The Last Laugh Page #6

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Auschwitz? Youll be

saying Wowschwitz!

MUISC:

- Hi.

- Good morning, how are you?

- Im okay.

I need a red

rose, can I get one?

Yes, yes sure.

One single red rose?

-Yes.

Oh my god.

- Here you go.

How much is it?

- Oh, no, no, no charge.

CALM MUSIC:

Both of us were survivors,

but both of us

realized we are alive

and we have to go on

living.

You cant die while

you are alive

and think of the dark side

of life all the time.

You just cant.

You cant survive that way.

bring a rose because thats what

he used to bring me every day,

one rose.

I will never

forget that.

CLEARS HER THROA Whenever I remember I cry,

and whenever I

dont remember

I laugh, or smile.

And Im glad that Im

able to smile and laugh.

It wouldve been a

horrible life for me

for 70 years

to

just cry,

and to raise my daughter.

She was a baby, I had

to laugh with her,

I had to smile

with her.

This was Klara,

I dont know, maybe 12 years

old, 10 years old, I dont know.

I think she was very cute,

she was a little dancer.

This was in

1948,

when I came to the

United States.

I had to make her understand

that life was good,

I didnt want her to mourn

with me the rest of her life.

So, you learn to do what

you have to do to live,

to survive.

To protect his family,

this loving father

has to think fast on his feet.

To turn the hard truth

into a simple game.

CHILD LAUGHS:

Life is Beautiful.

Life is Beautiful is the

worst movie ever made.

Seriously, the blurb should be,

He puts the ha

in Holocaust.

To make a comedy

about a concentration camp

and avoid what

really went on there

well, its a great trick but

its absolutely ludicrous.

Achtung!

SOLDIER SPEAKING GERMAN

SOLDIER SPEAKING GERMAN

SOLDIER SPEAKING GERMAN

He laughs and jokes

and kids around,

and thats how everything

turns out okay.

SOLDIER SPEAKING GERMAN

Life is Beautiful is

absolutely brilliant.

It portrays to a new audience

that you can take

humor,

but you can then get

their attention,

bring them in, and yet to

deliver the message

of the horror.

Now

look, I

I survived the Holocaust because

my parents did the unthinkable:

in order to save me

they gave me away.

SoCHUCKLES

did I not understand

Life is Beautiful,

when this father

does all these crazy things

to protect his child

from the horrors around him?

Its not a comedy,

its not a farce.

It's, It's, It's,

Its such a sense of

reality.

And yet

I understood when there were

survivors who said, No,

its unacceptable.

I would think Jerry Lewis

would see Life is Beautiful as a

shittier version of The

Day the Clown Cried.

Theres a movie Jerry

Lewis made called

The Day the Clown Cried

where hes a clown

whos put into a

concentration camp

and his job is to

entertain the children

as theyre being pushed

into the gas chambers.

No ones seen it

I mean, human beings have

seen it, not many, I know

Harry Shearer infamously

is one of the very few

people whos seen it.

I am one of the

handful of people

I dont

even know if its a handful,

it may be two fingers.

A rough cut had

become available.

It was

a startling experience

Its a material that youd

have to be so sublimely

careful with

whether youre being

funny or not.

The idea itself

is not

laughably bad.

Jerry Lewis wrote the script,

just tonally its

all over the place.

At times its Life is Beautiful,

and at times its

Dumb and Dumber.

It sort of luxuriated in

this mawkish sentimentality

which just made it ludicrous.

I think I said said that it was

like seeing a

Tijuana velvet clown

painting of the Holocaust.

CIRCUS MUSIC:

As you might imagine

hes not proud of it.

I dont think hes under some

delusion that its a work of art

that, you know, is being

suppressed by

big, you know, uhm

pro-PalestiniansLAUGHS

It just wasnt his time man,

he was too ahead of his time.

If he had waited 25 years

then, yeah,

hed be bounding over the those

seats, grabbing his Oscar.

If youre trying to be serious

about a matter like this

it could be just as dangerous

in the wrong hands as

being funny about it.

MUSIC:

To people who say,

Dont make these jokes cause

theyre in the wrong hands,

like, whose hands are right?

If comics cant point out

whats ridiculous in the world,

and the tragic in this world,

who else is going

to point it out?

Heres someone whos not Jewish,

Lisa Lampanelli at the

David Hasselhoff roast.

David Hasselhoff is a legend!

AUDIENCE APPLAUDS

I giant in

television and music.

David, your singing is

huge in Germany.

If they had played your

music in Auschwitz

the Jews wouldve

sprinted for those ovens.

I dont think its funny.

I think the initial

reaction

when a non-Jew makes

a Holocaust joke

is that theyre making

fun of the Holocaust,

and who are you to

make fun of of that?

You werent there,

you werent affected, okay?

We were and we are allowed

to joke about it, okay?

Just like um

African Americans are allowed

to say certain words that

God forbida big Jew from Long

Island, if I said it, Id get

my ass in trouble.

Jews have their turf, gay

people have their turf,

black people have their turf.

And when people

transgress those turfs,

you can run

into problems.

I aint never been

in a barbershop

and heard a bunch of

brothers talking about Jews.

Black people dont hate Jews

black people hate white people.

AUDIENCE LAUGHS:

We dont got time to dice white

people into little groups!

AUDIENCE APPLAUDS

I hate everybody!

I have a really hard time

deciding

whos going

to get offended by what.

Culture shifts, and the words

or the taboo subject shifts as

well. Its no longer a taboo.

You can make

fun of Lincolns assassination,

you can make fun of

the crucifixion

crucifixionyou cant

make fun of Mohammed.

Thats still a taboo

subject,

you know. And thats truly a

taboo subject

because if you do make fun of if

theres a good chance

someones going to throw a

bomb through your window

like the Danish cartoonists.

Uh, I want to say, despite

last weeks

senseless attacks on the French

satirical magazine

Charlie Hebdo,

we all remember Sundays

inspirational march

through Paris.

Millions standing

against terrorism

that made plain the message:

in a free society,

expression

without fear of persecution

is a basic right.

The anti-Semitic

comedian Dieudonn

arrested for incitement

after his Facebook post

that supported the attackers.

He tweeted

Je suis Charlie Coulibaly, the

name of one of the attackers.

Man!

Arresting someone for saying

something

days after a rally supporting

the right of free expression

eeeeeh, its a little weird.

AUDIENCE LAUGHS:

Maybe if we knew more

about the culprit

Dieudonn is very controversial,

he had a tour

canceled last yea

because of this anti- Semitic

routine that he does.

Oh man, this sucks!

Je suis confused.

AUDIENCE LAUGHS:

- When speech gets

censored, its

dangerous because it

makes it more taboo.

Its like Catholic schoolgirls

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