Filthy joke made into film

by Abel Horwitz

Daily Lobo

These days, Paul Provenza's a busy man.

For the last few years, Provenza and his friend Penn Jillette - the vocal half of Penn and Teller - had been filming a documentary about the fabled "filthiest joke in the world."

The film, titled "The Aristocrats," was released last summer to rave reviews and delighted audiences with its vulgarity and its originality. Now on a world tour to promote the DVD release of the film, Provenza is in Albuquerque for the Revolutions International Theater Festival. He's here to promote his documentary and one of the comedians who appears in "The Aristocrats," as well as to direct one of the festival's most promising comedies.

To make "The Aristocrats," Provenza and Jillette didn't do much more than hang out with their friends, ask them a few questions, and record the conversation on a hand-held camcorder. Of course, their friends consist of such people as George Carlin, Drew Carey and Robin Williams, as well as several dozen other famous comedians.

"When we shot the movie, we did it in a very guerilla-like way," Provenza said. "We wanted to create a vibe of simply hanging out. We wanted to have an experience with the least amount of artificiality as possible. In most cases the fact that we were shooting sort of fell away and we were just hanging out with friends."

The joke that is the subject of the documentary is notoriously unfunny in nature, consisting of a premise of a man walking into a talent agent's office and showing the agent an act he's been working on. At this point in the film the comedians elaborate on the act and transform it into what they wish, and, comedians being comedians, the joke keeps getting more hilarious and elaborate.

"The thesis of the film is that it's the singer and not the song," he said. "Every comedian did a different thing with the joke. As we got deeper into it, the joke became more distinctive with each performer. The more we heard the joke, the more fascinating it became to hear the comedian's creative process with it."

Provenza said he is happy with the response people have given his documentary.

"Someone recently said to me, 'Remember when you were 13 years old and fascinated with comedy? Remember that feeling you had when you were a kid? Imagine if you were a kid at that age and you could have gone and rented this movie,'" he said. "It's really fully of heart and soul. It makes comedians feel proud to be comedians."

This week at the theater festival one of "The Aristocrats" most intriguing performers, Billy the Mime, will perform his act.

"Billy the Mime uses classic, traditional and conventional miming and applies it to today's subject matter," Provenza said. "The show is an absolute mind fuck. You take an emotional journey with the show. It's quite remarkable in the world of mime. Brilliant, odd and touching."

When Provenza isn't promoting the documentary or performers from the documentary, he's busy directing his own show, "Nigerian Spam Scam Scam."

"The show is a true story about a very funny guy, Dean Cameron, who always responds to those Nigerian spam e-mails, which ask for your bank account number in exchange for millions of dollars, and asks, 'Great, do you have any toast?'" he said. "On occasions people would respond. The show is about years of correspondence between Dean and these Nigerian spammers. Dean assumes this identity of a sexually confused Floridian millionaire and the Nigerians keep pandering to him because they think they'll get his millions out of this transaction."

He said the film shows how the scam works.

"For this reason it is kind of a documentary," he said. "Dean is just writing to them to be funny but with this sophisticated edge to keep them on the hook. After it is all said and done, it's just an act - a theater piece that's pure comedy. But, it blurs the lines between reality and fiction."