Scandals have complicated elias’s Comedy selections
Montreal’s Elias asks: Should past work of now-disgraced comics be mothballed?
Joey Elias is unquestionably one of the funniest people in the city. A fixture on the local anglo comedy scene for almost three decades, he has taught a new generation of wits the rudiments of the trade.
But Elias has been a little in the dumps these days. Not because of the current socio-political climate — that just fuels his act.
Elias hosts a radio show weeknights from 11 to midnight on CJAD, and programming it is becoming increasingly difficult. Hardly a week goes by without one of his favourites — one of everyone’s comedy favourites — being charged with sexual improprieties or even assault.
So, say goodbye to Louis C.K., Aziz Ansari, Bill Cosby and T.J. Miller, among many others, on Elias’s show.
Elias supports the #MeToo movement; the guilty should pay the price. But like many others, he wonders if the past work of now-disgraced comics should be forever mothballed.
Elias recalls a situation a year ago when there was a fire alarm at the radio station and everyone had to leave the building
There was an emergency CD to be played in such circumstances, although it had never been used. “Unbeknownst to anybody, Cosby was the first clip on it,” Elias says.
“And when staffers came back after the alarm, the station was flooded with emails and calls.” Listeners were livid.
“I totally get it, but, as Seinfeld has put it, we do have to figure out a way to separate the body of work from what these people have now become.”
Seinfeld, among others, finds it difficult to distance himself from the early work of Cosby, considered by many standups to be a pioneer.
Former fans of Woody Allen and Kevin Spacey are similarly confused.
Like many, I was prepared to detest Allen’s latest, Wonder Wheel, based on the charges of sexual abuse put forward again by his daughter Dylan Farrow, even though Allen was cleared in an earlier investigation.
I did detest Wonder Wheel, but, frankly, the film never had a chance. But must I now renounce my admiration for such Allen comedy classics as Annie Hall and Love and Death, two of my fave films of all time?
Just seeing Spacey’s image these days is enough to make one’s skin crawl. And kudos to the makers of House of Cards for dumping him, and to the makers of All the Money in the World for replacing him with Christopher Plummer after the film had been shot.
But does this mean viewers can never again appreciate such gems as American Beauty or The Usual Suspects, which featured exquisite writing and performances apart from those of Spacey?
By the same token, do we boycott the movies produced by ogre Harvey Weinstein (Shakespeare in Love, Pulp Fiction, Gangs of New York et al.)?
“Until further notice — which may never come — I can’t play anything by Louis C.K., Aziz, Miller and definitely not Cosby,” Elias says. “For a couple of weeks, I couldn’t play anything by Bill Maher, after he used the N-word on his TV show.
“I think it’s come to the point that people have forgotten that they need to laugh to forget about everything. But it seems that once some people are tarnished, they’re dead to us.”
Elias finds he is still able to play material by the late Don Rickles, Flip Wilson, Redd Foxx, Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce and Joan Rivers.
“And nobody complains, in spite of the language and content, because it’s all from another period in time.”
A period in time when social media wasn’t pervasive — “when everyone wasn’t a keyboard warrior with a cause.”
“A guy like Rickles would never have a career today,” Elias says. “Audiences would ask who is this old, mean guy, despite the fact that the guy was hysterical and never cared who he was insulting, no matter how big a figure it was.”
Hello, Frank Sinatra.
“Put it this way: I’m really safe playing Red Skelton, Alan King or Allan Sherman and transporting listeners back to 1967,” cracks Elias, citing relatively benign acts our parents and grandparents relished.
Elias recently received an email from a listener who “loves most of the comedy” on his show. Then he urged Elias to play “only comedians who can enunciate in understandable English” and to avoid those with “incomprehensible Irish brogues as well as some Black Ghetto deliveries.”
“It’s unreal how some audiences have become,” Elias says. “Sometimes they don’t listen to the whole joke. They hear a trigger word, and they automatically make the assumption that it’s misogynistic or too risqué.
“Back in the day, comedians in most parts of the world were allowed to make fun of people in authority and not be killed for it. The whole idea of pointing out the flaws of society and government has been going on since Game of Thrones was real . ... So why do we have to reinvent comedy when it’s been so effective?
“I’m not talking about the unacceptable behaviour of people behind closed doors. I’m talking about their past work on stage, radio or TV. I think we need a little perspective here.”
Elias has resigned himself to a future where he has to mind his words carefully onstage, and make sacrifices off it.
“It looks like I’m going to die alone,” he says. “There’s no way I’m going to find a woman at this stage.”
Why?
“Because a man my size — 6foot-4 and 265 pounds — who just walks up to say hello to a random woman … well, that’s just a hashtag waiting to happen.”