The Aristocrats - Interview Feature

A guy walks into a talent manager's office and says "Boy, have I got an act for you!"

Thus begins the joke comedian/director Paul Provenza explores in a documentary entitled The Aristocrats.

The film played the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) during a midnight screening early in the festival. There are plans to release the film in August locally.

SIFF brought numerous films to theaters like the Neptune for one or two shows during the festival that will be available for regular viewing over the next several months.

You can probably guess the punch line, and the opening of the joke is innocuous enough, but every word in between isn't fit to print. Or even repeat in mixed company, to your parents or your boss.

In fact, once you've seen the film, you should refrain from telling the joke at all, unless you've really worked on it. This is a joke for the experts, as the film will reveal.

The title might be confusing, and it's amusing to discover folks who don't know what an Aristocrat is, (dictionary.com lists the word as a member of the ruling class or nobility, or one considered the best of its kind) but everything--seriously, everything--in this film has that sweet smell of irony.

Interviewing Provenza last week before his SIFF midnite screening at the Neptune, he felt that the film evolved in the telling into a spotlight on each of the comedians, and less about the joke.

Bob Saget (America’s Funniest Home Videos, Full House) has a turn in front of the camera.

“The joke [about Saget] is that he’s filthy hilarious,” said Provenza. “Saget is brilliant. He even won a Student Academy Award for a film he did. He’s brilliant and funny, and he’s filthy.”

It's ironic that the film’s title could lead you to think that its subjects (dozen's of America’s funniest and raunchiest comedians) are the aristocrats in question.

It's also ironic that these comics might be the nobility, the best of our kind, the guys who stand up and talk smack about the rest of us.

They are funny, each one of them. Provenza and his crew of surreptitious videographers capture these humorologists at their casual best, yukking it up for their friends behind the camera. There's no script (other than the basic framework of the joke), no special lights or microphones.

Each comic spends his/her time in front of the camera in their most comfortable manner, working their magic.

Somehow, ninety-odd minutes of discourse about one joke--one measly, gritty, nasty, filthy joke—works.

And the audience laughs and gasps even through the end credits.

As each comic told their version of the joke, and how they heard it, and as they related their story, they added their own personal style, it became clear that this was a story about the singer, not about the song.

Who wants to spend 90 minutes listening to the same joke, anyway?

This is a poignant, personal exploration of the funniest people we know, doing what they do best.

Because that's what the joke really is, is a chance for the teller to improvise, add their own magic and imprimatur to it, and to shine in all their glory as they speak the unspeakable.

Provenza calls the joke punk. “Everything about it is wrong,” he says.

Why do people laugh at the raunchiness? “We need a context,” Provenza continues. “Social interaction greases the wheels of society, but it also obscures. We need license to hear and not filter everything through social convention.”

Some may be disgusted by what they hear, but Provenza puts it all in perspective:

"Sure, the material's disgusting," he says. "What I find disgusting, however, is the manner in which we're killing people in Iraq, the people there and the soldiers dying, and we're being lied to over here. Now that's disgusting.'

South Park fans will get a real treat: Matt Stone and Trey Parker made a segment just for this film.