- You go to life events a lot. You go to life comedy much? - No. There's not much here. I did see Richard Lewis. - Wow. Is he still alive? I thought he died? - No, he died. It was the other Lewis, oh gosh. - Davey and Lewis? - Nope. - John Lewis, the department store. - Lewis Comedian. - Not Jerry Lewis. - Lewis Black. - Just Jerry Lewis. - No, no, no. Also dead. I think it was Lewis Black. - Lewis Black. - Lewis Black American. I saw him recently. That was a great show, by the way. I think it's his farewell tour of some sort, but time. - Well, 'cause all the other Lewis's have died, so he thought he'd better get his tour in now. - Do your farewell tour before you depart, yeah. (dramatic music) (upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to the two real cinema club. I am James Zieker. - And I am Andrés Laurenti. - And every week on the two real cinema club, we produce content. We are content makers. - Content with a capital say. - Content creators. - Enjoy our content. - With a double C. (laughs) And in that content, we used to try and find a couple of films. That's why we're called two real cinema club, because we're also hyper real. Is surreal, more real than hyper real, or no, hyper real would be super real, I suppose. I always think surreal is like an abbreviation of super real, 'cause they should be an apostrophe, where they've removed the PE, something like that. - So they're synonyms? - Yeah, maybe. - Well, we are hyper real, because we look at two films, one old one new, we usually talk about which one's better, which one has more donkeys, which one has more teachers. - Which one has more Tom Hanks? - Yes, ooh. - And we have some Tom Hanks this week. Tell us about it. - Thank God for that, we have, so I feel like we're on safe ground watching a Tom Hanks film this week. We have watched our old film this week, 1988's Punch Line, early Tom Hanks picture. We are comparing it to a film which has a title very close to my heart, the new film is called, I Used to be Funny. I think when they make the film about my life, it'll be called something like he hoped he was funny, or he wanted to be funny. I used to be funny. A Canadian, I kind of dramedy, that's a word, isn't it? - I thought a lot about those two masks, one of comedy and one of tragedy. And this one being nowhere near either one, so dramedy's okay as opposed. (laughing) - Is it just like that emoji of a completely flat lined mouth? - There you go. - Otherwise, a blank yellow face. - Two masks like that, yes, with just the two lines for the eyes. - Just the average and the line for lips. - Well, we'll kick off with the first film, the new film. So I used to be funny, released, originally made in 2023, released this year, it's come out in the UK this week. Directed by, and I apologize to her profusely when I get her name wrong yet again, Ali Panchu, I think, written by Ali Panchu. Man, if I ever meet her at a festival, she's going to snap me around the ear. It's a low budget Canadian film. And originally, when I saw the title, I thought this film was going to be the sequel to Do You Think I'm Funny Starring Joe Pesci? - Oh. - But it turns out, no, that's actually, that's good fellas, that wasn't a separate film, and this film doesn't have Joe Pesci in it. - This film could use some Joe Pesci. (laughing) - You know, I was preparing that gag for hours this afternoon. - Yeah. - I fell flat on my face. (laughing) - So Ali Panchu, she made, started making music videos, shorts, she was a story editor on Schitt's Creek, which is the TV comedy. She directed a segment of Black Mirror a year ago. I think segment Joan is awful, which I haven't seen. I'm not a big fan of Black Mirror, do you like Black Mirror? - I've seen some brilliant things in Black Mirror, and I've also seen some things that don't move me, but I didn't realize there were more and more seasons. I think I watched the first season. Then there was this bizarre, was it a film version that started out as one of the episodes where you could choose your own ending or something like that? - Yeah, that was one of the best ones. She wasn't involved with that one. - Okay. - This is her feature debut. stars Rachel Sennett, who is kind of happening at the moment. She starred in and co-wrote Bottoms, which was a kind of high school gay comedy out last year. I think she was in "Body's Bodies, Bodies," which was a youthy horror film out last year. And interesting bit of Travia Ali Panchu. She's the partner of one of the musicians in "Moona." Naomi McPherson, do you know "Moona" Pop Band? - How would you spell that? - M-U-N-A, an all spelled in capitals, it looks like, whenever I look at them on the internet. They're single, one that got away, I think was last year's best single. - Okay. - I have one question for you. - Yes, yes, I'm all ears. - If you say "Shits Creek" as a title on a podcast, does that get bleeped out? - I think that's PG because people can clearly hear the SC at the beginning of the word. - Like schedule. - Yeah, the "Shits" trick Creek. See, this is the great benefit of my precise received pronunciation. - Deceived pronunciation. - So I used to be funny, 2023, shall I? Tell you the story. - Do you have to? (laughing) (upbeat music) - So, so this is a Canadian comedy drama. I'm not, I think I haven't made up the word dramedy. I think it's a real word. - Dramedy is a drug that I used to take to fly on airplanes. - Oh, well that makes sense. So it's about Sam, who is a stand up comedian struggling with PTSD. So she's unable to leave the house, she's unable to do much more than get out of bed and have a bath, when she learns that Brooke, a 14 year old girl that she used to nanny, has gone missing. So the story of the film is split across, well two timelines, really three timelines, I think, and it tells, it's at least four and counting. Tells the story of Sam before her trauma, as a promising but broke comedian, and after her trauma, trying to help find Brooke. But, is the reason that Brooke has run away anything to do with Sam, and exactly what is the event that happened that turned her life upside down? - Is that it? - Well that's it, that's it. I think that's, that's, that's, that you'd fit that on the back of a DVD box, I think. - Well done. (laughs) - I, I can tell from your tone, the tone of your voice, that you didn't like this very much. - I think I like this more than the other film this week. (laughs) - Oh, we've watched two clunkers then. I mean, there's, there's two simple words that describe this film, whether it's our low budget. It's, it's, you know, this is a low budget film without big stars, you know, without a lot of fancy cinematography. It's quite TV-ish, I think. But personally, I think that is fine, 'cause it's a kind of, it is an outsider comedy. You know, it's sort of about outsider figures. It's, you know, set in a fairly small cultural milieu. And I think, as a film, which is set in the world of standard comedy and about standard comedy, I came away feeling it was quite authentic. - Oh good. - You know, it's, you know, it's, for a comedy, it's, it's downbeat. But there are gags, and I did chuckle, and Sam's lows, I thought, were kind of quite believable lows. So it's, you know, it's, it's, if you told me it was a Mayford TV movie, I believe you, I'm not sure all those things really exist anymore. But I was fine with that. I thought it was just fine, you know. I enjoyed this movie, actually, I enjoyed it. - I think there's potentially something really interesting in that balance of, we sort of talked about a little bit tragedy and comedy, in that so many comedians struggle with bipolar disorders or depression, and their comedies are a real outlet for it. And yet this film is, you sort of, I think, describe it as PTSD, which is probably quite accurate. So there is, there is something interesting, I kind of wish that had been explored a bit more. - Yep. - 'Cause I think the average comedian who struggles with mental illness sort of has to balance those two, and that's what this film lacked, I think, was balance. It would have been really interesting to see her instead of dropping out of comedy altogether, really going to the comedy at the same time that she's struggling with depression, because I think that would have been an interesting scene to a while, and it's actually quite the opposite. She sort of overcomes her depression in order to get back to comedy, and she sort of debilitated. She can't be funny as long as she's struggling with Brooks' issues and her own issues. So I think there was a missed opportunity there that would have been more interesting. I listened to a, I always talk about other podcasts on this podcast, which are like rule number one of podcasts don't talk about other podcasts, but this one's somewhat extinct. It's called The Wonderful World of Depression, I think it is, I'll look it up. But it was mostly about talking to comedians who struggled with mental illness and really talking about how they coped with mental illness and depression through comedy, and it was fantastic because it was amazed at how many artists and comedians would go on the show and talk about it, and it's called The Hilarious World of Depression. I'm sorry, The Hilarious World of Depression. I haven't heard an episode in years, but it was really good for the few years that it ran, and I think fortunately they ran out of people to be on the show because maybe there aren't as many as we think, or maybe many of them that had cured themselves and didn't need to talk about comedy and depression on the same podcast. So I think there was something really interesting in this film that could have been explored more, but we get bogged down or certainly I did as a viewer with the three timelines, there's a distant past, there's sort of a near past, and in the present, sadly, she's really kind of just flailing, isn't she? She's stuck in her house or apartment with her roommate, she won't leave, and she's really kind of mired in this depression, and in terms of being cinematic, you can do that in a couple beats, but I think they overdid that a little bit without really clarifying the three timelines and what was really going on with her. - I was trying to figure out whether the key to the three timelines was like, was her haircut, or at least the way that she wears her hair, or maybe how she dresses, but I couldn't find a very consistent rule there. So I did occasionally struggle with, oh, which timeline are we in now? - And as bright as that sounds, that's really important. - Yeah, I think it's-- - Something that helps the audience a little bit, and I think for me, we haven't spoiled yet. Should we spoil, or-- - Let's spoil it, I got like one other thing to say before we spoil, and then let's spoil away. Well, I got two things to say, one of the things I got to say before we spoil is that, I wish I could show you my notes here, 'cause the thing I've written on the top of my thoughts is missed opportunities, which is exactly the words that you use, which I think is a watchword for this film, which is a shame. I think it does a lot of fun things, and I enjoyed it, but there's a number of missed opportunities, and I'm sure we won't be backward in coming forward and suggesting what they might be. The other thing I was gonna talk about before we ring the spoiler bell, which is I was impressed that I think this film, and we'll talk about this with punchline as well, this film, I think, successfully captures the tone of what stand-ups are like off stage in safari, so I did three years of stand-up comedy, and I just quite enjoyed it, but it took me three years to figure out this probably wasn't quite the right form for me, but so I hung out with a lot of comedians, still know a lot of comedians, and one thing you really notice is once you get comedians together, comedians love being funny, and comedians will, usually, in a group, spend a lot of their energy outjoking each other, and I would warn anyone listening that if you try and write outjoking each other in Google Docs or on the notes on your phone, it will autocorrect to outjoking each other, which is something very different to what I was trying to write, but maybe some comedians are also doing that, I don't know, but certainly when I used to hang around with comedians who actually used to hate hanging around with us, because it was just, it was her, and a whole bunch of comedians outjoking each other, and it was kind of, it was funny, but also exhausting at the same time. Everybody trying to top the previous gag, everybody trying to think of a better punchline to the gag that someone else just told, on and on and on in this kind of spiral. And there's a bit of that in this film, I think, the way that, even when you're not on stage, although comedians have a reputation for being depressive, and at least having their own mental issues, or mental health issues, there's a lot of people trying to come up with gags all the time, you know, and even the dearest comedians will keep coming at you with zingers when you meet them in the pub or the cafe. And they successfully captured that, I thought, well done. - Yes, but what's happening right now is that I'm autocorrecting in my brain, so every time you say outjoking, I'm hearing out jerking. (laughing) Oh, poor Rachel. - Shall we rig the spoiler about it, as promised then? - Oh, yes. - And spoiler away, okay. It should be like, what's that bell they sound when it's the end of the interval and time to get back and watch the show? Well, I'm gonna rig that bell here it is. - Okay. - That interval bell sounds a lot like the spoiler bell, doesn't it, it's just the same, okay. - Yes. - Because I should get any-- - We should've had just a glorious laughter to spoil the bell. - Missed opportunities, I think. The number one missed opportunity that I spotted in this film is in the second half, I think. So, you know, the way the story works is that Sam has a lot of complex feelings about Brooke, and especially about the family, the father, but she decides in the end she should be the one who goes and tries to find Brooke 'cause she knows her better than anybody and sort of tracks her down. And while we're seeing the story of her tracking Brooke down and trying to bring her back to safety, we also see the cause of her PTSD, which is that she was, well, either sexually assaulted or raped by Brooke's father when she was looking after Brooke. So this is all pretty blooming or awful. - Yeah. - And although the film doesn't show you explicit detail and it kind of sort of discreetly cuts away at the moment of the actual assault, there's a real kind of sense of apprehension and dread. And I think you can really key into her emotional response. It's a pretty dreadful, awful thing. But as her way of working through this trauma of fighting her way back to life, she goes off to a neighboring city. She leaves Toronto where the film is set and goes to Niagara Falls to get Brooke back. And I felt that was the moment when the film should have opened up and it could have been either a bit of a road movie. Certainly she should have brought her friends with her. And I think that could have been both funnier and dower and more heartfelt and more exciting and just wider if she brought her two comedy friends along and she had a bit of backup, someone to talk to, someone to help her out, someone that she maybe had to help out. I think that would have turned it into a considerably more cinematic film rather than the quite small-scale lone woman rescue that we end up with. - Agreed. And I'm glad you mentioned that because I think that is really the crux moment of the whole film. And her roommates' relationship with Brooke has established quite carefully earlier on the film and Brooke was only what, 16, maybe even younger than 14. The timeline's a little fuzzy, but she's 14 or so when Sam becomes her au pair, I guess. And the older folks take her out to a movie, they're probably in their mid-20s is my feeling. So they've been set up as knowing Brooke and actually having a relationship with her and it would have made more sense. I agree with you. And that's actually where the time-jumping became really unhelpful too because Sam's on the rescue path and she goes to the Niagara Falls area. She runs into a cliche that will have to talk about later that sends her away from the house. She's about to go into the house and pull off the big rescue. And then all of a sudden she was in this motel and had no idea if I was in present tense, if I was in Toronto, I had no idea where I was in time or space for a little while there because she has this sort of a knelt down moment in this motel near the house where she needs to rescue Brooke from. And it just introduced a lot of confusion at a moment where it should have been very clearly present tense and as you said, probably with more hands on deck, I don't know what the excuse was for going alone. She was leaving a party, wasn't she? And they wanted to continue partying or something like that and she just goes on her own. She borrows a car, I believe to do it. So there were all these reasons why not to go as a group but that probably would have made it more interesting. And then there's another thing that I want to talk about that I don't know if I should do it yet but they end up at Niagara Falls. It's one of these things, I've seen this in several films, Grand Canyon comes to mind but instead of like tying something up realistically or with real good closure, people just go to some famous place together for that one last moment together before life changes. So they go into Niagara Falls together and suddenly they're friends again and all is forgiven and it's just too fast silent. I think it's just a little too easy and sweet. So I agree. - One man's fast side is another man's joy. I think, you know, I actually rather enjoyed that. - Oh, you like that? - I've read my usual notes about opening image and closing image because I have at last learned the importance of these two. The opening image, the film opens with Sam just about to go on stage and she is writing gags on the palm of her hand to remind herself what material she's doing tonight. And she kind of picks up the microphone. She has this joyous smile and then we cut to her in the bath. And she spends the first two or three minutes of the film just lying in this bath. Like you're barely, you're having to remind herself to breathe. She's kind of almost catatonic. She just feels really, really bad. But then the closing image of the film is I think a pretty efficient mirror of that. That we have the very closing image which is Sam going back on stage. She picks up the mic, she smiles, she's laughing. We have our old Sam back. But immediately before that in mirror image we have Sam and Brooke at Niagara Falls in their waterproofs. You're effectively kind of having a bath. Sam starts out in the movie Wet Alone and she ends the movie Wet but with somebody. And I felt like it's almost like a baptism at the end. I thought I personally thought that was a cute little mirror of the beginning of the movie. But if you are going to film in Niagara Falls that's kind of the only thing that you can put in, isn't it? I do realize you are probably contractually obliged to put the falls in and it would be a waste of time not to. - Absolutely. - And it would make no sense for her to run away to Niagara Falls if you weren't going to put that shot in the film because there's lots of other Ontario cities that she could poop off to. - Yeah, like in Blackberry. Could have gone to Windsor. - Right, yep, yep, yep, yep. If you've been to the Canadian Niagara Falls. - Oh, they brag about the Canadian side, don't they? It's Canadian side. - I lived in the Canadian side for like six weeks or so. When I was a student I had a job in a motel and a Japanese restaurant was a waiter. - Good for you. - And I kind of bummed around in Niagara Falls for about six weeks. And it is a pretty kind of rundown of Sad Seaside, sort of underdeveloped, under, yeah, sad town. - But the Canadians say that their falls are much more impressive than the American side. - Yeah, well, this is true, yeah. - Okay. - Those Canadians make me mad so often, my goodness. - I always think, I think of you as an honorary Canadian. How could you be mad? - I just, I just, I love the fact that you were working in a sushi restaurant and working in a motel 'cause that is stand up material right there, right? This film should have been about you. The title suggests it too, you used to be funny. Now you're a serious man. - Yeah, no funny anymore, that's true. - I like the way you talked about the beginning and ending 'cause that definitely resonates, that is nice. But I think there's something a little, those moments come very late and it seems like we're really building up for some massive surprises or something like that with this film, I never felt that. I never felt like I was, the journey was odd for me, I never felt like I've got where. I didn't get with clarity where I wanted to go, I guess, or where I thought the film would go, but. - I mean, I think the film is supposed to be structured that the rape is a surprise that the story is building to, but by the time you get there, I think it's been very clearly telegraphed from about five minutes into the movie, so it doesn't really come as any kind of surprise. And there are so few characters in this film that if you're going to be the victim of a sexual assault, there's hardly anybody who could be the perpetrator. So I think structuring the films of reveal is a mistake when the thing that you're revealing is just, oh, look, it's the thing you guessed after five minutes. - Yeah. - And I agreed, it did feel like maybe there was gonna be some other revelation or some surprise, something. - And I thought it was gonna be with the Nathan character who allegedly kidnapped Brooke, but we're also told that Brooke is just hanging out in her old house, which doesn't really work in the real estate industry. Once you sell the house, you can't just go back there and live there. So Brooke has been living there because Sam has also broken back into the house, which there's no relationship with that house anymore. Sam's broken in there, seeing that Brooke is living there. Then we also get that Nathan may have kidnapped her or has her under his influence. And that seems a little anticlimactic too. So I think there are missed opportunities. I don't know how I would rewrite this film or what, I don't know how many remedies by any means. And maybe it's exactly where they really wanted to have it, but I agree with you, it was, it's a fine film. It didn't really wow me. And the other thing is the comedy doesn't wow me that much. And I just wondered, do do comp stand-up comics ever consult on these films? 'Cause we've got two films here this week that I didn't really see that these people were seasoned comics and maybe they're not supposed to be, right? I guess in both films they're sort of amateur or rising comics, but I still think you have a stand-up consult on it or write the jokes. It was really flummoxing, I guess. - Why Rachel's Senate has done a bunch of stand-up herself. - Okay. - So yeah, she has done a whole bunch of open mic nights and it's kind of part of how she got her start in acting. And I'd rather suspect that Sabrina Gillies and Caleb here and who play Paige in Philip who are the other comedy roommates. I suspect they also, I think have come from the stand-up scene. So I think the consulting about the stand-up scene has come from the people who are performing in the movie. And I think actually I thought the stand-up was, although I haven't done the stand-up, I haven't really even seen very much stand-up for about 20 years, but it felt reasonably authentic to me. In fact, I found it pretty believable and it sort of, it made sense. There were enough amusing gags in this film that I did make some deposits in the quotation bank. - Ooh. (upbeat music) - Quotation bank. - I got quite, I ripped some of them down here. We need a VW-style recall of men, she says. Well, I think that's quite cute. When she tells some, she responds to Cameron who observes to Cameron is Brooks' dad, who then later assaults her. But kind of earlier on, he's trying to explain to his buddies, oh yeah, she's a comedian and Sam observes, oh yeah, comedian, that's just like a comedian, but a girl. I think these are actually cute amusing gags. She says, I think her Brooks aren't bumps into her in a cafe and she asks her, how are you when Sam says, well, thriving, obviously. When clearly she's not, I think actually they're kind of there, they are downbeat cute amusing gags. I thought it was perfectly enjoyable. So I had no problem with the material in this film. And the material felt true to the characters. I could believe that this would be the kind of set that Sam would come up with in the same way that when we see a bit of Caleb on stage and his gags also seem fairly true to the character of Caleb as developed as he is, which is not very developed. So I kind of had no problem with that. But overall, I think maybe, especially the supporting characters, I think underdeveloped in this film. There's one of those little screenwriting rules which is if you have a supporting character who sophisticated enough to have a name, then really they should get their own subplot of a kind. And the characters in this film don't really get much of a subplot. I think there's this little business where Paige gets a green card so she can work in the US, I guess. Philip, I don't know. Is this something about he can't invite his boyfriend round because Sam is depressed and that's about it. He doesn't really get a subplot. So I think all kind of a bit underdeveloped. And there is space within this film to develop his characters a bit further. So it's another one of my missed opportunity boxes. - I hear you. There's one thing that made me a little uncomfortable. It seemed like there was this setup of her, Sam, being a man hater, you told the one man joke there that we need new men, we need a VW style recall, and men. There's this man hater subtext to her routine, I guess. And Cameron jumps on that. And I don't know if that was the thing that was supposed to sort of give him this permission structure to assault her. What was going on there? It was one of those moments that made me cringe a little bit. And it wasn't a big part of her routine, but it was one thing that was really stuck out because what he and his cop friends are watching this video of her. And they say, "Oh, you're funny," or whatnot. But it almost gave him some sort of reason to do her evil, I don't know what that was. And it just rubbed me the wrong way, but maybe it wasn't as pronounced as I took it. - I mean, I think it's supposed to be a manifestation of their misaljony, isn't it? I think, oh, here's a woman who's not prepared to just lie down and be mistreated by men. So that makes you a man hater then. I think that is how that works. I think I'd never go on as Twitter as was, X as is. But I'm sure there's no shortage of tweets about women being labeled men haters the moment that they just show any sort of independence or dissent. So that was how I took that. - It's an uncomfortable scene 'cause this is his au pair. The woman who's been taking care of his daughter through times of great, but I guess we've mentioned that his wife has died. She's sick at the beginning. We never see the mother, we see the aunt. And Sam has been sort of hired on his policeman's salary in their beautiful house. I wasn't sure if the mother was just wealthy. - I mean, they live in a castle, don't they? I mean, it's amazing. It's completely ludicrous house. - So it makes it more uncomfortable because this is someone who's really cared for. He'd been a member of his family, essentially, and then really taking care of the daughter and then he assaults her. - You know, the character of Cameron and his policeman buddies, you know, are not particularly sophisticated, are they? I mean, you can sort of tell from the first time he arrives on screen that this guy's a wronging. And there is not a great deal of nuance there. But, you know, his main function in the story is to be, you know, the antagonist against Sam's protagonist. And the film is not particularly interested in his character. So I think it's, you know, I think it's fine. It's not a sophisticated bit of writing, but I think it does the thing that it needs to do. In the same way, I mean, a little metaphor for the film as a whole is the name of the comedy club where they performed. Did you see what it was called? - I forgot. - I had to write it down. It is called Comedy Bar, which is like the most on-the-nose possible name for a comedy bar, I suppose. I'll write down in my notes. It's probably next to the show's theater, and the drinking alcohol pub, and the shopping shop. It's not, it's, but I looked it up and it is a real place. There is a real comedy club in Toronto called Comedy Bar. I mean, no one's going to argue and ask you, well, what are they doing this place? At least they're spelling it out, good for them. - Very clear advertising. If on the nose it's very clear advertising. - You did allude earlier on to the Canadian branch of our favourite law enforcement agency. - Yes. - Cliché. - Yeah, what are the Canadians called a quarter? It has a name, doesn't it, is it? - As in 25 cents. - Yeah. - In Quebec with the Van Sanke Sioux, which is 25 cents. - Oh, okay, right, okay, right. - It's not the name of duck then. - Oh, no, well, there's the, oh, there's the looney. That's a dollar though. - Oh, okay, right, so no one's dropping a looney. No one's dropping a looney to phone the Cliché school. - I don't think there's a special word for a quarter, which we used to call two bits in the old days in the United States. They see that in the movies, right? Two bits. - Two bits. - One bit was 12 and a half cents. Go figure and then two bits was 25 cents. - Shave and a haircut used to be two bits, isn't it? - How much does it cost to, to, to call the, they keep the cliché? - I'm hoping it's a free phone number now. Let's, well, let's phone them and find out. - 1-800, oh no, but it's Canada, it might be 1-800-8-8-8-8-8. (upbeat music) - So I, oh, and I, I, I like this little bit more than you, so I haven't written down a great long list of clichés, but I suspect you have a tsunami of clichés, which is about to wash me away. The only one I wrote on my list here is teenagers, because Brooke is kind of, she, she's not a terribly, badly written character, but she is kind of teenager type B. I mean, I think she's just about nuanced enough to being, to, to avoid being enough to cliché. Although certainly at the early part of the film, I think she's introduced as being 12 years old. - Yeah. - And she is a very 18 year old looking 12 year old. - Yes. - But is it, but this is a low budget movie, and I prepare to give that a pass, I'm lost. - And she, apparently the timeline is a couple of years, it looks like, so she's supposed to age to 14. - 14, okay, or wow. - Yeah, doesn't work too well, but yeah. They pull it off. - Okay, I've talked about one. Some small excursion to a tourist site that's a cure all for everything, seen it. Impeccably clean windows on cars. This is always, I want to see some smudges. I know that, you know, the DPs, the cinematographers want to see a nice clean image, but boy, life is full of streaks and dirty windows. And you know, you got a 20 something driving a car that she's borrowed, and it's beautiful. The windows at least are just gorgeous. Just dirty up them windows a little bit, that's reality. That's hyper-reality. The big one for me again, and we've talked about this before, is drug dealers and dogs. It seems foolish now because now every cop in the world knows that drug dealers have loud, secret exposing dogs. And if you've got a chained up dog in your yard, then you're obviously selling drugs. So what a smart drug dealer would do is actually have a very low profile, probably have a very welcoming house, sort of our proper front, and just very discreetly sell drugs. But maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe every drug dealer has a German shepherd or a pit bull that's on a very short leash, tied up and hungry, and then you can just throw out some bacon and you're fine. I think, yeah, if you want to find drug dealers, you used to look for unusual patterns of bacon purchase, don't you? And that's going to lead you straight to them. And I just had a lot of bacon bacon on my last vacation. It's the plant-based bacon. And I wonder if the dogs would go for that with as much enthusiasm. - And I don't fool with those dogs. - Yeah, so I think for me, some missed opportunities, but it's mostly the balance between the comedy and some really grim reality, and it really kind of made me a little unsettled. I think that with the time shifts and time jumping, made it a little bit difficult for me to follow. And I guess I think that the low budget film should be written really, really tight, really, really beautifully. That's where you don't have to spend a lot of money to make a story good. So I just felt like if the script were really funnier when it had to be, and a little bit neater in terms of being able to follow the story, I think the impact would have been greater. And as you said, and I kind of alluded to it, you kind of know what's going to happen five or 10 minutes in because they're just, because it's not a big picture film, because it doesn't have a lot of subplots on those minor characters. There are not a lot of places where that story can go. And I think that could have been healed a little bit or improved a little bit just with more writing. - No matter, we should say that about every film, isn't it? Our prescription, more writing. - Yeah. - But it's true. But it's true, and it's absolutely true. Well, it's the right kind of writing, isn't it? I'm sure they put quite a lot of effort into this kind of twisty, turny, triple timeline shape. And if they instead have put most of the energy into supporting characters, I think this film would be considerably more successful. But it was cute, you know, I really didn't mind it. I quite enjoyed it, actually. I came away, I came away kind of smiling and I felt it was a bit of a redemption. And I enjoyed Sam's company and it wasn't long. So I think they've actually got a reasonable amount of the money well done. I love these low picture pictures. Shall we have a break? - I think we shall. - We should. We should have a break so we can go to the bar, which is always the answer, any comedy gig. It was the first half, it was quite hard work. And then people had gone to the bar during the break and you come back in the second half and everything just goes so much more. - Oh. - So let's go and get hammered and then we'll come back and talk about punchline. - punchline, which is gonna seem so much better after you go to the comedy bar. (laughing) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - This is an exciting news sponsorship that is sure to please the multi cat household listeners of the two real cinema club of which I am one. With ownership of two more cats come unique problems. Which cat uses which litter box? Which cat eats from which eating bay? Or drinks from which watering hole? And which cat uses which indoor outdoor kitty aperture? A lot of witches. I have two for the cats. - There's a lot of witches there. - They are kind of witches. The good people at, I don't know, I guess it's F-F-R-R-I, feline facial recognition and retina imaging or furry. 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And when you go with the furry minus, not furry plus, the furry minus feature, you'll get a bay that allows cats to enter and be groomed with oscillating brushes that scratch your itch because you don't need to scratch your cat's itch. Our friends at furry know how hard it is to manage too many cats. That's why they released a line of products with their trademark feline facial recognition and retina imaging technology. Choose furry, so you won't be buried by your furry friends. Check out all their available products and services at furry.kittycat.com. That's F-F-R-R-I.K-I-T-T-Y-C-A-T.com. - Where do I sign up? Get that furry, you can't-- - Oh, yes, go. - You just said you said that. - I just told you that. Is that a clear? I'm too busy coughing up on cat fur. Is that an actual fur ball? To be laughing, I can't laugh. I used to be funny. No, I'm just furry. Ah, that's it. I used to be furry. - No, that's good. - We've got it. That's all I need to say to get us back. Hello, everybody. I used to be furry before I met furry. We're coming back to 1988, which 12 plus 23. That's 35 years between these two films, I believe, something like that. Punchline featuring the very funny, I'm being generous, Tom Hanks and the very funny, Sally Field, I don't know how much comedy she had before it is. - Both of them can be funny when the need arises. Yes, 'cause acting is just like comedy, right? We're coming back to that film, and I just tell you why. - Do you have any other questions for the accounts? - I never saw this film, and I would find it under films I wish that I had seen. So, I'm not gonna bang on about myself too long, I promise, but so I did too. You know, a bunch of stand-up about the year 2000 for three years, and at the time, this is one of those films that stand-ups would often refer to. - Oh, really? - People would kind of hark back to punchline, and I wish I had seen it at the time, or I had seen it before 2000, 'cause I think there's some useful lessons for aspiring comedians in this film. This is one of the, I reckon mine notes here, and one of the pure dramatizations of the stand-up scene. Back in 1988, I was quite a fan of Tom Hanks. I had been fond of Tom Hanks since I was about 13, and me and my friend Simon went to see Splash at the local Odean on a school day, because every other pupil in the school was away on a geography trip, and we weren't doing geography, so we just got given the day off. - Oh, wow. - We were about six kids in the school, and I had the day off, and we just wandered around town thinking, look, look, this is what the town looks like on a Tuesday. And we went to see Splash, and I've always had a soft spot for Tom Hanks since that afternoon. I did do a little bit of background reading on the film before seeing it this week, so I didn't realize it was originally written in 1979. - Ooh. - And then sort of bounced around Hollywood, and so it only got made after about nine years. Originally, it was gonna be super low budget until Sally Fields signed on. Do you know how much they spent making this film? - Five million dollars. - It was 15 million dollars. - One five. - Yeah, one five, but it took 21 million dollars. - Ooh, okay. - So these guys definitely had a stand-up coach. Sally Field was coached in stand-up by Susan Essmann. You may recognize the name, I did not. Until I saw a picture, she is Jeff Green's wife at the end of your enthusiasm. - That's right, I heard, oh god, I'm about to talk about another podcast again. She just did an interview with Mark Merrin on WTF, and she did talk about this. It was a couple months before, well, maybe a month before we did the pod, so I'd forgotten. - Yes, she's very, she's very funny, quite profane, but obviously for this film, they weren't doing the profane thing. Really, I don't think, I don't find this film very profane. - I don't know if you have a lot of sex jokes in this film, a lot of jokes about sex. I always thought that Tom Hanks had originally come to acting from the stand-up scene, but actually it turns out that's not true, but he did do gigs in New York and Los Angeles to prepare for this part. Apparently, he performed about 30 times to get himself up to speed, yeah. - And this is after it was on Buddy, so he'd already done television comedy, I believe. - Ah, okay, yeah, yeah. - And that's where I first remember him as a kid. He did Buddy's on TV, and then his splash, maybe his first, sort of break through anyway, acting, well, I don't know if it's-- - I think so, and that was 1984, I think, splash. - Yep, directed by David Seltzer, who I didn't really know, he's had a long career, extensive career, mostly writing omen films, as far as I could tell. - Yes, weirdly, yes. - Yeah, and I think this might be the only film he directed. When you IMDB him, he comes up as a writer and a producer, but not much of a director. Also, if he shared Sally Field and Tom Hanks, as I mentioned before, and a pretty young John Goodman plays on Sally Field's husband. Well, do you need to hear the story, or are you so familiar with-- - I would love to hear the story, tell me the story. - Excellent. It's a comedy film, but it opens very noir, like it's an opening shot of a taxi cab, taking someone to a shady diner where Lila, that's Sally Field, is meeting a man where she is buying something illicitly, perhaps. Jokes, she's buying jokes. - There's been a lot of money on jokes, but you have $500 worth of success. - I believe a little pricey to me, considering the quality of the jokes, but if those are the jokes that we actually heard. She then sort of works the crowd at a club that has a big locker room of comics. I want to ask you about the accuracy of that kind of thing. It seems like there's this whole green room locker room space where all these comics know each other. That opening sort of splits to Wise Guy Steven, that's Steven Gold, I believe it is. That's Tom Hanks' character, who is the reliably late Wise Guy. He's waking up and rushing off to a medical school oral exam. I'm seeing a connection here, and I'm gonna say right now. Doctor by day, comic by night, let's skip to the who am I part of the program, the podcast. Razor this week, you are Tom Hanks. - How lucky am I to be Tom Hanks? I couldn't believe, 'cause I did not realize, until this week, that Tom Hanks plays a medical student doing stand up, it's unbelievable. Yeah, really, I really was kind of Steven Gold. - Yes. - Med student is really nice as a stand up, unbelievable. I couldn't believe that I hadn't seen this film before. If I had seen it before, I would have learned an awful lot. Just some of the things that he talks about in this film about what to concentrate on, what to tell your gags about, and the way that he kind of works the audience, I wish I had learned some of those lessons before trying to struggle with my own standards, actually, some useful lessons to learn from this film. Well, I'm gonna flip it around, 'cause we're doing it early. Who were you, have you got someone that you can mention now, or are you gonna come back to it later? - I should probably come back to it later. - Okay, all right, I will. - Okay, back to the synopsis, I'm jumping the gags. - 'Cause it doesn't make sense, 'cause it is someone in this film, so. - Okay, okay, all right. - So, well, unlike Tom Hanks, you are a successful doctor, he didn't finish medical school, he gets kicked out. I mean it, that bit about Tom Hanks, it explains a lot about this podcast and all 120 episodes we've done so far. You are, Tom Hanks. So when we say Tom Hanks is this thing, we mean it. Stephen gets kicked out of medical school for not saying rectum, or for saying rectum, and can I even say rectum on this podcast? I'm not sure. - I think it's a perfectly reasonable medical scientific word. - Rectum. - Rectum, rectum, rectum, that's PG. - That's PG. - Stephen is the destitute comic who needs to impress an agent to get his big break and make the tonight show with Johnny Carson. Lila is the disillusioned and overworked housewife who needs comedy to define her. They meet cute another diner. He wants to sell her jokes, but she can't, so she follows him to a rehabilitation facility where he wows the patients and staff, and he saves the cat by putting a smile on a sick child's face. Ooh, she's gonna love that for sure. I want to talk to you about that. How many rehabilitation gigs did you do? - Yeah, not one. That's another place where I was going wrong. - Natural for you. You should do this at the hospital right now, but let's not talk about it yet. Can Lila prove her husband wrong by making it in comedy? Can Stephen win the comic contest to get a video made or to be on the tonight show? And can Sally Field and Tom Hanks improbably fall in love, even though she's married, they lack any chemistry whatsoever, and between them they can barely rouse a smile, and will they be the dynamic married comic duo of racist rapport for generations to come? (laughing) - Yes, good summary, especially highlighting that there is a lot of racist humor in this film. - Equal opportunity, wait, I wrote this. Yeah, I said, many of the jokes and bits were surprisingly equal opportunity racist because they were both Asian and Polish people that were doing the big fun of. (laughing) - But I think there was also a certain amount of black man does this jokes as well. I think there was racism from a number of different angles. - Yes, there was. - And I think this is one of the things which probably stops this film from being quite so beloved in the year 2024. It's not, I was gonna say it's not looked back upon fondly. It's not really looked back upon at all. This is not one of those films in Tom Hanks' canon, which is held up for analysis and enjoyment. Did you enjoy punchline seeing it 35 years on? - I had never seen it when it came out. In fact, I don't know that I've ever heard of it. I moved to Canada in 1988. So I missed out on some American culture at that point, but I don't remember this film at all. So maybe I've seen it. I had totally blocked it out of my memory. It breezes along. It's a pretty easy film to watch. I had no problem sitting down in one sitting and just getting it done. But yeah, some of the comic bits were either racist, just overtly racist. Or for me, again, they just weren't that funny. I don't know if they had a comic, like a comic with stand-up experience, write any of the routines or jokes. 'Cause a lot of Tom Hanks' things are not actually funny. Some of them are downright grim, and some of them are, they didn't feel like comic routines to me. And there's this one skill that he teaches her about asking people in the audience to start talking about themselves, which I've never really heard of as an actual routine bit, or an instigator to get the audience going. Have you ever, did you ever do that? Is that a real thing? That was a real thing at every single comedy game. Oh, really, okay. Yep, so that is a very, very standard MC technique. So especially if you are the MC, if your job is to bring the acts on, bring the acts off, keep the audience just simmering. Sometimes you'll do a little bit of your material, but an absolute super common cliche thing is you'll just kind of ask people at random in the audience, you know, go down here, what do you do for a living? So I have done that on many, many gigs, most of the best MCs will do this on every gig. It really makes you depend on your improvisational skills, I suppose, but it also just seems like you don't have a routine somehow, or there's not enough material to do it on your own. I was taken back by that. I think a lot of people who go to comedy gigs do not realize that the comedians have pre-written the material. I think a lot of people think that the guy on stage is just coming up with it off the top of his head. I think a lot of people think that. And also, you may well say, I'm depending on improvisation, but actually there's only about 20 jobs. And, you know, if you do that for a month, you very quickly figure out a response to almost anything that somebody could tell you. - Yeah. - So it's, you know, it's a learned technique and it makes you seem extremely spontaneous, but actually, you know, there's a way of working it round to some pre-prepared material almost every time. I came away from this film, well, cringing, not just at the racist material, but also cringing when several of the comedians die a death. The first time that we see Sally Field on stage, you know, she dies a death. And I was there kind of cringing in the audience in much the same way that the audience on screen are cringing. And then later on when, you know, we don't see, you know, an awful lot of Tom Hanks's material, but later on when he's doing a set and some of his tutors from Med School turn up, you know, and he again dies on his feet. That also made me cringe because it reminded me that the hardest gigs you do when you're a standard, I think are the ones when there are people you know in the audience. It's one thing to make people who are strangers, either laugh or not laugh and the stakes are pretty low. You're not gonna see them anymore. But if you do a gig and you absolutely die and it's in front of the people whose opinions you really respect and want to hear. - That was some of the whole other level of death. - I was just gonna say, I was some of the person that that was his father and his brother. - Oh, ah, well, I might have completely misread that. I thought they were the two doctors from the Viva, the oral exam at the beginning of the movie. - Oh, no, I think it was Doctor, his father, and his brother because-- - Oh, was it? - Yeah. And it gets grim there, right? It's not a comic moment at all, he's really sort of just being very, very honest. And I think that was it, that his father and brother, 'cause he dropped out of medical school. He sort of had this secret that he was keeping from his family. I think that was the father and the brother. And then later on, he has another, in the big set piece, the sort of comic competition. He also sort of starts to be right and admonish the judges. And he kind of eventually wins them over after insulting them again and again. It's just, there was not a lot of comedy gold in the stand up pieces for Hank. There was a little bit for Sally Field, but I never, he keeps telling her she's funny, and I wasn't sure if he's doing that because he wants to write jokes for her, or if she's really funny, 'cause I didn't find that she had a lot of time on stage, or when she was on stage, she had a lot of funny bits. So I was surprised by how grim certain moments were. And in hindsight, I kind of like that again, I think it's a missed opportunity because I think there's a hint that there's some depression or there's a lot of dark stuff in Steve Gold's past, that sort of feeds that idea that a lot of comics are working through their own issues and some of them are struggling with depression or whatnot, and it comes out in comedy. Wasn't explored much, but instead, we just see these very dark moments where he's really not doing a comedy act as much as he is sort of venting on stage or griping about his own past. - I mean, I think that kind of reminds me of one of the lessons that I take home from this film, one of the reasons why I wished I watched it in 1988 instead of 2024, which is that it draws this distinction between between people saying funny things and funny people saying things. These are like the two branches of comedy. This is one of the truths about writing comedy. You can either have funny people who say things or people who say funny things. And the film comes down on the side, which is always the correct answer, which is the finer of these two forms of comedy. It's always funny people saying things. To start with Lila, Sally Fields character, is buying gags, which don't really suit her personality. They don't belong to her. She's under the impression that to be a successful comedian, it's good, good material. And it doesn't really matter where it comes from or what it has to do with you, it's just the material. Whereas actually it's kind of, it's the opposite, that I don't think the material is nearly as important as the connection with the audience. I think you need to be a funny person and it's doing material, not about something that you think was funny, something that you've been sold or something that you've heard. It's about material about your own lived experience. I think it's what makes the performance come to life. It's when Tom Hanks tells her, stop doing your material and start just talking, that her act actually starts to get laughed. - Sure. And I think that's one of the fundamental comedy lessons that I think an aspiring comedian will pick up from this film. I think there's two lessons to learn from this film. One is, what the audience want is not the gags, but you. So give them the version of you, which is funny and will make them laugh and will make them engage. People want to put the person not the material. And the other thing is to do with work ethic, I think. There's a scene after they have them meet cute in the diner when Tom Hanks, I've written down some of these quotes. He says, nothing is a joke to me, I'm a comedian. He talks about how seriously he takes it. He says, you know what it takes? Six nights a week, six gigs a night. He's been doing it for like 18 months, I think. Sally Field has been doing gigs for, I think it's like six weeks. - Yeah. - And looking back at it now, you think how can you expect to be a successful TV comedian after you've been doing it for six weeks? It's like expecting to be a heart surgeon after doing a heart surgery for, after starting a medical six weeks ago. It takes a long time to do this. It's all about paying dues about getting stage time about having the experience. And Tom Hanks is kind of doing a speed run of that experience by grabbing every opportunity to get up on stage and pick up the mic that he can. So his rule of doing six nights a week, six gigs a night, that is the way to progress in comedy. And you need to just keep hammering away at it. It's the thing, I kind of figured out after doing comedy for three years, which was that, you know, and I had like a small amount of success. I did a little count up. I think I was on TV four times in the end. - Well done. - I did, yeah, but none of them came to anything. So I was in a sitcom pilot and I did, I think it was five times. I did three episodes of a kind of a comedy show for a cable channel and I appeared on like a sort of a comedy, a comedian's game show and so, a bunch of kind of crummy stuff. But none of it kind of really came to anything because it takes many, many years of accumulated experience before you kind of build on that and actually build yourself a career. There used to be a regular joke that in UK comedy circles that, you know, the comedian who wins the best newcomer award is usually the person who's been at it for 15 or 20 years. And it's, you know, and it's just the same. You know, it's just the same now, I think. You just need to get the stage time in. You need to just keep hammering away that the door doesn't open for the funniest or the most talented or even the best looking. The door opens to the person who knocks on it for the longest. And I think that is a truth, which the film punchline kind of acknowledges. It acknowledges that, I know I'm monologuing here and I apologise, it acknowledges that truth. The other truth acknowledges, which is that success is bittersweet because it basically admits that comedians are kind of cheap fodder for TV, that, you know, that television appearances commonly do not translate to a long-term career for comedians. You know, TV will eat them up, spit them out. You know, you get your five minutes and then someone else is on the show next week. You know, it's a very small number of people who end up making it big. And the notion that, you know, you would get a slot on Carson being the ultimate prize, you know, is exposed in this film as the kind of false hope that it is. You know, it's not the big prize. It's a tiny little prize that everyone will have forgotten about in two weeks' time. And for you, when you were during a routine, did you have a half hour of material? Did you reach for the full hour or like a special length of material or was it just a... So you start out with a five and you kind of, you do open slots with your five. And if you're doing okay with a five, then you book back for a 10, a unit of work for a standard comedian is 20. So you work towards getting 20 minutes of good material, your 20 minutes of bankers. And so you may change your five around and gradually build it up and you've got your 10, but you're constantly swapping gags in and out and eventually you expand it out. So you've got 20 minutes of material. The first time that I was booked to do a 20, which was on a Tuesday night, I think, I was booked to be the closing act at like a new act night. So it'd be a whole bunch of new acts and I was the supposedly more established comedian, you come on and do 20 minutes at the end. And I was petrified of doing 20 minutes. I thought, oh my God, have I got enough material to do 20 minutes? And I got up on stage. And after I'd done about half of my set, they started flashing the light at me that I got into 22 minutes. I still had like 18 minutes worth of material left. So to have a career, you build up a good 20. And it's rare that you will get opportunities to do more than 20. And certainly when I was doing comedy, there were some people that I had seen as an audience member, 70 years previously, and then 70 years after that I was on the bill with them, and they were doing the same 20 in both gigs. So once you heard your good 20 and a lot of people were just stuck to it and they kept their good 20 minutes and they knew that it worked and they would take it around town and get the maximum use out of it. So there's a 20, a 20 is the unit of work. - Is there any money in a 20? - Oh, I like that. - Is there any money in a 20? - So I mean, this is old money now. So maybe you would get, so I would get like 50 quid for a 20 or something like that. So this is something worth saying about both this film and I used to be funny, which is there's no very realistic way for any of those comedians to be making a living out of what they're doing. All of them kind of need to have another job because it's going to be a few bucks here and there. I think as we watch a punch line, I think Romeo, who's the MC? He pays Tom Hanks 15 bucks for his set, doesn't he? - Yeah, there's not a lot of cash in the film. - And 15 bucks in New York, even in 1988, it's not going to pay a lot of rent, is it? - No, but that show you how difficult a comedian's life is. I think one thing that I do like about sort of both films is that you realize that comedy is not just telling jokes. As you said, it's not like one joke after another. It's more like you be who you are and you're telling stories and you're a funny person who can find comedy in your own life or in your own stories, I think, or in the world, of course. - Yeah, yeah. - And it's not about telling jokes at all. But in both of these films, I could have done for a few more jokes, I think. I think that's because in film, you've got to be doing shorthand all the time. So I never got the feeling that either one of the two main characters was super funny. And it just feel like it's a writing thing again for me. This is a guy who's written The Omen and then other omens and then more, yet more omens. - And over and after those gags, all those omen films. - Yes. And they're just like, what is it? Living is easy, comedies are hard, so what's the experience? (laughing) And I believe that. And I think, again, if you're writing a film about comics, it should be funnier. And there are some guest bits in here by one of the women's brothers that I think is Damon Waymans is in here. It seems like there's some other comics of the era that I don't really know who do some very short bits. And those are probably the funnier moments, but it really feels more like joke telling, as opposed to longer form comedy, true comedy. But I feel like the writing has to be funnier or sharper to make it work. So those were the parts that I probably believe the least. But one thing that I really felt about this film is there was like a lot of requisite scene stuff because you're taking comics' lives and it could have been funny as a comedy special or something like that. But you're trying to put this sort of narrative story in there and including the rain scene where Tom Hanks is silly and charming outside the diner, doing his best singing in the rain kind of routine. - I mean, one person might find that silly and charming. Other people might find that strangely psychotic and disturbing that scene. - Yes, and of course she falls for him in that moment. And a lot of the beats just felt like they were plotting through the beats. There's this very, a long, long bit of film is used to tell the story of Lila Salifield's character preparing out sort of like a business dinner at her house. And it goes on for a couple of minutes. You think this is way off of the A line of this story and it's really not its own subplot. And it didn't seem that comic either, but it was sort of a bit of more visual comedy in this film. It just feel like there were, and the two of them falling in love are even vaguely falling for each other, seem just like a requisite scene again of, oh, you've gotta have some boy meets girl on there. And the chemistry wasn't there as I mentioned in the synopsis. - Yeah, not at all. - So it just felt like you were plotting a few of these moments in order to make it a film. And as a result, the character journey is for me didn't feel particularly authentic. It felt kind of forced. And then of course, there's the big set piece of the competition at the end where everyone gets to do a little bit of their routine. And we see some tension because her husband's there and Steve's there too. So it's the two men in her life. And then there's Billy. - If I do, who am I right now? Does that mean we do it later? Or how do we do this? 'Cause... - No, I think that's, let's do it now. Go on, let's do it now. It's ripe, it's ripe. Let's do it. I've got the music queued up and everything. (upbeat music) - Who am I? - I'm Billy. - So he is the old comic, isn't he? - He's an old comic who's been set up as old and ill from the very beginning, because someone needs to fall ill at the end. So that, I think Steve hasn't signed up, is it right? So he can only get into the competition if someone else drops out. Billy has a minor heart issue or some sort. And it's great that Steve, this is where his skills isn't bad. He didn't come in, he's there, so he can make sure Billy's okay. And then Steve can go on and join the competition and succeed. I am Billy. I'm an old school guy. Just let me die, remind me to write my DNR. My do not resuscitate because death by comedy, certainly in the unfunny way, is no way to go. So I felt like Billy in this film, just too old to be funny and yet killed by comedy. (laughing) - Conversely, I felt quite a lot like Lila, like Sally Fields' character, in that scene where she has to prepare dinner in a hurry, because I feel like I have lived exactly that life, sometimes it either come back from either dropping the children off at something, or come back from work, or come back from some kind of meeting or project, where you have to quickly get dinner on the table as fast as possible. Slapping things on the plate and sticking it in the microwave at 90 miles an hour. And I really feel like, yes, yes, I feel seen watching this scene, yeah, this is my life here. - So was I wrong? You're not Tom Hanks, you're not Steven Gold? - I think if anyone gives me the opportunity to pretend to be Tom Hanks for a few minutes, I'm always gonna grab the opportunity with two hands. - You've got to take it. - Yes, please let me be Tom Hanks. - Got to take it, yes. I think I'm gonna take that. - I tell you what I wrote down as my summary, and the top of my notes here, it's the first thing I wrote down under the heading, thoughts, I wrote down for punchline, this film is the Saturday Night Fever of Comedy. Because it strikes me, it's sort of a film, it's sort of made for people who have heard of comedy clubs, but are very unlikely to ever go to one. - Yeah. - So instead, it's just like a little vision in, well, this is what happens out of comedy club. This is what comedians look like, and these are the sorts of things they do, and they have a life behind the scenes. It felt a lot like that to me. I don't know whether you agree. - I did, in fact my first thought was light writing, L-I-T-E, light writing. It felt very like an intro to comedy. So I agree with you, I think they are that you, I'm not so clever to put the Saturday Night Fever of Comedy, but yeah, that makes him John Travolta. So Tom Hanks, if he were on the show, he would say, "Who am I?" "I'm John Travolta." - John Travolta, I did make my usual notes about opening image and closing image, which again, they are mirror images in this film, but the opening image is a taxi appearing from the darkness, bringing Lila to the gag writer, and then the closing image is basically the same in reverse that she is walking off down the same street in the same blackness, but this time she is triumphant, having won the Comedy Competition spoilers, and she's with her husband rather than on her own, which may be kind of question, what is the theme of this film? I had a couple of suggestions, either this film is trying to tell us that a woman's place is in the home, because I feel like even though Lila ends up sort of winning the competition, she does the good thing, which is that she walks away with her husband to go back home rather than accept the prize of a suit on Carson. You know, and the film seems to be suggesting that this is a good outcome for her, that she has found her true self, which is walking arm in arm with the husband, I think, maybe, or the alternative theme of the movie is that fame is fleeting and hollow, because I think it kind of comes back to that notion many, many times. Nobody in the film looks like they are deeply satisfied by anything in their life, and yet they are all striving with the same desperation. Once again, you've stolen my thunder. (laughing) I would say she died. - So I should have had a punchline while you were still halfway through the set up. - Yes, to thine own self, be true. I think that's kind of the theme here. And I think you've sort of, your two themes sort of serve one another in terms of fame is fleeting, and most often not worth it. And that means just be yourself, you'll be happy. So I think, yeah, I think that's the theme. I don't think it's heavy on theme. I think this feels like a, just like a nice, warm, sweet tart of some sort. You eat it, you enjoy it, and then you don't think about it too much more. - But maybe, maybe with more aspartame than real sugar and cream, I think. I don't know, it's a little bit saccharine. - Yeah, it is a little saccharine. - Well, we've already played who am I. - We did. - All we can do now, all we can do is play the jingle and try and do the synthesis and bring these two films together. Should I play the music? - Please do. (dramatic music) - So usually with the synthesis, I'll buy me a way to the front of the queue and start gabbing on before I give you a chance to talk. So I'm gonna be a little bit more polite this week. And what do you think? Any parallels with these films? - I think that the atmosphere on the comedy clubs is very similar, and I'd love to have you comment a little bit on the reality of that or the accuracy of that. I think both of these films have a bit of darkness beneath the comedy, and I think in both cases, they could be explored more. I think that's where I felt unsatisfied. I mean, I think it's just hard to do comedy and hard to make a film about comics. So I'm just gonna excuse the fact that I didn't find either film terribly funny, but that means I think you've gotta explore, you've gotta probe the darkness a bit more. And neither one of those films, neither one of the films really does that to my satisfaction. That's just me. - Right. - And yeah, as a result, I think I was kind of disappointed by both films, I would say. Neither one of them is a rock star film. I don't think punchline age is very well. - No. - And I don't think I used to be funny. We'll really have much of an audience and probably doesn't have long legs, but I'm glad that young people are making films and doing it on the cheap 'cause that's where some of the real nuggets are found is the smaller independent films that can take more risks. And I think this one does take some risks, whereas the risks of punchline are mostly just in the racism. (both laughing) - Yeah, I kind of, I took home really that a lot of things have not changed, but watching these two films back to back. I wrote in my notes here their standup has changed and evolved less in nearly 40 years than cinema has. So I really like that the standup worlds that these two films portray are more or less the same, they're small clubs to bullish topics and material. Like the kind of a person with a microphone telling gags that grungy backstage area, it's all kind of unchanged. And I used to be funny, you do get a hint of the infiltration of YouTube into the standup world, but it's not because Sam is making TikTok videos and trying to kind of widen the form. It's just that somebody has filmed some of her routines and put them on YouTube, she's not making sketch shows or character skits or web series or anything, it's just that you can see a standup online if you didn't get to the gig. So it hasn't really substantially changed anything about the form of comedy. And I reckon that some of those gags in the Tom Hanks film could easily have been told in I Used to Be Funny by a younger comedian and they would probably still sound. About as believable. Maybe standup has become a little bit kinder or a little bit more inclusive or thoughtful maybe, but I'm not sure that you could definitely tell that from I Used to Be Funny. And most disappointingly, when I used to do standup there was this notion that some people would extol, which is our women aren't funny. There's a bit of a barrier to women being funny in punchline and in I Used to Be Funny now. There's still this notion of women doing comedy, women aren't funny. You're a man hater, women aren't funny. Even this idea has not really changed in 30. How would it be say, 37 years, something like that. So kind of disappointing. The other thing, which these two films talk about, I noticed in punchline, I think there is a little bit of Jan Diehlmann in that film. In Sephora, it's about the expectations made of women. She can go and do some comedy gigs, but she has to sprint home and get dinner on the table for her husband. In both of these films, women are presented largely as having the burden of care and the burden of being sexual objects. In both of the films, sort of rail against it, but I think the women in these two films are largely in the same sort of situation. Lila's main job is to take care of children and Sam's main job that pays the rent is to take care of a child. Not a great deal has changed between these two films and I find that overall a bit of a disappointment, but it's a disappointment in the world more than it is in the art of cinema. - Yeah. I Used to Be Funny does have some women of color as comedians and mixed race comedians. - Yeah, yeah. - Obviously a woman protagonist as punchline does as well and a gay comedian. So there's a little bit of evolution there, but it is minimal. And the thing that really struck me was just those locker room sort of scenes of, 'cause it's just a massive green room of comedians and they seem very similar in both in the two films. - Yep. Well, one thing I will say about punchline, I certainly never ever did a gig where there was a green room quite that big. We'd all be crammed into some tiny little corner and it certainly didn't have lockers where you could put your coat and hang up your tie. I mean, definitely not. But most of my gigs were like a room above a pub and the green room was squatting on the stairs with the other comedians and chit-chatting while you half listened to the other person's set. So in punchline, they've been pretty well served by their palatial green room. The little tiny green room they have in I used to be funny, it's a lot more believable, but I suspect that was filmed inside you. You know, actually on location in the real comedy bar. - Yeah. - So that probably is the actual green room, I guess. - I think one thing that both films may have benefited from is something that you were talking about earlier. Joking off, I'm so glad I said joking. (laughing) I was afraid I was gonna say the wrong thing there. Joking off, I think each film probably could have benefited from some really well established scenes where there are some moments where the comedians are sitting down in one diner and just talking. And the subtext could be about something quite appropriate for the film, whereas it gives them a chance to riff a little bit and say some funny things. And I think we get to know them a little bit more and we might have a subtext that really serves the film. In both films, the comedy is quite divided from the actual A-lines of the stories in the sense that it doesn't feed into their actual journeys very much into their own narratives. - Oh, yes. - That would be, that's what make a great film because it feels like, okay, this is a film that has some comedy scenes and some club moments, but the comedy is not really in their everyday lives or you don't see the connections between what they're doing on stage compared to what they're living. And as I think about the films more and more and what you so wisely said, O-comedian, that it's really more about a funny person telling stories about the world and about life and making them funny or seeing the humor in them. And there's this massive disconnect in both films, I think, 'cause I never really get the sense that any of those people were funny in life or that they were using their life, their lived experiences in their 20s. Well, like that, and I mean 20 minute sections, quite 20s, can I say? - Right, yep. - And you're 20. - Yeah, you're 20, yeah. Yeah, that sounds good, you sound like a real comedian. You are right, this is the film falling into the trap that it is trying to warn us about itself, but the film suggests, both of these films suggests that it should be funny people saying things, not people saying funny things, but the characters themselves are just people saying funny things which are only tangentially related to their lived experience, so you are right. This is a film which points the finger and then trips over the thing that it's intended to warn you about, but I did chuckle a bit, I chuckled a bit, you know, I chuckled a bit. - I didn't chuckle much. I wanted to chuckle more. - For films about comedy, that's a fairly fundamental failing, isn't it? Nah, well, we've just got time to talk about what also has been playing at this theater. - I go first, I go first. - You go first, you go first. You're always better than mine. You're also definitely better than mine. - And yours is gonna be better than mine, so. - No, no, I afraid it's not. Whatever you're gonna say, mine won't be better, I promise you. - I don't think, I don't remember seeing a film other than these two in the last weeks. I was traveling about a week of that time, so I didn't see anything at that time. I saw a play before I went on vacation. It was called A Case for the Existence of God. This is a play not mass you're talking about. - It was a play, all right. And it was a play, all right, and it was an all right play. Good word, play. It was done in an empty bar office building here, and that was good, 'cause that sort of takes place in an office building, so it was well situated in that sense, but it's a really hard name to live up to. A case for the existence of God, and I don't think it really did, it was good. It was good, but I don't think it was, I don't understand how the title relates to the play. That's a problem. - So you didn't come away believing in God? - Yeah, yeah, anyway, what did you see? - Well, I saw something which is probably a case for there not being a God, so we watched Wish, which is the most recent Disney animated feature film. It came out a little bit before Christmas, I think in cinemas here, and we missed it, and it didn't review very well, so we sat down and watched it this week. And this film is directed by Chris Bach, who is one of the directors of Frozen, which you know, I have a great bit of time for. - Yeah. - Also directed by Cif form Vera Sunthorn, who was head of story for Ryer and The Last Dragon, and also incidentally was also a med school dropout, there's a theme forming. This film was written by Jennifer Lee, who worked on Frozen, along with someone called Alison Moore, and I'm sorry to say this film was absolutely astonishingly terrible. (laughing) I just, really my daughter and I kept looking at each other, watching before we couldn't believe how very, very bad it was. It lost Disney, apparently $131 million at the box office, so we were not the only people who thought it was terrible. But I spent a bit of time trying to figure out why was this film so very, very bad? It's difficult to believe that this and the animation let this one slip through the net. And I think the reason is that it's just extremely has a way, way over complicated set up and story with so many kind of different, complicated, magical rules. And a whole bunch of poor, underdeveloped characters who were then living out the story. So really they just put all of their eggs in the wrong basket. I came away thinking, you know, for any film to succeed, you know, put all your energy into concentrating on the characters. It should be the absolute opposite. Keep the story simple, drill down on the characters, whereas wish does absolutely the opposite. The characters are all, you know, pretty dreadful and superficial and poorly written. And there's way too many of them. And the story is ludicrously complicated with so many different elements and rules and reasons and wishes. And it's just, it's all just terrible. - Wow, it's not easy to lose $130 million. - They really went for it though. Yeah, they really put the effort in there. (laughing) - Right, well sometimes you listen to this podcast to know what not to see, I guess, right? (laughing) - What to avoid? We're just quickly to the socials on Instagram. We are at Two Real Cinema Club. You can read the blog, TwoReal Cinema Club.com. Comment on our YouTube channel or email us because we love your emails to Real Cinema Club at gmail.com. Next time, what we do next time? - We are going to honor the 55th anniversary of the landing on the moon because we are tuned in to the zeitgeist of the people and of the times. We're gonna fly me to the moon, which is a new film with Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum. And we're gonna also watch me for the first time. Capricorn won from 1978. - It's just '77, I think, yes. - It's gonna be seven. - I love this cast, Elliot Gould, James Berlin, Brenda Vaccaro, Telly Savalas, and O.J. Simpson. - Oh my God, I am so excited. - That is the most seventies cast you can imagine. - Oh, it's incredible, yes. (laughing) - So we will be going to the moon all well week next week, or two weeks time. We'll be at the popcorn counter, chewing down on some kernels next week and then then going to the moon the week after. - You didn't tell me Karen Black was in it and Hal Hallbrook and Sam Waterston, oh my Lord. - This is a great day cast. Capricorn won a lot of fun, actually. I'm looking forward to hear what you would say about it. - Thanks for joining us, as always. We will see you next time. - See you on the moon. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
