..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

As necessary evils go, the increasingly ritualistic press-day gang-bang that precedes the opening of every new movie would seem to be among the most benign of mandated chores. Even though small armies of dedicated publicists strive to make everyone as comfortable as is humanly possible, these events are anticipated with equal measures of fear, loathing and anxiety by talent and media, alike.

Unlike that far more ethically odious marketing ceremony, the studio publicity junket, Hollywood-based press days tend to conform more to the limited budgets of distributors of indie, documentary and foreign fare. These scrappy little movies often merit more media attention than the crap typically promoted in the pages of Sunday features sections, but they’re routinely ignored by editors who would never admit to genuflecting at the altar of celebrity worship.

Even absent the tchocke-starved junketeers and jack-booted personal publicists, however, it’s rare when either participant in a press-day séance will admit to looking forward to the experience. After the first go-around, it gets old … fast … for everyone involved.

Nevertheless, there are far worse ways to while away a summer afternoon than chatting -- however briefly -- with someone whose work you admire.

Last week’s press day du jour was staged at the Le Meridien Hotel, by the backers of The Aristocrats. Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette’s already notorious one-joke movie not only blurs the line between documentary and performance film, but it also manages to cross several other borders, as well.

In it, dozens of well-known comics and comedy writers are shown dissecting or reciting The Aristocrats, an incredibly profane joke whose lineage can be traced at least back to the days vaudeville. Rarely heard outside of intimate gatherings of entertainers, the deceptively simple gag pretty much begins with, “A guy walks into an agent’s office, raving about this amazing act he’d just seen …,” and ends with, “… ‘The Aristocrats’!”

In between the set-up and the punch line comes an improvised description of the act itself. While this section can stretch anywhere from a few seconds, to several minutes in length, it invariably is dominated by graphic depictions of perverse, scatological and violent activities, punishable with death in many countries. No one is safe from the dementia, including children, cripples and animals.

Built into any telling of The Aristocrats is a degree of difficulty that approaches 11 on a scale of 10. Historically, it’s an exercise by which comics measure their peers’ chops … maybe, the original tough act to follow.

Truth be told, though, it really is one of those jokes you have to “be there” to “get.” And, even then, its appeal is going to elude far more people than it puts into stitches. Turning the telling of this one joke into a feature-length film borders on the miraculous.

Being their last interview of a long day, I anticipated a session with Jillette and Provenza that was dominated by yawns, oft-told anecdotes and furtive glances at wristwatches. Going in, the odds against getting anything fresh seemed to be prohibitive.

Instead of the dreaded dead silence, though, the sound of uproarious laughter filled the hallway leading to the interview room. Even from 20 feet away, Jillette’s distinctive boom-box of a voice could be heard happily sharing stories with Provenza and the reporter nearing the end of his 20-minute rotation.

If I was very lucky, maybe there would be something left in their tanks, when it was my turn in the ring. I needn’t have been concerned.

By way of introduction, I mentioned to the more talkative half of Penn & Teller that we’d once met -- briefly, and, in his case, un-memorably -- at a ventriloquist convention in Las Vegas. After recalling some of the more eccentric characters in attendance at the convention, Teller and Provenza entered into a riotous discussion of a legendary confrontation between a comic team represented in The Aristocrats and an aggrieved civilian.

According to Provenza, the X-rated Otto & George -- human and puppet, respectively -- made show-biz history after an outraged audience member rushed the stage of a comedy club, and stabbed the foul-mouthed mannequin. Otto, it seems, was so adept at throwing his voice that the assailant stabbed the messenger, while ignoring the guy who put the words into George’s mouth.

Teller, however, claimed he knew the “real” story behind the attack on the dummy. In his version, George & Otto were practicing their act near a fountain in Central Park, when a black man came strolling by with his white girlfriend. After enduring a barrage of clearly obscene and blatantly racist commentary, the gentleman became so enraged that he, yes, stabbed George.

His hand dripping blood, Otto angrily pointed out the obvious, “You stabbed the dummy … you stabbed the dummy!” He did, however, resist the temptation to add, “… you idiot.”

Not bad, for an icebreaker.

The Aristocrats, which debuted at this year’s Sundance festival and opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, has already made headlines for being banned from exhibition in AMC theaters. These includes venues in Atlanta and Chicago, where the film already had been booked.

Pam Blase, a spokeswoman for the Kansas City-based chain, told the Hollywood Reporter, "We are trying to program more specialty films in our theaters, but we are very selective. We've made a business decision and evaluated all the factors and we will stick with that decision."

Typically, she added, all NC-17 and un-rated pictures must be approved for exhibition on any of the chain’s 3,500 screens by AMC Film Group chairman Dick Walsh. And, while Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ passed muster, The Aristocrats was given a thumb’s-down.

Jeff Sackman, president and CEO of ThinkFilm, has argued that the scope of this ban amounts to censorship. By not taking local community standards into account, he suggests, “somebody is deciding on a personal basis what's appropriate and what isn't. They've said (The Aristocrats) is too small, but this film is not smaller than others that they've played."

In the Q&A that follows, the filmmakers discuss the ban and other issues related to The Aristocrats.

MOVIE CITY NEWS: Penn, you co-host a series on Showtime called Bullshit. Would Jeff Sackman’s use of word, “censorship,” fall into that category as being too extreme a characterization of the situation?

PENN JILLETTE: It falls within the dictionary definition of “censorship,” but, within my emotional definition, it isn’t. For that, you’d have to have government involvement and some enforcement provisions.

This guy (Walsh) worked hard for his business and his power, and he can do whatever he wants with his movie chain. If the owner of a supermarket chain decided he didn’t want to sell vegetables anymore, that would be a business decision.

MCN: Not a particularly practical one, though.

PJ: It’s odd to me that he’s chosen to make a statement to the world that he will not show this small, independent film -- a truly independent, not jive-ass we’re-really-owned-by-Disney independent movie -- because of the words in it. Yet, he’s comfortable with movies with serious depictions of anal rape.

What you have is a guy who’s cynically trying to cash in on being this moral crusader, by not showing a movie in which people say, “fuck” a lot. And, he’s doing it in a way he can’t possibly get hurt.

We don’t have 10 other movies coming out this year. It’s costing us a lot of money to market The Aristocrats … although, all the press coverage could even things out.

MCN: Think we’ll see comics organizing picket lines outside their local AMC multiplex?

PJ: Wouldn’t that fun? They’re welcome to do it, because they would be the consumers of this movie.

PAUL PROVENZA: You’d see some great signs: “No jesters, no peace.”

PJ: We’re not martyrs … we’re not going to play Michael Moore or Mel Gibson. They’re not P.T. Barnum or Harry Houdini.

Barnum and Houdini were doing art forms. These cynics are just trying to make money, by pretending to be on the bottom.

MCN: The press material suggests that comics consider the joke to be part of some sort of rite-of-passage, coming-of-age or fraternity-handshake ritual.

PJ: Rite-of-passage is probably too strong a term. This kind of thing happens on every job, where some sort of gag is handed down to a younger guy.

MCN: When did you hear it first?

PP: I probably heard it at a club, sitting around with other comics between shows. We were tossing around material and someone mentioned “The Aristocrats.” I said, “What’s ‘The Aristocrats’?

People began shouting, “Hey, Provenza never heard The Aristocrats, get over here.” It was a moment that defined the camaraderie that would be part of my life ever since.

MCN: Will your public disclosure of the origins of the joke spoil the surprise for generations of comedians to come? Will aspiring comics now begin practicing for their coming-out as Aristocrats tellers?

PJ: That would be cool.

PP: The worst thing in the world, to me, would be if audiences in Peoria all of a sudden started demanding to hear every comic’s version of The Aristocrats, as if it were a membership card.

PJ: Certainly worse than suicide bombers.

MCN: What inspired you to embark on this project?

PP: We thought it was interesting that all of these people knew the joke, but, until we brought it up to them, they didn’t pay much attention to it. It was this bit of comic minutiae that was ubiquitous and had an interesting history.

PJ: It started with us sitting around like we always do, talking about comedy, politics and so on. I brought up my obsession with be-bop, and tried to explain the difference between Miles Davis and John Coltrane improvising and comedians improvising.

I said that I thought the joke, itself, gets too much attention. When you talk about how great Miles was, it doesn’t matter all that much if it was on “Bye, Bye Blackbird” or some other song.

But, with comedians, people will pretend that the joke is the thing. It isn’t.

MCN: First, though, the uninitiated will have to get over their initial shock of hearing how far some comics are willing to go to impress their peers. It took a while for me to be able to focus on the comics’ rhythmic delivery, and the fluidity of the improvisations.

PJ: The whole movie starts with be-bop. I think the most pure fan of this movie is Mike Jones, who’s the best be-bop piano player alive. He’s seen the movie 30 or 40 times, and gets it at a level few people could.

MCN: Some of the riffs were exhilarating. The comics really seemed to appreciate the freedom to explore their own craft.

PJ: Some reporters today asked me why all this attention was being paid to such a simple, stupid joke. They didn’t understand that, when you’re starting out learning about jazz, you should probably begin with Miles and Coltrane blowing over “Bye, Bye Blackbird,” and not “Giant Steps.”

With “Giant Steps,” you might have to wait a while before you can understand what it means to solo over that.

MCN: Usually, the only thing audiences know about a comedian is what they see on clubs, in tightly sculpted and well-rehearsed sets of material. The only comedian in the movie who’s generally associated with joke telling, per se, is Jackie Martling.

PJ: I recently was interviewed for an article in the New York Times, about jokes being dead. There’s always the awkward moment when a journalist calls you, and they have their whole article written out … and they’re completely and utterly wrong.

He said, “Used to be, people told jokes. Now, Jon Stewart has this whole new attitude, where there are no real jokes.”

I responded, “I saw this young fellow the other day, Mark Twain, who doesn’t really tell jokes. He just comments on stuff, and he’s the highest paid speaker we have. Robert Ingersoll gets a lot of laughs, and he doesn’t tell jokes either … he talks about atheism.”

MCN: If it’s in the New York Times, though, it must be true. Right?

PJ: Jon may be the best at it now, but, before him, were Mark Twain and Will Rogers. He’s never claimed to be the best at what he does.

This cyclical thing has been going on forever. And, yes, there were some acts in vaudeville that actually told jokes. Jack Benny told jokes, but he was known more for his attitude.

I guess, Bob Hope told jokes

PP: Henny Youngman told jokes … all the old Borscht Belt comedians. As Phyllis Diller said, “Every so often, I’ll do an old joke. If they weren’t good, they wouldn’t be old.”

There seems to be a generational thing … a time span when it became a common or acceptable thing to do. But the art form has grown out of that.

Most of these jokes aren’t performed on stage, anyway. They’re part of the oral tradition, and we’re the retarded stepchild of the story-telling tradition.

MCN: So, for the record, reports of the death of joke telling have been greatly exaggerated?

PP: I sort of think it’s the opposite. The Internet has re-energized joke telling. They travel at the speed of light after a disaster, especially.

MCN: Someone once traced a particularly tasteless set of jokes to the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade.

PJ: I think that’s apocryphal. I thought it was fascinating that after the first Challenger shuttle disaster, there was a joke -- “What does NASA stand for?” Need Another Seven Astronauts -- that was time-stamped seven seconds after it blew up. Someone was on-line, with a window open, and, “boom,” a joke is born.

You’d think it would take seven seconds just to type that much. It’s astonishing.

MCN: There are several websites now where you can post your own version of The Aristocrats -- including yours, in a few days -- and the South Park segment has already been pirated for downloads.

PJ: You can find the South Park thing anywhere. It’s tattooed on peoples asses already.

PP: I would like to be able to say that it was a brilliant marketing move on our parts, but it wasn’t. It turned out to be a great teaser for our film, and it created a groundswell of interest.

At first, though, we were upset, because it was sent out against our will. It happened at a dub house, with the only footage over which we didn’t have 100 percent control.

MCN: I’m curious about a couple of other bits. Whose idea was it to put a mike on the mime?

PJ: That was funny … and, yes, it was a gag … one of the cameramen, Rich Nathanson, came up with that idea. Unfortunately, we couldn’t use any of the ambient sound, because all it was was us dying of laughter.

Most of the soundtrack had to be doctored, because, otherwise, it would be filled with us laughing our asses off.

MCN: Then, there was Rita Rudner, a comedian whose public image could hardly be more G-rated. I couldn’t even imagine Rita being aware of the joke, let alone repeating it.

PP: Basically, she just comments on the joke. In her telling of the joke -- which isn’t in the movie -- it’s basically her trying to go there, and not being able to … which was quite lovely, actually.

It’s the same treatment, in a different way, given Jake Johannsen. In describing why he can’t do the joke -- even though he’s the perfect person to do it -- he gives you all the beats of the joke, without telling it.

Several of the people we interviewed said they didn’t want to do the joke, and we would say, “Fine, let’s talk about you not wanting to do the joke,” which, in itself, was an interpretation of the joke.

Rita got what we were trying to do, and was happy to donate her time and talent. She wanted to be a part of the movie.

PJ: People were taken out of context throughout the movie. The idea was “e pluribus unum” … out of many, one. Provenza took 140 hours of film, and put it all together in this … thing.

Everyone is elevated by Provenza in the process, and everyone is hurt. It had to be trimmed down to 89 minutes, so everyone ended up getting about 30 seconds.

MCN: The roster of talent represented in The Aristocrats reads like a who’s who of comedy. Were there performers who decided it wasn’t for them?

PJ: Quite a few, but we didn’t want to know why. Everybody told us that they‘d love to do the movie, but, if someone said, “Let me think about it, and get back to you,” we didn’t try again.

This was not like a studio desperately negotiating with talent. This was friends fucking around … a party we were inviting friends to.

Is there anyone who turned us down because they thought it was too disgusting? Probably, but we have no way of knowing. It was their decision and we respect it.

MCN: We’ve lost quite a few of the giants lately. The Aristocrats is dedicated to Johnny Carson, who probably did more for up-and-coming comics than a thousand comedy clubs.

PJ: Johnny Carson loved the joke and was a big supporter of the film. I was planning on showing it to him after Sundance, but he died on the day after it screened there. I didn’t ask him to participate, even though I told Paul that I had.

I was in touch with him, and wanted him badly for the movie. He knew about the project, but was retired … and I respected that.

MCN: Any others?

PJ: The sad ones were guys like Buddy Hackett, who, when I spoke with him on the phone, told me three or four versions of the joke. He loved the idea of the movie, but said he was too old.

That same day, I called Rodney Dangerfield, and we had the same conversation. He also said he was too old.

Then, too, there were people -- Loren Michaels, Stiller & Meara, Mike Nichols, Conan O’Brien -- who said, yes, and wanted to be in the movie, but their schedules just didn’t work out.

July 26, 2005
- Gary Dretzka