When Jews Were Funny (2013)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Absolutely the worst movie.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

A few years back I saw one of the most startling documentaries I had ever seen. It was called AN EMPIRE OF THEIR OWN- HOW THE JEWS INVENTED Hollywood, and it was based on a bestseller.It was brilliant. It not only showed how Hollywood was started by Jews, literally, but also showed how, the more successful Hollywood became, the less Jewish everyone wanted to be. The message seemed to be that assimilation and success went hand in hand. The writers even used Superman as an example -- invented by two Jews, Superman actually used a "secret identity" to keep the world from learning that he was "different." Wow.Zweig's film here is successful entertainment but FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS.I cannot easily recall another film where the film-maker is such an annoying presence and the viewer so wishes he would just take an extended lunch so we could spend more time with some the greatest comics of the last century, many of whom we have not seen for so long.(Age is now and always will be scarier than any Hollywood villain. Shelley Berman, for example, sounds like himself and is sharp as a tack, but at 90 he looks nothing like the imposing comic presence he was on the Ed Sullivan show where by sheer force of will he dragged a whole generation into an appreciation of his "phone call" comedy.)Zwieg meanwhile presents, ironically, the least comic moments in the film as he harasses and annoys these professionals into trying to get them to admit that the world is not as funny as it was because Jews are not as Jewish as they were...Ignore Zweig and you will actually enjoy this.

You'll see a lot of great old Jewish comics, from back in the day when "Jewish" was almost understood in the word "comic". Also loads of great old Borscht Belt jokes. Zweig's interview style is genius: he presents himself as a schlemiel asking dumb questions, and gets some priceless responses. He gets people who have cultivated a goyisher stage presence to revert to their native culture, and those who have been "Hollywood Jewish" to revert to the real thing, with brilliant results. The great Shelley Berman even sings a whole song in Yiddish, after mentioning his son who died at the age of 12 and finding himself at a loss for (English) words. See it. You'll laugh, you'll cry.

OK-so the filmmaker Alan Zweig's interview skills are terribly annoying, yet despite that I laughed a lot at the jokes, anecdotes, and schtick from the many comedians and writers that appeared in this film. As Zweig probes whether old style Jewish humor is dead, he unfortunately loses focus quite often and even, at times, gets some of the interviewees uncomfortable, confused, and even irritated, which, in my opinion, is not great viewing.The consensus ends up being that as the Jewish people are more and more assimilated into society the type of Jewish humor of the past, kindled by pain, suffering, and frustration, takes a new form today. Aside from the interviews from many of the top Jewish comics and writers today, there are a number of film clips of Jewish comedians, many of whom are no longer with us, performing on television.Overall, despite Zweig's style, I found this documentary to be quite entertaining and, as mentioned I found myself laughing whole heartedly quite often.

While anyone can enjoy this nostalgic look at what it means to be a Jewish comic, the question Zweig keeps returning to is how to get a fix for his Jew Jones. As another babyboomer NYC Jew who grew up watching Jack Carter, Red Buttons, Myron Cohen, London Lee, Jack E. Leonard, Alan King, Joey Bishop, Norm Crosby, Professor Irwin Corey, Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Howie Morris, Alan Sherman, Jerry Lewis, The Three Stooges, George Burns, Corbett Monica, Sandy Baron, Stanley Myron Handleman, Buddy Hackett, Shecky Greene, Danny Kaye, Pinky Lee, Eddie Cantor, Groucho Marx...in other words, the funnymen of the late 40s and 50s, it seemed the whole comedy world was Jewish. There's nothing particularly ethnic about any of the above performers, many of whom were cited in the documentary, but that sense of Jewishness in comedy is an historic relic. While the documentary contains many funny lines and examples of Jewish jokes, there's a sadness as an undercurrent that only fellow 60+ Jews can truly understand...the loss of a culture. I'm glad I watched the film, but it left me melancholy.