Stop reading this and go see it right this very minute. Everything else in your life can wait.
Now go.
Pixar has made some excellent films in the past, but now they have created a masterpiece.
It's not just good; it's not just great. For the first 45 minutes it truly is an absolute masterpiece.
After that it's simply a great film, but for 45 minutes it's one of the single greatest achievements not just in animation but in the history of international cinema.
And for 45 minutes it's possibly the best "clown theater" presented on film since the late 1920s.
Imagine James Agee's unproduced post-apocalyptic Chaplin screenplay The Tramp's New World as performed by an R2-D2/E.T. hybrid, directed by Jacques Tati at his peak and he's calling Buster Keaton and Stan Laurel for advice.
Patricia Ellis and the Hagenbeck-Wallace Clown Alley (including Kinko Sunberry) who are included in the film, along with Poodles Hanneford and another notable aerial clown who doubles Brown but who's name escapes me.
Well, one thing's for sure ... he ISN'T Bozo the Harmon Clown anymore. Seventeen years on WGN-TV Chicago was a long-enough run for Joey, although I'm sure he'd have been willing to stay another seventeen years had the show not ended.
The last time I saw Joey he thought he was George Burns, regaling the (Santa Barbara, California) Arlington Theater's audiences in a Milt Larsen/Chris Bearde production of "The Really Retro Radio Revue". Betty White was Gracie Allen to Joey's George Burns in that show, and they certainly brought the legendary couple back to life in those eerie yet funny performances.
But last weekend Joey really hurt me.
I know he didn't mean to, but my sides are STILL aching from watching three performances of Joey as Joe Weber (of the Weber & Fields vaudeville comedy team) in a brand new magical musical extravaganza, "PAZZAZZ!" which played the majestic newly-restored Granada Theatre here in Santa Barbara, California.
What's "PAZZAZZ!" ? It's a musical about vaudeville, but SO much more. It's got GREAT music,GREAT lyrics, GREAT costumes, GREAT story, and a truly remarkable cast!
Which includes Joey D'Auria!
So how does Joey D'Auria do in the role?
Let me preface my review by warning: if you're not totally nuts about Joey D'Auria, you'd better stop reading this right now. BECAUSE ..... Joey D'Auria as Joe Weber could easily steal the show from an INCREDIBLY capable, Gifted cast, were he not such a well-schooled, Professional (trained at New York City's prestigious American Academy of Dramatic Arts) entertainer.
Joey D'Auria doesn't steal the show because he knows better. He knows exactly where he is, why he's there, what his job is, and he sings (!) and dances (!) and stars (!!!) his exquisite little way through one of the most delightful musicals I've EVER had the pleasure of seeing THREE TIMES! (I heavily emphasize THREE TIMES because ONCE is ALWAYS enough for me. Not this show it wasn't.)
In "PAZZAZZ!", Joey is in stellar company with the likes of Dale Khristien as Lillian Russell, Joshua Finkel as Lew Fields, Juliet Fischer as Billiard Billie, Amy Gillette as Josie Cohan, Adam Wylie as (young) Georgie Cohan, Danny Michaels as (statue) George M. Cohan, Barbara Hinrichsen as Miss Finchball, Alan Rachins as James Skimmer, and Michael Hill as Manny Kahn, and a gaggle of singers, dancers and musicians that are among the sharpest I've ever seen and heard! Real EYE & EAR CANDY! The ONLY reason I just listed all those people is because they are nothing short of FANTASTIC, each and every one.
Arlene Larsen is the Executive Producer of "PAZZAZZ!" along with her Husband Milt, but she also designed (and created!) the one-hundred-and-fifty costumes, any one of which puts to shame anything you've ever seen in a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey spec, or in any other Broadway show. Brooks Van Horn, eat your heart out!
Besides Joey D'Auria and all the other stellar show stars, the book, sets, lighting, and casting are TOTAL PERFECTION!
If (I should say WHEN!) "PAZZAZZ!" lands on Broadway I won't be the LEAST bit surprised (I will be ASTOUNDED if the show DOESN'T land on Broadway. It's most assuredly a "New York show", and a WINNING one at that!)
But should it pass through your town or city on it''s way East, DON'T YOU DARE MISS JOEY D'AURIA IN "PAZZAZZ!"
It's BETTER than a THREE-RING CIRCUS!
Former vaudevillians Felix B. Adler, Jackie LeClaire Sr., Chester Sherman, Joe Vani Sherman and Kenneth Waite eventually all left vaudeville to become clowns.
It's therefore only fitting that Joey D'Auria left clowning to become a vaudevillian!
Dan Rice (premier American circus clown of the 19th century) finds something more interesting, just to his right, than either the photographer or his camera ; )
Interesting photo indeed... These are Francois' children, Kiko, Albertino and Popol.
In 1920 they created an acrobatic act called "Les Pierrots de Willette", Willette being a painter living in Montmartre, a friend of the family, who usually painted clowns and pierrots. Their costumes are inspired in Willette's paintings, that's why they used the name.
Years later, with the addition of the other brother, Baba, they change their costumes to sailor uniforms and they become "The Craddocks". With that act, they were in United States in 1946.
In 1956, Kiko, Popol and Baba become the new Fratellini trio, and, after Alberto's death (Alberto, not Albert) in 1961, they are just "Les Fratellini".
Former ballet outfitter also made Mr. Snuffleupagus —and no, Kermit the Frog wasn't named after him
Tribune staff report June 25, 2008
Kermit Love, the ballet costume designer whose greatest fame came as a creator, with Jim Henson, of the beloved "Sesame Street" characters Big Bird and Mr. Snuffleupagus, died Saturday in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He was 91.
The cause was congestive heart failure, said Christopher Lyall, Mr. Love's partner of 50 years.
Although Mr. Love collaborated with luminaries of dance like George Balanchine, Agnes de Mille, Robert Joffrey, Jerome Robbins and Twyla Tharp, it was the 8-foot-2, yellow-feathered Big Bird and his 7-foot, woolly mammoth-like friend Mr. Snuffleupagus—both perennially 6 years old—that brought him global attention.
"For Kermit, the costume was just the beginning," said Kevin Clash, who is now senior puppet coordinator for "Sesame Street." "He taught how to create the character out of the costume."
Caroll Spinney, 74, the man inside the bird since "Sesame Street" was first telecast in 1969, said, "We traveled the world doing shows for kids, sometimes with Big Bird conducting orchestras."
In 1973, Spinney said, he and Mr. Love and a "big, hooped sack" containing Big Bird flew to Beijing to perform, a year after President Richard Nixon's diplomatic breakthrough with Communist China. He said Mr. Love was "was very picky about how the bird was handled."
Big Bird had his own seat, Spinney said, adding, "They gave us a half-priced ticket because he was only 6 years old."
Henson, the creator of "Sesame Street," who died in 1990, did the original sketches of Big Bird. Mr. Love built the bird, with its manhole-sized orange foam feet. He added feathers (with some designed to fall off) to make the creature cuter.
Inside, Spinney controlled Big Bird's mouth with his hand and the eyes with a lever attached to his pinky finger. A television monitor inside the puppet allowed Spinney to see the set.
Mr. Love, who, with his Santa Claus-like beard, played Willy the Hot Dog Man on the show, also helped design Oscar the Grouch and Cookie Monster; he insisted he was not the namesake of the famous frog. He created characters for 22 foreign versions of "Sesame Street."
Mr. Love began making puppets for a federal Works Progress Administration theater in 1935 and soon after was designing costumes for Orson Welles' Mercury Theater. Then he began working with Barbara Karinska, the costumer for the New York City Ballet.
Hal Haviland, formerly an unsmiling whiteface clown, performing his comedy horse act.
I think I may have discovered why Hal wouldn't smile in any of his whiteface publicity photos. While I was at the ICHOF I found a photo of the Polack show alley in the mid 50s in Chester and Joe Sherman's scrapbook. In the photo, Hal has his head thrown back, laughing very hard about something, and you can see that his teeth are pretty crooked.
He's smiling very nicely here, with what I guess are a different set of choppers.
My guess is that he was probably self-conscious about his crooked teeth, but it makes for some pretty strange publicity shots. You can find some of his pictures but searching the clownalley.net archives in the upper left corner at the top of the page.
George Denis Patrick Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008) was an American stand-up comedian, actor and author who won four Grammy Awards for his comedy albums.
Carlin was especially noted for his political and black humor and his observations on language, psychology, and religion along with many taboo subjects. Carlin and his "Seven Dirty Words" comedy routine were central to the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, in which a narrow 5-4 decision by the justices affirmed the government's right to regulate Carlin's act on the public airwaves.
In the 2000s, Carlin's stand-up routines focused on the flaws in modern-day America. He often took on contemporary political issues in the United States and satirized the excesses of American culture.
He placed second on the Comedy Central cable television network list of the 10 greatest stand-up comedians, ahead of Lenny Bruce and behind Richard Pryor. He was a frequent performer and guest host on The Tonight Show during the three-decade Johnny Carson era, and was also the first person to host Saturday Night Live.
“ My grandfather would say: "I'm going upstairs to fuck your grandmother". He was an honest man, and he wasn't going to bullshit a four-year-old. ”
Carlin grew up on West 121st Street, in a neighborhood of Manhattan which he later said, in a stand-up routine, he and his friends called "White Harlem", because that sounded a lot tougher than its real name of Morningside Heights. He was raised by his mother, who left his father when Carlin was two years old. After 3 semesters, at the age of 14, Carlin involuntarily left Cardinal Hayes High School and briefly attended Bishop Dubois High School in Harlem. He later joined the United States Air Force, training as a radar technician. He was stationed at Barksdale AFB in Bossier City, Louisiana.
During this time he began working as a disc jockey on KJOE, a radio station based in the nearby city of Shreveport. He did not complete his Air Force enlistment. Labeled an "unproductive airman" by his superiors, Carlin was discharged on July 29, 1957.
In 1959, Carlin and Jack Burns began as a comedy team when both were working for radio station KXOL in Fort Worth, Texas. After successful performances at Fort Worth's beat coffeehouse, The Cellar, Burns and Carlin headed for California in February 1960 and stayed together for two years as a team before moving on to individual pursuits.
1960s
In the 1960s, Carlin began appearing on television variety shows, notably The Ed Sullivan Show. His most famous routines were: The Indian Sergeant ("You wit' the beads... get outta line"), Stupid disc jockeys ("Wonderful WINO...") — "The Beatles' latest record, when played backwards at slow speed, says 'Dummy! You're playing it backwards at slow speed!'" and Al Sleet, the "hippie-dippie weatherman" — "Tonight's forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely-scattered light towards morning."
Variations on the first three of these routines appear on Carlin's 1967 debut album, Take Offs and Put Ons, recorded live in 1966 at The Roostertail in Detroit, Michigan.
During this period, Carlin became more popular as a frequent performer and guest host on The Tonight Show during the Johnny Carson era, becoming one of Carson's most frequent substitutes during the host's three-decade reign. Carlin was also cast on Away We Go, a 1967 comedy show. His material during his early career, which included impressions, and his appearance, which consisted of suits and short-cropped hair, has been seen as "conventional", particularly when contrasted with his later antiestablishment material.
Carlin was present at Lenny Bruce's arrest for obscenity. According to legend the police began attempting to detain members of the audience for questioning, and asked Carlin for his identification. Telling the police he did not believe in government issued IDs, he was arrested and taken to jail with Bruce in the same vehicle.
1970s
Eventually, Carlin changed both his routines and his appearance. He lost some TV bookings by dressing strangely for a comedian of the time, wearing faded jeans and sporting a beard and earrings at a time when clean-cut, well-dressed comedians were in vogue. Using his own persona as a springboard for his new comedy, he was presented by Ed Sullivan in a performance of "The Hair Piece," and quickly regained his popularity as the public caught on to his sense of style.
In this period he also perfected what is perhaps his best-known routine, "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television", recorded on his album Class Clown.
Carlin was arrested on July 21, 1972 at Milwaukee's Summerfest and charged with violating obscenity laws after performing this routine. The case, which prompted Carlin to refer to the words for a time as, "The Milwaukee Seven", was dismissed in December of that year; the judge declared the language indecent, stating that the language was indecent but cited free speech, as well as the lack of any disturbance.
In 1973, a man complained to the FCC that his son had heard a later, similar routine, "Filthy Words", from Occupation: Foole, broadcast one afternoon over WBAI, a Pacifica Foundation FM radio station in New York City. Pacifica received a citation from the FCC, which sought to fine Pacifica for allegedly violating FCC regulations which prohibited broadcasting "obscene" material. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the FCC action, by a vote of 5 to 4, ruling that the routine was "indecent but not obscene", and the FCC had authority to prohibit such broadcasts during hours when children were likely to be among the audience. F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978). The court documents contain a complete transcript of the routine.
The controversy only increased Carlin's fame (or notoriety). Carlin eventually expanded the dirty-words theme with a seemingly interminable end to a performance (ending with his voice fading out in one HBO version, and accompanying the credits in the Carlin at Carnegie special for the 1982-83 season), and a set of 49 web pages organized by subject and embracing his "Incomplete List Of Impolite Words".
Carlin was the first-ever host of NBC's Saturday Night Live, debuting on October 11, 1975. (He also hosted SNL on November 10, 1984, where he actually appeared in sketches. The first time he hosted, he only appeared to perform stand-up and introduce the guest acts.) The following season, 1976-77, Carlin also appeared regularly on CBS Television's Tony Orlando & Dawn variety series.
Carlin unexpectedly stopped performing regularly in 1976, when his career appeared to be at its height. For the next five years, he rarely appeared to perform stand-up, although it was at this time he began doing specials for HBO as part of its On Location series. His first two HBO specials aired in 1977 and 1978. It was later revealed that Carlin had suffered the first of his three non-fatal heart attacks during this layoff period.
1980s and 1990s
In 1981, Carlin returned to the stage, releasing A Place For My Stuff, and he returned to HBO and New York City with the Carlin at Carnegie TV special, videotaped at Carnegie Hall and airing during the 1982-83 season. Carlin continued doing HBO specials every year or every other year over the following decade-and-a-half. All of Carlin's albums from this time forward are the HBO specials.
Carlin's acting career was primed with a major supporting role in the 1987 comedy hit Outrageous Fortune, starring Bette Midler and Shelley Long; it was his first notable screen role after a handful of previous guest roles on television series. Playing drifter Frank Madras, the role poked fun at the lingering effect of the 1960s psychedelic counterculture.
In 1989, he gained popularity with a new generation of teens when he was cast as Rufus, the time-traveling mentor of the titular characters in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and reprised his role in the film sequel Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey as well as the first season of the cartoon series.
In 1991, he provided the narrative voice for the American version of the children's show Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, a role he continued until 1998. He played "Mr. Conductor" on the PBS children's show Shining Time Station which featured Thomas from 1991 to 1993 as well as Shining Time Station TV specials in 1995 and Mr. Conductor's Thomas Tales in 1996. Also in 1991, Carlin had a major supporting role in the movie The Prince of Tides along with Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand.
Carlin began a weekly Fox Broadcasting sitcom, The George Carlin Show, in 1993, playing New York City cab driver "George O'Grady". He quickly included a variation of the "Seven Words" in the plot. The show ran 27 episodes through December 1995.
In 1997, his first hardcover book, Brain Droppings, was published, and sold over 750,000 copies as of 2001. Carlin was honored at the 1997 Aspen Comedy Festival with a retrospective George Carlin: 40 Years of Comedy hosted by Jon Stewart.
In 1999, Carlin played a supporting role as a satirically marketing-oriented Roman Catholic cardinal in filmmaker Kevin Smith's movie Dogma. He worked with Smith again with a cameo appearance in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and later played an atypically serious role in Jersey Girl, as the blue collar father of Ben Affleck's character.
2000s
In 2001, Carlin was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 15th Annual American Comedy Awards.
In December 2003, California U.S. Representative Doug Ose introduced a bill (H.R. 3687) to outlaw the broadcast of Carlin's seven "dirty words", including "compound use (including hyphenated compounds) of such words and phrases with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms)". (The bill omits "tits", but includes "ass" and "asshole", which were not part of Carlin's original routine.)
The following year, Carlin was fired from his headlining position at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas after an altercation with his audience. After a poorly received set filled with dark references to suicide bombings and beheadings, Carlin stated that he couldn't wait to get out of "this fucking hotel" and Las Vegas in general, claiming he wanted to go back East "where the real people are". He continued to insult his audience, stating, "People who go to Las Vegas, you've got to question their fucking intellect to start with. Traveling hundreds and thousands of miles to essentially give your money to a large corporation is kind of fucking moronic. That's what I'm always getting here is these kind of fucking people with very limited intellects." An audience member shouted back that Carlin should "stop degrading us", at which point Carlin responded "Thank you very much, whatever that was. I hope it was positive; if not, well blow me." He was immediately fired by MGM Grand and soon after announced he would enter rehab for drug and alcohol addiction.
For years, Carlin had performed regularly as a headliner in Las Vegas. He began a tour through the first half of 2006, and had a new HBO Special on November 5, 2005 entitled Life is Worth Losing, which was shown live from the Beacon Theatre in New York City. Topics covered included suicide, natural disasters (and the impulse to see them escalate in severity), cannibalism, genocide, human sacrifice, threats to civil liberties in America, and how an argument can be made that humans are inferior to animals.
On February 1, 2006, Carlin mentioned to the crowd, during his Life is Worth Losing set at the Tachi Palace Casino in Lemoore, California, that he had been discharged from the hospital only six weeks previously for "heart failure" and "pneumonia", citing the appearance as his "first show back".
Carlin provided the voice of Fillmore, a character in the Disney/Pixar animated feature Cars, which opened in theaters on June 9, 2006. The character Fillmore, who is presented as an antiestablishment hippie, is a VW Microbus with a psychedelic paint job, whose front license plate reads "51237" — Carlin's birthday.
Carlin's last HBO stand-up special, It's Bad for Ya, aired live on March 1, 2008 in Santa Rosa, CA at the Wells Fargo Center For The Arts. Many of the themes that appeared in this HBO special included "American Bullshit", "Rights", "Death", "Old Age", and "Child Rearing". Carlin had been working the new material for this HBO special for several months prior in concerts all over the country.
On June 18, 2008, four days before his death, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC announced that Carlin would be the 2008 honoree of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor to be awarded in November of that year.
Personal life
In 1961, Carlin married Brenda Hosbrook (born August 5, 1936, died May 11, 1997), whom he had met while touring the previous year, in her parents' living room in Dayton, Ohio. The couple had a daughter, Kelly, in 1963. In 1971, George and Brenda renewed their wedding vows in Las Vegas, Nevada. Brenda died of liver cancer a day before Carlin's 60th birthday, in 1997.
Carlin later married Sally Wade on June 24, 1998, and the marriage lasted until his death - two days before their tenth anniversary.
In December 2004, Carlin announced that he would be voluntarily entering a drug rehabilitation facility to receive treatment for his dependency on alcohol and painkillers.
Carlin did not vote and often criticized elections as an "illusion of choice". He said he last voted for George McGovern, who ran for President in 1972 against Richard Nixon.
Religion
“ If God had intended us not to masturbate he would've made our arms shorter. ”
— George Carlin
Although raised in the Roman Catholic faith, Carlin often denounced the idea of God in interviews and performances, most notably with his "Invisible Man in the Sky" and "There Is No God" routines. In mockery, he invented the parody religion Frisbeetarianism for a newspaper contest. He defined it as the belief that when a person dies "his soul gets flung onto a roof, and just stays there", and cannot be retrieved.
Carlin also joked that he worshipped the Sun, because he could actually see it, but prayed to Joe Pesci (a good friend of his in real life) because "he's a good actor", and "looks like a guy who can get things done!"
Carlin also introduced the "Two Commandments", a revised "pocket-sized" list of the Ten Commandments in his HBO special Complaints and Grievances, ending with the additional commandment of "Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself."
Themes
“ The very existence of flame throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done. ”
— George Carlin
Carlin's themes have been known for causing considerable controversy in the American media. His most usual topic was (in his words) humanity's "bullshit", which might include murder, genocide, war, rape, corruption, religion and other aspects of human civilization. His delivery frequently treated these subjects in a misanthropic and nihilistic fashion, such as in his statement during the Life is Worth Losing show: "I look at it this way... For centuries now, man has done everything he can to destroy, defile, and interfere with nature: clear-cutting forests, strip-mining mountains, poisoning the atmosphere, over-fishing the oceans, polluting the rivers and lakes, destroying wetlands and aquifers... so when nature strikes back, and smacks him on the head and kicks him in the nuts, I enjoy that. I have absolutely no sympathy for human beings whatsoever. None. And no matter what kind of problem humans are facing, whether it's natural or man-made, I always hope it gets worse."
Language was a frequent focus of Carlin's work. Euphemisms that in his view, seek to distort and lie, and the use of language he felt was pompous, presumptuous or silly, were often the target of Carlin's routines.
Carlin also gave special attention to prominent topics in American and Western Culture, such as obsession with fame and celebrity, consumerism, Christianity, political alienation, corporate control, hypocrisy, child raising, fast food diet, news stations, self-help publications, patriotism, sexual taboos, certain uses of technology and surveillance, and the pro-life position, among many others.
Carlin openly communicated in his shows and in his interviews that his purpose for existence was entertainment, that he was "here for the show". He professed a hearty schadenfreude in watching the rich spectrum of humanity slowly self-destruct, in his estimation, of its own design; saying, "When you're born, you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front-row seat." He acknowledged that this is a very selfish thing, especially since he included large human catastrophes as entertainment.
In a late-1990s interview with radio talk show host Art Bell, he remarked about his view of human life: "I think we're already 'circling the drain' as a species, and I'd love to see the circles get a little faster and a little shorter."
In the same interview, he recounted his experience of a California earthquake in the early-1970s as: "...an amusement park ride. Really, I mean it's such a wonderful thing to realize that you have absolutely no control... and to see the dresser move across the bedroom floor unassisted... is just exciting." Later he summarized: "I really think there's great human drama in destruction and nature unleashed and I don't get enough of it."
A routine in Carlin's 1999 HBO special You Are All Diseased focusing on airport security leads up to the statement: "Take a fucking chance! Put a little fun in your life! ... most Americans are soft and frightened and unimaginative and they don't realize there's such a thing as dangerous fun, and they certainly don't recognize a good show when they see one."
Death
On June 22, 2008, Carlin was admitted to St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California after complaining of chest pain. He died later that day at 5:55 p.m. PDT of heart failure at the age of 71.
My very favorite picture of Billy and Mike and proof positive that classic American circus clowning was ushered into the 21st century by true professionals like these two gentlemen.
