once upon Once in Hollywood, Jon Favreau wrote a movie. Was called swingers. It was about a group of twenty-something white guys, played by Favreau, Vince Vaughn and Ron Livingston, who were trying to make it as actors. Toward the end of the film, Favreau’s character, the affable Mike, tells a woman he just met (played by Heather Graham) why he moved to Los Angeles: “When I lived in New York, it seemed like they were handing out comedies. to monologues here at the airport.”
The joke was that when the movie came out in 1996, comedian-led shows were everywhere: Seinfeld, Crazy for You, Martin, Elena. Back then, appearing on television seemed simply a matter of being a little funny and having a name that looked good on a business card.
The irony, however, is that following swingers, those actors became incredibly famous. Especially Favreau, although he is now primarily a producer, screenwriter and director who holds the keys to Disney/Lucasfilm/Marvel in his hands, having worked on everything from Iron Man to The Lion King to The Mandalorian. Vaughn and Livingston succeeded as actors. They became the people their characters aspired to be. Things like that were possible then.
They are not now. Today, very few, if any, television comedies are based on monologues. Network TV simply doesn’t have time for that anymore. Streaming services may be preparing to air the next Dave Chappelle or Chris Rock stand-up special, but shows starring stand-ups filled with jokes and plots loosely based on their acts seem like relics. All the fun people seem to have migrated to TikTok.
If you ask Jerry Seinfeld, it’s because “the far left and PC bullshit” ruined comedy. Or that’s what he said The New Yorker weekend. Funny people are so worried about offending people, Jerry says, that they don’t make jokes like they used to. Larry David, who created Seinfeld with Seinfeld and stars in the HBO series Curb your enthusiasm, it is protected”. Now, the comedian says, the networks aren’t smart enough to realize: “Do we accept the pressure or are we just not funny?”
One flaw in this logic: there’s a comedy on HBO that actually manages to do both and is smart enough: tricks. The series, which launched its third season on Thursday, follows a comedian from the Seinfeld generation, Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), who hires a young writer, Ava (Hannah Einbinder), to collaborate on jokes. Ava, a quintessential lefty, criticizes Vance for her occasional uninteresting jokes. They argue; resolutions arise. Criticizing the current friction in comedy over “how far is too far?” is the source of much of the comedy about tricks. Perhaps these jokes live beyond the imagination of comedians who don’t want to evolve.
wide city Veterans Jen Statsky, Paul W. Downs and Lucia Aniello created tricks as what they call their “love letter to comedy.” The trio emerged on the New York comedy scene, where, in a twist to the scene depicted in swingersComedians might work on improv for a while and then find work on a show like wide city to make your rest. Comedy Central no longer makes original scripted shows like that, something Aniello recently said The Hollywood Reporter It is “so bad” for the fun business. “There is already a lack of young, cutting-edge comedy, because Comedy Central no longer exists.”