Why I’m Taking Comedy Films Seriously

Look, I get it. Starting a podcast in 2020 about the history of comedy films might come across as a bit tone deaf, given that the news for much of this year has delivered seemingly nothing but anxiety, tragedy, injustice, and absurdity at a breakneck pace. And that’s just any random Tuesday.

But, perhaps that’s the best time to turn to comedy. Not merely as an escape from the daily stresses, although it admirably serves that purpose, but also because comedy can be a useful tool to help us understand the world we inhabit. At least, that’s the basis of the question I asked myself that inspired this podcast: what can learning the history of comedy films teach me about comedy, about film, and about who we are? And, as I’ll illustrate in a moment, that’s the sort of question I love to ask myself about nearly any bit of pop culture or history that captures my attention for an extended moment of time.

While the question sounds academic in nature, let me take this moment to point out that I am not an academic (but I am a big fan of such and hope to convince actual academics to join me as guests in these conversations). I am not an expert in any capacity on any of this. I don’t hold any degrees in film studies or related topics (although I did take a very enjoyable Intro to Film Studies elective many decades ago in my sophomore year of college). In fact, I don’t hold any degrees at all. And, while I have a great love of comedy films, I know that my knowledge of their history and evolution is superficial at best: trivial facts filled in by random biographies and essays I may have read here or there and bits of info gleaned from the hosts of Turner Classic Movies as they introduced the next film of the day’s schedule. That’s more or less the point, though. I want to teach myself whatever I can learn that will take me beyond merely knowing the household names (Chaplin, Keaton, the Marx Brothers, Mel Brooks, etc.) and gaining a better understanding of how the people who made us laugh in the past have influenced what makes us laugh today.

And so, when the pandemic gave me some unexpected free time by putting an end to my nights of driving around the Southeastern US performing stand-up comedy in bars, breweries, comedy theaters, festivals, and at least one vacant lot, I reached into the back of my mind where this question about comedy film history had been fermenting and decided to act upon it. I got my hands on some cinema studies textbooks. I found essays on the early film pioneers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I followed YouTube rabbit holes of old movies and discovered online collections maintained by the Library of Congress and other libraries, museums, and archives. As I became more fascinated by what I was learning, I realized that perhaps other people might enjoy it, too.

I’ve kind of done something like this before, to be honest. Something in my wiring leads me to it. Since my childhood, when I have found a topic that really captures my interest, I usually have come to a point when I want to learn as much as possible what led to the genesis of that topic. My mother introduced me to Elvis Presley’s music when I was very young. And when I got old enough to get my own records, I wanted to learn more about how his sound came to be. Soon, with the help of a trusty library card and some spare change earned from a newspaper route, I was getting my hands regularly on LPs containing rockabilly, rhythm and blues, and then blues, before working my way forward again chronologically. Before I knew it, I was the kid in middle school with a weird knowledge of jazz and big band music, whose record collection hopscotched among musical selections bound to no single decade or genre. When I found a favorite author, I would usually ask a teacher who that author liked and then set about reading those works, too. In the 1990s, I found myself working for a regional historical society, and soon realized my odd way of deconstructing a topic of interest worked quite nicely as a means of using pop culture topics to teach public history. Living in the football-mad southeastern US, I took an interest in the history of college football and used that to curate a museum exhibit and lecture series on how the history of college football both reflected and played a role in shaping the culture of East Tennessee. (The exhibit and lecture series were called “The Spirit of the Hill: Football in the Culture of East Tennessee.”) My favorite such project was the creation of a self-guided walking tour of downtown Knoxville, that played upon my interests in regional history, music history, and my previous professional experience in radio, to highlight Knoxville’s role in the development of country music. (If you’re ever in Knoxville, the Cradle of Country Music Walking Tour is still there waiting for you to enjoy.) I loved the opportunity to dive backwards in time and to find ways to share what I had learned myself.

Which brings us all back to this. As a comedian (by the way, you’ve never heard of me and that’s alright as I’m pretty low on the scale of comedians, but you can go to my comedy website to learn more about that part of my life), I was quite aware of podcasts, but had mostly resisted the urge to create one. But podcasting seemed an ideal medium for me to share this. And once I realized that 2020 was the 125th anniversary of the first comedy film’s first public screening, I knew what I wanted to do. So, Acting Funny, was born (with some great assistance from my wife in helping me choose a name). Each episode will look at one year, moving in chronological order from 1895 forward, focusing on one film from that year. I’m inviting guest experts to join me each episode for a discussion of that film and that year, to see what I (and you) can learn about how comedy and film have helped us move forward.

So, that’s the plan at least. And, this post hopefully explains a bit about me and why I wanted to do this. In the next post, I’ll explain more of the “ground rules” of how I hope to keep this thing on the tracks. Thanks for reading this far if you did. I hope you’ll stick around and be a part of the launch this December for the first episode. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the newsletter (you’ll find a submission form at the bottom of this page) where you can find out when I’m launching the first episode and where you can find the podcast on your device.