a dead ringer for Stan Laurel says Austerlitz and it is hard to imagine that is an accident. 

When the subject of another comedian, whose films seem to have suffered with time, Bob Hope, comes up, Austerlitz is equivocal. He notes that when Woody Allen talks about his love of Hope as a teenager, it sometimes makes modern film enthusiasts shake their heads. But there are still Hope films that can hit with modern tastes, including one often cited by Allen.

“My Favorite Brunette is actually a pretty good film. Hope was a self-deprecating one-liner machine.” says Austerlitz.

Today’s audiences can decide for themselves how well the humor stands up. One comedian/filmmaker who is universally thought to stand up is, obviously Charles Chaplin but he is more than just an actor or director. It is pretty unfair to compare other comedians to Chaplin and not just because of his control over his projects. Indeed, Austerlitz believes that an actor can influence a comedic film more than dramas.

“I don’t think anyone can be compared to Chaplin in his effect on film history and culture—or on American culture, period, with a very few exceptions.  But I think that, on the whole, an actor can, and have, had an enormous impact on the growth and development of comedy,” says Austerlitz. “Comedy is a performer’s medium, to a large extent, and a talented actor like (Bill) Murray can place his imprint on a film as much as, if not more than, their directors.  Rushmore and Groundhog Day and Lost in Translation are Bill Murray movies as much as they are films by Wes Anderson, Harold Ramis and Sofia Coppola.  There is a notable difference in the variety of the talents displayed by an actor-director like, say, Jerry Lewis, as compared to an actor like Peter Sellers, but I wouldn’t necessarily rank Lewis ahead of Sellers merely because he directed as well as acted.” 

Another example of a performer, “just an actor,” having a profound impact on films is the regrettably overlooked, Harold Lloyd.

“Chaplin is the ideal of people who did everything. Keaton did some of his own directing but advisors. Lloyd didn’t direct his own films but he put his own stamp on them. Lloyd, even though the least remembered, may have been the most successful. He had a studio, set of directors and gag men.”  says Austerlitz.

Lloyd was a producer and more and while he may have started out as a sort of Chaplin-esque character, he evolved.

Austerlitz says that his book doesn’t really have any “undiscovered” comedians in it for film buffs (although casual fans may not remember Lloyd). He does take time, however, to reconsider some comedic talents who have fallen into eclipse.  

One of these is Doris Day.

“She has become a punch line in movies about chastity. The movies she did with Rock Hudson were better than we remember. We think of them as Doris Day being chased around the room by some horny guy. They are quite modern for the times about young single, upwardly mobile people,” he says. “Doris Day is just as much an icon of 50s female sensibility as Marilyn Monroe. The time is ideal for Day to be recovered as a performer and not a ridiculous parody of herself.”

And where are the current non-painful romantic comedies?  The ones with no J-Lo?

“I think it is, in part, that there are not a lot of performers whose performances translate to that genre and the most talented directors are not making those movies. It seems like a genre that, for the moment, has run its course.” says Austerlitz.

The world really needs Christian Bale in a remake of Pillow Talk.

Though the romantic comedy may be in the creative doldrums, Austerlitz contends that another sub-genre is not: the trash guy comedy. Austerlitz credits Judd Apatow with rescuing this genre from simply being eternal remakes of Porky’s and Hollywood Knights. 

“I think Judd Apatow is unique in the way he has skillfully integrated raunchy guy comedy with a subtle emotional palette heretofore unknown to the genre.  The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up in particular, are hilarious, unadulterated comedies of masculine aimlessness that manage to capture something very real—about relationships, about contemporary life, and most of all, about the ways men relate to each other,” he says. “Apatow is a poet of masculinity, and his films demonstrate a remarkable understanding of, and sympathy for, his male characters. That said all of that would be enough, together with four dollars, to purchase a tall latte at Starbucks if he weren’t also blessed with the gift of writing exceptionally funny dialogue.  Knocked Up, in particular, is a gold mine of brilliant comic roughhousing.”

 And yet, getting back into the dearth of awards train of thought, how often have you heard Apatow’s name called on Oscar night? There should be a new high end award, perhaps “The Chaplin” (please don’t sue me Chaplin family) for comedies. They can give whoever directed Porky’s an honorary one to start things off right.

Beyond Apatow, Austerlitz singles out another group of contemporary comedians for special attention: Will Ferrell and Ben Stiller. 

“Ferrell is a personal favorite of mine.  He is, I suppose, a one-joke comedian—the cloddish boor triumphant—but hell if it isn’t a surprisingly flexible joke.  And didn’t W.C. Fields make his own version of that same joke last for an entire career, too?” says Austerlitz.

Stiller’s work is a different sort of creature to Austerlitz.

“It’s more inward-looking, more directed at skewering himself and his own delusions of grandeur.  If you look at the films Stiller has made like Reality Bites or Dodgeball or Tropic Thunder, he is often the butt of his own jokes,” he says. “Stiller refuses to wink at the audience—to acknowledge in any way that his portraits of odious strivers and petty tyrants are in any way meant satirically, or that the real Ben Stiller is somehow superior to the characters he plays—and that, ultimately, is his saving grace.”

Austerlitz notes a somber note in the book, one Chaplin’s protagonist in Limelight articulates.

“The slightly depressing undercurrent of my book is that nearly every major comedic talent eventually does stumble. Comedy is a fickle master, and even the greatest comedians eventually lose whatever mysterious spark it was that allowed them to succeed,” says Austerlitz. “Often, their time at the top of the comedic heap is surprisingly short—look at someone like Preston Sturges, whose brilliant run of films lasted approximately 5 years, or Buster Keaton.  Being funny, it seems, is not like being a skilled actor or a superb writer.  It is a skill that emerges mysteriously and disappears with just as little warning.  Comedians’ lives are often depressing to exactly the extent that they fail to understand the fragility of their gifts.”

Saul Austerlitz is a writer and critic for, among others, the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Slate, the Village Voice, the San Francisco Chronicle, Spin, Rolling Stone and Paste.  He is likewise author of Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video from the Beatles to the White Stripes (Continuum, 2007). Money for Nothing is currently being adapted into a documentary film with a screenplay penned by Austerlitz. He resides in the borough of Brooklyn.

Frazer Bradshaw doesn’t want you to just his watch movies. He wants your participation. Not in the Rocky Horror sense. He doesn’t want you to dress up like Tim Curry and prance about (although we doubt he would seriously object should an overwhelming urge to do so take you).He actually wants you to exercise your mind.

Bradshaw is a director and cinematographer. He has been cinematographer on 35 films and directed/editor five more (three of which he also wrote). His most recent film, Everything Strange and New is a narrative drama that uses both voice-over and music in innovative ways.

“Actually the music was part of the genesis of the film. The shot of the back of the character’s head looking out with cacophonous music is the visual moment that drives the rest of the film.” says Bradshaw.

The music, by Dan Plonsey and Kent Sparling, is a cacophony that stands in direct opposition to the sedate visual imagery. This disconnect is by design and, indeed, is part of Bradshaw’s philosophy of film.

“Music and voice over are things radically misused in films. To me music has to not support the film but offer something new.” he says.

The image and music in that first shot creates something you would not get with just the shot or the music alone. The feeling is expanded by the music. It means something more and something different because of the music. In Bradshaw’s film, and probably in every other film, music can change the relationship between people and landscape. And it does so profoundly.

“Music can change that relationship in a chemical way.” says Bradshaw

Bradshaw uses voice over in a way that is out of the ordinary as well.

“The voice over works much like the music. You never see a character when you hear the voice over. To me, that is the worst thing you can do. If you are seeing someone thinking it becomes false” says Bradshaw. “The voice over is never about what you are looking at.”

Like music he juxtaposes two things do not inherently have a relationship. It expands the movies ‘meaning palette’ he says and allows more interpretation by the audience. And that is a key to this film.

Bradshaw says that with studio films there is nothing between the lines. They are something you can watch and keep your distance. This is not criticism but an observation (Bradshaw often works as a cinematographer on studio films). Bradshaw wants his films to be a mirror for the audience. A mirror forcing them to be almost a part of the movie

“If I have one goal as a filmmaker it is to open things up to interpretation.” he says.

Whenever he has the opportunity to add or change part of the film the same thought comes to him; “I think about what are the implications for broadening or contracting of the film around the shot.” he says.

His films mean what they mean to you, to me, to anyone who watches, as much as they mean what Bradshaw was thinking while shooting. Indeed, this one thing is ever present in his mind is how to expand possible interpretation rather than restrict it.

If you want to see Everything Strange and New you may have to wait until a DVD release. Its theatrical run has been intermittent.

“It is not in any theaters, or it may or may not be but it is still, in theory, playing theatrically,” says Bradshaw; he then adds a tad of self criticism. “I made a mistake. I made a film about people who do not go to movies. People want to see movies about themselves which is a sad state of affairs.”

You may notice there hasn’t been much plot summary. There is a plot. The film is a “slice of life” about a working man, with two kids and a mortgage working to get by. But it is as much about the audience’s reaction to the life he and his friends lead. It is as much about the somnambulistic way he moves through his life and word and how the good blends with the bad.

The film is also not about what it is about (if that makes sense). And sometimes, we, the audience, like to be told how to feel and know, with certainty what the meaning of a film is. We are not used to being challenged. This film’s aim, and Bradshaw's, is a bit more esoteric.

“It is about the effect of watching the film. It is hard to talk about film as experience rather than a movie,” he says. “I need people to relate to the film in a way they would not normally relate to a movie. Ultimately it is not to tell a story but to give a visceral and emotional experience.”

The film was also shot on Super 16 and feels almost like a series of photographs. The “action” taking place as much in the character’s minds as in the physical action itself. This disembodiment of the characters likely comes from Bradshaw’s background. As a youngster he never thought about becoming a filmmaker. Bradshaw went to art school and became interested in film because he liked reflected light.

“I wasn’t one of those guys who saw Star Wars and wanted to make movies. I wasn’t interested in making films until college.” he says.

Unsurprisingly he wasn’t initially interested in narrative films but rather experimental ones.

“Generally I like to answer my biggest influences are directors I work for as a cinematographer.” says Bradshaw.

When the subject of influences arises he initially talks about various European directors such as Tarkovsky and Bergman. But his real influences come from his job as a cinematographer.

“Generally I like to answer my biggest influences are directors I work for as a cinematographer.” says Bradshaw.

He gets to see these directors succeed and fail, sometimes on a grand scale. They make his mistakes for him. Most directors do not have the benefit of such experience. Bradshaw learns what he doesn’t want to do as much as what he does.

“There is inherent risk in making a good film.” he says.

But he gets to take risks that are “less risky” because he has witnessed other directors making similar decisions.

As to what is next Bradshaw is writing something and is working on what he refers to as a “straight forward documentary project”.

Bradshaw was also cinematographer on the film, Babies. Whenever this film is mentioned to the cynical film snob they think it is about Anne Gedde. It is, in fact, more like a BBC nature film. He is also credited with being an “additional photographer” on the documentary about Townes Van Zant, Be Here to Love Me. He says (and makes a compelling case) that a “director of photography” credit would have been more appropriate. There was a break in filming and after that, there was a new director of photography.

“I made $93 a day as a favor to Margaret (Brown),” he says. “After six weeks we ran out of money. I went home. Margaret started dating Lee Daniel and when they started shooting again. Well, you can’t beat free boyfriend labor.”

And if you are into innovative, thoughtful filmmaking you cannot beat Everything Strange and New.