"Stay tuned...and keep the calls coming!"

A preface: The following essay will be detailing almost every major plot revelation in THE BLACK PHONE, as well as that from other well-known films by the same director. I don't personally believe that knowing all the details will ever hurt a first-time viewing of a movie if the story is good and the direction well-executed, and this particular film is less about its surprise revelations and more about how it reaches conclusion, but there is definitely a specific pleasure to be obtained from going into discovering a previously unviewed film with a blank slate. So use that information as you will...

Can you hear what I've been thinking
Do you hear my words out loud
Cause there's an echo that's insisting
That this here phone should ring about now
But when it does, it rings, no questions
Then when it don't, I wonder why
Maybe I'm somewhere you can't reach me
On this dark and lonely night

- Terry Reid, "Faith to Arise"

Writer/director Scott Derrickson has maintained a singular presence in a crowded field of auteurs, by delivering a consistent flow of entertaining films in the horror and fantasy genres, and more importantly, imbuing them with significant themes on and questions about believing in forces other than what's knowable in the corporeal realm. In a business where its most visible talent either cautiously avoid discussing religious practice, or cravenly make it their entire brand at the expense of any nuance, he frequently expounds unvarnished on his life as a Christian, from his conversion to Evangelical fundamentalism in youth, expanding into larger ecumenism in adulthood, and his present of, as he told the National Catholic Register, being more of a general mystic, but carrying a rosary and a G.K. Chesterton book almost all the time. And in full disclosure, I have enjoyed congenial correspondence with the artist for several years, and had the privilege of securing him to introduce one of my series of "Cinema Tremens" screenings in 2014.

There have been two dominant collaborators in Derrickson's filmography, each assisting in getting across ideas that have mattered to him. His first writing partner, Paul Harris Boardman, can be associated with his most overtly Christian-driven narratives - HELLRAISER: INFERNO, THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE, DELIVER US FROM EVIL, while his current writing partner, C. Robert Cargill, has helped steer the more general supernatural tales  - SINISTER, DOCTOR STRANGE, and their current hit film, THE BLACK PHONE. Barring the disawowed Pinhead installment (as a certain "SCTV" sketch might say, "Was this box in fact, HELL???"), all these films have conveyed Derrickson's concepts of morality and the varying degrees of what happens when it is compromised. 

While he recently stated to writer Walter Chaw, "I haven't made any movies with happy endings. They're always really bleak," in the opinion of this writer, it's not so much that they're unhappy or bleak, but they don't neatly wrap everything in the kind of clean finish that most films...and indeed, some branches of Christianity...often promise; there's a mess to be reckoned with after the credits roll. In the Christian stories written with Boardman, God's glory is served as demon possessions are thwarted, but one priest is found guilty of negligent homicide, a detective causes the death of his partner while his wife and child are traumatized by abduction, and nobody comes back from the netherworld. In the first two outings with Cargill, both protagonists - played by actors made up to bear a striking resemblance to Derrickson - give in to hubris, believing themselves smarter than the unknown forces they're investigating, and while one is completely consumed while the other survives, they both have facilitated the continuation of chaos they thought could be tamed. Sadly, on occasion this conundrum has bled into his real life: as he elaborated to Chaw, two years after the life-changing success of DOCTOR STRANGE, "my house burned down in [the Woodley] wildfire and my wife and I of many years separated and divorced very shortly after that. It was really hard, so hard..."

"[I] thought one day when I was depressed, you know when you’re real depressed and you see everything comes to nothing, well, I thought, maybe I ought to take a different approach, and write [something] that, instead of directed at people, would somehow musically induce God into giving us all a break, cause I was getting a little fed up by this point. So...I’d like to [give this to] you in the hope that you’ll get a break.”

- Judee Sill, introduction to "The Donor" for the BBC, 1972

THE BLACK PHONE, Derrickson's newest release, again co-scripted with Robert Cargill from the 2004 short story by Joe Hill, in principle continues exploring his favorite topics - folklore, cruelty, and faith - but takes several new approaches on their depiction. It is his first film that, barring its lead villain, focuses almost entirely on child protagonists. It is his first set in the past, rather than the present tense of his previous stories. There is supernatural activity, but all violence visited upon its characters are acts of free will by humans. And while it is unflinching in its dramatization of family abuse, bullying, psychological torture, and catatonic fear, it is the first Derrickson film that does not leave a mess behind to linger on; God has finally granted the hero a break.

In a Denver suburb during 1978, shy tweener kid Finney Blake (Mason Thames) and his brasher younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) endure steady beatings from a trio of bullies at school and from their anguished alcoholic father (Jeremy Davies) at home. They have heard accounts of a rumored local child abductor called The Grabber (Ethan Hawke), and his threat looms harder over them when two of Finney's schoolmates go missing. Gwen, in recounting dreams she has had about the kidnappings to others, describes details not disclosed to the public, which leads desperate police to interrogate her while having misgivings about her claims. Finney himself ultimately gets taken by The Grabber, and is imprisoned in a barren, soundproof basement. Already feeling mostly cowed by antagonists, he now faces his ultimate enemy - one who cannot be hidden from, deferred to, bargained with, tricked, or moved - and is almost resigned to the worst. Until an old, otherwise disconnected wall phone, regularly rings just for him, with the voices of previous Grabber victims instructing him on various ways of making an escape. Concurrently, Gwen, unaware of Finney's incidents, senses more details about the crimes, at times almost overlapping visions with him, and sets out to determine if what she's seen is real. But after all Finney's attempts have failed, and he recognizes his captor is ready to finish this grim charade, he'll need to tap into his own spirit rather than the ones beyond him. And Gwen must find order in the chaos of her manifestations - or else. All of these events taking place in a decade where, even today, one of the biggest questions taking place within was whether the children were growing up too fast. 

 Help me find my proper place

Help me in my weakness
'Cos I'm falling out of grace

- The Velvet Underground, "Jesus"

Going against his previous films whose stories frequently involve long-forgotten arcana about secret societies and deities, there is a brilliant and ruthless simplicity to THE BLACK PHONE in its near-lack of back story. There are references to trauma The Grabber himself was subject to in his childhood, and the suicide of the Blake family's mother when her own powers of prophesy became overwhelming, but they ultimately do not come into play; no digging through dusty books or microfiche, no ancient relics once lost now found. When Finney and Gwen have their flashes to the past moments of the missing boys, witnessing lives they did not otherwise know intimate details about, they are not so much finding clues as they are placing themselves in the shoes of the fallen, building empathy. At the core, this is a straightforward scary tale of survival where each moment matters *right now*, and in many cases, will unexpectedly matter later on. And as all the victims testify to losing memory of their names first, retaining only details of their confinement or their ties to the siblings, it is their job to remember for them to the living world.

Personal memory permeates this film more than perhaps any other Derrickson film and screenplay. Upon first reading Hill's minimalist tale, it became a personal mission for him to adapt it, telling SlashFilm's Jacob Hall, "I had thought about Joe's story for a long time, over 15 years I was trying to do it. And I had given it to my writing partner Cargill, and he loved it too...toward the end of working on the sequel to DOCTOR STRANGE and then stepping off of it, I had been in therapy for three years dealing with the traumatic nature of my own childhood, and just the violence that I experienced, and violence in my home and my neighborhood, the bullying, just the kind of place that I grew up. And I felt that I could take all of that and merge it with Joe's story, and have something really powerful. [The] most terrifying difficult scene to watch in the movie is the whipping, and that happened to me all the time as a kid, and a lot of other kids in my neighborhood. That was pretty standard for that time, for the late '70s. And so the idea, ultimately, of making a movie about childhood trauma and the resilience of children became — it's a horror film and a coming-of-age film."

Lest these details make the film sound unbearably grim, there is a frequent and therapeutic amount of levity throughout the story. There is warm and funny banter between the siblings and their friends, discussing such solemn topics as toughest kid in school rankings, who's the best TV heartthrob, or the better "forbidden" adult action movie to sneak a look at. Totems of the 70s are used sparingly but smartly, with darkly humorous moments as Finney watching William Castle's THE TINGLER (specifically, the scene when a mute woman is attacked by the creature, telegraphing his own impending imprisonment of silence), or when Robin's abduction is followed by a TV screen broadcasting "EMERGENCY!" And most surprisingly, Gwen's relationship to religion provides the most laughs, as she has clearly not had any actual church upbringing and is cobbling together her own ritual to speak to Jesus; when she feels she's been left adrift by God, whilst not descending to the rage of, say, Harvey Keitel in BAD LIEUTENANT, she has no qualms about expressing herself to the Great Infinite with several expletives...though she quickly apologizes just in case. Our heroes are dealing with ordeals on par with Job himself, but never lose their capacity for rueful amusement.

As befitting its period setting, in the best ways possible, THE BLACK PHONE unfolds and plays like a tight, efficient ABC Movie of the Week that its 1978 characters would be at home watching tonight. If Derrickson & Cargill's script had somehow traveled back in time to Fred Silverman's desk, it would have easily become a World Television Premiere directed by Curtis Harrington, starring Alfred Lutter, Quinn Cummings, and Richard Thomas as The Grabber. The premise of isolation and escape with a ticking clock amidst an outwardly uncaring world calls to mind not just horror classics as Jack Smight's 1972 THE SCREAMING WOMAN with Olivia de Havilland and THE LONGEST NIGHT with James Farentino, but even non-horror fare as Daryl Duke's 1975 A CRY FOR HELP, written by future "MURDER SHE WROTE" co-creator Peter S. Fischer, where Robert Culp plays a morning "shock jock" talk radio star who, after initially ridiculing a suicidal caller, changes course and desperately appeals to all his listeners to help track her down before she gives in to her depression. (All films produced, appropriately enough, by the studio behind this one, Universal.) In one powerful moment, Culp's DJ could just as easily be speaking for Gwen after her brother's kidnapping:

"There's a guy down at the police station - you heard him - who said that the girl can't be found. The word was can't. Well, I'll tell you what I think. Maybe we better get cracking. Not just me, but all of us, because...I guess she's one of us...and maybe we oughta take some responsibility for her." 

Hey, now, who really cares?
Hey, won't somebody listen
Let me say what's been on my mind
Can I bring it out to you
I need someone to talk to
And no one else will spare me the time

- Linda Perhacs, "Hey, Who Really Cares"

Indeed, the notion of being the proverbial brother's keeper is the recurrent thread through Finney's interactions with the voices of The Grabber's previous victims, all of whom, in their own ways, are children on the margins. Bruce Yasmada is Asian, Robin Arellano is Latino, mingling amiably with white kids in a time where racial integration in the suburbs is still a relatively new phenomenon. Billy Showalter, who bristles at hearing his name and prefers being called by his occupation "Paperboy," suggests a child thrust into the work force to sustain the household. Griffin Staggs is a proverbial lonely invisible kid - Finney says to him, "I didn't know you," and he replies, "Nobody did." And Vance Hopper, by contrast, is one of the meanest, most feared people in the neighborhood, almost a rival to The Grabber in tall tales around the playground, the kind of person who would actively not be missed. They have little in common beyond any of them not being considered one of the average boys in town, but in cold Kubrickian calculus, whatever their previous quarrels, they are all equal now. And in turn, it is now Finney's task to try every strategy they offer him to escape and expose their killer. He has already demonstrated an ability to grasp the circumstances of others, it is time to augment that with action. Because, as Robin reminds him, he is capable of withstanding pain without compromising his morals: "You were always afraid to throw a punch, but you knew how to take one." When he was alive, he warned him that some day he would have to stand up for himself, and in his posthumous counsel he proclaims, "Someday is today...Use what we gave you." In saving himself, he will also make sure the other boys are not forgotten, and that no other child in their town will be claimed either.

This is a sentiment that is right at home in the tradition of Roman Catholicism what has fascinated Derrickson for some time. Though almost completely eliminated in the present day, for centuries during the Sacrament of Confirmation, when a teenager stands before an archbishop and speaks for themselves the vows that a godparent previously took for them at Baptism, the bishop would in turn softly touch their cheek with their hand, to symbolize the potential conflicts ahead from adhering to those vows. And while post-Vatican II church teachings have attempted to de-escalate the fetishization of suffering, many Catholics, including myself, appreciate the base concept that in life, doing the right thing is often going to hurt, emotionally and physically, and many times, it will be an unrewarding endeavor. Finney gets a taste of this harsh truth when, upon trying to thank Vance for his escape hint, he screams back, "IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU, FUCKHEAD!" In his literal quest for survival, he accepts a crucial lesson about allyship, that some of the pain of conscientious behavior will involve being castigated by the very souls he seeks to help. With apologies to Eddie Izzard, being good won't guarantee you any fucking cake; at best, maybe a cracker on Sunday.

You've been sitting on your ass
Trying to find some grace
But you better save yourself
If you wanna see his face

- Chris Bell, "Better Save Yourself"

Derrickson, in his thoughtful interview with Chaw, expounded on the acceptance of pain in a life of faith, as opposed to the excessive positivity of, say, Prosperity Gospel purveyors. He states, "man, in that culture, you gotta be happy. You gotta be happy and everything's positive because that's the result of loving Jesus. That's proof. You wanna hear the Good News? Everything's great. You know, He saved me. Never mind the horrible and obvious shit I have pressed down into my gut, my life is wonderful. Everything is great. The idea of delving into darkness is in the Catholic tradition, but boy, it sure as shit is not in the Evangelical one. That's not healthy. It has no relationship with reality. There's kind of a no darkness allowed rule when it comes to that brand of American Christianity."

As Finney is the surrogate for Derrickson learning to transcend childhood trauma, Gwen is the surrogate for accepting mystery in the greater world. She is initially trepidatious at the prospect of psychic sight, having only a vague knowledge that her mother claimed to be able to "see things" before taking her own life, much like Ellie Taylor, the tender protagonist of Edgar Wright's equally scintillating 2021 thriller LAST NIGHT IN SOHO; to her, this gift has only yielded alternating bouts of abuse and angst from her father. But once her own brother goes missing, with practically all the adults around her proving to be nigh worthless for help, she's open to accept whatever God or her subconscious have to show her. She's wise enough to temper these mind flights within the reality of her environment, lest this become a Great Pumpkin-esque weight on her playground reputation, but as she bravely and alone follows the crumbs, she helps make a positive outcome possible; she's is willing to look where others have not thought to look, be it in that quiet house no is seen entering or leaving, or in her own self.

Reflecting back on Derrickson's assertion about his previous endings, any viewer will concur that this is the cleanest and happiest resolution of his films. In sober terms, it's not without some future ambiguities for its characters. Finney likely may find himself overcome by survivor's guilt as he grows older. His Big Man on Campus status will dissipate one day, and his old antagonists may feel bold enough to resume stirring his pot. He and Gwen may be in a honeymoon stage with their father now that they've emerged from this ordeal safe, but how long before a parental hand gets raised in a fit of pique again? But these matters will be dealt with later, if or when they happen. Today, *right now*, he has earned the right to express his wish to be called "Finn," and to be exempt from petty shit. He now has faith in his abilities to survive and assert himself. Gwen now has faith that the world has forces that will set things right. And these already loving siblings have blood proof they can rely on each other. Tonight, they're going to stay up past their bedtime, watch scary movies and eat ice cream, and enjoy childhood. 

Help your fellow man
Your cause is great and good

Your temple made of sand

No trace of where it stood
No, you can't be hurt

You're a golden child of God

- Emitt Rhodes, "Golden Child of God"

The New Normal of NEXT LEVEL

Roughly nine years ago, I stumbled across a great glorious cinematic What-in-the-Sam-Hill called STANDING OVATION, which I described as the tweener intersection of HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL and "JERSEY SHORE." I happily say that I have a fondness for films aimed at the grade school set, decades after they stopped being relevant to my existence, because more often than not I can imagine how li'l Mark (before he started spelling his name with a "c" instead of a "k" just to be difficult) would have reacted to them. Look, many of you have probably revisited the movies of your childhood and determined that they don't really hold up, but more often than not they still make you smile because you're remembering the wide-eyed hope of that earlier time. All I'm doing different is viewing such modern-day trifles through a theoretical fog of memory instead of an actual one.

So when I started seeing the advertising for another Pre-Adolescent Performing Arts Saga called NEXT LEVEL, naturally I was intrigued, being that ever since that previous jolt of kooky endorphins, I've been chasing that cotton-candy dragon for years since. I made the drive to attend one of the few theatrical playdates the movie has been granted - apparently the release is so small a theatre count or opening weekend gross could not be obtained from Box Office Mojo - and sure enough, I was the only person at my screening. For all I know, I may have been the only person in attendance for the whole day's worth of shows. To my mild disappointment, I was not treated to the same delirious array of plot turns and aesthetic decisions that made STANDING OVATION one-of-a-kind. Those looking for the next OOGIELOVES or THE IDENTICAL are thus duly warned. But, to my warm-hearted pleasure, I found just enough grace notes at play that I felt it worth expending space at this moribund blog to discuss them.

My close friend and esteemed colleague William Bibbiani, who was one of the few people to also take the time to meet this movie halfway and write a review for it, served up a thumbs-down pan for The Wrap that was nonetheless fair-minded, friendly, and respectful. His largest issue with the movie appears to be its lack of plausibility and stakes-worthy conflict, stating that, "the film’s production values [undermine] the story at every turn." On his Critically Acclaimed podcast with Witney Seibold, he further addressed that though it would be churlish to take issue with teenagers of limited acting experience and range performing as such, the experience of watching the film felt akin to being the parent of one of the kids who feels compelled to stay and watch the proceedings even though rooting interest dissipated shortly after their particular fave already did their number. Which is pretty much how my own father felt when he came to watch the big show at the performing arts camps he sent me to for my middle school years, not to mention how my friends felt about coming to see me during my open-mic stand-up years. (Plot twist: they didn't, and I wound up performing to the empty room that resulted after the audience members who came to see their friends split when their five minutes was up. But I digress) Much like me, he was hoping for a different kind of "camp" movie.

Bibbs has cogently assessed why he does not recommend it. I am not here about simply gainsaying his points, suffice to say that, in keeping with the principle coined by programmer Jesse Hawthorne Ficks as "neo-sincerity," what took him out of the movie never troubled me. Low production value? Sending me to Days of Creation cost my dad plenty, and their facilities were definitely not Camp Mohawk posh. The songs and choreography are so-so? Would it be better if Tommy French from SMILE were to have been in charge and turned a nice bunch of high school kids into Vegas showgirls? And, dude, it's not that Cindy turned on the house lights during Kelly's number, it's that her jerk move cut the power to her backing music and threw off the act. Didn't you ever have to solve the mystery of "The music stopped, and the lady died" when you were in middle school? But hey, consistency is a hobgoblin of small minds. And speaking of HOBGOBLINS...naah, we'll table that movie for now. The point is, he's already lain out what doesn't work. I've come to say here's what does work, DO MORE OF THAT!

The element that director Alyssa Goodman and screenwriter Byron Kavanagh bring to NEXT LEVEL which I believe help transcend it's outwardly ragged issues is how it quietly upends and thwarts the gender tropes that would normally be de rigeur in a PAPAS (yes, I am going to make that acronym happen). Press materials have openly name-checked MEAN GIRLS as an influence, though what I kept thinking of as I was watching was Jessica Bendinger's underappreciated directorial debut STICK IT, in how the ongoing theme is that shoehorning a young woman's desire to hone a talent into a winner-take-all environment will either curdle their personality or drain all joy from that pursuit, or both. Modern movies like to talk a good game of girl power and cooperation, but it's rare you see something where the lead is doing her damnedest to not be an Alpha in her group...and succeeds. It also keenly addresses that even if you outwardly eschew competition, it's often still ingrained in your thoughts. A particularly striking moment is when, after a boys versus girls dodgeball game, Kelly, the maverick who doesn't care about winning, initially resents that Hayden, the boy who likes her, effectively let her win; she considers it condescending that he didn't bring his A game. But Hayden points out that yeah, he could have flung the ball hard and beaned her, but then she'd be in pain and probably not in the mood to spend more time with him, and she agrees. Later, when Cindy pulls a boilerplate make-the-girl-jealous-with a hug scam, Hayden describes what happened and Kelly recognizes that Cindy's obsessed with manipulating people and bam, it's resolved. The contrivances of most teen stories are cut short here. It's refreshing that all the boys in this movie for once are not presented as antagonists or chaos agents, but just benign diversions. When they first appear, disrupting an initial rehearsal, they flat out say they heard the song and dance happening and liked it and wanted to watch, and after some chiding, are allowed to. When they acquiesce to their makeover bet payoff with the girls, none of them seem embarrassed or even that anxious to get it off, much to the chagrin of their female coach. Heck, the d.j.'s at the closing night celebration are girls. And the fact that at the end it is suggested that hey, why not allow boys in this arts camp as well, frankly I laughed heartily at that because after decades of having to sit through dozens of movies where "girls can do this too" is the moral, turnabout is fair play and overdue.

Another element that may seem incredulous to some but felt effective to me is the virtual lack of adult supervision in this story. Aside from the hapless camp director, there are no other adult males ever seen. And beyond some early comic relief with Cindy's enabling mother, a disheartening audio exchange between Becky and her pushy stage mom, and the one moment with the boys' basketball camp coach, no adult women either, Even the ostensible visiting mentor Jasmine Joel is herself just reaching college age, though she does have some lessons to impart. Thus, we are spared any kind of tired "the grown-ups have the answers" lecturing; the girls in effect are recognizing and solving their own problems. As FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH director Amy Heckerling once observed, "I hate parents. Parents open a whole box of stuff I [don’t] want to get into. I just [want] to say ‘Here’s the world of kids in their own universe.'" And in a film that is almost exclusively going to be viewed by the Tiger Beat set, agency and self-determination are good skills to depict.

I'll further throw in to say that I enjoyed how while there is a declared prize to be won within the story, it is deliberately undercut to the point of becoming an anticlimax. There's a nice resolution between Cindy and Kelly that dovetails to the earlier exchange between Kelly and Hayden, where the girls debate whether, if they had not been at loggerheads, the award win would have been different, and then decide it would have been the same because their essential temperaments for achievement have always been different, and there's more contentment from having good company. Even in an uplifting kids movie, one is risking massive mockery to go for a "the real prize was the friends we made along the way" ending. Seeing as how Kelly, in an earlier gloomy moment, assumes that her botched performance will shortly become a meme, and in real life all these eager young performers already have an internet presence, everyone involved in this film are aware that the snark brigade is always waiting. So woot to them for believing that sometimes if you leave girls to their own devices, they won't go LORD OF THE FLIES on each other; for the viewers about to start high school, that's reassuring. And for some of us arrested adolescents as well.

While NEXT LEVEL is not a strong enough movie to hold much interest for anyone who isn't a teenage girl or their sitter for the night, if you do find yourself watching it in such circumstance...your roommate absconded with your copy of the original HAIRSPRAY, and CAMP with Anna Kendrick got pulled from streaming, and you don't think your young charge is ready for Coco's breakdown in FAME, you will see a world where girls are valued, boys aren't toxic, and in a time of your life where it feels like Everything is Everything, it's possible to lower the stakes and find calm. Bibbs is right in that I won't likely remember any of the song or dance numbers that were supposed to be the big draw. But I will remember that I had a good time, and that's worth something too.

(P.S.: Thank you for the post-credit blooper reel. Since most indie movies don't get physical media releases anymore, I sometimes worry that little bonuses like this may fall by the wayside. Why should Marvel fans get all the cookies?)

Fernand Raynaud and His Role in Amusing Myself

Your first favorite comedy recording is one of the milestones of your childhood; it may not fully define the expanse or range of what you find funny as you grow older, but it presents the root elements that made you laugh all those years ago, and probably still hooks you today when you search for a moment’s distraction.

I spent the first few years of my life in a melange of languages. My mother, newly transplanted to America from years in Naples, Italy, switched between French and Italian on alternate days, believing it would help continue communication between myself and her non-English speaking parents, who had also moved stateside to be closer to me. My father just kept speaking English. I have no memory of what transpired, but according to him, after a stretch of this, I stopped speaking completely for almost six months, and then just as abruptly, started up again. Therapists they took me to then could not agree on whether being immersed in multiple tongues was helping me or confusing me – a debate which continues today – so once I inexplicably ended the vocal standoff, the decision was made to pare down to just French and English at home. So while I had previously (and adorably) been able to muscle up to a barista on a cruise liner and say, “Uno cappucino, subito!” before the age of four, what Italian I learned faded away, my French stayed conversational though I would never fully master writing it or nail that eternal aigue versus grave divide, and I learned to speak the flat unaffected English of any other child growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Nonetheless, my first comedy memory was impacted by that multilingual setting. My mother had brought with her a collection of comedy 45s by a French comedian named Fernand Raynaud. And one in particular I somehow gravitated to, playing it as constantly as most growing kids played their Disney storybook record, and ultimately memorizing the sketch. Well, technically, memorizing it as onomatopoeiatically possible, since between skips in the record and the high speed slang of the delivery, I never fully understood all the actual words being said. But my determination to recite it at the drop of a hat definitely made for some initial amusement at family gatherings. Then, for various reasons practical and personal, this obsession became just a curious historical anecdote as I discovered Monty Python, George Carlin, the Second City, and other English-language comedy.

Trying to describe the appeal of a foreign-language comedian whose prime came before the internet offered global interconnectivity is not quite as difficult as dancing about architecture, but it’s still a bit of a challenge. With that Magilla Gorilla in the room, I’ll give it a try.

Fernand Raynaud’s comedy was driven by storytelling, reciting events and sketches using exaggerated voices and facial expressions, usually building to one big payoff, kind of a French equivalent of Jerry Clower. And since some of his sketches became quite popular, he would also effectively be an ancestor of that genre which “SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE” would mercilessly brand for eternity as, “The Kings of Catchphrase Comedy.” Raynaud was in fact often derided by some comedy fans for this appeal, which was at odds with another popular French comedian of the day, Raymond Devos, who was perceived as way more literate. Writer François Beaune described the divide through the words of a woman he encountered in 2011:

“Fernand Raynaud, really, he was already cheesy back then...When I was young, there were only two comedians: Fernand Raynaud and Raymond Devos. In my cultivated, bourgeois family, we loved Devos. [Raynaud’s] interminable croissant gag...[he] was for the proles, Devos was for the nerds. There were still real class distinctions.”

Raynaud’s affinity was indeed for working class characters, and their daily toil against the indignities of job, home, and other people. This was likely inspired from his upbringing in Oradou, a suburb of Clermont-Ferrand, dominated by Michelin’s tire factory, where his father worked as a foreman. He left school at 15, and lived a nomadic, knockaround life into his 20s, working a multitude of jobs, doing military service in Berlin during WWII, and losing two of his fingers in an undefined accident. When he began regularly performing in Parisian cabarets and television in the mid-’50s, he performed material inspired by the personalities he had encountered through his travels, most often sporting a battered hat and long coat. As Beaune observed, “The characters of Fernand Raynaud are beautiful and complex creatures: the sister, the switchboard operator, the customs officer, the [brat]...No stereotypes. Fernand possessed the art of portraiture, the art of observing, of transcribing without exaggerating, of sketching reality.”

Probably the best representation of Raynaud’s skill for social observation and wresting comedy from a repeated phrase is his well-remembered sketch, “J’ m’amuse.” In a set up that serves as a scarily prescient prediction of modern-day corporate doublespeak, a factory boss calls an impromptu meeting of all his employees to inform them that starting immediately, “to boost morale,” no one is allowed to even say that they are laboring or doing a job, they must say, “I’m enjoying myself.” There are predictably tired and grouchy recitations of the new euphemism by the unlucky grunts who are put on the spot to test the new rule, but the sketch reaches its full potential as the boss grills a supply clerk about his role in the factory, and the clerk keeps repeating the “I’m enjoying myself” maxim, demonstrating the clear absurdity of this directive, to a perfect conclusion:

SUPPLY CLERK: I think I’ll be enjoying myself here for another fifteen years, until my retirement, tell you what!

THE BOSS: And after that, what will you do?

SUPPLY CLERK: Well then after that? I'll go to work!

The sketch that I had memorized as a five-year-old was “Bourreau d’enfants,” which literally translates as “Executioner of Children” but would probably be better understood as simply “Child Abuser.” Raynaud alternately narrates and acts out the chaos of a dyspeptic father trying to get his intransigent son to eat his dinner, and the yelling between them leads the neighbors to constantly scream the title catchphrase. Perhaps, to modern listeners, that's a grim-sounding scenario for a lighthearted comedy routine, especially to be re-recited by a child like me back then. However, speaking as a former child, that's a scenario likely relatable to any parent, or neighbor to a parent for that matter; as the late Rahn Ramey observed, if you’ve never thought about killing your kids, that’s because your kids don’t live with you. Revisiting and translating it for this article yielded fresh insight that I obviously lacked back then. For example, there is a third character in the sketch, the father’s mother-in-law who vainly tries to mediate the dispute. Which leads me to the question, where is the actual mother during this dinner? I rather suspect the fact that Raynaud chose to dramatize a grandparent rather than the maternal parent was perhaps meant to hint that mother was off working a night job! 

A reasonably faithful translation of the French audio is provided in small print below:

FATHER: Toto, eat your soup.

TOTO: No, I won’t eat it. Tonight, I don’t want to eat my soup.

FATHER: Eat it right away, Toto. Otherwise I will see it as my paternal obligation to serve you, with deep regret, a lovely pair of slaps to your face.

TOTO: Ohh...oh how unhappy I must be...all this crazy slapping when I don’t want to eat things I don’t like...Oh, I’ve had it...what I life I lead…

FATHER: Stop your crying, Toto, or otherwise I will give you such a slap, you'll know why you're crying.

TOTO: {wailing}

The neighbors: ‘CHILD ABUSER!’

FATHER: Seriously, you’re not going to rile up the neighborhood because you don’t want to eat your soup, no? Eat it this instant!

TOTO: No, I won’t eat it. Tonight I decided that I won’t eat my soup.

FATHER: Oh like that you decided?

TOTO: Yes, that’s what I decided.

FATHER: Well, you’re going to eat it.

TOTO: No, I won’t eat it.

FATHER: Yes, you will eat it!

TOTO: {wailing}

MOTHER IN LAW: It seems to me, my son-in-law, that for the education of your son, it would certainly be preferable at the moment, would it not, especially at this time that we live in…

FATHER: You, “mother,” give me a break. If you’re not happy here, I’ll show you the door.

MOTHER IN LAW: This I thought I’d never see; my children, throwing me in the street.

TOTO: That’s papa, he wants to throw us in the street. {wailing}

The neighbors: ‘CHILD ABUSER!’

FATHER: Stop your screaming! I’m not going to play along with this drama! What do you want to eat since you don’t want to eat your soup?

TOTO: What would I like? I would like...a sausage.

FATHER: You’d eat a sausage?

TOTO: Tonight I’d definitely eat a sausage.

FATHER: Well, you’re not going to eat a sausage because you are going to eat your soup right this minute.

TOTO: No, I’ll eat a sausage.

FATHER: No, you won’t eat it.

TOTO: {wailing}

The neighbors: ‘CHILD ABUSER!’

The father goes downstairs at top speed, he rouses the butcher after they've closed for the night, and he returns with a sausage.

FATHER: There. Happy? You’ll give me a moment’s peace now?

TOTO: {wailing}

FATHER: What are you going on about now, what do you want?

TOTO: I want you to have a piece before me.

FATHER: That I eat a sausage? After I’ve already had my jam? Never, you hear.

TOTO: Uh-huh. I know you want to poison me, then.

FATHER: No, but you’re crazy. Yes, completely. I don’t want to poison you.

TOTO: Then eat a piece!

FATHER: No, I won’t eat it!

TOTO: {wailing}

The neighbors: ‘CHILD ABUSER!’

FATHER: Be quiet, you! I swear to you, I’ll eat your darned piece of sausage. And after that you’ll give me peace. (mouth full) Because, first off...pay attention...I’ll show you out the door, you hear? So don’t make your faces at me. You’ll be eating your sausage with your school teachers. (swallow) There! Are you happy? I ate your piece of sausage!

TOTO: {wailing}

The neighbors: ‘CHILD ABUSER!’

FATHER: How can this be? You didn’t want to eat your soup, you didn’t eat it. You wanted me to bring you a sausage and I brought it. You wanted me to eat a piece, and I ate it. And you’re still whining? Why?

TOTO: You ate the piece that I wanted!

Thinking back to that very distant time of my childhood, where memory is often difficult to recover, I am inclined to believe that while I liked the laughs I was getting for regurgitating the routine, I was probably first drawn to it and ultimately embraced it because with the highs and lows of the dialogue between the sketch's father and son, it was almost like memorizing a favorite song. Maybe it was less about the subject matter and more the melody of the French being spoken itself that drew me in.

Similarly, to really get in a zone to write this piece, I mainlined easily two dozen or more monologues and sketches of Raynaud's, some of which I was able to suss out meaning from with my pidgin understanding of French, some that I did not but instead simply listened to, indeed, as if they were musical compositions. And while I've got a definite bias because I'm trying to sell the validity of my subject to the reader, I did feel a definite and immediate sense of comfort listening to his patter at length, the kind of easy feeling decades of "A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION" audiences have likely felt. I have not yet gone so far as to listen to an equal amount of his ersatz rivals Raymond Devos or Colouche or Fernandel, but I'm open to that idea, depending on how much response I get for this initial foray. But I digress.

At the height of his fame in the ‘60s, doing TV and movies in France, and taking his stage act to London, Canada, and Africa, Raynaud was now in a paradoxical position. His success meant he could take his children on holidays his hard-laboring father could not, but they would often have to cut their visits short due to being besieged by fans. Also, the high demand for his performances led to being subject to higher taxes, which he could only feasibly pay off by working even more than he already was. His son Pascal recounted in a 2003 interview that he tried to balance all these conflicting forces as best he could: “Even when he was traveling 400 kilometers away, he drove all night to get home and sleep at home...It bothered him not to have the life of the simple man.” However, he would allow himself one major indulgence that would be in stark contrast to his working-class roots: after being served with a tax bill of 300,000 francs, he spent an equivalent amount on a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow. Finally, to hold onto more of his income and ease his work schedule, Raynaud moved his residence to Nouméa, on the peninsula of New Caledonia, just out of reach of the revenuers.

Raynaud never did make inroads into the United States, but strangely enough, some of his material did.

It’s not known who precisely was the Francophile on the writing staff of the 1971-1977 Children’s Television Workshop educational series “THE ELECTRIC COMPANY,” but two of Reynaud’s sketches were repurposed, without credit, into animated segments for the show. The segments were done by the late Jerry Lieberman, whose studio would later create logo treatments for Nickelodeon and Turner Broadcasting and the animated portions of Cyndi Lauper’s “She Bop” video.

The first sketch really needs no introduction, suffice to say that the animated version pares down what was a wordy 6 minute monologue into a tight playlet.

The other, “Deux croissants,” mentioned earlier in this essay, became the “Sweet Roll” segment, which proved so popular, it was restaged in live action with Hattie Winston and Jim Boyd in a later season. While the ingredients change, the principle is the same: a clueless customer continues to request the one menu item an increasingly flustered server tells him is not available. Raynaud’s original finishes with a third character, another diner who castigates the customer for annoying the server, stating that had it been them taking the order, they would have used the non-existent croissants to smack him in the face. The “ELECTRIC COMPANY” version just ends with the server running to the kitchen screaming. In the 2006 book SMARTBOMB by Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby, another variation was attributed to computer game developer Will Wright, who described it as a “Zen” joke, with no acknowledgment to its previous telling by Raynaud or the TV series.

Now, it is entirely possible that, befitting the old “music hall” style of narrative comedy he practiced, maybe Raynaud was not in fact the original author of those sketches. For example, another of Raynaud’s recordings, “Le tailleur,” is essentially a variation of what has circulated since American vaudeville as “The Suit Joke.” ("Oh, that poor man!" "Yes, but what a perfect suit!") And “It’s the Plumber” has been attributed to both American comic Buddy Hackett and UK comic Duggie Brown, though finding a concrete date of telling it has so far proved elusive, thus it is possible Raynaud told it first. 

But getting back to the prime point, while one shared sketch could be attributed to coincidence and public domain status, the fact that two sketches widely associated with Raynaud -- even packaged together on the same 45 -- got restaged on the same TV show suggests that some wily bilingual was taking notes from his act.

And of course, when I was a comedy-devouring child, I wasn’t about joke theft. I was just surprised that somehow that sketch from one of my mother’s 45s made it to one of my favorite TV shows. And we all had a laugh about it, back at that age when laughing in my mother’s presence came much more naturally than it would once I got older.

In the fall of 1973, the 47-year-old Raynaud was ready to step away. He had booked a benefit performance for factory workers in his hometown of Clermont-Ferrand on September 28th, and intended to hold a press conference before the show with the mayor to announce his retirement. He had specifically chosen this location and occasion for personal symbolism, having previously encapsulated his feelings for the city in 1970: "When, coming from Paris, after Aigueperse, on the blue road, I see the Puy de Dome, and after that, passing by Riom, built in Volvic stone, I see [the sign] ‘Clermont-Ferrand, 14 kilometers,’ my heart beats stronger. I am affected as a lover who will return to a beloved woman."

As writer Jean-Baptiste Ledys wrote this past January, “In this declaration of love that Fernand Raynaud made for Clermont-Ferrand...the comedian did not know that he described the road on which he would die.”

Running late for his press conference, Raynaud’s Silver Shadow, chosen this day because his preferred traveling car had been stolen two days before, that piquant prize which he had jokingly described to his friends as “an assassin,” went out of control after the Aigueperse curve, hit a livestock trailer, and continued for 80 meters until crashing into the wall of the Cheix-sur-Morge cemetery, killing him instantly.

La Montagne, one of the French publications waiting for him at the press conference that never happened, later declared in a headline: “For the first time, Fernand made us cry.”

Raynaud’s most beloved monologue was called simply, “Hereux.” Within the flexibility of French, it can mean “Happy,” but also the more sober reading, “Content.” In his monologue, he portrays a road worker, talking about his unassuming but also unstressful daily life, and contrasting it with the dissatisfied feelings of the relatives he reluctantly meets with once a year, repeating the word “Hereux” frequently. When one of his relatives, a philosopher, challenges him to prove how he can be so content with his lot in life, another relative, a doctor, stands up for him, saying, “Have you ever seen a road worker go on strike?”

“Hereux” would become his best known catch phrase. When tabloids reported on his tax disputes and other domestic troubles, they always invoked it with a question mark. When his sketches were published in a 1975 book, and when actor Jean Rochefort staged a Hal-Holbrook-as-Mark-Twain-style tribute to Raynaud in 2004, performing his classic scenes and songs to packed audiences, it was used as the title. And most importantly, it is the word on his headstone in Saint-Germain-des-Fosses, the municipality in central France where he vacationed in childhood. 

In August of 2010, filmmaker and Academy Award winner Claude Lelouch offered this personal memory of Raynaud:

"I knew him well, he was one of those people who really made me laugh...I remember an evening spent at a friend's house who had very, very beautiful paintings, and had a very beautiful Picasso. Fernand had advised him to put it in the bathroom because, he said, this is where we have time to appreciate [things] every day. The masterpieces, we should put them in the bathroom, where we have time to look at them, [otherwise] in the living room we pass them by...He was a very astonishing person and it is true that he was constantly [concerned about] the truth; I had a little talk with him, and he said, 'If there is not one whiff of truth in my sketch, it won't hold the road.'"

And perhaps, without me knowing it, that was the seed planted in me from that first comedy record. Truth. One kid recognizing how bratty behavior can sound amusing, especially when you clumsily recount it to the grownups instead of committing it yourself. One adult recognizing how when you try to futz with or manipulate what truth is only makes you look more stupid. And all the time in between, finding those real things that would indeed make one content, if not completely happy.

So I think I can say truthfully that I really went to work in enjoying myself for you all.

John and John, Where Have Ye Gone?

If you're a comedy lover, March 5, 1982, and March 4, 1994, are two days in history where you had better laugh just to stop from crying.



When you talk to someone born between, say, 1940 to 1960, they'll have some sort of story about how the assassination of President John F. Kennedy shocked them like no other death of a public figure, or for that matter, any other tragic event they'd witnessed. After that, it gets a little more fragmented and particular, depending either on your political stripe or entertainment taste. And for me, my personal JFK moment has always been when I came into my father's house on a Friday afternoon, just after buying snacks for the evening's VHS rental, and as I walked into the dining room, the news on the TV was announcing that John Belushi had died.

I thought I was pretty together for a 12-year-old. Sure, it was shocking when Elvis died at 42, I had been listening and pantomiming his records alone in my room and was thus a fan, but I was in grade school and he was my parents' rock star: I shook my head and went on. I was up past my bedtime watching "THE TONIGHT SHOW," as was my regular routine, when the news interrupted that December night in 1980 with news that John Lennon had been shot; again, I was shocked, especially since his new album had only come out three weeks before, but somehow I got over this too. But when I heard Belushi was gone, I was inconsolable for weeks, and there's a part of me that's never gotten over it.

Perhaps it is because unlike Presley and Lennon, Belushi felt like he was mine, a star that belonged to me and was not my parents' hand-me-down. I found him by staying up late to watch "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE," I had the ludicrous tingle of going to an R-rated movie like THE BLUES BROTHERS to see him do his magic...nobody older than me had to set the stage and sell me on any sort of past track record, I was seeing his legacy happen from the ground floor. And at that stage of my life, I was a little husky like he was, and I looked up to his ability to be physically graceful and command attention and be attractive to girls. I wanted to be him when I became a man. And in most of the right ways, and even some of the wrong ways, I still want to.

It seems strange to make this kind of observation about a man who is remembered for his domineering qualities, but Belushi emerged from an artistic mindset that is very hard to find in the entertainers of today, where genius was not only in how they could project, but also how they could hold back. If you watch enough classic SNL sketches you will see how John can play completely normal while another player or guest star takes focus and gets the laughs. It may not have been his personal instinct - he was notorious for trying to sandbag female writers' sketch ideas - but once a sketch made it to show, and the camera was on, he was all about the scene, whether he was the prime mover or the straight man. And while he certainly owned the frame when he was headlining a movie, when he was playing support, such as to Talia Shire in OLD BOYFRIENDS or Jack Nicholson in GOIN' SOUTH, he knew when to turn his wattage up and when to turn it down. Maybe that's old Second City discipline straight from Viola Spolin and Paul Sills, maybe it's from working with people whom you enjoy playing back-and-forth with, but it is a skill that is missing from a lot of comedy nowadays. I am not here to accuse modern comedians of being attention hogs, far from it: most have trained in the same talent incubators (Second City, the Groundlings) under the same standards, and in the best comedies, are still capable of this proper give and take. I feel the finger is better pointed at more modern comedy producers, who after overpaying for talent, panic if every second of their screen time is not taken up with a laugh.

Example: I saw ANCHORMAN 2 in December, and pretty much hated on it for multiple reasons, but especially because it felt like for all the trouble it took to reunite all the principal cast from the first film, it was fully the Will Ferrell show with maybe Steve Carell getting the most significant screen time because of his increased stature, while the rest were just left to get a few sporadic moments to shine. But I went the other night to see the "763 New Jokes" alternate R-rated cut that was reissued to theatres this past weekend (in advance of the home video release), and while it still has many problems, actually liked it better, precisely because it spread more screen time and material to the supporting players, but certainly carried the perceived downside of making the movie longer. As such I could easily understand the pressures on Ferrell and director Adam McKay from all sides, and deciding to hedge their bet and sacrifice development for jokes-per-minute. John Landis has often remarked on the decision to carefully parcel out Belushi's appearances in ANIMAL HOUSE for maximum impact, and even in many of those moments, he is in concert with the primary cast, and not always getting the payoff. Landis would likely not have that option today, instead he'd surely get besieged with studio notes demanding more Bluto scenes, "because he's the star."

This is what I wish more people would dwell on when the legacy of Belushi is discussed, rather than the usual topics of his excessive behavior in films and in real life. He was described as being able to walk into a room as if he were on horseback, to pull all eyes to him. However, too many don't recognize that once he had that attention, he gladly gave it away to others. It can be as obvious as the easy rapport he enjoyed with Dan Aykroyd in their multiple movies, or sometimes not for public consumption, as when he came to support friends Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas during a press op for STRANGE BREW, and insisted on not being filmed, so that all attention could be given to the rise of the McKenzie Brothers. There was a touching testimony by the late SNL writer Michael O'Donoghue for a Rolling Stone memorial issue, where he listed five reasons why John went straight to Heaven - I can't find the original text, but two that stood out to me was that he regularly sent money to Albanian relatives he'd never met, and that he reunited his old high school band to play together for all their friends. In short, what made Belushi special was that he not only had the confidence to draw attention to himself, he had the generosity to spread the wealth around..."Oh, you think I'm funny - here's these guys I know and enjoy, you should be watching them too."

That is what I think I love most and miss so much about Belushi decades later, and the lesson I've tried to carry on from him: the notion of shared elevation, of making everyone in the scene look good. As a high school football star, he knew if you can grab that ball, then go ahead and run with it all the way to the goal, but if you got a teammate to make the pass to, trust in them to rise to the occasion.

One of the prime recipients of his comedy trust managed to go on running with the spotlight, and my heart, for over another decade. And when he unexpectedly died 12 years later, one day before Belushi's marker, and within days of another comedy legend, Bill Hicks, it made me so despondent I left a sobbing message on a friend's voice mail bemoaning, "All my heroes are dying."

Upon discovering the quasi-adult pleasures of watching "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE" as a child, I was soon hungry for more. And I don't know how precisely it was that I found "SECOND CITY TELEVISION," later to just be "SCTV;" I guess I somehow saw it listed in the TV Guide described as a sketch comedy show, and my curiosity drove me to fiddle with the antenna to get a decent signal from the Dayton station that aired it after SNL since no Cincinnati stations carried it. But after that first episode, I was hooked. And, naturally, was the only kid on the playground talking about Count Floyd and Edith Prickley and Bobby Bittman. And, when I did get to go to that previously-mentioned taboo screening of THE BLUES BROTHERS, when a smug detective showed up where the boys were staying, I was certainly the only kid my age in the theatre to look at the screen and excitedly say, "That's John Candy!"

To this day there are plenty of people who don't care for Belushi or his work, who merely see him as a fat pampered train wreck, but there is practically nobody out there who doesn't have a kind thing to say about John Candy. His history is similar to Belushi's in terms of Second City education, ensemble performing, and public charm, and also full of outgoing gestures to friends and fans, of cooking large meals for the crew of his movies, of sitting in the cheap seats with hockey lovers who came to see the team he co-owned for several years. The popular perception is that Candy was a more sensible person than Belushi, since he lived longer, didn't abuse drugs and liquor, had a more solid marriage and raised children, and did not have a record of erratic behavior to sully his image. But as demonstrated in his final years, Candy was susceptible to the same addictive swings that Belushi was prone to, just through more socially accepted dependencies on cigarettes and food. And as such, both men reached such a need for those perceived comfort items which they inherently knew would decimate them, it put all who loved them in the position of either enabling or disengaging, and speaking from personal experience, disengagement is worse precisely because you don't know how bad things are getting.

Candy, I feel, also had a gift that is often overlooked when his body of work is discussed. Belushi only made a handful of movies, and while the greatness of some of them remain in debate (I count myself in the small but vocal rally behind NEIGHBORS), he didn't leave behind any clunkers. Candy was not as lucky; there are plenty of stiffs in his resume, including, sadly, his swan song, WAGONS EAST. But I maintain that while Candy has appeared in movies that didn't work, he never gave anything less than 100% to those roles. He could take substandard material and elevate it just enough so that you never felt like your two hours were a total waste, only a minor disappointment; you never lost your goodwill towards him, if anything you bemoaned that the rest of the movie didn't deserve him. As a tweener, I thought GOING BERSERK was a neglected masterpiece, and even though through my adult eyes, I can see how threadbare and misbegotten it is, I remember his scenes and I'm still laughing. Candy could sell like a champ: he could take a tired predictable punchline and make it gold, like this one from another misfire, ONCE UPON A CRIME:

"Why, you married for money!"
"That sir, is an outrage! I married for lots of money! Huhuhuhuhuhuh!"
(seriously, that classic Johnny LaRue laughing-verging-on-sobbing is irresistible)

Selling when the ship is sinking is another lost art. It's not that there aren't devoted actors today who try to make the best out of lousy material, but ultimately they come off as too guarded or too desperate. Somehow, Candy was always eminently watchable no matter how badly everything else was turning out. You can try to just blame it on '80's nostalgia, but I guarantee you 10 years from now there will be more people watching ARMED AND DANGEROUS than, say, THE WATCH, and I'll stand on Ben Stiller's coffee table in my Chuck Taylors and say that.

Ultimately, Belushi and Candy were brothers from another mother. They were friends, excellent team players, men who challenged conventional notions of attraction, and engendered enormous audience affections that continue long after their departure. For whatever vices they picked up that should have been left behind, perhaps even those were simply part of how they treated their art and their lives, from the cardinal rules that everyone is taught to do in improvisation: say yes, explore, and heighten. And in the best moments, and the detrimental moments, they kept to that standard.

Belushi would have been 65 and Candy would have been 63 today. And they would have been as grief-stricken as we have been at the recent loss of their friend Harold Ramis. As all three of them were when Doug Kenney inexplicably departed before properly enjoying the success of the movies he co-wrote with or for them.

In his exploration on Belushi's legacy, Roger Ebert observed, "Tragedy is when you know not only what was, but what could have been." That's why my elders have not forgotten the shock of their fallen heroes, nor I mine. I think if there is a difference, it's because, well, if the two Johns stuck around a little longer, we would have had a lot more laughs in the world. And we're always going to need those.

But thankfully, we have what they left behind, which is still a lot of great stuff.

Little Chocolate Donuts will always be the donuts of champions!

And Johnny LaRue will always be NOT GAY!