Listening to the radio earlier, I heard someone mention Woody Allen. That’s a name I don’t think on too often, even though I know he’s all kinds of famous.
Back when I was in college, I knew a feller who was from New York City somewhere. And to him, Woody Allen was the height of comedy. But when I think back to any and everything I’ve ever seen from Allen… none of it was funny. Not even a little bit. It’s not like “this was a joke that fell flat,” more like “I am watching comedy based on dialog, but it’s in a foreign language.”
For my own self, that seems to be the explanation: he’s from an alien culture. “Seinfeld” and “Friends” were two hideously popular comedy shows that never once made me laugh… and I think it was due in large part to them being highly invested in their own alien cultures (NYC and LA, if memory serves).
So, yeah. I tried thinking back to anything I ever saw of Woody Allens that made me laugh, and I came up empty. Actually, for a moment there I thought I had something, but then I realized that I was actually thinking not of woody Allen, but then I realized that I was actually thinking of Marty Feldmans “Igor.” So… nuthin’.
So… is Allen funny to anyone else? It might be interesting to map out where and when. Mel Brooks, after all, made some astonishingly funny movies. And then he made a bunch of astonishingly unfunny movies. So there might be a time factor. Perhaps Allen was similarly funny at one time but not another.