Wednesday, February 12, 2014
YOUR COMIC OF COMICS: Jamie Poniewozik remembers the late Sid Caesar: "[E]ven if you’ve seen little of his original work, any family tree of modern comedy branches back to Caesar, through the writers and actors he worked with, the works they went on to create, and the sketch-comedy format that the chamelonic performer Caesar defined."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
From all the stories I've read over the years, Caesar had the reputation of brooking nothing but the best and the funniest from his writer's room; it's a tribute to that to see how many great, TIGHT writers came out of that room.
ReplyDeleteRIP. To hear the esteem that Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Dick Van Dyke, and others of that era of television had for Caesar is, I think, to understand at least a bit of his character. If you haven't heard them yet, and you're up for some amazing, wide-ranging conversations and hearing about some really sweet friendships that continued for 60+ years, I highly, highly recommend the Marc Maron WTF podcast interviews with Brooks, Reiner, and Van Dyke. They're probably behind Maron's paywall by now, but these were excellent episodes.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone else remember America 2100, a show about two guys from modern 1979 who wake up in the year 2100, and America is a utopia (of sorts), with Sid Caeser as the voice of the benevolent government dictatorship?
ReplyDelete