SPACEBALLS THE COMEDY LESSON
The first time I watched Spaceballs was with Zack, my younger brother, when it premiered on HBO in 1988. It appeared to be just another funny movie like Three Men and a Baby. I found Michael Winslow making Bleeps, Sweeps and Creeps to be in the same league as Tom Selleck getting pissed on by a baby. Luckily I had taped it on my parent’s new VHS player.
Every day on our walk home from school we would roll apples into the street praying a car would hit one. An apple explosion was the best thing life had to offer at the time. It’s hard to even remember if the apples were green, red or golden because we never made it back to the tree after Spaceballs entered our life. When my apple exploded the day after we had watched Spaceballs for the first time, it wasn’t joy I was feeling, it was relief. Finally, I could go home and watch Spaceballs again.
During that last day of apple tossing my brother was the one who first brought up the idea of watching the film again. At first, it made no sense, what was interesting about watching a movie I had just seen? I remembered the funny parts, and so I proved it. I looked around the ground and up into the tree and said, “I knew it, I’m surrounded by apples. Keep firing, apples.” He thought my pun was hilarious, and I wasn’t about to tell him otherwise. Instead, we raced home to re-watch it and find more jokes to borrow. My brother and I spent the following six months devouring it. Every day a new joke to recite, each one more esoteric than the last. It was no longer a film, it was a contest. We weren’t passive moviegoers sitting in the theatre with our guts hanging out half laughing and half regretting the large coke we purchased. We were active participants. Yelling out the lines we knew and taking notes on the ones we hadn’t yet committed to memory. Zack and I became professors of Spaceballs. (According to Zack’s memory, we recited the entire film, including music cues, on March Twenty-Third, 1990.) Yet, as much as we had discovered about Spaceballs, this was only the beginning of our journey.
As the older of the two of us, it was only natural that I came to the inevitable conclusion first: Spaceballs was no longer funny. Zack jumped up and down on my parents’ bed, screaming our favorite lines. He refused to believe that I would forsake this film in the same way we had ditched the apple tree. I put my finger to mouth, shhhing him. His world was upside down. There was only one way he could express his shock, “my brains are going into my feet!”
If I was older at the time of my six-month obsession, I might have jumped right into a meta-appreciation, but instead, it took years. “Prepare to fast-forward.”
In Seventh and Eighth grade my friends Brian, Dave and I rediscovered an edited-for-content Spaceballs playing on either TNT or The Superstation, I don’t remember which one. It was especially hilarious to watch my favorite scene, “I’m surrounded by assholes” transformed into “I’m surrounded by bleeps.”
After we were done, I couldn’t help wondering, was this censored version better than the original? We popped in my worn tape. Yes, the original, curses and all, felt hollow compared to this new piece of pop art. Months afterwards Dave called me freaking out, he had just watched a different edited-for-content Spaceballs which replaced the curses with tamer words instead of beeps. Like the boyscout he was, he recorded the second half of the film. There was no “asshole” scene, it was edited out entirely, but we debated about which “safe” word would have replaced asshole for weeks. I believe the winner was “I’m surrounded by ski poles.” Although I always liked the idea that Dark Helmet got really dark and said “I knew it I’m surrounded by dead souls.”
What was so funny about these mangled versions? We no longer found Spaceballs funny, and these edited versions helped bring us to a meta-place we might not have reached until high school: Spaceballs is funny only because it’s not funny. See, “Funny, she doesn’t look Drewish” as an example. Heavy shit, but only the beginning. In actuality, we had reached the third level of The Spaceballs’ Scale of Comedic Appreciation and Criticism; we just didn’t know it yet. That is to say we had passed the first level, we thought it was funny; we had soldiered through the second level, we thought it wasn’t funny; and now we were just about to pass the third level. But, where were we going?
We didn’t reach the fourth level of Spaceballs appreciation until high school. This was where I can point to comedic minds being born. (Not mine! the other guys.) In tenth grade the film was popped back in the machine as a nostalgic joke, it faired okay, but one level stood out that had never occurred to me before: Spaceballs is funny only when it is not trying to be funny. Which is to say, “I knew it, I’m surrounded by assholes,” is definitely not funny. But Bill Pullman delivering a purely plot driven line like, “A million? That’s unfair,” is hilarious. The lack of a joke becomes the joke. In fact, the words sometimes lose meaning and the timbre of a voice along with the meter of the delivery is enough to send someone into hysterics. Admittedly, it is impossible to get to the forth level of humor on the first viewing.
I didn’t develop the fifth and final level. It was my brother, who, after swearing off the film for a decade, came up with the concept: Spaceballs is hilarious because the film consistently misses the best possible joke, but only by inches. Thus, the humor of Spaceballs is actually in the alternate jokes your brain creates. A highly subjective level of humor, I was weary on this concept when Zack presented it to me a while I was in college, but I think it works. Take, “Irreversible! Just like my raincoat!” The joke can get sexual and depressing if instead of “raincoat” he said “vasectomy.” Or maybe get scientific by replacing it with “thermodynamics” or maybe get a little Wall Street by replacing it with “sunk costs.” Sunk costs! “Neal you truly are the master of economic references.” Yeah… They all work and while watching they can enhance the film. Admittedly, sometimes the simplest joke is the best joke. But, once again, my brain was an active participant in the creation of something more than the film.
I’ve only tested the fifth level of The Spaceballs’ Scale of Comedic Appreciation and Criticism out on a select number of comedies, but Zack swears that it works with almost any comedy except for Deuce Bigalo, Male Gigolo, which he claims cannot be improved upon in any way (he’s a weird guy, what can I say?). I don’t know if he’s right, Spaceballs is something special, and when I watched it last week, I was able to experience all five levels of comedy at once. I even found the “born in the Ford Galaxie” pun funny for the first time.
