by CHRIS BARRY

You no doubt know him as the slightly more talkative half of the comedy/magic duo Penn & Teller, and while he's certainly verbose, there's more to Penn Jillette's shtick than perhaps meets the eye. Along with celebrated comedian/director Paul Provenza, Jillette has produced one of the most insightful films on the culture of professional comedy... um, ever - or at least since the Jerry Seinfeld profile Comedian came out in 2002.

Here's the premise: get 100 or so of the funniest, most successful comedians you know, and have them all tell the same joke - a randy anecdote comedians have been spouting since vaudeville, chock full of scatological references and addressing the always hilarious subject matter of incest. And while that may sound like the most redundant 86 minutes one could ever hope to spend, it is anything but. Pretty well every comedian delivers a different spin on the joke, each trying to outdo the other in grossness and originality. As a result, The Aristocrats is not only genuinely funny - really funny - but it's also a satisfyingly astute and profound glimpse into the both the craft and culture of pro comedy. In other words, it's a really good movie and you should go see it.

Mirror: Straight out of the shoot, was this project the most fun thing you've ever worked on?

PJ: For sure, but you use the word "work" there, and don't get me wrong, I love all my work, that's absolutely true, but this wasn't ever even supposed to be work. It was just me and Provenza travelling about and fucking around, you know? Calling up our friends, saying, "Wanna tell a dirty joke?" And then going over to their house [to tape it], which is pretty much what we did for four years. It really doesn't get much better than that. What I love about The Aristocrats is that it's the only movie I can think of with no conflict, no violence, no hostility, no nothing, just 100 people fucking around, having a good time.

M: Yeah, that comes across. It's nice to get a portrait of these comedians when they're not necessarily being on, you know?

PJ: What's very clear in this movie - to any comedian, at least - is that, although the public may not know it, there are many different ways [for a comedian] to be on. I think people think that if, say, Bob Saget, isn't in his Full House or America's Funniest Home Videos character then he's just not funny. But comedians out of character are also really, really funny because they love comedy. And what you're seeing in this movie, with a few exceptions, are people being funny in a slightly different way than you've seen them before. I've known Saget for 20 years and he's always been known as the filthiest comedian who ever lived.

M: And probably the richest too, what with owning that America's Funniest Ho...

PJ: And the other thing that's very rare is you don't often see a movie where every single person involved is a friend. Okay, "friend" might be too strong a word, it's not like I call Phyllis Diller and have her pick me up at the airport, but she's someone I have a great deal of honest affection for. I made most of the phone calls to get people into the movie and didn't try to seduce anyone. If they even hesitated for a second, we said, "Well, great talking to you, bro, see you later," and never called them back.

Old farts and shit jokes

M: Was there anybody you wanted who you just couldn't get, or told you to go fuck yourself going, "Yeah? How much does it pay?"

PJ: A lot of people might have said that, had I asked them but I'd always approach it like, "Hey, we're doing this movie thing, we're shooting it on consumer cameras. It'll probably never come out, there's certainly no money in it, it certainly won't help your career, but you know how with jazz musicians you always hear them play over the same changes but you never hear comedians working over the same changes doing the same joke? That's what we're looking for. Do you wanna do it?" If I'd pushed people, they might have said, "What, for no money?" But I didn't give them the chance.

M: I was surprised to see you didn't have more old school guys, like Buddy Hackett, Rodney Dangerfield, Jackie Ma...

PJ: Yeah, that's the heartbreaker. I called Buddy Hackett and he talked to me for 45 minutes. He told the [Aristocrats] joke three different ways and another seven or eight other jokes too, but said, "Look, I'm too old and too tired, I love the idea but I just can't do it." And the exact same thing happened - in fact, on that same day - with Rodney Dangerfield. Same thing, he said he was just too old to do it. Johnny Carson, Jerry Lewis - we definitely thought of all of those people, but it gets tougher when people are in their 70s and 80s.

Cheerleaders, committees and coke analogies

M: Hey, when you went to edit this....

PJ: The whole problem with movies is that they're all done by committee. So what I did with Provenza is when it came time to cut the movie I basically acted like a cheerleader. I didn't want there to be one bit of compromise on this. If he had one idea and I had another we'd go with his, because I'm so sick of going to movies that are done by committee. The only thing a committee can ever agree on is beige. Every fuckin' movie that comes out is beige. I can't accept films that 45 studio execs have stepped on with more baby laxative than black tar heroin. It's just this horrible, horrible thing.

M: Um, I think you're mixing up your cuts. Nobody cuts tar with baby laxative. You're thinking cocaine. For what it's worth, by the way.

PJ: Ah, whenever I use that analogy and I'm half-way through it, I realize that I've never had a drink or any drug in my entire life so I'm probably going to fuck the analogy up.

All jazzed up

M: Listen, when you began this film did you have any idea that you'd wind up with such insight into the craft, or the culture of professional comedy? Was that the plan or did you just kind of luck out?

PJ: Oh, no, before we started, the two of us talked literally for hours and hours about what improvisation means, like for instance how do you compare Miles Davis to Gilbert Gottfried. And to do that we realized we needed a joke without any complexity, something simple that would point out the differences - or really, the similarities - in the cultures of jazz improvisation and comedy improvisation. We thought this was pretty important. There's never been a movie about the improvisation of comedy. There've been some very bad movies about stand-up that were just totally wrong. [With The Aristocrats] we didn't want to show these sad clowns lighting cigarettes backstage thinking about how they were going to go on, we wanted to show what the culture really feels like. So it's no accident this is what we got, but it was an accident in how good it was and how many lay people liked it. But the theme, the thesis, the leitmotif - none of that was an accident, that was just what was in our hearts and what we wanted to say. With The Aristocrats, I think you really see that even a dirty joke can grow into something profound. And what's really weird is that, for the first time, it seems like everybody gets it.

PENN JILLETTE, PAUL PROVENZA AND SEVERAL FEATURED COMEDIANS, INCLUDING GREGG ROGELL, DOUG STANHOPE AND JUDY GOLD WILL PRESENT THE ARISTOCRATS AT THE IMPERIAL THEATRE ON FRIDAY, JULY 22, 10:30 P.M. FOR MORE INFO, CALL 845-2322

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