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      Brett Goldstein Faces Life After ‘Ted Lasso’

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      LONDON — A few minutes into coffee last spring, Brett Goldstein wanted to show me something on his phone.I leaned over and saw puppeteers sitting on skateboards while they hid behind a table, rolling into one another in apparent bliss as their hands animated a clowder of felt cats above their heads. For Goldstein this represented a kind of creative ideal, as pure an expression of fun, craft and unbridled glee as any human is likely to encounter.“Imagine this is your actual job,” he said, his breathtaking eyebrows raised in wonder.Goldstein shot this behind-the-scenes video during his time as a guest star on “Sesame Street,” an experience this Emmy-winning, Marvel-starring comic actor and writer still describes as the single best day of his life.The clip is inarguably delightful, but Goldstein hardly has to imagine such a job. As the breakout star of “Ted Lasso,” the hit comedy about a tormented but terminally sunny American coach winning hearts, minds and the occasional football match in England, he is part of an ensemble that brought as much bonhomie, optimism and warmth to the set as Ted himself, played by the show’s mastermind, Jason Sudeikis, brought to the screen.“I will be absolutely devastated when it ends,” Goldstein said last year. “I think we all will.”And now it has ended. Or maybe it hasn’t. What is certain is that the new season of “Ted Lasso,” which starts on Wednesday, will conclude the three-act story the creators conceived in the beginning and there are no plans for more. Whether and how more tales from the Lassoverse arrive is up to Sudeikis, who told me he hadn’t even begun to ponder such things. “It’s been a wonderful labor of love, but a labor nonetheless,” he said.So even if the new season isn’t the end, it represents an end, one that hit Goldstein hard. In a video call last month, he confirmed that while shooting the finale in November, he kept sneaking off to “have a cry.”But even if “Lasso” is over for good, it is also inarguable that Goldstein has made the most of it. Chances are you had never heard of him three years ago, when he was a journeyman performer working on a TV show based on an NBC Sports promo for a service, Apple TV+, that few people had. (Humanity had plenty else to think about in March 2020.)Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt and Jason Sudeikis in the third and final season of “Ted Lasso.”Apple TV+But things have moved fast for him since “Ted Lasso” became the pre-eminent feel-good story of the streaming era, both in form — as an underdog sports tale about the importance of kindness — and function, as a surprise hit and career boost for a bunch of lovable, previously unheralded actors who have now amassed 14 Emmy nominations for their performances.None of them have turned “Ted Lasso” into quite the launchpad that Goldstein has. His Roy Kent, a gruff, floridly profane retired player turned coach, was an immediate fan favorite, and Goldstein won Emmys for best supporting actor in a comedy both seasons. He was also one of the show’s writers and parlayed that into a new series: “Shrinking,” a comedy about grief and friendship. Goldstein developed it with Bill Lawrence, another “Lasso” creator, and Jason Segel, who stars along with Harrison Ford. (It is Ford’s first regular TV comedy role.)Thanks to “Shrinking,” which came out in January and was just renewed for another season, you might have encountered Goldstein on “Late Night With Stephen Colbert,” “The Today Show,” “CBS Saturday Morning” or some podcast or another.Thanks to his surprise debut as Hercules — Hercules! — in a post-credits scene in Marvel’s 2022 blockbuster “Thor: Love and Thunder,” you will soon see him everywhere.Brett Goldstein in a scene from “Thor: Love and Thunder.”MarvelNone of this had come out when we met last year. Back then, he was still struggling to make sense of the ways “Ted Lasso” had changed his life after two decades of working in comparative obscurity in London’s theater and comedy trenches. Whatever the hassles of losing his anonymity, he said, they were more than offset by the benefits — the visit to “Sesame Street,” the opportunity to work with a childhood hero like Ford, the chance to work on “Lasso” itself.“I would happily do it for 25 more years,” he said, but that’s out of his hands.What Goldstein can control is what he does with his new Hollywood juice, which currently includes a second season of “Shrinking,” other TV concepts in development and whatever emerges from the whole Hercules thing. (He’s already mastered Marvel’s signature superpower: the non-comment.)No matter how long this window of opportunity stays open, he’s still chasing the same simple thing: a slightly coarser version of what he captured in that “Sesame Street” video.“It’s a bunch of grown people having the time of their [expletive] lives being very, very silly but also creating something that’s meaningful,” Goldstein said. “And it’s [expletive] joyous.”OK, a significantly coarser version. But to understand why, it helps to know a little about how he got here.‘I very much relate to the anger.’Goldstein, 42, grew up in Sutton, England, as a soccer nut by birthright — his father is a Tottenham Hotspur fanatic — who became just as obsessed with performing and movies, spending hours as a boy recreating Indiana Jones stunts in his front yard.Improbably, all of the above contributed to his current circumstances: It was his performing and soccer fandom that led to “Ted Lasso,” and he is now writing lines for Indiana Jones himself in “Shrinking” — lines Ford says while playing a character inspired by Goldstein’s father.But it took Goldstein a few decades to arrive at such an exalted position. After a childhood spent acting in little plays and his own crude horror shorts, he studied film and literature at the University of Warwick. He continued writing and performing through college and beyond, in shorts and “loads of plays at Edinburgh Fringe and off, off, off, off West End,” he said. A short film called “SuperBob,” about a melancholy lo-fi superhero played by a beardless Goldstein, eventually led to a cult feature of the same name.More important, it caught the eye of the casting director for “Derek” (2012-14), Ricky Gervais’s mawkish comedy about a kindly simpleton (played by Gervais) working at a senior care facility. Goldstein played a nice boyfriend. “That was my first proper TV job, and then it was slightly easier,” he said.Along the way he tried standup and it became an abiding obsession — even now he tries to perform several nights a week. “He’s always been the sexy, hunky dude in, like, really tiny comedic circles,” said Phil Dunster, who plays the reformed prima donna Jamie Tartt in “Lasso” and first met Goldstein roughly a decade ago, when he performed in one of Goldstein’s plays. (Dunster remembers being dazzled and intimidated by his eyebrows.)At some point a fan of Goldstein’s standup mentioned him to Lawrence, a creator of network hits like “Spin City” and “Scrubs,” who checked out Goldstein in a failed pilot and was impressed enough to cast him in his own new sitcom in 2017.That one also never made it to air. By then Goldstein was in his late 30s. “I had a sort of epiphany of, ‘I’ve missed my window,’” he said.Then came “Ted Lasso.”“I will be absolutely devastated when it ends,” Brett Goldstein said of “Ted Lasso.” “I think we all will.”Magdalena Wosinska for The New York TimesThe show’s creators, who also included Brendan Hunt and Joe Kelly, wanted some English soccer fans on staff, and Lawrence thought of Goldstein. He was hired as a writer but soon became convinced that he was the person to play the surly, fading pro Roy Kent. As scripting on the first season wrapped up, he made a video of himself performing several Roy scenes and sent it to the creators, stipulating that if he was terrible, all involved would never speak of it again. He was not terrible.It’s a story he has told many times. But it hits different in person, as the gentle fellow in a fitted black T-shirt recounts how he felt a bone-deep connection to the irascible Roy. The face is essentially the same, but the eyes are too friendly and the voice is smooth and mellifluous where Roy’s is a clipped growl.“I get that you would be confused by this,” Goldstein said, setting his coffee cup neatly into its saucer. “But I very much relate to the anger. I used to be very, very miserable and had a quite dark brain, and I’ve worked very hard at changing that. But it’s there.”Lawrence said that “of all the shows I’ve ever done, Brett is one of the top two people in terms of how different he is from his character.” (The other: Ken Jenkins, the friendly actor who played the caustic Dr. Kelso in “Scrubs.”)In some ways the connection between actor and character is clear. Both are prolific swearers, for one thing, and Goldstein lives by the chant that defines his famous alter-ego: He’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere.Colleagues and friends are stupefied by how much he does. While shooting the first season of “Lasso,” he was also flying to Madrid to shoot “Soulmates,” the sci-fi anthology series he created with Will Bridges. During filming for Season 3, he acted in “Lasso” by day and joined the “Shrinking” writers’ room on video calls by night. He found time to interview comics, actors, filmmakers and friends for his long-running movie podcast, “Films to be Buried With.” He regularly squeezed in standup sets.“I’m not sure when he sleeps,” Dunster said. “But I know he gets it in, because he looks so young.”Goldstein said his workaholism predates his newfound Hollywood clout. “Even when I was doing stuff that no one was watching, I was always working,” he said. “Either I’m mentally unwell, or genuinely this is the thing that gives me purpose and makes me happy.”He acknowledged that both could be true. But then if “Ted Lasso” has taught us anything, it’s that nobody is just one thing.‘We joke our way through this.’“Ted Lasso” is a sprawling comic tapestry woven from characters — a wounded team owner (played by Hannah Waddingham), an insecure publicist (Juno Temple), a spiteful former protégé (Nick Mohammed) — threading their way toward better selves. The new season finds the AFC Richmond squad at its underdoggiest yet, back in England’s mighty Premier League and destined for an uncertain but sure to be uplifting fate.“Shrinking” is more intimate, a show about hard emotions and hanging out that happens to star a screen legend whose presence still astounds everyone. “It’s a year later and I still go, ‘Bloody hell, that’s Harrison Ford,’” Goldstein said.Harrison Ford is one of the stars of “Shrinking,” an Apple TV+ series Goldstein helped create. “It’s a year later and I still go, ‘Bloody hell, that’s Harrison Ford,’” Goldstein said.Apple TV+Ford’s character is an esteemed psychologist who has received a Parkinson’s diagnosis. He was inspired by several real-life figures, including Lawrence’s grandfather, who also had Parkinson’s disease; his father, who has Lewy body dementia; and his old friend from “Spin City,” Michael J. Fox. The character was also based on Goldstein’s father, another Parkinson’s survivor.“Brett and I share this thing with our families that we joke our way through this,” Lawrence said.Goldstein is exceedingly private about his personal life, but his father gave him permission to discuss the link — his reasoning was that he wasn’t ashamed of the condition and couldn’t hide it anyway. “And also,” he told his son, “the fact that I can tell people Harrison Ford is based on me is a pretty cool thing.”Goldstein joked that this gift he has given his father has expanded their conversational canvas by roughly 100 percent: “Football is still all me and my dad talk about,” he said. “That and the fact that he’s Harrison Ford.”The former, at least, is the way it’s always been. “I think that’s why sport exists,” he said. “It’s a way of saying ‘I love you’ while never saying ‘I love you.’”Such Trojan-horsing of human emotion has become Goldstein’s default mode, whether it’s using his podcast guests’ favorite films to get at their real fears and desires, portraying the discomfort of vulnerability via a clenched soccer star, or writing Parkinson’s jokes to work through the painful fact of his parents’ mortality.“Even when I was doing stuff that no one was watching, I was always working,” Goldstein said. “Either I’m mentally unwell, or genuinely this is the thing that gives me purpose and makes me happy.”Magdalena Wosinska for The New York TimesSegel said that Goldstein is always the one on “Shrinking” insisting that no matter how punchy the punch lines, the feelings must be pure and true. This wasn’t surprising, he added, because Goldstein is a Muppets fan.“It sounds like a joke,” said Segel, who as a writer and star of “The Muppets” (2011) does not joke about such things. “But it speaks to a lack of fear around earnest expression of emotion.”Which brings us back to the cat video and Goldstein’s other Muppet-related fascinations. (“The Muppet Christmas Carol” might be his favorite move ever, he said, and he’s been known to perform an abridged version on standup stages.)Those looking for a felt skeleton key to unlock his various idiosyncrasies aren’t likely to find one. But his Muppet affection does offer a glimpse at what motivates him as a performer, creator and workaholic, which is less about opportunities, franchises or scale than the vulnerability and risks of trying to reach someone and the openness required to take it in. The thing he’s always looking for, he told me over and over — to the point that he started apologizing for it — is a bit of human connection in a world that can seem designed to thwart it.“They put up this Muppet and I’m gone,” he said. “But that requires from both of us a leap of faith, like, ‘We’re doing this, and I’m all in and you’re all in.’ And if one of us did not commit to this thing then it’s [expletive] stupid — it’s just a [expletive] felt thing on your hand, and I’m an idiot for talking to it and you’re an idiot for holding it.“Do you know what I mean?” More

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      in Movies

      Review: Chris Rock’s ‘Selective Outrage’ Strikes Back

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      A year after Will Smith slapped him at the Oscars, Rock responded fiercely in a new stand-up special, Netflix’s first experiment in live entertainment.One year later, Chris Rock slapped back. Hard.It was certainly not as startling as Will Smith hitting him at the Oscars, but his long-awaited response, in his new Netflix stand-up special “Selective Outrage” on Saturday night, had moments that felt as emotional, messy and fierce. It was the least rehearsed, most riveting material in an uneven hour.Near the end, Rock even botched a key part of one joke, getting a title of a movie wrong. Normally, such an error would have been edited out, but since this was the first live global event in the history of Netflix, Rock could only stop, call attention to it and tell the joke again. It messed up his momentum, but the trade-off might have been worth it, since the flub added an electric spontaneity and unpredictability that was a drawing card.At 58, Rock is one of our greatest stand-ups, a perfectionist whose material, once it appeared in a special, always displayed a meticulous sense of control. He lost it here, purposely, flashing anger as he insulted Smith, offering a theory of the case of what really happened at the Academy Awards after he made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair, and in what will be the most controversial part of the set, laid much of the blame on her. This felt like comedy as revenge. Rock said he long loved Will Smith. “And now,” he added, pausing before referencing the new movie in which Smith plays an enslaved man, “I watch ‘Emancipation’ just to see him get whooped.”One of the reasons Netflix remains the leading stand-up platform has been its ability to create attention-getting events. No other streamer comes close. Through a combination of razzle dazzle and Rolodex spinning, the streaming service packaged this special more like a major sporting event than a special, a star-studded warm-up act to the Oscars next week.It began with an awkward preshow hosted by Ronny Chieng, who soldiered through by poking fun at the marketing around him. “We’re doing a comedy show on Saturday night — live,” he said, before sarcastically marveling at this “revolutionary” innovation. An all-star team of comics (Ali Wong, Leslie Jones, Jerry Seinfeld), actors (Matthew McConaughey) and music stars (Paul McCartney, Ice-T) hyped up the proceedings, featuring enough earnest tributes for a lifetime achievement award. As if this weren’t enough puffery, Netflix had the comedians Dana Carvey and David Spade host a panel of more celebrations posing as post-show analysis.This was unnecessary, since Netflix already had our attention by having Rock signed to do a special right after he was on the receiving end of one of the most notorious bad reviews of a joke in the history of television. Countless people weighed in on the slap, most recently the actor and comic Marlon Wayans, whose surprisingly empathetic new special, “God Loves Me,” is an entire hour about the incident from someone who knows all the participants. HBO Max releasing that in the last week was its own counterprogramming.Until now, Rock has said relatively little about the Oscars, telling a few jokes on tour, which invariably got reported in the press. I’m guessing part of the reason he wanted this special to air live was to hold onto an element of surprise. Rock famously said that he always believed a special should be special. And he has done so in previous shows by moving his comedy in a more personal direction. “Tamborine,” an artful, intimate production shot at the BAM Harvey theater, focused on his divorce. This one, shot in Baltimore, had a grander, more old-fashioned vibe, with reaction shots alternating with him pacing the stage in his signature commanding cadence.Dressed all in white, his T-shirt and jeans hanging loosely off a lanky frame, and wearing a shiny bracelet and necklace with the Prince symbol, Rock started slowly with familiar bits about easily bruised modern sensibilities, the hollowness of social media and woke signaling. He skewered the preening of companies like Lululemon that market their lack of racism while charging $100 for yoga pants. Most people, he says, would “prefer $20 racist yoga pants.”Rock’s special, shot in Baltimore, had a grander, more old-fashioned vibe.Kirill Bichutsky/NetflixIf there’s one consistent thread through Rock’s entire career, it’s following the money, how economics motivates even love and social issues. On abortion, he finds his way to the financial angle, advising women: “If you have to pay for your own abortion, you should have an abortion.”A commanding theater performer who sets up bits as well as anyone, Rock picked up momentum midway through, while always hinting at the Smith material to come, with a reoccurring refrain of poking fun at Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z before making clear it’s just for fun: “Last thing I need is another mad rapper.” Another running theme is his contempt for victimhood. His jokes about Meghan Markle are very funny, mocking her surprise that the royal family is racist, terming them its originators, the “Sugarhill Gang of racism.”On tour, his few jokes about Smith were once tied to his points about victimhood. But here, he follows one of his most polished and funny jokes, comparing the dating prospects of Jay-Z and Beyoncé if they weren’t stars but worked at Burger King, with a long, sustained section on the Oscars that closes the show. Here, he offers his theory on Will Smith, which is essentially that the slap was an act of displacement, shifting his anger from his wife cheating on him and broadcasting it onto Rock. The comic says his joke was never really the issue. “She hurt him way more than he hurt me,” Rock said, using his considerable powers of description to describe the humiliation of Smith in a manner that seemed designed to do it again.There’s a comic nastiness to Rock’s insults, some of which is studied, but other times appeared to be the product of his own bottled-up anger. In this special, Rock seemed more raw than usual, sloppier, cursing more often and less precisely. This was a side of him you hadn’t seen before. The way his fury became directed at Pinkett Smith makes you wonder if this was also a kind of displacement. Going back into the weeds of Oscar history, Rock traced his conflict with her and Smith to when he said she wanted Rock to quit as Oscar host in 2016 because Smith was not nominated for the movie “Concussion” (the title that he mangled).That her boycotting that year’s Oscars was part of a larger protest against the Academy for not nominating Black artists went unsaid, implying it was merely a pretext. Rock often establishes his arguments with the deftness and nuance of a skilled trial lawyer, but he’s not trying to give a fair, fleshed out version of events. He’s out for blood. There’s a coldness here that is bracing. Describing his jokes about Smith’s wife at the ceremony in 2016, he put it bluntly: “She started it. I finished it.” But, of course, as would become obvious years later, he didn’t.Did he finish it in this special? We’ll see, but I think we’re in for another cycle of discourse as we head into the Academy Awards next week.At one point, Rock said there are four ways people can get attention in our culture: “Showing your ass,” being infamous, being excellent or playing the victim. It’s a good list, but this special demonstrates a conspicuous omission: Nothing draws a crowd like a fight. More

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      in Television

      Tyler James Williams Lifts His Spirits With bell hooks and Tom Ford

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      The “Abbott Elementary” star keeps nourished, body and soul, with D’Angelo’s music, Earl Grey lattes and early 2000s rom-coms.Tyler James Williams has had a winning season.A Screen Actors Guild award that he and his “Abbott Elementary” castmates won for their work on the ABC mockumentary about an underfunded public school in Philadelphia.A Golden Globe for best supporting actor for his own performance in the series, as Gregory Eddie, a substitute teacher who finds a sense of purpose and permanence in the job.And, as he took the Globes stage, a standing ovation from Eddie Murphy.“The award is great — I appreciate it. But that did more for me than anything ever could,” Williams admitted in a video call from Los Angeles.The actor, 30, has also morphed into something of a heartthrob in the role, which the “Abbott Elementary” creator Quinta Brunson, whom he’d met on “A Black Lady Sketch Show,” wrote for him after they became lockdown pals.All of the accolades don’t overshadow what he considers his most significant achievement.“We haven’t seen characters like Gregory and Janine” — a teacher played by Brunson with whom Gregory has a slow-burn kind of thing — “exist on television,” Williams said.“There’s not a heavy trauma story line. It’s just Black people living everyday lives and seeing the beauty in that,” he added. “Very rarely do we see that recognized in the awards platforms, so that for me is what I hope that win does.”Still, Williams, who has Crohn’s disease, may have never arrived at this moment had he not had a near-fatal flare-up when he was 23.“When I came out of the other side of it, I realized I had a choice,” he said. “I could be really busy and try to make a bunch of money. Or I could do things that felt like my heart was just bathed.”A few days after wrapping the second season of “Abbott” last month, Williams talked about his deep dive into bell hooks’s work, how D’Angelo captured the feelings of his youth and the Burberry trench he can’t leave behind. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1bell hooksIn 2020, when it became apparent that we were going to be locked down for some time, I was getting book recommendations from people. I had just finished “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” and Miss Lawrence, who was a castmate, had recommended “We Real Cool” by bell hooks. I read it and fell in love with her voice, and felt seen in a way I had never felt seen before, and understood things about myself I didn’t know. Then everything she had ever written, I was just diving through. To me they really question masculinity standards, particularly Black masculinity standards, which, with Gregory, I try to dismantle as many of those as I can.2‘Voodoo’ by D’AngeloI had to be 8 or 9 the first time I heard that album played in my house. And I was like, “Who did this? Who took my insides and made it sonic?” I listen to that album once every day, usually at the top of the day. D’Angelo, he’s kind of everything to me.3CinemaSinsIt’s a YouTube channel that points out all the tropes and archaic things that happen in our industry, where everything is so austere and we make art. It’s usually how I end my night when I’m in bed and winding down. Just to have some guy somewhere break it all down and dismantle it is really funny to me.4Earl Grey LatteDue to Crohn’s, I had to stop drinking coffee when I was younger, and I was a big latte person. So I got this great combination of Earl Grey teas that you mix together. Froth up the milk. It feels like a coffee, but you have the flowery notes that are in the tea. In the wintertime, you could do a dash of nutmeg, even some cinnamon, and a single sugar. And if it’s one of those days where it’s like, “This is going to be a heavy lift,” you do two tea bags.5Skywalker MarijuanaThat’s my favorite strain. Also Crohn’s-related, my doctors wanted me to eat more. My appetite response isn’t the same as everybody else’s — I need something to tell me that I’m hungry. And they were like, “Hey, there’s marijuana.” It seems to do all the things we need it to do.6Tom Ford CandlesI was shooting a show called “Whiskey Cavalier” in Prague, right before “Abbott,” and I stumbled on this candle at one of the stores on Parizska Street. There’s notes that are very masculine, but then there’s this soft powder behind it that’s feminine and light. I was like, “This is what I want my house to smell like at all times.”7‘Brown Sugar’This movie felt like a story that could happen to me: Two New York kids who love hip-hop could essentially just fall in love over that. It was simple. I’m a huge fan of the ’90s/early 2000s rom-com. I feel like we peaked as a society right there.8GoldThere’s something about it aesthetically that has always brightened my day. I’ve tried to get into silver, but it doesn’t really do it for me. There’s something about the way sun hits gold that the world gets brighter. It’s kind of like when you take sunglasses off. Everything becomes more vibrant.9Black Burberry Trench CoatI don’t buy a lot of things, and my closet’s very small. I just have stuff that I’m absolutely in love with. And Burberry has always done the trench better than everybody else. It’s something that I pull out literally all the time. It goes so perfectly with everything, always. I left it in New York when I came back from Christmas to finish shooting, and I was like, “What am I doing? I have to go back and get this.” I need this everywhere I go.10DuragsDuring the pandemic, my hair was really long. I couldn’t see a barber, so I ordered a durag and would put it on. I would compress over and over and over again and just kind of brush it out because I didn’t have any other choice. By the time we had shot the pilot of “Abbott,” I had been wave brushing for almost a year, and that became Gregory’s look. More

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      Richard Belzer Had a Ball With the Relationship Between Comic and Crowd

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      Unlike his TV characters, his live shows were marked by spontaneity and physicality. He could even keep up with Robin Williams line by line.When Richard Belzer did stand-up on “Late Night With David Letterman,” he always entered to the opening riffs of “Start Me Up” by the Rolling Stones, dancing his way onstage, looking like the life of the party in dark shades. Once he arrived at the microphone, he made a point of engaging with the studio audience in a way you rarely saw on television. More than once, he asked, “You in a good mood?” and waited for a cheer. Then his tone shifted: “Prove it.”With that opening pivot, he turned the relationship between comedian and crowd upside-down. The expectation was now on the people in the seats: Impress me.Belzer, who died Sunday, is best known for his performances as a detective on TV, but his acting career was built on a signature persona in comedy, as a master of seductive crowd work who set the template for the MC in the early days of the comedy club. Often in jackets and shirts buttoned low, he cut a stylish image, spiky and louche. He could charm with the best of them, but unlike many performers, he didn’t come off as desperate for your approval. He understood that one of the peculiar things about comedy is that the line between irritation and ingratiation could easily blur.Throughout the 1970s, he ran the show at the buzziest of the New York clubs: Catch a Rising Star, stand-up’s answer to Studio 54. He roasted the crowds while warming them up, quizzing them about where they were from and what they did, establishing rapport and dominance. Long before Dave Chappelle dropped the mic at the end of shows, Belzer regularly did so.If the crowd wasn’t laughing, he could lay on a guilt trip: “Could you be a little more quiet? Because I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.” And if someone heckled, look out. According to a story from the comic Jonathan Katz, one night someone in the crowd yelled, “Nice jacket!” and Belzer responded that he got it on sale in his mother’s vagina.Belzer didn’t get famous as quickly as many of his peers, but he was a cult figure with wide influence in comedy. You can hear his clipped cadences, not to mention his use of the word “babe” as a nickname, in the act of Dennis Miller, who once referred to him as “the dark prince” of Catch a Rising Star. Andy Kaufman’s alter ego Tony Clifton was partly inspired by Belzer (notice the glasses).Even as an MC, Belzer was his own star attraction. He became famous for taking an incredibly long time to introduce a comic. In an interview for a documentary on him that has yet to be released, Belzer recalled once taking an hour and forty-five minutes to bring up the next comic. The writer Bill Scheft, who is producing the movie, said Belzer ad-libbed many lines “that became stock MC lines for others.”Few of Belzer’s live shows were taped, but you can find traces online. An all-purpose showman who could sing and dance, he even did pratfalls while spoofing a hipster pose. One wonderfully goofy bit involved getting his hand stuck while running it through his hair, dragging his whole body down to the ground. He leaned hard on flamboyant impressions including those of Ronald Reagan, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and especially Mick Jagger. There’s a wonderful competitive moment from the 2011 show “Green Room” when, in the middle of a conversation, Belzer gets into a “Jagger-off” with the comic Rick Overton. He triumphs, doing an impression he always called “peacock on acid.”More than any joke, what stands out from a deep dive into Belzer’s online comedy was an attitude: impatient, sarcastic, friendly but quick to jab. There was a percussive sound to his running retorts to the crowd: “Yeah, right, sure.” These move-it-along interruptions had a rhythm and sound that was quintessentially New York. When he dove into a familiar premise, his voice could move from dry to wry in a blink, mocking himself. It’s no wonder that Letterman, another ironist whose attitude perpetually commented on and upstaged his own jokes, booked him so often.Today, crowd work is much easier to see, in specials but also all over social media, where it has become a critical part of marketing and selling tickets for young comics. But in the 1980s, unless you went to a club, you didn’t often find people turning “Where you from?” into spontaneous comedy, so it’s striking that in his 1986 HBO special, he included plenty of such basic interactions. “There’s a lot of parts of New Jersey that are very nice,” he said, responding to one guy from the state. “I can’t think of any right now.”As early as 1978, he opened sets with a touch of hostility, looking up and asking, “Could you make these lights brighter? I’d like to go blind.”Nothing on video displays his stature as much as a 90-minute show celebrating the 10th anniversary of Catch a Rising Star that aired on HBO in 1982. It’s a terrific portrait of New York comedy at the time, with a long bill including Andy Kaufman, Billy Crystal, Rita Rudner and David Brenner, along with the singer Pat Benatar, who was managed by the club’s owner, Rick Newman. Belzer introduces them all, keeping things just sarcastic enough to prevent anyone from taking themselves seriously. Once Joe Piscopo finished a Frank Sinatra impression in full costume and makeup, Belzer marveled: “What an honor. What a surprise. What a man. What a toupée.”At the end, Robin Williams heckled Belzer from the crowd, before going onstage and improvising a series of scenes to close out the night. Whereas Belzer was relatively unknown to the mainstream then, Williams was a giant television star and powerhouse live performer, frenetic and wildly unpredictable. Williams riffed punch lines effortlessly, but Belzer kept up and matched him, line by line. That some don’t land only adds gravitas to the feat, since it proves this was not an act polished for HBO but a real attempt to translate high-wire improv to television.This ephemeral work is not the part of comedy you tend to see in movies or specials, but when done well live, it can be thrilling. And part of the job of the MC is to be alert to the value of spontaneous moments. Belzer understood this as well as anyone.“The greatest thing for me is when I make the audience laugh in a moment that could only happen that night with that audience,” he said in a recent interview. “Sometimes I laugh with the audience because I’m hearing the joke the same time they are.” More

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      in Theater

      Review: In ‘Leo Reich: Literally Who Cares?!,’ He’s Too Hot to Live

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      Reich, a comedian and writer, transforms into the avatar of Gen Z disaffection in his taut, biting solo show at Greenwich House Theater.The British writer and comedian Leo Reich styles himself as a walking caricature, his cropped mop of slick curls and high cheekbones framing his frequently half-rolled eyes. Roving the compact stage of the Greenwich House Theater, where his darkly hilarious solo show “Leo Reich: Literally Who Cares?!” opened on Sunday, Reich is frenetic and restless, a self-consciously exaggerated cliché.You know the type. Raised with smartphones in hand and prone to hyperbole, they are experts of self-presentation who use words like “literally” and “iconic” as filler. Onstage, Reich, 23, fashions himself as a hyperkinetic Gen Z avatar, playing off prevailing assumptions associated with those perennially known as “kids today.” He identifies as queer and hot, he says, preening with ironic self-regard. (A faux memoir he reads from onstage is titled, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Ripped Slut.”)But Reich’s over-the-top vanity and arch detachment are another form of misdirection, his favored comedic strategy. The flippancy implied by the title of his 60-minute show, a taut and often mordant stand-up set punctuated with musical numbers (by the “Six” co-composer Toby Marlow), masks the profundity of the question it really asks: of how to look forward to life when the future seems, by all accounts, pretty bleak.More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.Every generation finds its reasons for disaffection, and those facing young people today are undeniably harsh. Of course, few among us are inured from the consequences of extreme digitization, climate change, war and a yearslong pandemic. But Reich points to the particular, twisted flavor of experiencing all of that at an age when the promise of innocence has disappeared from the menu. He says he first saw hard-core pornography online at age 9, spent his early 20s typing “death toll” into Google rather than casually dating and imagines that homeownership is so out of reach he’ll still be living with his parents in 2042.None of this feels remotely like hand-wringing, though, and Reich is drolly circumspect (it’s not like 70-year-olds in the audience actually lived through the Holocaust, he tells us). But his show offers a keen and incisive distillation of how much has changed since the turn of the century, and how dizzying and absurd it can seem to people of any age. Musings about how to cope with the crises of modern life are interspersed with pivotal moments from his queer coming-of-age, lending the show a cohesive structure. But it’s Reich’s brashness and wry, reflexive panache that give “Literally Who Cares?!” its embodied dynamism.Partly, this is thanks to how he builds momentum. Under the direction of Adam Brace, Reich flits seamlessly between bits, with punch lines cleverly enjambed at the ends of his sentences. (Rapid shifts in tone are greatly aided by the wit of Daniel Carter-Brennan’s lighting design.) The show traverses an impressive range of subjects as a result, while staying anchored in Reich’s own experience of being gay (a boon for branding, but still a psychological nightmare, he says), Jewish (doesn’t God seem like another controlling boyfriend?) and perpetually online, where signifiers of identity have become salable commodities.There was a moment during childhood, Reich recalls, when he did a somersault, not realizing it would be his last one. He plays this realization with mock sentimentality, but the metaphor is a poignant one. Life is an accumulation of losses, and their pace is accelerating — privacy, innocence and the illusion of invincibility have all grown tougher to hold onto for long. If you’re wondering where all of this could be headed next, ask a young person who’s weathering the chaos with a wicked sense of humor.Leo Reich: Literally Who Cares?!Through March 11 at Greenwich House Theater, Manhattan; leoreich.com. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes. More

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      in Television

      Marc Maron, Roseanne Barr and Nathan Macintosh Have New Specials

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      In the mix this month are hour sets from a maturing Marc Maron, a very funny Nathan Macintosh and a pandering Roseanne Barr.Marc Maron, ‘From Bleak to Dark’HBO MaxIn his new hour, Marc Maron says he refuses to outgrow blaming his parents for his problems. “They did it,” he grumbles, concisely. His graying hair bouncing off a dark leather jacket, Maron, 59, has remained a vital comic voice by staying in touch with his inner brooding teen. And yet, don’t be fooled: Maron is maturing. His comedy has become more intricate, varied in timing and tone, and politically astute. After decades of leaning over stools, his years of touring theaters — and perhaps film work — have turned him into more of a showman, with a repertoire of small scenes, satires (his spoof of the TED Talk is pitch perfect) and act-outs.The emotional centerpiece of his new special is the 2020 death of his partner, the director Lynn Shelton. Here is where he really shows his evolution, because he handles this passage with a light touch, humbly and without the melodramatic negativity of his title. What stands out is his lack of philosophizing or waxing poetic. There’s a lot of art, including comedy, that exploits the gravity of death. And why not? Our greatest play, “Hamlet,” is about a neurotic, grief-struck young man who can’t stop obsessing over the death of a loved one. But Maron brings an older man’s perspective. He tells us he’s not the victim. Shelton is. He calls his loss ordinary, common. Can art help? People send him “The Year of Magical Thinking,” and it does nothing for him except make him compare himself unfavorably to Joan Didion.What does help, he says, is “the Jewish thing.” Maron has long been fascinated by religion and spirituality, but this hour is his most Jewish by far, featuring the most jokes on the religion, including punch lines about the Holocaust and antisemitism. He says he finds solace in the Jewish epithet “May her memory be a blessing.” This phrase, dating at least to the Talmud, contrasts with the Jewish stereotypes of neurosis and kvetching. Maron pokes fun at the idea of him doing an emotional Jewish one-man show about the death of his girlfriend, but in a way, he has done it — or at least, his version. Looking to the wisdom of religion is perhaps the most hack move possible, but one of the things you learn as you get older is that clichés exist for a reason.Nathan Macintosh, ‘Money Never Wakes’YouTubeWhen it comes to stand-up specials, it’s a “best of times, worst of times” situation. There have never been more being made, released and available to a global audience than right now. According to Sean McCarthy’s newsletter Piffany, there have already been 55 released this year — more than one a day. While most hours are terrible, rote or entirely mediocre, there are gems that would have remained entirely obscure in previous eras.Take Nathan Macintosh, an inauspicious-looking blond guy dressed in khaki pants, a white T-shirt and a button down. His new hour did not get picked up by any major platform, but you can watch it free on YouTube and, if you’re like me, convulse with laughter. His jokes won’t translate well to the page because his delivery is so eccentrically goofy while still managing a momentum that keeps building and building. His main mode is end-of-your-rope exasperation, with eyes popping, voice squeaking and a jittery physicality. He can be funny on mute.The panic in his voice is a perfect match for his preoccupation: The confusing way money works and the infuriating inequities of class. That makes him sound didactic, but his jokes stay close to the ground and unexpected, sympathizing with much-mocked figures like landlords or subway drivers. There’s a novelistic detail in his description of his own apartment, with rats scurrying above the ceiling. (“Have you ever heard rats above you having a better life?”) His self-loathing bit on losing money on crypto is a wonderful time capsule of our moment.But his funniest jokes are about the pampered rich, whom he portrays as aliens speaking to one another and oblivious of everyone else. In dark comic set pieces, they are forced into contact with ordinary people, who must treat them with extreme deference. He acts out one scene in which a rich person complains about his chicken being cold at a fancy restaurant. The manager says with practiced professionalism, “Look, we’ll have the waiter murdered in front of his family.”Roseanne Barr, ‘Cancel This!’Fox NationIn the oral history “We Killed: The Rise of Women in Comedy,” Roseanne Barr explained how she adjusted her stand-up act in the 1980s to fit in with comedy clubs. “I had to make it less political and more mainstream,” she said. This clearly worked. Barr became one of the most successful comics in history, turning her fed-up housewife persona into one of the best sitcoms of the era. But now, several years after an offensive tweet led to her being fired from a reboot of that show, Barr has adjusted again by becoming more political, aggressively courting right-wing audiences as a conspiracy-minded victim of cancel culture.Her new special, which arrives on the Fox Nation streaming service, feels like a mix of rally and fan convention, with some stand-up sprinkled on top. Barr, who alternates between long pauses and flashes of anger, gets an applause break from saying “Baby blood drinking Democrat community” and a big laugh from “I don’t want to talk to no Hillary donors.” It’s a balky production, with abrupt edits and occasional tangents that belong more to the green room than the stage, like an extended gripe about doing promos for her sitcom.It’s the culture war material, though, that gets her crowd fired up. She berates #MeToo victims, suggests that taking the vaccine will prevent you from getting pregnant, and in bemoaning the decline of men, orders the ones in her audience to tell their wives and girlfriends to sit down, shut up and make them a sandwich. Barr says she plans to offend, but this has become another pander, since obviously her crowd loves the grievances, the resentments. She even clarifies that she likes doing promos for Fox.Watch Barr’s early sets and you will find not only a quick comic mind, but also tightly written jokes. Neither appear here. Of course, it’s not just Barr who has changed. Comedy has, too. The scene is more political, polarized, desperate for outrage. Jim Jeffries prefaces the trans jokes in his new Netflix special by saying he’s doing them because he wants the press that Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais received. I’m sure he’d say it’s a joke, but I believe it. When Barr trots out a stale gag about gender, riffing on the question “What is a woman?” she gets a predictable roar. It’s a reminder that Barr once ran for president, and how much comedy and politics have blurred. Cheap nostalgia can be powerful in both arenas. At one point, Barr jokes, “The world has changed a lot since I was alive.” More

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      in Television

      Amrit Kaur of ‘Sex Lives of College Girls’ Runs on ‘Super Soul Sunday’ Podcasts

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      The actress, one of the stars of the HBO Max comedy, wakes up with elaborate chai rituals and unwinds with “90 Day Fiancé” episodes.Amrit Kaur was glowing. “It’s like I’m doing a Pantene Pro-V ad,” the actress, freshly coifed, said with a flip of her shorter new ’do on a video call from her home in Toronto.She had gotten too attached to her long hair, she said, “so it’s like, chop it all off.”Kaur was also fresh off the buzz of Season 2 of the HBO Max comedy “The Sex Lives of College Girls,” in which she plays an eye-on-the-prize aspiring comedy writer trying to navigate messy campus romances and cringe-worthy social climbing. The series, which has been renewed for a third season, has taught her “how to become funny,” she said.This year, Kaur pivots from college calamities on TV to a mother-daughter story on film. Tentatively titled “Me, My Mom & Sharmila,” it focuses on a Pakistani Muslim woman and her Canadian-born daughter, who come of age in different eras but share an obsession with Bollywood. Kaur, who is also Canadian, plays the daughter as well as the mother in her youth, which at times has meant shooting one character in the morning and the other in the evening.“I got to stretch myself artistically and learn a new language,” she said of Urdu. “It’s very vulnerable.” The film will make the festival rounds in the coming months, headed for release later this year or early 2024.On a cold winter day after her return from filming in Pakistan, Kaur talked about her elaborate chai fixings, a return to her faith and escapism in reality TV. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1Morning RitualsI wake up after being mean to my alarm a couple of times. Finally, by the third time, I’m like, fine, you’re right, I should start my day. I do morning pages, which is stream-of-consciousness writing. The days I need to do it the most are the days I resist. Then I’ll get up and listen to Japji Sahib, which is a morning prayer, and then I have my chai. I have a cupboard in my kitchen just for chai spices. Every day I wake up, and I’m like, what do I want today? What does cardamom go well with? Do I want fennel seeds? Do I want ginger? That’s really nice. Some people have that with coffee. For me, it’s chai.2Acting ClassI’ve been studying at the Lonsdale Smith Studio in Toronto for six years now, continuously. I take classes, even while on set, every Sunday. When I’m not on set, I’ll take class a couple of times a week. It’s a religious place for me. Acting class in many ways was my first religion. In Pakistan, I took class from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., virtually.3A Special Piece of PaperI have this paper, which you’re supposed to keep in your pocket, but I keep it in my bra so that it’s closer to my heart. The paper holds an exercise we did in acting class where you write down three things that are true of yourself that you don’t wish to be true. The whole idea is to come to terms with and face the parts of myself that hurt the most, or that I don’t like, to come into consciousness of who I truly am.4SikhismI aspire to be far more in touch with my faith. I think it’s in my nature to be quite devoted; it’s in the bones of who I am. When I found out I’d be going to Pakistan, there were so many messages that I needed to go on a pilgrimage. I went first to Nankana Sahib on the border of India and Pakistan, which is the birthplace of Guru Nanak, the creator of Sikhism. People who are Muslim and Hindu still go to show him respect, and I think that is so telling. I stayed overnight, spoke to the priest and learned so much about my culture and my history.5Gift-givingI’ve never been a gift giver. I love it now. I’ve always had a dream of giving my mother a beautiful gold jewelry set — and it’s now off my dream list. One of the questions I asked the priest was, “What is the purpose of money?” And he said, “It’s about giving it away.”6Artistic VisionOne of my dreams is to create a school in Hoshiarpur, the city where my dad is from in India, for girls who don’t have the opportunity to study. My artistic vision is to be part of a future where girls are not living in oppression and to be part of relaying that message. I’m going to be doubling down on writing and creating my own material to inspire women and girls to be their true selves, to be big and bold in the world.7International TravelIn the last year I’ve been to New York, California, Nova Scotia, Italy, Istanbul, Karachi, Lahore and more. I’m really lucky and grateful that I’ve been able to travel. The dream is to be an international artist, and I’m working toward that, telling stories and working with artists in different parts of the world.8‘Super Soul Sunday’I religiously listen to “Super Soul Sunday,” Oprah’s podcast, when I’m running. All these thoughts are going through my head, and I’m like, “I’m going to get through it, I’m going to run through it. Yes, Oprah, tell me!” It’s so powerful to run through the wind and listen to all of these people who have so much insight into life.9WhatsAppWhatsApp is a very Indian thing, I think. I use it so much that now all my Canadian friends are on it. It’s just so much easier because I travel so often. And I love looking at people’s faces. I’m a very big video caller.10Reality TVI love to watch “90 Day Fiancé,” “Too Hot to Handle” and other trashy shows. When I’m on vacation, that’s my favorite thing to do, just lying down on my couch with my best friend, getting all the chocolate on Uber Eats, watching all of these people behave so badly and not having to think. More

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      in Television

      How Many Comics Does It Take to Joke About a Dim Bulb?

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      Nate Bargatze, Chase O’Donnell and the star of “Cunk on Earth” find smart nuances in pretending that they aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed.If there’s one group of people who have been made fun of more than any other, it’s the stupid.From Homer Simpson to Zoolander to Rose from “The Golden Girls,” no satirical target has produced more laughs. Jokes about the dumb are ancient and show up in nearly every country. Certain kinds go out of fashion (you don’t hear Polish jokes much anymore), but the idiocy of others has proved universally funny.Why don’t we feel guilty about this? Sometimes, we do. But savvy comics have always found ways to mitigate the cruelty and condescension of mocking the moronic. And these days, when audiences can be particularly sensitive to the direction comedy is punching, the dumb joke often requires a lighter touch. Two deft new stand-up specials dig into stereotypes about the unintelligent, dust them off and renovate them for a new era, while a new mockumentary gets even bigger laughs through the stunt of placing a fool in a variety of intellectual arenas.Nate Bargatze — whose new special, “Hello World,” is his first hour for Prime Video after breaking out with two popular and well-crafted Netflix efforts — told The Daily Beast that he wanted his comedy to be “the right amount of dumb.” His brand of clueless Christian dad self-deprecation isn’t buffoonish. He presents himself as a little slow in a world that seems far too fast. He speaks with a hint of a drawl, and his delivery moseys as he settles into a gem of a story about the time he couldn’t figure out how to turn off the light in a hotel room.Nate Bargatze in his new special, “Hello World.” He presents himself as a little slow, not buffoonish.Amazon PrimeBargatze, 42, says he knows he utters  idiotic things, with a bit of bashfulness. “I try to keep it in front of large groups,” he explains in the special. “When you say something dumb one on one, it’s a lot for that person.”The moment is characteristic: thoughtful about his lack of thought. Bargatze, who has a gift for making something out of seemingly nothing, has emerged as one of the finest clean, family-friendly comics in America, firmly in the conversation with Jim Gaffigan, Jerry Seinfeld and Brian Regan. His last three specials begin with his adorable daughter introducing him. But he’s putting an updated spin on another comedy tradition, the Southern rube, poking fun at his own dimness but also at those who would look down on him.Bargatze draws attention to his roots (a previous special is called “The Tennessee Kid”), but unlike Larry the Cable Guy or Jim Varney, he doesn’t lean on exaggerated accents or dopey language. When he tells you Andrew Jackson is from his town, it’s to set up a scene in which a snotty interviewer informs him that Jackson was a bad man. “I stopped him and was like: We didn’t, like, know him or anything,” Bargatze says, the slightest touch of defensiveness mixed with minor annoyance. “We didn’t move there because we were fans.”There is a gentleness to his ignorance, one that taps into a fertile area for laughs: childhood anxieties. Even his joke about struggling to turn off the light is designed not to make you laugh at him but relate to him. He acts out a kind of helplessness that we all once had and often still do. It’s a dumb joke that makes you feel if not smart, then at least less alone in your stupidity.While perhaps not as old as punch lines about country folk, the dumb blond joke has been around as long as America. Scholars trace it to a 1775 French one-act satire, “Les Curiosités de la Foire.” The archetype boomed in the middle of the last century with the stardom of Marilyn Monroe in movies like “Gentleman Prefer Blondes.” As that title suggests, blonds have favorable stereotypes attached to them, which makes poking fun at their intelligence, as well as their superficiality, a little more palatable. Because we think blonds have more fun, people can have more fun with them. And yet this has been under some scrutiny lately, reconsidered in movies about objectified stars like Pamela Anderson, Britney Spears and Monroe herself. (The recent drama about her was titled “Blonde” as if her hair color was her Rosebud).The performer Chase O’Donnell plays more ditsy then dumb, but she leans into it. Years ago, she starred in a cabaret double act called “Too Blondes,” and her new special, “People Pleaser,” an enjoyable YouTube distraction, is full of self-deprecating jokes and precisely timed malapropisms. Her most faithful strategy is to begin a joke, pause, bug out her eyes in an innocent glare, then shift direction to upend expectations. When a date tells her to dye her hair, she acts offended. “I literally died,” she says, glaring. “My hair the next day.”Chase O’Donnell in “People Pleaser.” She specializes in precisely timed malapropisms.Steve NguyenThe quality of her joke-writing is not as assured as her persona. It’s a low-budget production with rough edges, but like Bargatze, O’Donnell finds laughs in being more innocent than those around her. There are some darker undercurrents if you want to look for them, which you probably won’t. A show about the consequences for a woman who can’t say no is not what this breezy act is going for. And credit where it’s due: It’s hard to stay this light. She performs obliviousness with enough savvy to make you not quite believe it.In the hilarious “Cunk on Earth” (now on Netflix) Diane Morgan performs imbecility in an entirely different way. She’s an actor, not a stand-up, and as the spectacularly ill-informed anchor Philomena Cunk, she doesn’t wink at the audience. She commits, brilliantly. Dressed stylishly in an overcoat and boots, speaking in the sober and dispassionate cadences of high-toned public television, she stands in the desert, musing pensively: “Looking at the pyramids tonight, it’s hard not to be struck by the thought they are just big triangles.”This five-episode series, produced by the “Black Mirror” creator Charlie Brooker, is based on a simple idea — place a dummy among posh, smart elites — but it’s exactingly executed. The show is beautifully shot and edited, impeccably deadpan and dense with jokes. In episodes that explore the history of civilization, our most popular religions or our greatest inventions, it captures a refined BBC aesthetic: staged in front of sweeping landscapes, inside museums or near ruins and featuring a collection of academics, authors and other intellectuals. How fully realized this world is only makes it funnier when Morgan, sitting across from a professor of Middle Eastern history, asks: “Were numbers worth less in ancient times?”As with so many artists in the growing documentary comedy genre, Morgan uses real people as foils for her scripted lines. But in this case, they belong to a single class of experts whose tasteful clothes and thick spectacles project intelligence better than any design department could muster. There’s cringe comedy in their fluster opposite her flamboyant imbecility. At no point does she break character. Her confidence is impenetrable, though sometimes she does use vulnerability strategically, as when she tells an academic she’s worried that her question will sound stupid before asking about Aristotle saying, “Dance like no one’s watching.” This is a cagey manipulation that extends the scene and shifts the dynamic into something more polite than it otherwise would be.It’s a reminder of a piece of wisdom from David St. Hubbins of Spinal Tap, the metal band at the center of the greatest mockumentary: “It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.” More