On Saturday, a friend and I went to watch The Aristocrats. It's a documentary by comedian Paul Provenza, who I had never heard of, and Penn Jillette, of Penn and Teller fame. In this documentary, they record many famous comedians analyzing and performing variations on The Aristocrats, an in-joke among comedians.
The joke is as follows:
The Setup: A family walks into a talent agent and says they've got a great act. The talent agent asks what's the act.
The Middle: This largely open, except the comedian tries to be as vulgar and obscene as possible. Drawing on anything and everything from incest, beastiality, scatology, etc.
The Punchline: The talent agent asks what's the name of such an act. And the family responds, "The Aristocrats."
To illustrate this, here is a NSFW clip of a South Park version.
The punchline is suppose to be something about the contrast between something so non-aristocratic and the aura of aristocrats, but is largely besides the point. It's the middle that's really the key. Some good performances was a comedian/magic card trick version, and Bob Saget cracks himself up with his endeavor to out do everyone else (he makes a pun on "cockeyed" at one point). Sarah Silverman's tone was such that without listening to what she was saying, you might not think she was joking. And Gilbert Gottfried just sounds funny no matter what he's saying.
In conclusion, an interesting movie watched with good company. Though maybe I shouldn't have shown clips of Battle Royale after that. Hmmmm....
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