Preview: Paul Provenza at Rumor’s Comedy Club
Uptown Magazine Feb. 16, 2006
It's hard to believe there's anything beautiful about a film containing detailed accounts of rape, incest, and defecation.
On the surface, The Aristocrats is a documentary about a dirty joke, featuring 100 comics creating hilariously vile images for an hour and a half.
But director and co-producer Paul Provenza, who performs at Rumor's until Feb. 18, had something more in mind when he conceived the project. Underneath the cursing, the Aristocrats displays the often overlooked aspects of comedy: the camaraderie among comedians, and their passion for making each other laugh.
"When I watch it, I just see everybody having so much joy," Provenza says.
"It was one of the things that we wanted to be careful about capturing. That's why it was produced the way it was. It's why we didn't do any lighting, why there's no makeup. We didn't want any levels of artifice that would get in the way of that pure experience".
Comedians talking about comedy off-stage is something the general public rarely encounters. He says the emotional layer of the film has successfully reached most audiences.
"People are really taken aback by what a feel-good movie it is, and that seems to be not just people who are close to comedy," he says.
Talking about comedy is tricky. Provenza is in the camp of comedians who enjoy deconstructing humour, but respects the opinion that analysis can ruin it.
"Very early on in the process, we decided we should show, not tell. That whenever an idea about comedy is brought up, we would just show illustrations. You'd see people performing comedy, not breaking the comedy down," he says. "We decided to let a few people comment on things, and then by context and by having certain things arranged in a certain way, you could sort of glean the deconstructive aspect of it."
Provenza, along with his co-producer Penn Jillette, shot the film over the course of four years. He transcribed all 140 hours of raw interview footage with his "hunt and peck" typing skills before he and fellow comic Emery Emery began the tedious editing process. Even though the dvd was released last month, the project may not be complete.
"We may do an extended version of the dvd somewhere along the line, which might be more than one disc that would contain extras as well as shoot some people who wanted to be on the dvd after the movie came out," he says.
Whether that ever comes to fruition will depend on the success of the current version, but there may well be a market for it. Documentaries about comedy have practically become a sub-genre. Comedian showed the process of Jerry Seinfeld building a new act. Comedians of Comedy followed four American comics on the road, and recently spun off into a Comedy Central series of the same name. A dvd release is on the way for the long awaited When Stand-Up Stood Out, about the 1980s Boston scene.
Each presents comedy as a complex art form, executed by dedicated people. But Provenza says comedians don't make these films just to educate audiences.
"I think it's just the desire to express something in a different way," he says. "Our lives tend to be really compelling and interesting and rich and crazy and hilarious…. And we just gotta get it out there."