What’s so funny about lunch? Well, when you get a bunch of Jewish comediennes around a table — in this case, Judy Gold, Cory Kahaney, Jackie Hoffman and Jessica Kirson — with a large tab and a heap of pastrami, you’d think it might be a laugh a minute. Not quite. But these women, who are the face of Jewish standup comedy today, use this lunch at Katz’s Deli on New York’s Lower East Side to set the stage for Making Trouble, a documentary that profiles the female trailblazers of Jewish American comedy.
Director Rachel Talbot stuffs a lot of facts and, um, figures into 85 minutes, and while we gain considerable insight into these six women who made America laugh over the last century, I wondered if, as a male, I might have had an easier time relating to this film if it had been a history of both male and female comics.
Of course, that’s not the point. Making Trouble was underwritten by the Jewish Women’s Archives, and some of the more modern routines — principally from Joan Rivers, who looks like she’s got a couple of cranes keeping her face lifted, and the late, great Gilda Radner — were hilarious.
The most interesting parts of this documentary come early on, with the real pioneers of the stage: Molly Picon, Fanny Brice and Sophie Tucker. Picon, whose career rose from the ashes of the Boston flu epidemic of 1917, when the Yiddish theatre was the only game in town, proved to be something of a prolific writer in both English and Yiddish, and was one of the great stars of her era. The same held true for Brice, whose onstage persona turned out to be completely different from who she was offstage.
Tucker’s career showed the sacrifice and heartbreak of life on the road. A divorced mother by the time she was 17, the Rubenesque comedienne left her son and her strict Orthodox upbringing to make a name for herself. And make a name she did, with her bawdy humor and bad singing. According to the film’s narrative, Tucker still had bookings two years after her death.
The film jumps from the early 20th century to the ‘60s and ‘70s, starting with the hilarious, but oh-so-dirty, Joan Rivers. Rivers, incidentally, is the only woman profiled in the film who’s still living.
Profiles on Gilda Radner and Wendy Wasserstein, both of whom died far too young, ranged from the outrageous (Radner) to the bitterly honest (Wasserstein), but also gave too little time to another groundbreaker who also left the party early: the brilliant Madeline Kahn.
Making Trouble is a good film, particularly for comedy fans, but it lacked the spark and humor that might have made it much more compelling, and, dare I say it, funny.
Heartbreaking hilarity
