Loneliness Is The Best Laughter
Loneliness Is The Best Laughter
Laughing Alone
December 16, 2018
Christmas In a Dark, Cold, Lonely Place In Canada A Long Time Ago
Dave Thomas sits at the piano on a cold night banging away at the keys playing Christmas tunes while getting hit with a whip by a muscular man. Thomas is dressed like Liberace and speaks like Liberace but we suspect the piano playing isn't real.
It's an early 1980s episode of SCTV and Thomas is starring in a sketch called Liberace's Musical Tribute to the Holidays and it's one of our funniest and favorite and most important Christmas traditions.
Liberace welcomes Elton John (Rick Moranis), who seems to hate him, then Ethel Merman (Andrea Martin), who destroys the place, and finally Orson Welles (John Candy) who is hungry and ornery and walks off the set in disgust.
If you don't like masochism, jealousy, violence and insolence then you don't know early 80s Canadian comedy, damn it.
One of the quirky and most unique things about SCTV, amid its hilarity and silliness, is that it always felt so lonely. Each sketch looked like it was shot in a studio outside Toronto late on a cold night and the only people in the whole building were the actors, a cameraman and another guy mopping up in the back.
Maybe there's something Canadian about it. Maybe Canadian nights are all about cold and loneliness and isolation and overcoming those things. You know, sort of like how American humor is all about trying not to get shot.
What does Ed Grimley think? Grimley, played preciously as always by Martin Short, stars in our other favorite SCTV Christmas gift, The Fella Who Couldn't Wait For Christmas.
Grimley is alone in his bedroom on Christmas Eve, tortured by the hours that stand between him and Christmas morning as he paces the floor, looks out the window, talks to the sky and gets screamed at by an unseen parental figure.
The set is simple if not downright cheap, the lighting is moody if not sad and the whole thing, while hilarious and weird, is just so lonely and touching. Lovely and special.
We think about Canada a lot these days. It must be the first country that Santa visits on Christmas Eve and it wouldn't surprise us if he stops at every Canadian house a second time on his way home.
Canada has Ed Grimley, whispering pines, Kaetlyn Osmond and friendly ghosts.
It has cold hallways and flannel shirts that Grandpa loved and Grandma still sleeps in even when Christmas is over.
Canada is that part of Christmas when you’re alone in a cold place and you’re laughing and wondering where everyone went and if they’re coming back. It’s funny when you realize you might have been forgotten on winter day. It’s very funny.
But the colder it gets, the less you laugh. --TK
Sunday, December 16, 2018