…and hilarity ensues.
Doc and “The Aristocrats”
In his LJ entry today, the ever informative robin_d_laws makes mention of a new documentary called “The Aristocrats”. Now, for those of you who are not in the know (which will be 99.9% of you), The Aristocrats is the title (and punchline) of what is widely known among comedians as the “worlds filthiest joke”. In point of fact, the joke in and of itself is not all that funny or, if told in it’s very basic form, very filthy.
But oh, my friends, the humor comes not from the joke, but from the way it is told. And it is never ever told the same way twice. In the film, the joke id told by about 100 comics, from George Carlin to Whoopi Goldberg to old vaudevillians. In real life, it is told by comics when they are sitting around with other comics…or sometimes when they want to try and shock and disgust all or part of an audience. And once in awhile, an old comedian might just tell it to a bunch of young bucks who THINK they are funny, just to see what they can do with it.
And that is how I came to hear it and tell it for the first and so far only time back in 1982.
I was living in San Jose and my friend Henry asked if I’d like to go with him to visit his uncle. I said OK and off we went, with Henry’s two cousins in tow. Now, Bob and Rich, the two cousins, were some pretty funny guys. They were a couple of New Jersey guys and had a very physical style of humor. Henry called them the “Two Stooges”. Henry himself had a rather dry sense of humor, while I…well, I’m sort of a mix of George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Robin Williams and Daffy Duck.
So anyway, we go see Uncle Eddy. Now, Uncle Eddy was actually their great uncle and he was a former minor vaudevillian and had run a hotel that catered to all sorts of showbiz acts, including tons of comics from the famous to the totally forgotten. He was also one of those great funny alcoholic uncles that I think every family in America has. On this particular day, he was in rare form with both stories and jokes. And then, he told us about The Aristocrats.
The joke in short form: A family, consisting of father, mother, son, daughter and family dog, enter a talent agent’s office. The agent says “Show me yer act” and they proceed to get naked and perform a wide array of sexual and scatological acts. With each new perversion, the agent is more amazed/disgusted/shocked. Finally, when they have finished, the agent say “My God, that’s the most filthy thing I’ve ever seen! What do you call yourselves?”. To which the father replies, “The Aristocrats!”
See, I told you, not very funny or filthy.
After he told us about it, Uncle Eddy told the joke. He took maybe 3 minutes to tell it and he did a pretty good job. It was fairly nasty and pretty funny. Then he asked us to tell it to him.
Henry, knowing he was on the bottom rung of the humor hierarchy here, went first. He did ok, but it wasn’t all that funny.
Next came Bob and Rich, who went into full Joisy mode and got very very filthy. It got even better when they started pantomiming the perversities. I nearly split a gut laughing.
Then it was my turn and I turned both the Humor Meter and the Filth Meter up to the redline. No way was I gonna let New Jersey beat out California:) I used body language, accents, wildass tangenital musings, every prop I could grab and every perversion and blasphemy I could think of. It took me maybe 15 minutes to tell it, considering that I cracked myself up a few times.
When the dust cleared, it was proclaimed that I had won. Then we all got drunker than we already were, with Henry and I finally staggering to our respective homes about midnight.
I never told that joke again.
Why? Well, mostly because I got busy in my personal life and the joke itself slipped back into the recesses of my mind, but partly because it is not the sort of joke you just tell to anybody. It only seemed right that it be told in a gathering of funny folks.
Now, however, with the release of the movie, the joke is out there for everyone to hear and tell. Maybe I’ll tell it again sometime, for the right audience. Especially if they ply me with booze. And if I think they can hand the Filthiest Joke In The World.
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