NO COMMERCIALS, NO MERCY: I will no longer complain about the Kennedy Center's selections for the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, because they have clearly given up on trying to make it an award recognizing lifetime achievement in comedy. After honoring folks like Richard Pryor, Carl Reiner, Bob Newhart and Neil Simon in its first decade and George Carlin and Bill Cosby more recently, they've now gone to honoring Tina Fey in 2010 and, for 2011, Will Ferrell?
I'm sure they can do a nice tv show with tributes and montages galore, but there's no prestige to the thing anymore. It's just a way to fill two hours on PBS. Apologies to David Letterman, Norman Lear, Eddie Murphy, Woody Allen, Carol Burnett, Mel Brooks, and Nora Ephron -- you just haven't done as much to deserve it yet, I guess.
Woody's personal life is going to make it very very hard for him to ever get this sort of award, and may also suffer from the fact that his late career work is decidedly not as good as his early career work. Other worthies? Johnny Carson (if they can award posthumously), Mike Nichols/Elaine May, Robin Williams, Garry Shandling, and James L. Brooks (if just for Taxi and The Simpsons).
ReplyDeleteI think you're mostly right, and I'm sure it will eventually become as meaningless as other awards shows to those who still cared about it. Still, I think it's sometimes nice to honor people while they're still (or at least recently) funny and relevant.
ReplyDeleteI know there can be bad results when one rushes to award humorists while they are in the prime of their careers ("quick, Dane Cook's 15 minutes are almost up!"). But given how diluted the tail end of most careers are, I'd just assume not wait around for the entire decline phase. I know the award wasn't around for his peak, but I'd rather not see a Norman Lear montage that included not only clips from All in the Family and Fernwood 2 Night, but lots of 227 and Who's the Boss. If Eddie Murphy were honored next year, they'd spend half the time talking about Dr. Doolittle and Shrek. The only things you gain by waiting around for a humorist's twilight years are lots of disciples to talk about how much they were influenced by the honoree and a little more certainty that you haven't missed the honoree's last big comeback.
One of those things is not like the others. As brilliant as Shandling's two tv shows were, that's not quite the same resume.
ReplyDeleteBrooks is due for a full Kennedy Center Honor. (Nichols already has one, as did Carson.)
Sid Caesar. My God, Sid Caesar.
ReplyDeleteRick Moranis. Dan Akroyd. Martin Short. Bill frickin' Murray.
Dick Van Dyke. Jerry Lewis.
Joan Rivers. Phyllis Diller.
There are plenty of more contemporary people whose peaks are behind them with stronger bodies of work than Ferrell: Jim Carrey. Chris Rock. Adam Sandler.
If you want PBS to implode on itself, give it to Tom Lehrer.
Doesn't he already have a whole hour?
ReplyDeleteI dunno. Writing, producing, and starring in one of the two or three greatest sitcoms ever -- one that is in no small part a meditation on the making of comedy -- is one of those outstanding accomplishments that can elevate an otherwise solid, if not brilliant, resume to the level of the greats. If he'd done nothing other than Larry Sanders, there'd still be a special place for him in the American comedy pantheon.
ReplyDeleteShandling certainly can stake as good of a claim to the award as Fey or Ferrell, but I suppose that's your point.
Fey's resume is better than Shandling's, between (a) SNL head writer, (b) iconic Palin impression, (c) Mean Girls, and (d) 30 Rock. Also, as I love to mention, she wrote the "Colonel Angus" sketch. Shandling just doesn't have the same breadth -- and I say this as someone who agrees with everything you say about the importance of The Larry Sanders Show.
ReplyDeleteJonathan Williams for crying out loud.
ReplyDeleteJonathan Winters was the second honoree -- 1999.
ReplyDeleteNo, Squid - he shares it with Bill MacNeil.
ReplyDelete