Vale: Leslie Nielsen - and his lesson for all of us

In a very sad day, Leslie Nielsen has passed away at age 84.

To a great many of us, Nielsen was best known as a comedy actor but this came very much in the latter part of his career. During his approximately 60 years in front of the camera, he was for the longer part a serious actor. Looking back, his was one of those faces that only in later years were you able to recognise.

In my opinion at least, Nielsen's turning point for wider-spread popularity and recognition was being featured in the 1980 film Airplane (Flying High in Australia). There he was able to play some very  funny lines with a wonderful deadpan attitude. I vividly recall seeing this at a drive-in theatre one evening in the small northern Victorian town of Kerang, together with my fellow boarder where I lived. We were both bored and he suggested we go see a film. We didn't know what was being shown and it just happened to be Flying High. And this became the start of Nielsen's career as a comic actor, best known for his role in The Naked Gun series of films although those were far from the only comic roles he played.

Nielsen was a real prankster behind the camera and sometimes in front of it as well. Some years ago I saw a clip of him being interviewed. He was answering things in a generally serious manner. But the whole time he had a rubber bulb secreted in one hand, squeezing it as he spoke, making copious farting sounds. And he had the poor interviewer completely fooled into thinking Nielsen was indeed suffering from copious flatulence until late in the interview when he revealed just what he had been doing.

It was this transition into comedy later in his career that saw Nielsen doing what he really wanted to do. And he was damned good at it in terms of delivery, timing, body language and facial expressions.

I think that there is a lesson there for all of us. What is that we really want to do? And if we aren't already doing it in some way, then why not?

Rest in peace, Mr Nielsen and thank you for the entertainment - and the inspiration.

Now if you have an opinion on what I'm blathering about or even just feel like saying hi, then don't be afraid to leave a comment or post something to me via Twitter or Facebook. I don't bite - at least not always.

Welcome to the dark side

There is an attraction to being a performer. Why else do so many young people secretly dream of  being rock stars? I know I did.

I tried being a musician and I was brilliant apart from the slight drawback of being virtually talentless. I did a little amateur theatre years ago. I think the most memorable bit of that was wandering around one evening in the foyer before removing the stage make up, only to be told that make up really suited me.

Last Friday evening I experienced that amazing thrill, the rush of being in front of a crowd in a packed venue, performing and getting laughs that were intended. The energy in the room was amazing and just lifted you up, bringing out even more manic energy in me. Perhaps not surprisingly, Robin Williams is one of my comic heroes. While I most surely am not anywhere near as funny as he is, I can relate to his manic bounding around. And how tiring it is. I felt exhausted by a set only some seven minutes long. It was all that adrenalin and manic energy pumping through the system.

Now I understand why people do it, getting out there to make people laugh. Fortunately I never got into drugs so cannot compare it to a drug high. But I know I never felt that good when I was still drinking.

Comic DeAnne Smith said to me afterwards via Twitter, 'welcome to the dark side'. I understand what she means. I want more!

Another form of writing practice

Learning never ceases. That point has kept getting forced home to me again and again over the years.

I have always like to make people laugh although I was never particularly good at doing it. I was fortunate enough to do a weekend workshop with comic maestro, Tim Ferguson, early last year and learned a great deal from that. Tim encouraged attendees to try stand-up comedy as it helped you learn more about the mechanics of making people laugh. I was determined to give it ago but when the opportunity did come, I wimped out completely. More truthfully, I panicked and couldn't go ahead with it all.

So that seemed to be pretty much that.

A couple of months or so back, I saw a poster advertising a program of comedy classes targeted at people who have or have had mental health issues. Actually I only just happened to see it among the other mess on the noticeboard because I stopped to use a drinking fountain beneath and tie a stray shoelace. Otherwise I would probably have never noticed the thing. Being a formally diagnosed loony, I thought that was for me.

Apart from having a bloody great time, it struck me that this is really a condensed form of story telling. The joke has a set-up (topic, attitude, premise) and then the gag itself which hopefully gets the laugh. And you have to carefully look at what words you are going to use, how to put them together, the all-important timing. This has become another form of writing practice.

Just as discovering poetry forced me to start looking more closely at my word choices and mental images I am trying to create, so the comedy writing has further reinforced that even more strongly.

It really is a great learning experience, not to mention one heck of a lot of fun.

The end result of the workshop program is a gala performance in the company of other, working stand-up comics. Hopefully this will be recorded by someone and I can post some choice bits to YouTube or somewhere.

Going too far

Comedy often pushes the boundaries, forcing us to look at ourselves and society. When that is successful, there is an underlying truth to the gag itself. Take for example the classic and phenomenally successful Golden Girls. One of the things that made that show work so well was the underlying truth of a fear of dying alone, hence the four women banding together.

When things go too far, it is usually a case of a poor joke, made in worse taste, that doesn't have that underlying truth. This was never more evident than with The Chasers' frankly appalling gag about not bothering to give dieing children decent gifts because they are only going to die anyway. The only truth underlying that was that there are seriously ill children out there, dieing from terrible disease. That was not a reflective truth, merely an awful and unfunny truth that The Chaser crew made a shocking error in judgement in even coming up with a gag to exploit it. Matters became worse with an evident degree of butt-covering and buck-passing within the internal politics of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of South Park, did an episode which reflected on the often nonsensical media and public obsession with celebrities. Why that obsession exists is hard to pin down. The effect on the celebrities themselves can be harsh. A case in point - how many 'child stars' end up basketcases? The episode in question revolved around Britney Spears. Where Stone and Parker pushed the envelope too far in my opinion, was with the set-up. The Southpark kids trick their way into Spears's dressing room by pretending to be her children. A depressed Spears, hearing that her children had arrived, cheers up, only to be crestfallen when she realises that it is not her children at all, but just more people wanting something from her. The depressed Spears then blows most of her head off with a shotgun.

That aspect of the Southpark episode was essentially making fun of depression, the underlying truth being that depressed people can kill themselves. For me, that unfunny truth overwhelmed the remainder of the overall truth underlying the episode – that of unfathomable obsession with celebrities and celebrity status. Perhaps I am more sensitive on the issue than others because of my own past with depression and the phsycial scars from a failed suicide attempt.

It is Family Guy however that are really incurring my wrath. This is a show that also often really pushes the boundaries. It has some very clever characterisation, particular with Brian, the talking family dog, and Stewie, the baby. However a recent episode used as its comedic line, making fun of Down's Syndrome and former US Vice-President hopeful, Sarah Palin. Now I am not a huge fan of Palin and what she stood for during the last presidential campaign. But, making fun of the fact that Palin has a child with Down's Syndrome is going too far. What underlying truth is there in making fun of something like that? I was left with a distinct impression that the creator simply doesn't like Palin and the Republicans and decided this was a way to express little more than hate.

Politics and political characters are things that are the staple of a lot of comedy. They all too often simply beg to be made fun of. But this stunt by Family Guy was nothing short of nasty and entirely unjustified.

There are times when I am made to feel ashamed of both being a writer, including my comedic writing. This was one of them. Pushing boundaries is one thing but simple cruelty as point-scoring is another and not acceptable.

Kids make cruel fun of people who are different. Where I grew up, people of other than generally Anglo-Saxon ethnicity was a rarity. They were different so they often became targets. There is one girl in particular that I hope to meet again one day so that I may apologise for my role in her regular humiliation. Lord knows, my parents would have had several layers of skin off my bum if they had ever found out the things we were saying and doing to the poor girl. Part of me knew it was wrong but I kept laughing at it anyway, which just encouraged the worst perpetrators even more. Another child who was at my primary school briefly, was of considerably lower intellect than whatever passes for average. I sometimes laughed at others who were making fun of that poor kid as well. At least I had the decency to feel guilty about it afterwards and stopped.

What I have just related was the stunts of pre-teen kids, thirty-five years ago. This controversial episode of Family Guy had about as much depth as those childhood cruelties. Surely as 'adults' they should know better by now?