The customary explanation is that people who spent a lot of money for a good time will imagine they are having fun no matter what. There may even be a more depressing reason though: that because they themselves have no conversation and wit to speak of, they are impressed by whatever seems like cleverness to them. And compared to their ineptitude, it may even be witty. And so they laugh at almost anything. But because the actors expect no laughter there, they rightly do not pause for any, and so lines get lost, which justifiably annoys those who know better. It is the sort of thing that can make one despair of the human race.Some years ago, when Debbie and I went to see About Schmidt — a perfectly dreadful film, to be sure — some people in the audience apparently thought it was a comedy and kept laughing at things that were meant to evoke pathos. So far as I could tell, they enjoyed the film a good deal more than I did.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Laughter in the dark …
… Uncensored John Simon: On Losers and Laughers. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
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In one of Wyndham Lewis's novels there occurs the line "If you cannot think, you can always laugh."
ReplyDeleteYears ago we went to see Sherman's March, not an especially good film. Near the end, standing before the monument by Central Park, the filmmaker related the story of Sherman's funeral, Joseph Johnston standing bareheaded in the cold rain, and saying "If he were in my place and I in his, he would not put on his hat", and a few days later dying of the sickness this brought on. The audience laughed, which slightly shocked me.