Tuesday

The High Art of Phoning It In by Otterfarm

TBB is a place where gentlemen of debatable racial composition gather to discuss their neighborhoods, sex, drugs, and art.

Well, not me. I’m all whitey. No racial debate here. I’m as white as they get. My mother’s family came to Virginia from Merry Ole Aingland as indentured servants in 1632. My dad’s family came from Germany in, oh, fuck it, let’s say 1887. Put’em together and what have you got? WRONG. I’m mostly Welsh. That’s what happens when you have 800 great, great, great, great, grandparents. It fucks with the math. Just ask the famous Asian golfer, Tiger Woods.

But today I want to focus our discussion on art. Specifically, the High Art of Phoning It In. (High is not intended as a pun, despite one of my case studies below.) I define the High Art of Phoning It In as the comedic ability to make people laugh with what appears to be no effort, no concern, no desire, and almost no material. We have no idea why these people are funny, let alone successful or employed. Yet they endure – they keep showing up and making (some of) us laugh. And I offer this up today as a discussion rather than a lecture, because, frankly, I’m at a bit of a loss as to how the greats do it. Somehow or other, the phoning it in becomes the comedy. The cheating us of what we have paid for, or what we expect from a comic, is exactly what becomes the source of the comedy.

Actors and comedians are not always what they seem. Dean Martin was rarely drunk on stage. Chris Rock is really a pretty quiet guy. Zach Galifianakis is not nearly as tortured as his stage persona suggests. But two modern comics seem to have mastered the High Art of Phoning It In to such a degree that it seems completely natural – there is seemingly no faking how little effort they are putting into their act. Compare their delivery to that of indisputably hardworking (suffering) comics such as Katt Williams (previously discussed on TBB), Robin Williams (not funny), or the great Louis CK.

Doug Benson
If you knew Doug Benson in middle school, he was probably pudgy, obnoxious, and hated by girls. Think of the fat kid from Stand by Me if he didn’t become Gerry O’Connell. Then, around 10th grade, he probably started smoking pot (as did his classmates) and that took the edge off his annoying nerd persona and revealed his inner hilarity. (I’m making all this up.) Benson never backed away from this formula. He is best known for his documentary Super High Me in which he smokes pot for 30 days straight. Or perhaps more remarkable, he begins the film by NOT smoking pot for 30 days. His other two star turns were 1) the most over-acted two-line cameo ever on Friends (“My mom calls it BLOOMIES.”), and a couple of seasons on Last Comic Standing, which I’ve never seen so I can’t comment on.

These days you can watch him phone it in on Best Week Ever with Paul F. Tompkins.

Here’s what distinguishes Benson from other brilliant comics. He never turns it off. Either he’s always high (likely), or the character is genuine - a rare turn for anything coming out of LA. Take a look at some of his Best Day Ever highlights where his delivery is some combination of over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek, sincere, and mostly high. There is something appealingly self-destructive about Benson. The higher profile a gig, the more he will phone it in…and hence, the funnier it will be.



Despite his success, I suspect girls still hate him.

Doug’s other brilliance is his ability to create comedic vehicles for himself that allow him to phone it in. The Doug Benson Interruption is a monthly-ish live show in LA where his comedian friends do their act and he sits in the audience with a microphone and interrupts them. The results vary but at its best, the improvisational banter can far out perform the planned material.

His other phoning it in vehicle is his I Love Movies podcast available on iTunes (earlier incarnation was available on HandHeldComedy.com). The best episodes generally include Patton Oswalt or Paul F. Tompkins, but one episode with Bob Odenkirk best tells the story. Benson, who frequently admits to being high during tapings, ate a brownie earlier in the day and by taping was still deep in the throws of an all day brownie high. Odenkirk, a consummate professional, struggled, too hard and unnecessarily, to carry the show, thinking Benson was going to blow it. But for plus or minus 30 minutes, Benson, who could barely complete his sentences, successfully delivered professional comedy, without material, without delivery, without coherence, based almost entirely on the force of his character - a heroic display of phoning it in.

Norm MacDonald
The All-Time Master of phoning it in is Norm MacDonald. This is a comic whose Burt Reynolds imitation is identical to his Bob Dole imitation, which in turn, is identical to his Norm MacDonald character. MacDonald, who can’t act his way out of a paper bag, has strung together a 20-year career that mostly involves getting undeserved high-profile gigs (SNL Weekend Update, various sit-coms, a movie or two) and then getting fired from them. And then he goes on talk shows, sometimes drunk, and expresses his complete disbelief at how any of this came to pass. Norm MacDonald is perhaps the only comic who can simultaneously laugh at his own jokes (as if they genuinely surprise him) and act confused about why anyone else is laughing. His act is that of the thoroughly unintentional comic. I say all of this with fully-adulated reverence.

I needn’t say more about the master, Norm MacDonald. I’ll let his work speak for itself.



Otterfarm @ Twitter
at Tuesday, May 19, 2009