It starts off with the pronouncement, “People have always laughed at me.” The reading style is very deadpan and unflashy-- sad almost, in a way that recalls Charles Bukowski’s reading style. I’ve never heard a radio documentary on this subject and I listened with great curiosity. It’s quite funny and enjoyable and has a built in story to it. He wants to try his hand at being a stand up comic and he takes us all the way through the training process at a kind of comedy school where students learn the seven levels of comedy. Beatty rings the inherent absurdity out of being taught how to be funny—the humor that emerges from the gulf between theory and practice. The only thing I would say that’s missing is some tape of the actual event at the end. The desire to hear how it goes becomes so great—because of how engaging the narrative is-- that by the end you just crave a bit of a bigger dramatic pay off.
Review of Funny Business
Jonathan Goldstein
Posted on February 27, 2005 at 06:10 AM
It starts off with the pronouncement, “People have always laughed at me.” The reading style is very deadpan and unflashy-- sad almost, in a way that recalls Charles Bukowski’s reading style. I’ve never heard a radio documentary on this subject and I listened with great curiosity. It’s quite funny and enjoyable and has a built in story to it. He wants to try his hand at being a stand up comic and he takes us all the way through the training process at a kind of comedy school where students learn the seven levels of comedy. Beatty rings the inherent absurdity out of being taught how to be funny—the humor that emerges from the gulf between theory and practice. The only thing I would say that’s missing is some tape of the actual event at the end. The desire to hear how it goes becomes so great—because of how engaging the narrative is-- that by the end you just crave a bit of a bigger dramatic pay off.