Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

A man walks into a talent agent’s office…etc and the punchline is “The Aristocrats.” Don’t worry I’m not giving away anything. The fun is the trip getting there. The film, The Aristocrats, takes a decades old joke that comedians riff much in the same way that jazz musicians or jam bands will improvise with a song. produced by master deconstructionist Penn Jillette and directed by intellectual comedian Paul Provenza, The Aristocrats tapes hundreds of comedians’ version of said joke such as George Carlin, Bob Saget, Drew Carey, Sarah Silverman, Susie Essman, Jake Johannsen and many more.

Check out the official site for The Aristocrats

Daniel Robert Epstein: Penn, this movie is a perfect example of the work you do because it’s a deconstruction of a joke and most of you’re work is a kind of deconstruction, whether of magic or comedy.

Penn Jillette: I really think that it’s a human being’s job to tell the truth as you see it. I think that everybody goes through a phase when they’re 16 or 17 where they’re obsessed with the idea of truth and you’re supposed to grow out of that but I didn’t. This movie started with a conversation Provenza and I had. When we get together, we don’t go out and eat, we don’t watch a movie; we sit down over a cup of coffee in a diner and talk really deeply and pretentiously about anything that is on our minds. We started talking about what improvisation in real time meant in listening to John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Charles Mingus. That got me thinking about improvisation in comedy. You always hear musicians improvising over the same song. You never hear comedians tell the same joke and all you’re seeing now is an example of our conversation. I’m always fascinated by the process that people create art and by the process that people bring the truth in their heart out to the world. The stuff I do with Teller is very much pro-science and a breaking down when people use the tools of magic in order to lie to other people which really offends me. This is a little bit more abstract and a little bit more intellectual.

DRE: To many of the comedians in this film, doing The Aristocrats joke seems very cathartic.

Paul Provenza: Freedom and joy is cathartic and that’s what happens when creative people get together. In this case, they have a task. They were given a challenge or a toy as it were and then what you get is people just being free and being creative and for an artist, that is cathartic.

PJ: Just hanging out with your friends and saying whatever pops into your head is cathartic. It just so happens we filmed it…barely.

PP: Comedians have to deal with audience perceptions, they have to deal with their images, they have to deal with taboos, they have to deal with common denominators and communicating successful to many people. Those are the caveats that come with working with words and performing. Imagine going to a five year old and saying “You know what, you can fingerpaint and it doesn’t matter where you get the paint. It can go on the walls, on the ceiling, your clothes, up your nose, nobody cares. Just go crazy.” That’s cathartic.

DRE: Since you spoke to so many people for this movie, how did you know when to stop editing?

PP: At some point, the voice of reason and Penn’s accountant spoke. I mean, we spent four and a half years shooting footage and we were running into the issues with who was available. We started running into the same scheduling issues with the same people over and over again and we also had accumulated so much. At that point, it was kind of like chomping at the bit.

PJ: Also art thrives on its limitations and we didn’t have limitations. We could do whatever we wanted. As much as he says “the accountant did this”, we could have gone forever in this project, but at some point, you have to arbitrarily say “Yes, we can wait until we get Lorne Michaels. He’s going to be great” We had 40 people on the list who had said “yes” and that we wanted. Lorne Michaels, Mike Nichols, Conan O’Brien and they were all ready to go and we just couldn’t get in the same city with them when they had an extra hour. Finally we just knew we had to stop and make the movie.

PP: There was no one person that was more important than another.

DRE: Paul, how come you’re not in the movie?

PP: Well, the movie is my version of the joke.

PJ: It took me a long time to get that. I kept saying to Provenza “We got to do you”, and Provenza kept saying “no, no, the whole thing is my version and having me do it will confuse it” and I didn’t get it. And then I saw the first rough cut, which was 2 hours and 20 minutes and then boy, did I get it! OH, yeah! This is all Provenza. And when you come away from this movie—I’ve known Provenza for years—when you’re finished with that movie, that kind of affection and knowledge and history and friendship, what you’re seeing there is Provenza.

PP: In the movie [chairman and CEO of HBO] Chris Albrecht says “This is a joke where it’s impossible to gild the lily” and I just thought that if I put myself in this movie, I would be the first person in the 100 plus years of this joke, to have gilded the lily!

DRE: Are any comedians not happy that the joke is getting out there?

PP: It’s not really a secret handshake. It’s not like there’s some comedy illuminati that’ll hunt us down with rubber chickens or anything. It’s a secret handshake de facto. It’s just that as people took this joke outside the world of comedy it became a lot riskier and you were faced with a lot of people who you had to explain yourself. But that is why most comedians are actually thrilled about this. I don’t know a comedian worth his salt that wouldn’t be happy to live in a world where everyone got the Aristocrats joke. The reason we’re all so frustrated in any way when we’re in high school or junior high school and then becoming adults is because everyone around us doesn’t seem to get it.

DRE: Do you see this film as the great anti-censorship statement

PJ: No, my point is exactly the opposite. I don’t there’s any censorship issues whatsoever. I know that AMC guy did this little publicity stunt where he decided that he will ban the film from his theatres. I’m banning it.” I say to him that he doesn’t have the right to use the word ban or censorship. You’re not the government. You’re a shopkeeper and you’re a shopkeeper who has decided not to carry a product that some of his customers will want. Woo-hoo! It’s so cynical and so transparent. He picks a movie that can’t hurt him. If he picked War of the Worlds, Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg and the studio would crush him. He showed the movie Irreversible, which is a great movie, but it’s a depiction of violent anal rape. He’s already shown that he will show anything, but he wants to grab a little bit of moral high ground because he thinks he can get his name in the paper and then we’re supposed to play the side of victims. It’s this game that is played in the US when 10,000 Christians with their imaginary friends write a lot of letters about how the country can’t do this and can’t do that and then Hollywood, a bunch of liberals, plays the other side. Eminem had the top album last year and he’s not going to jail, unlike 2 Live Crew and Lenny Bruce. These Hollywood people are going “Oh but the Christian Right is coming down to us.” You are not Lenny Bruce! You are an old cocaine fucking head with a half a billion dollars! You are not oppressed! Go to Malibu and just live, you stupid old cunt! They’re playing this game and people say stuff like “The French laugh at us about the whole Janet Jackson thing” and I go “We laugh at us!” It’s 10,000 people total! It’s not the United States! George W. Bush tells dirty jokes. He tells them to Kinky Friedman, Kinky tells them to me. The NASCAR drivers tell dirty jokes. The Christian Right is desperate, they’re dying, the Muslims, the Christians and the Jews are doing badly right now and that’s why they are desperate and when they’re desperate, they get ugly and they get dangerous. One man, with a very small penis, says that his chain will not show our movie is not censorship.

PP: It’s important not to exaggerate. We’re not the kind of guys to repeat to you rumors about Ebola in the popcorn.

DRE: What’s going to be on this DVD?

PJ: For the DVD, you have to have a certain amount of theatrical success so we’ll see. We kind of like to think that five years down the line, if anybody remembers this movie, maybe we’ll do the six hour Aristocrats project using this footage.

DRE: Paul, when did you discover that you automatically turn into Teller when you’re around him?

PP: There’s no mystery why Teller is silent.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Penn+Jillette+and+Paul+Provenza/