Full Transcript for “Comedy should punch up, not down” with Matt Singer | The Movie Racket

2: It was, it would be now like 18 years ago. It was 2008. And I will remember that day for the rest of my life, certainly. 00:06:27 Speaker 1: Why? 00:06:27 Speaker 2: Because I was auditioning to be one of the new hosts of what was then called At The Movies. 00:06:35 Speaker 4: How do you make a movie about characters that already got their happy endings? 00:06:38 Speaker 2: As the opening credits of the Sex and the City movie remind us. It was the lineal show that was Siskel and Ebert. 00:06:45 Speaker 1: Right. 00:06:46 Speaker 2: And you were on the show at the time as, I guess, like a kind of perma guest host. 00:06:50 Speaker 1: Semi-perma. 00:06:51 Speaker 2: Semi-perma guest host. 00:06:53 Speaker 1: Nothing is perma in TV. 00:06:54 Speaker 2: And I guess they roped you into being the person sitting opposite the auditioners. 00:06:59 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:06:59 Speaker 4: I must confess, I enjoyed it more than I expected to, and I'm recommending it on the strengths of the relationships between the four leads, which are so much funnier and richer than Hollywood movies usually give us, so I say see it. 00:07:11 Speaker 5: Matt, I say see it too, and I think there's one big difference between the TV show, of which I was a casual fan. 00:07:16 Speaker 2: Casual. 00:07:17 Speaker 5: And the film, which is, the film is much more sentimental, much more of a soap opera, and it isn't really even trying to be as much of a pure comedy as the best episodes, my favorite episodes. 00:07:27 Speaker 1: Anyway, of the series were. You really do feel like you're getting your money's worth. But then I ended up without any gig at all at the end of it. 00:07:33 Speaker 2: That's true. Neither of us were. Well, I was on the show as like they had me doing their the critics roundup where they would have three critics, often very good critics. I think Wesley Morris was one of the other people who did it. And on occasion, it was a rotating. They had a crew of people. And it was like, you know, when you tune into CNN or something and there's little heads in boxes all talking to the host about a subject. I would go to like the Reuters office in New York for some reason. And this is pre-Zoom. Now I would probably just sit in my bathroom and use Zoom and do it. And they would have us weigh in on whatever the movie was. So I did wind up on the show in some small capacity. 00:08:09 Speaker 1: But we were sort of sitting there in the spots that for our audition that went to Ben Mankiewicz and Ben Lyons. 00:08:15 Speaker 2: That is true. 00:08:16 Speaker 1: Yes. 00:08:16 Speaker 2: And I was sitting in, I mean, I was thankful that you were sitting in Roger Ebert's seat. You know, if you looked at the set layout like as it was at the time, I was in Roper's seat, which I like Richard Roper, don't get me wrong, but there would have been an extra layer of intensity to it if I'd had to sit actually in the Roger Ebert seat on the set. 00:08:33 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:08:34 Speaker 2: That would have made me more uncomfortable than I already was. 00:08:37 Speaker 1: All that aside, I do blame you for me not getting that gig out of the book. You didn't get it either, so I guess that's fair then. Yes. We'll say this, there's a lot of Siskel and Ebert nerds out there. Of course, I was one of them growing up in Racine and convincing my parents to go down to Chicago, which we used to do occasionally and see films and stay overnight. They loved this movie with Jeremy Irons. I knew my mom liked Jeremy Irons. It's called Moonlighting, and it was by a Polish director. I didn't know at the time, Skowalski, and there we were. So it was just great to use Siskel and Ebert to see my first, I think, I suspect, film largely in Polish, right? It was also in English too, but yeah, no, it was great. A lot of nerds out there bought Only one wrote a very good book on Siskel and Ebert. 00:09:25 Speaker 2: Oh, thank you. 00:09:25 Speaker 1: Matt Singer, Opposable Thumbs, which if you have not read, folks, if you have not read it, it's well worth reading. 00:09:31 Speaker 2: Thank you. 00:09:32 Speaker 1: And today we're not talking about that. 00:09:33 Speaker 5: No. 00:09:34 Speaker 2: Well, we are. Literally we are, but we're not supposed to. 00:09:36 Speaker 1: Be talking about it. Anymore. 00:09:37 Speaker 6: Okay, more. 00:09:38 Speaker 1: We're done with that. But what we're here to talk about today is your latest book, among other things, Funny Business. Now, in a shorthand way, can you please explain a bit about it before we get into some of the films dealt with? and some of the ideas about comedy that I'm going to debate. I know we don't agree on all of them. So we're going to let her rip. What do we have here? 00:10:00 Speaker 2: Funny Business is, well, it's a book about, mostly it is about this particular era of film comedy from the first decade of the 2000s, mostly. And filmmakers like Ben Stiller and Will Ferrell and Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, the group that kind of against their wishes kind of became known as the frat pack. They didn't really like that name. It wasn't their idea. And often they seemed kind of wary about even being called like any sort of group, like it was a collective, even though they made a ton of movies together for a period. And the book is about how their careers kind of started, why they worked together, why they were so successful, but then also something I was particularly interested in was like, why was that the last moment as we sit here talking that comedy movies were a really big deal in Hollywood? Certainly, comedies still get made, but today in 2026, they are mostly for streaming. They are not put in theaters, or if they are in theaters, they're either IP of some kind. They are a sequel, a remake, a reboot. It's a scary movie. It's It's the naked gun. You can't, like an original comedy is almost unheard of in this day and age. So why is that? And why was this period so successful? And how this many

years later did we kind of wind up where they're almost non-existent? 00:11:27 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Well, the first question that comes to mind for me is, is comedy distinctly different from every other genre in that every film in every genre is having a struggle getting traction? At what we used to call one of the studios, which now we just are increasingly calling one. 00:11:48 Speaker 2: One of the. It's the studio. 00:11:50 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. So do you know what I mean? 00:11:52 Speaker 2: I do know what you mean. And in fact, I think it was Seth MacFarlane who I interviewed for the book who, when I asked him the question, like, why are there so few people? comedies. And I asked that to everyone I spoke to, and I got a lot of different answers. And I think he was the one who said, I mean, you're right, there are less comics, but it's not just comedies. You can't get anything made in Hollywood right now. It all has to be IP. It all has to be something that has a brand. Nothing of interest can be made, basically, in a lot of genres. So that's a fair point. It's not just comedies. I think comedy is one of the the biggest examples just because it's so striking how big those movies were, or maybe the loom in my mind, at least, and how rare it is to see them in a theater these days. I mean, you can certainly, since I wrote the book and, you know, submitted the manuscript like about a year ago at this time now, like we've seen this wonderful and exciting revival in horror films, original horror films. 00:12:53 Speaker 6: Right. 00:12:54 Speaker 2: And that's super encouraging. And we still, even if we don't see them all year round, we can still see every year there are wonderful, exciting, interesting movies that are nominated for Academy Awards that are not based on comic books or video games or things like that. But comedy movies are one area where it really does feel like someone will put two movie stars in something. and give them both guns and say, go run around in the jungle and shoot guns and make occasional quips. And that's the comedy we'll make. That's the one comedy movie we'll make this year. And that's it. And so, yes, it is not the only genre, but I feel like it's maybe been the genre that's been harmed the most or most notably to me. 00:13:36 Speaker 1: So in the book, you talk about the decades that preceded all this, because a lot of the films you discuss in the book at length which began early 2000s, as you say. We're talking about early on. You'd look at something like Adam McKay's first film with Anchorman. Zoolander. A year later, in 2005, I think, 40-Year-Old Virgin, which is sort of like, okay, this is now another voice. We have Jon Apatow, who's obviously not brand new then because he had backed Freaks and Geeks and other things. But that's a slightly different kind of tone of comedy, I think. But going back, they grew up with Blazing Saddle, Mel Brooks, a lot. 00:14:18 Speaker 3: What did you expect? Welcome, Sonny. Make yourself at home. Marry my daughter. You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the New West. 00:14:37 Speaker 2: You know. 00:14:39 Speaker 4: Morons. 00:14:40 Speaker 6: Ha! 00:14:42 Speaker 1: Blazing Saddles, you know, Frankenstein. 00:14:43 Speaker 2: Animal House. 00:14:44 Speaker 1: Yeah, Animal House, 78, I think. 00:14:46 Speaker 2: Animal House is 78? 00:14:47 Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. Over? Did you say over? 00:14:51 Speaker 3: Nothing is over until we decide it is! 00:14:54 Speaker 6: Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? 00:14:57 Speaker 1: Hell no! Germans? Forget it, he's rolling. It ain't over now! 00:15:03 Speaker 6: Because when the going gets tough, the tough get going! 00:15:10 Speaker 1: Who's with me? 00:15:11 Speaker 3: Let's go! 00:15:12 Speaker 6: Come on! 00:15:15 Speaker 1: And then, yeah, Brooks' work a few years earlier. A few years before. Yeah. So in that work we started seeing on the big screen in 2003, 4, 5, what are the key films for you that begin kind of your thinking about all this? 00:15:32 Speaker 2: Well, there's movies like Old School, Anchorman, 40-Year-Old Virgin. Even before that, something like Zoolander, which has Ben Stiller, it has Owen Wilson, it has Will Ferrell. So that I would certainly group in there. And even though the tone is maybe a little less outrageous, something like Meet the Parents feels kind of of a piece with this with me. And the movie that I kind of write about as one of the big ones that kind of really started this snowball rolling down the hill at this time was There's Something About Mary, because that was Ben Stiller in this incredibly R-rated comedy that became a gigantic hit. And then all of a sudden, after we'd had this long period where, yeah, there were movies like Animal House and then so many derivatives and copycats of Animal House in the late 70s and early 80s, after those movies had kind of started to peter out, there was a long period where comedies were definitely a little more PG-13, a little more cartoonish And that was the age that I was a kid. So I've seen all those movies. I'm not insulting them or denigrating them for being a little more PG. I loved all those movies too. But it felt like There's Something About Mary came along at just the right time to capitalize on something. And it was so huge that it opened the door for a lot more, more explicit, more raunchy, racier comedy to kind of come along in the next few years. 00:16:55 Speaker 3: What is that? 00:17:00 Speaker 2: On your ear. 00:17:03 Speaker 6: No, your left ear. 00:17:05 Speaker 3: Is that. 00:17:08 Speaker 3: Is that a hair gel? 00:17:11 Speaker 6: Yeah. Great. 00:17:13 Speaker 2: I can use that. 00:17:14 Speaker 3: No, no, no, you don't have to. 00:17:16 Speaker 6: I just ran out. 00:17:21 Speaker 1: All right, so the fact that all the biggest stars that came out of this, and you talk about Ben Stiller as being this

improbable monster presence in... With how many hits in the same year? I mean, there was an incredible streak. 00:17:35 Speaker 2: Yeah, I think he was in like six movies and something like four or five of them made over $ 100 million. This is like 2004. 00:17:41 Speaker 1: Right. 00:17:42 Speaker 2: And he was in Dodgeball. He has a cameo in Anchorman. And I think that's the year also of Along Came Polly. And then the one that's the biggest hit is the Meet the Parents sequel, Meet the Fockers, made... a staggering amount of money, half a billion dollars. 00:17:58 Speaker 6: Right. 00:17:59 Speaker 2: For meet the Fockers. 00:18:00 Speaker 1: So he's the prince of acute embarrassment, really, right? Yeah. I mean, that's kind of his. 00:18:05 Speaker 2: That's his, yeah, that's his bread and butter. 00:18:07 Speaker 1: But not quite a whole generation later, but much more recently, Stiller, Will Ferrell, some of the directors, they all really, as you say, kind of just looked at that phrase, the frat pack, and I mean, Stiller called it bull. Yeah. You know, it was just like, I think it, I just wonder if it just didn't remind them all that it was essentially humor for and by privileged adolescent male sensibilities who happened to be adults at the time. And very clever in many ways. So I think that's kind of my reading on that. And I think it's also my reading on, and this is what I'd love to get your feeling about this. The comedies of that time that I love, there's not really a through line on them because I do love, I love about half of Anchorman still. I don't think it's actually critiquing any of the boorish male behavior. I think it's having too much fun with it. And it doesn't really throw enough to any, I mean, there's only one prominent female character anyway, but that's the whole idea, right? It's like, oh, this threatening species, the female broadcaster has entered our lair of, you know, our den of sevens. 00:19:15 Speaker 2: Male safety. 00:19:16 Speaker 1: Exactly. But there's something about the comedies made by, in particular for me, Todd Phillips, not so much old school, which I think is fine. But when you look at the size of the success of The Hangover, which is not a film I liked then and don't like now. I remember sitting in a big packed audience full of largely what seemed like fraternity alums just having a ball, remembering their younger days and imagining you know, themselves in that same Vegas scenario, right? And hating it, hating it. Not because I wasn't in a frat, just because I didn't, I thought it was really sour, punching down comedy the whole way. 00:20:00 Speaker 6: Okay, kids, you're in for a real treat today. These gentlemen have kindly volunteered to demonstrate how a stun gun is used to subdue a suspect. 00:20:10 Speaker 1: Wait a second, what? 00:20:11 Speaker 6: Now, there's two ways to use a stun gun. Up close and personal. Or, you can shoot it from a distance. Now, do I have any volunteers who want to come up here and do some shooting, huh? All right, how about you, young lady? 00:20:25 Speaker 1: Except for Ed Helms. 00:20:26 Speaker 3: Right. 00:20:26 Speaker 1: And, The only thing that, for me, saved the hangover at all was that end credit sequence where you get the real visual. The reveal, yes. And that as that was, that for me, it sent people out on a high and it sent me out on less of a low. But there's something about the sourness and I think the, I have to say, the innate meanness of Todd Phillips' sort of comic sensibility that, to me, that puts a very bad sort of overlay on this whole era. Now, Most of the films I like have nothing to do with that kind of comedy. 00:20:59 Speaker 3: Right. 00:20:59 Speaker 1: More like Judd Apatow and all that. But, I mean, do you draw distinctions like that for yourself just as you remember back on these movies? 00:21:05 Speaker 2: Well, certainly they're, you know, they're directed by different people. The Hangover is a very interesting movie to look back on now because that was a movie that was just as big as, you know, it's up there with Meet the Fockers of among the biggest hits of this period. 00:21:21 Speaker 1: Right. 00:21:22 Speaker 2: Have you seen Nirvana the Band, the show, the movie? 00:21:26 Speaker 1: No. Okay. 00:21:27 Speaker 2: So there, I won't spoil it, but there is a joke in that movie, which came out this year. I think maybe it was released. It's released this year. I guess maybe it was first shown maybe at film festivals in 2025. But there is a joke in that movie about The Hangover and how that movie has aged and how it's only been, what, 15, 16 years, something like that. But how that movie... has aged and how, hopefully, how far we've come, we hope, in that time. That's maybe the funniest moment in any movie of this year. And it was very interesting to see that as I was finishing this book. And you're right, that movie is, it's really nasty. 00:22:10 Speaker 1: And God knows the sequels, which, I mean. 00:22:13 Speaker 2: Well, the sequels, I mean, yeah, that's a strange world. I mean, just the fact that you would make a second Hangover and have them have a Another hangover is such an act of brazenness. Just like, here you go. It's what you liked the last time. 00:22:27 Speaker 1: You liked it once. 00:22:28 Speaker 2: Yeah. Here it is again. And guess what? It did very well in theaters. I think when I look at the movie and I go, why was this such a big hit? I think that there's two things that I would point to. I think one thing is it has, whatever you think of Todd Phillips, of the movie itself and the kind of sourness of the humor, which I completely agree with you about, it has a great premise it was one of the all-time great high concept like you can describe what that movie is about in a sentence and you go that's a great idea for a movie the idea of these guys wake up with no memory of what they've done and now they have to go figure it out and the scene that you described

the end credits where they find that they've taken pictures and they find out how it all happened right a brilliant punchline and and you send the audience out on a high And, you know, sometimes that's a big part of a movie's success. If you can end with the right punchline and make people leave smiling. 00:23:25 Speaker 1: Right. 00:23:25 Speaker 2: You know, it makes such a big difference versus like even if you're a good movie with a bad ending and you leave people walk out of here going, you know what I mean? 00:23:33 Speaker 6: Right. 00:23:33 Speaker 2: The last thing being the thing you remember. And the other thing that I think that that movie has is they did a phenomenal job casting that movie. And they found stars like Ed Helms. Bradley Cooper, who hadn't really broken out yet. Zach Galifianakis, who just seemed like he had, like, if you were a real comedy nerd, you knew who he was. But a mainstream audience maybe didn't know who that was. They just, like, there was something about the chemistry, about the charisma people responded to. And I think that that was the combination of these guys in this great idea. And it was an undeniable high concept. 00:24:13 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:24:13 Speaker 2: The execution, I agree. It's very nasty. There are jokes that you're shocked that they would make. And again, it's not that long ago. And to your punching up, punching down thing, totally. It has a punching down quality at times, for sure. So yeah, it is a movie that you look back on and you go, wow. And this movie made how much money and was so popular? And spawned multiple sequels. Right, right. That is the wild part about it. But when I revisited it, those were the things that I thought, okay, I understand this part of its success. I don't necessarily understand these other parts. We look at these pictures together, okay? One time. And then we delete the evidence. I say we delete it right now. Are you nuts? I want to find out how I wound up in the hospital. Is that in there? Yeah, it's in there. 00:25:04 Speaker 5: Guys, one time. 00:25:06 Speaker 6: Deal? 00:25:07 Speaker 3: Deal. 00:25:07 Speaker 1: Deal. 00:25:07 Speaker 4: Okay. 00:25:15 Speaker 1: I might be being too hard on Todd Phillips and maybe not hard enough on Judd Apatow. A lot of the films I really liked of his and still have good memories of, for the most part, beginning with 40-Year-Old Virgin, with Steve Carell, Knocked Up, with Seth Rogen, and everything that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg kind of worked on together, that goes back to I mean, what's the first one they did? That was Superbad. 00:25:38 Speaker 2: Superbad was the first one they certainly wrote that was made. 00:25:41 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:25:42 Speaker 2: Superbad, Pineapple Express. 00:25:44 Speaker 1: Right. Let's hold on Pineapple Express. But with the Avatar stuff, that is, to me, there's a lot of scenes, many scenes in everything from Superbad to Four-Year-Old Virgin to Knocked Off that do kind of curdle when

you see those movies again. You think, you know, and this really was like, really? Okay. Okay. And just the whole riffs on any number of things that could be either characterized or experienced as, okay, an expression of kind of like a comic sort of perspective on idiot male homophobia or else just simply homophobic jokes. Right. And I think a lot of the, I suppose you can argue that a lot of the best comedies of this time are playing it maybe right down the middle in this very slippery way. So it sort of can kind of get, your defenses at the moment just because the improv rhythms that Apatow was really, really strong on. I mean, that was. 00:26:38 Speaker 2: Basically his and McKay's... Innovation. 00:26:42 Speaker 1: Way of, yeah. And it wasn't the first, they weren't the first people in Hollywood to do this. Leo McCary, great Hollywood director of comedy and drama in the old days. I mean, he would shut down production on The Awful Truth with Cary Cranton. And Irene Dunn for like a day and just play piano and kind of come up with ideas. And Cary Grant was like, this isn't the way you make a movie. I want off of this movie. 00:27:02 Speaker 2: And he tried to get off. 00:27:04 Speaker 1: But it has a way. It's magic when it works because it feels like it's actually these complicated or maybe not so complicated, but these basic storylines and premises. You somehow feel like they're just happening for the first time again. Yeah. And that's what I like that about some of the Apatow stuff. 00:27:20 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:27:21 Speaker 1: What I don't like is the introduction where action comedy, action comedy, I think Pineapple Express, you know. 00:27:28 Speaker 2: Tropic Thunder. 00:27:29 Speaker 1: Tropic Thunder. That, to me, that's partly what kind of, I don't want to say killed off the idea of like, why are we getting more comedies in theaters right now? Because there's all these other factors, as you mentioned, you know, just streaming and how much comedy we're getting every second of our lives, you know, on our phones, if we want it, online. It's all different now. And there's so much comedy on Netflix. in specials, and yet Netflix helped kill all this off. Kind of, yeah. And you talk about that in the book. 00:27:57 Speaker 2: Absolutely. We're getting at, yeah, all kinds of, there is this kind of perfect storm of factors that have co-conspired to gradually erode the movie comedy. And yeah, I mean, Netflix, even though that is probably now one of the places where you can consume the most comedy if you want to. 00:28:14 Speaker 1: Right. 00:28:15 Speaker 2: It is, as you said, it's mostly stand-up comedy, stand-up specials, podcasts. Can you imagine doing a podcast? Who podcasts? But now there's podcasts on Netflix with the traditional talk show has become, you know, like this form where just any funny person can have a podcast and have guests on and they just riff. And those are available on Netflix and YouTube and a hundred other places as well. And Netflix does make comedy, you know, like traditional like sitcoms and comedy shows and they occasionally make feature films, right? But do they put any of them in movie theaters? No, they certainly do not. And the rise of Netflix streaming, absolutely. You look at the timing of all of these things, right? Like the introduction of what was, I think, then called Netflix Instant, because at the time Netflix was, they send you DVDs in the mail in a red envelope. 00:29:07 Speaker 1: Oh, my God. 00:29:08 Speaker 2: And then they introduced this concept that, well, if you're a subscriber for free at no extra cost, you can watch movies on your computer. Wouldn't that be wild? 00:29:15 Speaker 3: Right. 00:29:16 Speaker 2: And everyone was like, well, wait, this is far better than having to wait three days for my movie to come in the mail. 00:29:23 Speaker 3: Right. 00:29:23 Speaker 2: And so that starts to take off. Well, guess when that was introduced? That's within months of those movies you were describing, those action comedies. That's the late 2000s. That's 2007 into 2008 is when they start that. The other element of theatrical comedies of this era— in terms of their finances was they put them in theaters and they could do great, like Meet the Fockers, or maybe they don't do so great, like The Hangover Part 3. But it doesn't really matter because whatever, however they do in theaters is We're going to put them on DVD. 00:29:53 Speaker 3: Right. 00:29:53 Speaker 2: And there we can guarantee they're going to make back their budget no matter what and more. They're going to you know, that's where our profit is going to be every time guaranteed. And when Netflix and streaming start rising, the DVD business starts going down and that financial backstop evaporates. 00:30:12 Speaker 1: So a movie like Zoolander, which did not kill it, did not kill it. 00:30:16 Speaker 2: It did not, no. But that movie— Was a huge hit on DVD. 00:30:20 Speaker 1: As was Old School. 00:30:21 Speaker 2: As was Anchorman. 00:30:22 Speaker 1: Anchorman, right. 00:30:38 Speaker 2: It was like reflected in the box office for the follow-up. So Anchorman made like $ 80 million, Talladega Nights made 120 or whatever it was. And you can see immediately the impact, not just on the previous movie, but the next one. And when that market dries up, it has a big impact on the state of all movie comedies as well. But even to get back to the first thing you said about action comedies, And those movies and how it affected the general decline of comedies. Those kind of come towards the end of this period. And you have, you know, we're talking about 2007, 8, 9. So it's about, you know, almost a decade into these guys having success with mostly smaller movies. 00:31:23 Speaker 1: Like Apple Express, a smaller film. 00:31:25 Speaker 2: Pineapple Express was, I mean, smaller than Tropic Thunder, perhaps. But again, a movie with explosions and action. And again, you look around the

Hollywood, the environment at that time. Look at the list of movies that were hits the same year Tropic Thunder came out. It's the year of Iron Man and the Dark Knight. And just these, again, movies are getting bigger all around these guys. You know what I mean? And it feels like they're trying to compete however they can. And I agree with you. A lot of the bigger action movies, like an action comedy is a different thing and often frustrating. 00:32:00 Speaker 1: Really frustrating. I mean, as a critic, we were seeing a lot of those movies every month for a long time. And you can even sort of see the origin of it. Not that Pineapple Express was the first action comedy ever attempted in Hollywood, by whatever definition you want to call it. But the first half of that movie, for me, was funny and it worked and the premise was good enough. And it was basically just stoner humor. And it was just a higher grade Cheech and Chong movie, I thought. You know, which is great. What the fuck is this thing? Ah, cross joint. Yeah. Never smoked one of those? You can smoke this? 00:32:35 Speaker 6: Yeah, man. 00:32:37 Speaker 1: No. 00:32:37 Speaker 2: This is the future. 00:32:39 Speaker 3: This is like the apex of the vortex of joint engineering. 00:32:44 Speaker 1: And then it just simply was, okay, let's just lean into the violence. And it's not just explosions and guns. It's really more like, okay, we're going to have R-rated violence that will either take you out of the movie because it's just like, what the hell is this doing in a comic? And, and I think that may be my generational albatross. It's like, what the hell, you know, that kind of violence. And to your point about like movies that are more and more expensive like that. If you look at some of the, action comedies and action romantic comedies. Like, what was the one with Sandra Bullock and Fanny Tatum? The Lost City. Okay, that's a $ 900 billion budget. 00:33:22 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the proto-example. When I talk about put two movie stars in the jungle with guns, I'm thinking about that movie. 00:33:27 Speaker 1: Yeah, and of course, it's all coming from Romancing the Stone, which was a little more human-scale and a little lighter on his feet and a much better director for that kind of thing, Robert Zemeckis. And that, to me, that did not help The state of comedy in Hollywood. No, it didn't. 00:33:45 Speaker 2: No. And the other like an even better example for me of like what was kind of going wrong and part of just yet another contributing factor is you look at a movie like The Green Hornet to me is like the perfect example of. 00:33:58 Speaker 1: Remind people. 00:33:58 Speaker 2: Seth Rogen. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg after they had had that success of, you know, he's in Knocked Up. They do Superbad. Suddenly, after years and years of, you know, this guy literally not being able to get a job, he's got people coming to him and saying, we want to work with you. And one of the things that he

was offered was Sony came to him and Evan Goldberg and said, we'll give you, I don't know, I think it's $ 70 million, something like that. We want you to do the Green Hornet, which is people think of it as like the TV show that was on like after the old 60s Batman. 00:34:29 Speaker 1: Green Hornet, what do you think? 00:34:33 Speaker 2: Take it easy, miss. We won't hurt you. I mean, this is not even like a character of, you know, like a huge character. Probably most young people, even in 2011, had no idea who that was. You had to be a real dork to know. And I say this as a real dork. So I did know. But most people did not really know. But this was like the desperate search for any kind of IP. What do we have that we can turn into a superhero movie? Because this is also in the aftermath, again, of The Dark Knight and Iron Man 2. Just huge movies, you know, movies, success on scales that are almost unheard of, you know, billion dollar grosses. How can we. 00:35:09 Speaker 1: Also among two of the best still, those two films. Yes. Yeah. 00:35:14 Speaker 6: Right. 00:35:14 Speaker 2: Which is part of why they were so successful. 00:35:16 Speaker 1: When Iron Man seemed fresh and the idea of someone like Robert Downey Jr. in the middle of a superhero film. Right. It seemed outrageous, you know, and just like, what kind of eccentric casting is that? I mean, 2008 was a very good year for that. Yes. But... At the same time, right. 00:35:33 Speaker 2: But we wound up paying the price for it in so many ways. And this was one of them. And Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg were like, well, you know, like these movies, meaning Dark Knight, Iron Man, these superhero movies are the thing right now. Why don't we do it? That's what, you know, it's kind of almost like a status symbol in a way, you know, like this is our chance to do one of them. And it just, it's not a disaster, but it's just not good. It's not anything really. And the thing that they also encountered doing it was, you know, when they made something like Superbad. They're working on a scale that's so small that like they can kind of just do what they want. You know what I mean? That the executives are not constantly peeking over at what they're doing, which enables them to have a little bit of creative freedom to really make the movie they want. And, you know, like Seth Rogen tells a story about like the very first meeting on the script for Green Hornet. They were like, OK, here's what we have to change. X, Y, Z. Like immediately he's feeling the executives because this is a now they've leveled up in terms of budget. And so they're, you know, they're now having to bow to the whims of the executives. And the movie comes out and it makes it, you know, like any hope that they had had of making maybe a biting satire about superhero movies goes right out the window because it has to appeal to a broad audience. And the result is the Green Hornet movie we got. 00:36:50 Speaker 5: Hey, you come. 00:36:51 Speaker 3: Come in. 00:36:51 Speaker 1: Come in. Hey, who do you work for? 00:36:53 Speaker 2: Chernovsky. 00:36:54 Speaker 1: Same guy everybody works for. Chavotsky? 00:36:56 Speaker 2: Chernovsky. 00:36:58 Speaker 1: What kind of a dumb name is that? 00:37:00 Speaker 6: Where do you get to yourself for him, huh? 00:37:02 Speaker 2: I'm not going to tell you that. And I think that speaks volumes to, again, why another reason why the comedians of that era had a hard time kind of adapting to the Hollywood that was changing all around them. 00:37:13 Speaker 1: There's something in what you just said about just the simple fact, the simple decades, decades old credo of like, oh, we have to make this movie for a broad audience. I don't know right now in 2026, and this predates Trump. So in other words, it predates 2015, 2016. But right now, the idea of finding comedy that appeals to or somehow exists outside any kind of political sphere or doesn't, has so little foot in the real world that it can sort of get beyond that, that somehow it's a uniter, not a divider. And it's not even a notion of punching down or up anymore. It's really more punching left or punching right. Even if people think Shane Gillis' monologue recently on Saturday Night Live, I mean, it wasn't like an outrageously, explicitly, moderately conservative viewpoint being expressed, except when he starts going on about how women are dressing as whores now. And you just thought, what in hell? What year is this? But that was an absolute political divide at work, whether he wanted it to be or not. I mean, it was just the moment where they reminded all of us where we are right now. And I don't know If you can get a studio-backed comedy that doesn't just, not just not quite work for half of the country, but really, really just become like a rallying cry for hatred for the other half. I just feel it. Maybe I'm just so kind of like consumed and distracted by what's going on in the world today. I don't know. I mean, that's not helping my sense of humor. You know what I'm saying? 00:38:52 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:38:53 Speaker 1: Yeah. And neither is this show. I mean, this is bumming me out. Sorry. No. 00:38:57 Speaker 2: Sorry. 00:39:00 Speaker 1: So we're done. Oh, okay. Sorry. No, but I do wonder, and even in a minor way, I remember talking to Billy Eichhorn when he came through four years ago in advance of the Universal comedy, Bros, he made, and you could just feel the tension and the imminent trouble. If this didn't make money, it would be the end of a mainstream gay romantic comedy, at least for a while, you know, backed by a studio limping out of COVID. You know, it was all very fraught. 00:39:35 Speaker 6: Stop! 00:39:35 Speaker 4: What are you doing? 00:39:36 Speaker 1: Stop that! 00:39:37 Speaker 3: Bobby! 00:39:37 Speaker 2: The Lincoln exhibit is canceled. 00:39:39 Speaker 6: Why? 00:39:39 Speaker 1: People are threatening a boycott. They're pulling their donations. 00:39:42 Speaker 2:

There's just not enough proof. Okay. 00:39:44 Speaker 1: You want to put Lincoln back in the closet? 00:39:46 Speaker 3: Fine! 00:39:47 Speaker 1: I'll put him back in the closet! 00:39:48 Speaker 6: I'll put him back in. 00:39:49 Speaker 2: The fucking closet! 00:39:51 Speaker 6: Here! 00:39:52 Speaker 2: There you go Lincoln is back in the closet where you all need him to. 00:39:56 Speaker 1: Be pretty good film actually but it did not it sure did. 00:39:58 Speaker 2: Not do well no and it did and it was you know we haven't seen too many other examples. 00:40:03 Speaker 1: Right but that's why it's it's all these examples why I just think I don't know you know is comedy really this is the moment maybe just for the Netflix special where you can just sort of be alone and now cater to your audience yeah I don't know I mean the whole that's the whole entertainment fragmentation that has worked against this a I don't know. Is this on one hand, there's more comedy material or the dreaded word content? Content, yes. But it's just not in the forms that maybe you or I prefer or remember. So I don't know. Do we just have to suck it up and live with it? 00:40:40 Speaker 2: I mean, that is one of the animating questions that I was thinking about to start the book. It's like, how do we grapple with it? And can these movies make a comeback? And I think what you're saying is a very good argument why perhaps they can't anytime soon. You know, the story you're telling about bros is reminding me of the story that Paul Feig told me when I interviewed him for the book about bridesmaids, that when they were making it, he had colleagues who were writing women who were going out with female-driven comedy ideas to studios at the time. And they were pitching them to studios. And the studio response was, this is great, but we have to wait and see how Bridesmaids does. And if that movie flops, we're not going to make your movie, no matter how clever an idea it is. And he said he felt this enormous pressure that the entire future of female-driven comedy in Hollywood was resting on his one movie. 00:41:34 Speaker 1: Miss? 00:41:36 Speaker 5: No, it's not me. 00:41:39 Speaker 1: Yes, it is you. Please go back to your seat. Yes, I'm with him. 00:41:42 Speaker 6: I'm Mrs. 00:41:44 Speaker 5: Iglesias. 00:41:46 Speaker 1: No, you're not. You were just out here and you put sunglasses on. Out. I don't want to. 00:41:52 Speaker 2: Sir, she can have my seat, okay? 00:41:54 Speaker 5: Everyone should experience first class at least once in their lives, and Annie shouldn't miss out just because she can't afford it. 00:41:58 Speaker 2: No, ma'am, I'm afraid that's not allowed. Help me, I'm poor. And in that case, the movie, thankfully, was a hit and did well, and so perhaps some of those projects got made. 00:42:09 Speaker 1: I don't know. 00:42:09 Speaker 2: He didn't, you know, name the projects that were being pitched at the time. But, I mean, the scary thing is, like your example, where, you know, you feel a pressure to make a hit because if you don't, there won't be another one. And then the movie doesn't do well. And again, like we talked about earlier, there's no DVD sales to prop the movie up. If it doesn't do well in theaters, well, it'll find its audience eventually. When that goes away, yeah, what happens to the next movie? And another element that I've talked to people about or people have said to me is, yes, we do exactly what you said. There is all this comedy content out there. 00:42:45 Speaker 1: Kind of wince every time I hear the word. Right. You did. 00:42:49 Speaker 2: I can confirm. You physically win. 00:42:51 Speaker 1: Say it again. 00:42:52 Speaker 2: Content. 00:42:53 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:42:54 Speaker 3: Oh. 00:42:55 Speaker 1: Oh, no. Okay, good. 00:42:57 Speaker 2: Like we referred to kind of at the beginning of the conversation, the filmmakers that were working in this period, all of them had these inspirations that they loved. Animal House, Blazing Saddles, Steve Martin movies, The Jerk. You know, like they were inspired by great movie comedies that they saw and they were inspired to make movie comedies. Well, the current generation of up-and-coming artists and comedians, they're watching, get ready, content. They're not watching great movie comedies unless they're going back and watching these old ones. So what are they going to be inspired to make? 00:43:34 Speaker 1: Content. 00:43:35 Speaker 2: And that's a real concern that people that I interviewed for the book said. They said, if you're a young comedian, why would you even want to make a movie comedy right now? Because you know it's going to be hard to get the money and you have to write a script and you have to cast it and you have to hope against hope that it's going to turn out well and you're going to spend three years of your life on this project. Whereas you could spend a month honing a standup special and then releasing that on YouTube, you know, and you could, it could be seen by millions of people. 00:44:05 Speaker 1: You got to wonder when the next example of what was the last big sort of star oriented star is born sort of, we'll take this comic personality and build a movie around it. And in this case, Amy Schumer in train wreck, a really good film, John Apatow 2015, I think, I mean, that's more than a decade ago. And I don't know if I can think of, many or any comparable financial successes that were actually good. 00:44:34 Speaker 3: Right. 00:44:34 Speaker 1: That sort of, okay, explained Amy Schumer to a woman's audience and just basically worked. It had a lot of, all of Judd Apatow's sort of strengths in terms of just finding the improv rhythms within a scripted scene. And like every Judd Apatow film was about 15 minutes too long at least. But honestly, that was a small price to pay in his heyday. Yes. I don't know. Ever again? 00:44:58 Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I think he's working on a new movie right now. We'll

have to see how it turns out. I think he's working on it with Glenn Powell, who's not a stand-up comedian, but I guess— He sure isn't. 00:45:08 Speaker 1: And as an actor, the verdict's out. So anyway, go ahead. Go ahead. 00:45:13 Speaker 2: Well, we'll see how it turns out. I think it's interesting. I love watching these documentaries that he keeps making about stand-up comedians. He has one about Norm Macdonald. That's really good. That just came out. And I haven't seen it yet, but he has one on Maria Bamford as well. I think it's fascinating that he has kind of we haven't talked about him too much on the podcast. But like his start was as a teenager was he used to interview stand up comedians because he just loved stand up comedy, wanted to be a stand up. And he figured, well, if I can talk to enough of them and have them tell me how to do it, I'll be able to figure it out. And he basically didn't lie because he was doing it for a radio station. He would call up publicists or standups and say, I'd like to interview for my radio show. Well, his radio show was his high school radio station, which you probably couldn't even hear if you were outside the parking lot of the high school. 00:46:00 Speaker 1: But it worked. 00:46:01 Speaker 2: And he interviewed all these great comedians. And now all these years later, he's kind of returned to like chronicling their lives as documentaries on mostly on Netflix, quite frankly. But they're very good and thoughtful comedians. documentaries. And he did one on Mel Brooks, speaking of him, and Gary Shandling and George Carlin. He has one on George Carlin as well. So it's interesting. But he is working on a new feature film for the first time in a while. I think since, was it The Bubble was the last one? So we'll see how it turns out. I am such a comedy fan that I now just like kind of root for the concept of movie comedies. No matter who's doing it, I'm just sort of hopeful that when it comes out, it will do well Even if I don't like it, just because I want to break the cycle of when those rare ones come out, they just do okay or poorly. And that seems to shut things down even further. 00:46:54 Speaker 1: What we're talking about is not that different from, say, a black story made by black talent. on screen and behind the camera. And there was, it's still the case that Hollywood just, just goes through this enforced amnesia. Like, well, you know, we had a hit, we had many hits, you know, that would suggest, you know, not that many over a number of years that would suggest and proves that yes, the audience is there and it's not just a black audience. I mean, look at Jordan Peele's, I mean, the fact that both of his first two films made the, Us is a lot trickier movie than Get Out. That's a harder movie to kind of, you know, it's maybe not quite as neat and sharp as on the page, but it's full of really amazing work. And that film made a quarter billion in theaters just like Get Out did. And to me, that was like, things are good. I mean, this is a filmmaker who has been found by, and it's not just by the core black audience. I don't think it is at the core. It's just simply an audience who's responding to Responding en masse. 00:48:02 Speaker 2: Film lovers. 00:48:03 Speaker 1: En masse to loving it. 00:48:04 Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah. 00:48:05 Speaker 2: But that's a case of a great comedian who's now moved into the horror genre. 00:48:11 Speaker 3: Right. 00:48:11 Speaker 2: Because he sees that's where the audience is. And it's where he can get movies made and put into theaters. 00:48:16 Speaker 6: Right. 00:48:16 Speaker 1: And there's Zach Kreger. 00:48:17 Speaker 2: And there's Zach Kreger, who's another example. So it's another thing that I am so glad these filmmakers exist. And I've loved almost everything they've made as horror filmmakers. But I do, I keep waiting for like, when are they going to make a comedy? 00:48:30 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I know. 00:48:31 Speaker 2: Couldn't they make a comedy? Shouldn't they make a comedy? 00:48:34 Speaker 1: Last thing, I want to look at the historical timeline. We live when we live. We don't have any control over that. And the work is being done when it's being done. When he saw something like Bridesmaids come along in 2011, and it really was just like finally, not an antidote, but like just a little room at the table for something other than All the people, you know, who dominated the screen comedies before Stiller, you know, Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, disparate talents for sure. You know, Apatow's not the same as Todd Phillips is not the same as Greg Mottola, who directed Superbad and one of my favorites, Adventureland, which made a buck 380. But, you know, still, I loved it. But finally, finally. And I wonder if the dreaded phrase, frat pack comedy, that all the people who were at the center of it now disowned that name or always hated that name. It wasn't theirs. It was just... Sure. It came out of journalism, not comedy. 00:49:34 Speaker 2: Journalists. 00:49:36 Speaker 1: Exactly. But was it. 00:49:39 Speaker 1: I wonder if it just wasn't part of the end of a sort of era of blithe insensitivity and, you know, absolute white male domination of the comic sphere on screen. 00:49:51 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:49:52 Speaker 1: You know, or are we still in it? And, you know, but I mean, that's, to me, it looks a little that way from 2026. Yeah. I don't know. What do you think? I don't know. 00:50:01 Speaker 2: I mean, yes, Bridesmaids does kind of, especially when you look at it in this context, you do kind of go. Ah, finally. It has that feeling, especially if you watch all these movies kind of in order or, you know, if you were like reading my book and watching along with it and then you arrive at Bridesmaids. Yes, it can have that feeling. But I mean, it was produced by Apatow. 00:50:24 Speaker 3: Right. 00:50:24 Speaker 2: And he really believed in it and shepherded it. It took years for that movie to come

about. It wasn't like an instantaneous thing. You know, he. wanted to make something with Kristen Wiig after he worked with her on Knocked Up. She had a tiny role on Knocked Up. 00:50:38 Speaker 1: And killed it. 00:50:39 Speaker 2: And killed. And that's exactly what it is. And that was kind of, was for a long time, Apatow's MO. He would bring in lots of people he liked, he thought were funny, put them in small roles in his movies, and he would kind of see who really hits a home run, who really connects with the audience. And in that tiny role in Knocked Up, Kristen Wiig just exploded off the screen and got huge laughs at every test screening. And so that was the, you know, the kind of the origin of Bridesmaids was you deserve your own movie. How do we make it happen? And it was like a long process of refining the script. And part of the reason I think that movie is so good is that it wasn't like, OK, we're making a movie and we're releasing it in 18 months. They worked on that script and I don't even know how many drafts until it was really good. And years later, it finally comes out. And is a huge hit and is a great movie that really holds up. And it does stand out from a lot of these other movies because it is, you know, it has so many great roles for women. 00:51:39 Speaker 1: And as you mentioned in your talk at the, here we are in Iowa City. Should we just mention that? We're here in Iowa City, yeah. 00:51:47 Speaker 2: The Refocus Film Festival, Iowa City Book Festival. 00:51:49 Speaker 1: And you read from your book, Funny Business, and talked about your work. feelings about seeing bridesmaids recently and really just kind of realizing, and I, and here's where we agree. Absolutely. That it's the relationship between wig and Maya Rudolph's character and the permutations and the struggles that friendship goes through. That's what makes that movie. 00:52:12 Speaker 2: Right. 00:52:13 Speaker 1: And, and all the scenes you remember just for just sort of like, you know, really grotesque comedy or, or just, it just seems where you just sort of like vibing, you know? 00:52:24 Speaker 2: Want to thank you for carefully selecting me as your maid of honor. 00:52:29 Speaker 1: I know you had some other choices, but. 00:52:33 Speaker 2: You're like my sister, and I love you. 00:52:36 Speaker 3: Well, that concludes the speeches for the night. 00:52:39 Speaker 2: Thank you. 00:52:39 Speaker 1: One last thing. 00:52:40 Speaker 2: It's rare to meet someone as an adult who you really connect with, and that's you, Lil. 00:52:45 Speaker 1: I mean, the hangout factor in a movie is kind of the hidden secretive for a lot of movies' success. You just like hanging out with these people. 00:52:52 Speaker 2: That's right. And the vibe of friendship and the relationships between longtime friends, it's not that different than a lot of those other comedies of that period. It's just the perspective is different because it's coming from Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo.

00:53:07 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:53:07 Speaker 2: And they brought their own interests and their own feelings about it and honed in on this interesting idea about jealousy and friendship and how those two things are not mutually exclusive. 00:53:18 Speaker 5: Brilliant. 00:53:21 Speaker 2: Keep smiling. 00:53:22 Speaker 3: Keep shining. 00:53:24 Speaker 1: Knowing you can always count on me. 00:53:28 Speaker 3: For sure. 00:53:30 Speaker 2: And yeah, that is a movie that I really enjoyed it when it came out and seeing it doing the book. I was like, oh, this is like a great movie. This is a great movie comedy. Wouldn't it be nice if we had more movies like this? 00:53:43 Speaker 5: In good times. 00:53:44 Speaker 2: And bad times, I'll be on your side forevermore. That's what friends are for. 00:53:57 Speaker 1: The book is Funny Business. And it's out and about right now. Matt, appreciate the time. 00:54:04 Speaker 2: My pleasure. It was a lot of fun talking. 00:54:05 Speaker 1: All right. See you around. 00:54:06 Speaker 2: Here's two guys. 00:54:07 Speaker 5: Two. 00:54:08 Speaker 2: Enjoying sex in the city, we may have to hand in our. 00:54:11 Speaker 1: The guy card. 00:54:11 Speaker 2: The guy card, yeah. We might have to rescind that. 00:54:14 Speaker 5: Well, when the remake of The Women opens up. 00:54:17 Speaker 1: Mmm, yeah. After we talked, I thought about where Matt and I were in our lives, not literally where we were in Chicago, but in our young critics' heads' lives when we did that tryout for At The Movies cranked up on coffee like we were cocaine fiends trying to basically bro our way through reviewing the Sex and the City movie. And I thought about what George Carlin said back in 1990, long before all the movies Matt focuses on in his book Funny Business came into being, and before folks like Judd Apatow and Adam McKay, Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, and yes, Todd Phillips got their shot over and over again. while others had to wait for years and years for theirs. Is the punching-up-versus-punching-down principle of comedy too reductive? Too simple? 00:55:13 Speaker 2: Maybe. 00:55:14 Speaker 1: Maybe like everything in life, but more so, comedy is wildly subjective. And these days, if you revisit some of your favorite comedies from a generation or two or three or five ago, well, the movies don't change, but everything else has, including you. So maybe... You laugh less, or at least in different places now. And, you know, it's okay to have a super mixed reaction now to something you didn't think about twice back then in terms of who's the butt of what joke. All I know is Plato was right. I always say that. Plato was right. The ancient Greek philosopher said that the only true aim of comedy should be scoring laughs off the vice of self-ignorance. That's a loose translation, by the way. Also, I love the Mel Brooks theory of comedy just as much. Tragedy, he said, is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die. The Movie Racket is produced by Joe Disso and myself. Executive producers, yeah, we've got two of them, Adam Kempinar and Sam Van Halgren. Special thanks to our extraordinarily special guest, Matt Singer, Brooklyn's own His book, Funny Business, is here, there, and everywhere right now. Write to me at movieracket at filmspotting.net and I swear to God I'll read it and potentially respond to it and theoretically appreciate it. Thanks for listening. Remember, punch up, not down. Life is too short to be a jerk. This is a Filmspotting production.