Meet “Dashan,” the Canadian Comedian Who Achieved Accidental Stardom in China

in Comedy, Life | January 25th, 2013

West­ern stu­dents of the Chi­nese lan­guage tend to know Dashan. Some­times they don’t like him very much. The vari­ety of pos­si­ble expla­na­tions obvi­ous­ly includes sim­ple jeal­ousy, since Dashan (giv­en name Mark Rowswell) enjoys fame across Chi­na for his mas­tery of Man­darin. But just as this anti-Dashan resent­ment actu­al­ly springs from more com­pli­cat­ed caus­es, so the fer­vent­ly pro-Dashan feel­ings of mil­lions of Chi­nese fans spring from more than his unusu­al flu­en­cy. Ambas­sador to Chi­na’s Fun­ny Bone, the fifty-minute doc­u­men­tary above, traces Dashan’s seem­ing­ly uncal­cu­lat­ed rise from his under­grad­u­ate days in Chi­nese stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, to his break­through appear­ance on Chi­na Cen­tral Tele­vi­sion’s 1988 New Year’s Gala, to his inescapable pres­ence on the Chi­nese stage and screen — includ­ing but by no means lim­it­ed to endors­ing a “Cana­di­an fast food restau­rant.” This sort of celebri­ty makes one instinc­tive­ly want to para­phrase Samuel John­son’s line about the dog walk­ing on its hind legs: even if a west­ern­er speak­ing Chi­nese on tele­vi­sion is not done well, audi­ences are sur­prised to find it done at all.

But Dashan does do it well, and he does it in a con­text even more chal­leng­ing than a four-legged ani­mal walk­ing upright: the tra­di­tion­al form of lan­guage com­e­dy known as xiang­sheng. The doc­u­men­tary shows Dashan per­form­ing as part of a duo, and just above you can see him going solo. Out­side of this spe­cial­ized set­ting, observers have com­pared his mild, easy­go­ing, friend­ly — dare I say Cana­di­an? — per­sona to Dick Clark’s; one inter­vie­wee in Ambas­sador even describes him as harm­less­ly sym­bol­iz­ing Cana­da just as a pan­da sym­bol­izes Chi­na. Yet his detrac­tors have grown vocal enough to prompt some­one to pub­licly ask, on ques­tion-and-answer site Quo­ra, “Why do so many Chi­nese learn­ers seem to hate Dashan?” The top answer comes from Dashan him­self, who pro­vides a thor­ough, clear­head­ed, and self-aware analy­sis of the per­cep­tion of his char­ac­ter. He even cites, approv­ing­ly, the answer from Chi­na watch­er and rock­er Kaiser Kuo: “Dashan seems like a nice enough guy, but for some rea­son every once in a while I have the urge to punch him in the face.”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch Bill Murray Perform a Satirical Anti-Technology Rant (1982)

in Comedy, Technology, Television | January 23rd, 2013

Above you’ll find find a clip from Wired In, a tele­vi­sion show pro­duced in the ear­ly eight­ies meant to ori­ent view­ers in the midst of that heady era of tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion. Alas, the pro­gram nev­er aired; only a demo reel and some raw footage sur­vive. But those remains fea­ture no less a comedic lumi­nary than Bill Mur­ray, who even 32 years ago must have been quite a catch for a pilot like this. Though not known for his tech savvy, he has built a rep­u­ta­tion for mak­ing any­thing sound hilar­i­ous by virtue of his per­sona alone. This skill he applies to a par­o­dy of the every­man’s anti-tech­nol­o­gy dia­tribe, as com­mon­ly heard then as it is today — or as it no doubt was 32 years before the shoot, or will be 32 years from now. “Who thinks up all this high-tech stuff any­way?” Mur­ray demands. “They start with the dig­i­tal watch­es. Tells you the time in num­bers, the exact time to the sec­ond. 3:12 and 42 sec­onds. Who needs to know that stuff? I don’t!”

Keep watch­ing, and that Wired In clip heads to Las Vegas to demon­strate for us the won­der of sol­id-state car­tridge soft­ware for the Texas Instru­ments Home Com­put­er. But if you’d rather mar­vel at more of Mur­ray’s par­tic­u­lar kind of craft, watch the full sev­en min­utes of rant takes above. His riffs, seem­ing­ly script­ed as well as impro­vised, of vary­ing moods and pitched at vary­ing ener­gy lev­els, take him from those dig­i­tal watch­es to auto­mat­ed car fac­to­ries to R2-D2 to talk­ing dash­boards to the one idea he does like, robots that ride along­side you in your car’s pas­sen­ger’s seat. “You know what?” he con­cludes, “They’ll nev­er do it — because it makes too much sense.” The mak­ers of Wired In clear­ly had a pre­scient­ly sar­don­ic atti­tude about the com­ing waves of tech-relat­ed anx­i­ety; the pilot also includes a jab at the notion of video game addic­tion from “Pac-Man freak” Lily Tom­lin.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Mur­ray Reads Wal­lace Stevens Poems — “The Plan­et on The Table” and “A Rab­bit as King of the Ghosts”

Fact Check­ing Bill Mur­ray: A Short, Com­ic Film from Sun­dance 2008

Bill Mur­ray Reads Poet­ry at a Con­struc­tion Site

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Author Gary Shteyngart Reveals Why He Willingly Blurbs His Brains Out

in Books, Comedy, Writing | January 11th, 2013

If you’re an author of lit­er­ary fic­tion, you’d do well to shoot fel­low author Gary Shteyn­gart an advance copy of that soon-to-be-pub­lished mas­ter­piece you’ve got in the pipeline. He won’t just love the book, he’ll blurb it, thus telegraph­ing your insid­er sta­tus to the estab­lish­ment and read­ers in the know. It’s a far from an exclu­sive club. As author Levi Ash­er notes in the video above, Shteyn­gart’s the sort of men­sch who will­ing­ly blurbs his friends. Also friends of friends. Dit­to strangers. (For­mer stranger Karen Rus­sell won­ders if per­haps some agent-deployed fruit bas­ket was respon­si­ble for gar­ner­ing her some of  Shteyn­gart’s “swa­mi mag­ic”.)

The insou­ciant qual­i­ty of the typ­i­cal Shteyn­gart endorse­ment is not intend­ed to tele­graph any insin­cer­i­ty on his part. His mis­sion is secur­ing read­ers for the sort of titles indie book­stores hold dear, and in order for that mis­sion to suc­ceed, he has to gen­er­ate blurbs by the bushel. He may not get to the end of every vol­ume he cham­pi­ons, but he makes it deep enough to get a gen­er­al sense that such a thing might be plea­sur­able.

His high­ly pub­lic will­ing­ness to clam­or aboard oth­er authors’ band­wag­ons has been described as both promis­cu­ity and per­for­mance art. It has inspired a tum­blr, and now the tongue-in-cheek mini-doc­u­men­tary above. Nar­rat­ed by Jonathan Ames, it fea­tures a cav­al­cade of grate­ful New York City-based lit stars, game­ly striv­ing to exude the sort of dev­il-may-care buoy­an­cy at which their hero excels.

Thanks to Edward C. for send­ing this along.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Book Trail­er as Self-Par­o­dy: Stars Gary Shteyn­gart with James Fran­co Cameo

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s best known book was blurbed by Stephen Col­bert.

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The Making of The Blues Brothers: When Belushi and Aykroyd Went on a Mission for Comedy & Music

in Comedy, Film, Music | January 11th, 2013

Before you close out the week, you’ll want to spend some time with Ned Zeman’s piece in Van­i­ty Fair, “Soul Men: The Mak­ing of The Blues Broth­ers.” It brings us back to the 1970s, when John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd labored to bring their char­ac­ters, Jake and Elwood Blues, onto the nation­al stage. Despite being the stars of Sat­ur­day Night Live, Belushi and Aykroyd had to cajole the show’s pro­duc­er Lorne Michaels into let­ting them per­form as The Blues Broth­ers on late night TV. First, Michaels let them warm up SNL audi­ences before shows. Then, in 1976, Michaels let the Blues Broth­ers make their first live appear­ance. But there was a rub. They had to dress as Killer Bees and not as “John Lee Hook­er gone Hasidic.” Only in April, 1978, did Jake and Elwood make their true SNL debut as a musi­cal act (see below).

Zeman’s piece focus­es most­ly on the next chap­ter in the his­to­ry of The Blues Broth­ers — the mak­ing of the now leg­endary film. That had its own set of dif­fi­cul­ties. Big bud­gets, big ambi­tions and big coke addic­tions, all threat­en­ing to derail the project. Down to the very last moment, the film looked like a guar­an­teed finan­cial bust, to the tune of $27 mil­lion. But, of course, that’s not how things turned out.

Above, you can watch The Mak­ing of The Blues Broth­ers, a 2005 doc­u­men­tary that came out with the 25th anniver­sary re-release of the com­ic mas­ter­piece. Below, watch their SNL debut.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Belushi’s Impro­vised Screen Test for Sat­ur­day Night Live (1975)

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

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An Anti, Anti-Smoking Announcement from John Waters

in Comedy, Film | January 7th, 2013

The idea of smok­ing in a movie the­ater, or any­where one might go to have a good time, seems out­landish in 21st-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca, far more fan­tas­ti­cal than most of what you’d actu­al­ly see pro­ject­ed onscreen. I don’t smoke, but it cer­tain­ly would­n’t occur to me to start while moviego­ing, a pur­suit that, here in Los Ange­les, takes up a con­sid­er­able chunk of my free time. Though I attend screen­ings at the Nuart The­atre on San­ta Mon­i­ca Boule­vard with some fre­quen­cy, I’ve sad­ly missed the hey­day of the pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment above. Bad-taste-is-good-taste film­mak­er John Waters shot the PSA for the Nuart The­atre decades ago in appre­ci­a­tion for their long-run­ning show­ings of his break­through fea­ture Pink Flamin­gos. “I’m sup­posed to announce that there’s no smok­ing in this the­ater,” Waters says to the cam­era, after tak­ing a drag on his cig­a­rette, “which is just one of the most ridicu­lous things I’ve heard of in my life.”

“How can any­one sit through the length of a film,” he con­tin­ues, “espe­cial­ly a Euro­pean film, and not have a cig­a­rette?” Indeed, the Nuart today remains a reli­able source for inter­est­ing pic­tures, often of Euro­pean ori­gin. So, I’ve heard, was Berke­ley’s UC The­ater, anoth­er fre­quent screen­er of Waters’ “no-smok­ing” PSA, before it closed its doors in 2001. When Land­mark The­atres own­er Gary Mey­er pur­chased both the Nuart and the UC in 1974, they became the first in that now-for­mi­da­ble chain of pop­u­lar-art house crossover venues. Revival cin­e­ma has seen some­thing of a resur­gence in recent years, giv­ing Land­mark more com­pe­ti­tion than it once faced, and though some the­aters have brought gourmet food and alco­hol into the expe­ri­ence, cig­a­rettes seem unlike­ly to make a return. What the moviego­ing world needs now is a clip from Waters denounc­ing cell­phone usage — but he’s got to do it seri­ous­ly. Or as seri­ous­ly as he can.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Stephen Colbert Brings Laughs and Book Tour to Google

in Comedy, Google, Television, Video - Arts & Culture, YouTube | January 1st, 2013

Stephen Col­bert is one of the most refresh­ing come­di­ans work­ing today. He main­tains his character’s obnox­ious­ness dur­ing his own show, riff­ing and impro­vis­ing dur­ing inter­views with every­one from Bill O’Reilly to Eli­jah Wood, build­ing his char­ac­ter to dead­pan heights even with Jane Fon­da’s tongue in his ear.

But in the hot seat him­self, as an inter­vie­wee on Let­ter­man, Oprah or even with Play­boy mag­a­zine, Col­bert is authen­tic, can­did, fun­ny and a fast-on-his-feet smar­tie. In ear­ly Decem­ber Col­bert vis­it­ed Google’s New York offices and taped an inter­view for At Google Talks. Col­bert fans will want to check out the unedit­ed ver­sion recent­ly post­ed by Google. As a guest, Col­bert is fun­nier than Jon Stew­art and we get an hon­est look at the bright guy behind the buf­foon. The uncut inter­view has its high­lights, includ­ing the point when Colbert’s reac­tion to Eric Schmidt’s sug­ges­tion that The Col­bert Report launch its own YouTube show. His answers to ques­tions from the audi­ence are engag­ing, fun­ny and reveal­ing. It’s won­der­ful to hear the per­son­al sto­ry about the moment he real­ized he want­ed to make peo­ple laugh.

Col­bert was also con­duct­ing busi­ness. The inter­view was part of his book tour to pro­mote Amer­i­ca Again: Re-Becom­ing the Great­ness We Nev­er Weren’t. Below, you can see Col­bert give his comedic pitch for the book. And, if you want to down­load a free audio copy, you can always do so by start­ing a Free 30-Day Tri­al with Audible.com. We have details here.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at and at thenifty.blogspot.com. 

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Richard Pryor Does Early Stand-Up Comedy Routine in New York, 1964

in Comedy | December 28th, 2012

Yes­ter­day we fea­tured one of the final per­for­mances of Lenny Bruce, the so-called “sick come­di­an” who was hound­ed out of work in the mid-six­ties for his sup­posed obscen­i­ty. While Bruce was fight­ing and los­ing his legal bat­tles, going bank­rupt, and sink­ing into depres­sion, one of his suc­ces­sors was just get­ting his start in New York City, play­ing Green­wich Vil­lage cof­fee hous­es along­side Woody Allen and Bob Dylan. Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pry­or arrived in New York in 1963, leav­ing behind him a grim, abu­sive child­hood in Peo­ria, Illi­nois and a very trou­bled army stint (most of which he spent locked in the brig). But watch­ing Pryor’s ear­ly act—like the 1964 per­for­mance above—you’d hard­ly know that he came from such hard­scrab­ble places as he did. We get the clas­sic Pry­or ges­tures, man­ner­isms, and expres­sions: the full immer­sion of his arms and mal­leable face in every punch­line. But the jokes…. Well, it’s safe mate­r­i­al. Tame one-lin­ers and mid­dle­brow, san­i­tized bits about child­hood, bach­e­lor­hood, life in New York, and TV com­mer­cials. If there is a glim­mer of the absur­dism and tragi­com­e­dy of Pryor’s lat­er wit, it’s a faint one. But who can blame him after what hap­pened to Lenny Bruce?

But, as we all know, some­thing changed. Accord­ing to Pry­or him­self, he had an “epiphany” while stand­ing onstage in front of a full audi­ence (which includ­ed Dean Mar­tin) in Las Vegas in 1967. Appar­ent­ly, before he start­ed his act, he looked out into the crowd, exclaimed into the micro­phone, “what the f*ck am I doing here?” and walked off stage. For the remain­der of his career, he built his onstage act around the bru­tal, unspar­ing honesty–about race, pover­ty, drug abuse, his trou­bled past (and present), and every­thing in-between–that audi­ences loved. Even when the bits were painful, they were painful­ly fun­ny (though not always so fun­ny off stage). That he man­aged to cul­ti­vate such a pro­fane and con­tro­ver­sial per­sona while achiev­ing main­stream Hol­ly­wood movie suc­cess is fur­ther cred­it to his ver­sa­til­i­ty. He even did the alpha­bet on Sesame Street in 1976. But he nev­er went back to the unthreat­en­ing and gener­ic mate­r­i­al from his ear­ly New York days. Even his roles in the most kid-friend­ly films had plen­ty of edge and that vein of dopey-but-dan­ger­ous crazi­ness that ran through all of Pryor’s work after he found his voice.

For a vin­tage clip of the Richard Pry­or we remem­ber, take a look back to the 1979 film Richard Pry­or: Live in Con­cert, record­ed the pre­vi­ous year at the Ter­race The­ater in Long Beach, Cal­i­for­nia. It’s NSFW, of course.

Josh Jones is a writer and schol­ar cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion on land­scape, lit­er­a­ture, and labor.

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Lenny Bruce Riffs and Rants on Injustice and Hypocrisy in One of His Final Performances (NSFW)

in Comedy | December 27th, 2012

We can remem­ber Lenny Bruce as a mas­ter­ful social crit­ic or as one of the edgi­est, most orig­i­nal come­di­ans of the late-50s/ear­ly 60s. Or both, since both sides of him were always present in the live per­for­mances pre­served on film and tape. Born Leonard Alfred Schnei­der in Long Island, Bruce came from a show­biz fam­i­ly, in a way; his moth­er was a per­former and a sup­port­er of his stage ambi­tions. But, after his dis­charge from the Navy (for a per­for­mance in drag, among oth­er things), his New York act evolved quick­ly from celebri­ty impres­sions and bur­lesque to a more per­son­al­ized and bit­ing satire that cut through the gen­teel silences around racism, reli­gious intol­er­ance, drugs, pol­i­tics, sex­u­al­i­ty, and Jew­ish­ness in Amer­i­ca. Sprin­kled lib­er­al­ly with Yid­dishisms, hip beat expres­sions, and top­i­cal riffs, Bruce’s jazz-inflect­ed act could swing wild­ly from gid­dy falset­to exu­ber­ance to heart­break­ing down­beat lament in a mat­ter of min­utes. Per­haps nowhere is this high­wire act bet­ter doc­u­ment­ed than in the record­ing of his 1961 per­for­mance at New York’s Carnegie Hall, which he gave at mid­night in a bliz­zard to a devot­ed audi­ence of near­ly 3,000.

The Carnegie Hall con­cert marked the height of his career, after which his sad decline began. Lat­er that year, he was arrest­ed in San Fran­cis­co for obscen­i­ty. He was acquit­ted, but this began the years-long bat­tle in courts, includ­ing two Supreme Court appeals, on sim­i­lar charges (dra­ma­tized in the excel­lent biopic Lenny, with Dustin Hoff­man as Bruce). The legal bat­tles bank­rupt­ed Bruce, and exhaust­ed and demor­al­ized him; he stood as a defend­er of the right to free expres­sion and the need for peo­ple like him, whether just “enter­tain­ers” or seri­ous satirists, to hold pow­er to account and mock its thread­bare con­tra­dic­tions, but he so pro­found­ly rubbed the legal sys­tem the wrong way that he didn’t stand a chance.

By 1966, Bruce could not gig out­side San Fran­cis­co. One of his final per­for­mances (above) before his death from over­dose sees him rehears­ing his legal bat­tles. He is embit­tered, angry, some might say obsessed, some might say right­eous, but he’s still in top form, even if there may be more of Bruce the crit­ic than Bruce the enter­tain­er here. Lenny Bruce has been mourned and cel­e­brat­ed by comedic giants like George Car­lin, Richard Pry­or, and Bill Hicks and musi­cians like Nico, Dylan, and R.E.M. But it some­times seems that his name gets more press than his work. So, get to know Lenny Bruce. Watch the per­for­mance above, but also lis­ten to the bril­liant Carnegie Hall con­cert (avail­able in 7 parts on YouTube). And thank him every time a com­ic gets away with cross­ing social bound­aries with impuni­ty. He wore the sys­tem down so that the Car­lins and Pry­ors could break it wide open.

Josh Jones is a writer and schol­ar cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion on land­scape, lit­er­a­ture, and labor.

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