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      in Television

      Using Comedy to Push for Abortion Rights

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      Lizz Winstead, the “Daily Show” co-creator, has marshaled her contacts in the standup world to help supporters turn protest into action.“Things are awesome — never better!” joked Lizz Winstead, the comedian, producer and abortion rights activist. “Sleeping well; no diarrhea. Things are awesome.”Things are decidedly not awesome, but comic misdirection might as well be oxygen for Winstead, who has banked her career on satirizing politics and media and calling out hypocrisy, as the co-creator of “The Daily Show” and a host and director on the now-defunct left-wing radio network Air America. For most of the last decade or so, though, she has been singularly, steadfastly focused on one issue, abortion. Her preferred method for delivering her message is the variety show: a little schtick, a little song, a little taboo talk.“Don’t be ashamed of having an abortion,” the comedian Joyelle Nicole Johnson said onstage at “Bro v. Wade,” a benefit show in Brooklyn that Winstead organized recently with her group Abortion Access Front. “Maybe be ashamed of how you got pregnant. I got pregnant the classy way: On the floor. On an Amtrak train. In the handicapped restroom, babeeey!”Joking about abortion is nothing new; George Carlin went there, among many others. But Winstead’s goal is sharper: with righteous fervor and a Rolodex of comic all-stars, she leads a nonprofit that uses unexpected tools — like humor and men — to advocate for abortion as health care and as a fundamental human right.She told her own abortion story on a Comedy Central special in 1992, and in the decades since, has been warning, on stages across the country and in social media campaigns, that reproductive rights were in jeopardy. Long before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month, Abortion Access Front was preparing. Now, it is mobilizing as never before: On Sunday it will host “Operation Save Abortion,” a livestreamed daylong training session, with more than 60 partners and 25 panelists from local and national care, funding and policy organizations, and secure ways for viewers to plan direct, on-the-ground action. It will be capped off by a set from Johnson, a board member and ride-or-die touring performer, who lately has become accustomed to delivering punch lines to an audience that has spent the day weeping.Joyelle Nicole Johnson, left, with Winstead, is a board member and ride-or-die touring performer for Abortion Access Front. Nina Westervelt for The New York Times“Politicians aren’t going to save us,” Winstead, 60, said. Laughter won’t either. But with her network of grassroots advocates, abortion providers and entertainers, she hopes to change the narrative around abortion, eliminate the shame and give newly fired-up supporters the tools to get involved. “If people have to march one more time, and rage and feel helpless and hopeless, they win,” she said of her anti-abortion opponents. “We need to give people who are, like, ‘What can we do?’ an answer,” she added.That includes the people responsible for 50 percent of a pregnancy — men. On the eve of Father’s Day last month, Abortion Access Front produced a “Dads for Choice” video starring W. Kamau Bell, the comedian, CNN host and commentator, and inviting men to consider who bears the monetary costs of contraception: “Nobody ever got pregnant from a vibrator!”“The more complicated the issues are, the more humor can break things down to their basic points, and clarify things,” Bell said. Especially for topics that have traditionally been deemed uncomfortable, “humor can invite people in.”Why might comedy be an especially effective tool now? “Well, the other stuff hasn’t worked,” said David Cross, who was part of the all-male “Bro v. Wade” lineup. “Look where we find ourselves.”Abortion Access Front performances feature sketch comedy; music; standups like Sarah Silverman, Michelle Buteau, Jenny Yang, Aida Rodriguez and Negin Farsad and notables like the writer Dan Savage and filmmaker Mark Duplass; and on the road, conversations with local abortion providers, to highlight their needs. Even pro-abortion-rights crowds are often edified and galvanized, according to audience surveys collected by a researcher from the University of California, Los Angeles.“To give you the joy and then the information and then give you something to do, that trifecta of an evening is magic,” Winstead said. Beginning in 2016, the showcases toured annually across dozens of cities, including in states hostile to abortion.David Cross performing at “Bro v. Wade.”Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesOne of the group’s messages is that everybody can find a way to contribute; abortion rights supporters need not march in every street protest or continually reach into their overstretched wallets. “If you have 10 minutes a month to give, I can give you something to do that’s meaningful,” Winstead said. “And I don’t want you to feel bad that that’s all you can give. Life is too messed up right now.”At one clinic, in Huntsville, Ala., Abortion Access Front and its volunteers planted hedges out front, to help block anti-abortion protesters. In Detroit, at the request of another clinic, they threw a block party as a gesture of welcome and gratitude to the community.“For a lot of these folks, in the only clinic in their state, they feel really isolated,” said Amy Elizabeth Alterman, an abortion scholar, ethnographer and public health researcher at U.C.L.A. Out of safety concerns or for social reasons, “many abortion providers don’t tell friends and family what they do.”Winstead’s organization, which has a full-time staff of 10 and many volunteers, served as a much-needed balm. “When a band of feminists explodes out of a van, wearing pro-abortion swag and saying, ‘Thank you for what you do. What can we do and how can we celebrate you?’ it’s often very emotional,” Alterman said. “Sometimes providers cry.”Winstead and the group are not trying to reach across the aisle to change anti-abortion evangelists’ minds. Since she became outspoken on the issue, she has personally experienced a backlash. “My parents, when they were alive, got calls constantly saying, your daughter’s a baby murderer,” she said. They were Catholic — “it really scared them.” Her shows were boycotted; old employers were called in efforts at intimidation. She “paid a lot of money,” she said, to erase her personal data from the internet.Now, “there’s no place I can get fired from — come at me, I don’t care,” she said. Fomenting any cultural shift requires real dedication, said Dean Obeidallah, the comic and radio host, who was on the “Bro v. Wade” bill and performed at Winstead’s first abortion-rights benefit a decade ago. “I can tell you from years of doing comedy, and trying to dispel stereotypes about Arab Americans, it’s never a light-bulb moment,” he said. “For people on your side already, you have to make them feel like they’re in the right place. For people who aren’t on the right side, or even have hate, it’s chipping away.”“To give you the joy and then the information and then give you something to do, that trifecta of an evening is magic,” Winstead said of her group’s performances.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesFor those in the Minnesota-born Winstead’s orbit, it’s not surprising that she rose from a politically minded standup to an activist leader. “She’s just one of those — you meet them throughout life — boundless energy, high-strung, talk very quickly, gesticulate wildly, kind of people,” said Cross, a friend for more than 30 years.Johnson, the comic who has been with the organization since it started, said, “I think she’s a non-somniac, like Obama’s a non-somniac, to be able to do all the things she does. Her brain is constantly worrying — since 2016, her hair has turned white.”Even for Abortion Access Front, whose allies long knew that reproductive care and women’s rights were under attack, the weeks since Roe v. Wade was overturned have been, as Winstead said, gut-churningly surreal and destabilizing. “I’ve always felt unsafe in this country,” said Johnson, who is Black, “but now it’s almost a slapstick level of unsafe. It’s chaos.”Winstead said, “This is almost our last shot, because we’re burned out — and that’s by design.”But this moment has also sharpened activists’ focus, and expanded their tent. Since Roe was overturned, “I talk about it every chance — you’re going to hear abortion, abortion, abortion out of Joyelle’s mouth,” Johnson said. “I do it for the women in the audience who are not as liberated as me, those women who cannot tell their closest family members. I hope it liberates some people.” Viva Ruiz, a performer and activist whose group, Thank God For Abortion, is involved in the training session Sunday, said, “Everybody needs to use their way — the more variance there is, the more tactics there are, the more successful we can be.” She added, “The thing is, to just not stop. To keep showing up.”Together, Winstead agreed, “we are more motivated to fight and stay in the fight. And be relentless.” More

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      in Movies

      ‘Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank’ Review: A Tail of Two Samurai

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      Michael Cera and Samuel L. Jackson lend their voices to this unlikely animated adaptation of Mel Brooks’s “Blazing Saddles.”Michael Cera stars as an anthropomorphic dog, who is in training to be a samurai, and Samuel L. Jackson plays his washed-up feline mentor in Paramount’s latest animated family flick, “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank.” The film sounds like standard CGI family fare, until you learn that the movie, originally titled “Blazing Samurai,” is a PG adaptation of Mel Brooks’s 1974 satire of Western films and race relations, “Blazing Saddles.”Sure enough, the basic story elements of “Blazing Saddles” are all here — only now, rather than an evil railroad baron employing an unwitting Black prisoner to be the sheriff of a racist town, a conniving cat (Ricky Gervais) convinces Hank, a lost beagle, to become the samurai for a village with a prejudice against canines. (Brooks even reprises his “Blazing Saddles” role as the Governor, now reimagined as a geriatric shogun.) Many of the same slapstick jokes and gags from Brooks’s film are referenced, too, though they have been retooled to remove any outdated references or obscenity. Some quips, however, still slip under the radar: At one point, Jackson’s character, the retired samurai Jimbo, refers to a group of village invaders as “N.W.A. — Ninjas With Attitude.”Despite its risqué origins, “Paws of Fury” manages to dish out lighthearted fun, swashbuckling action and surface-level messaging about following your dreams, though not every joke lands. The anachronistic sight gags in “Blazing Saddles” don’t work as well in the hyperreal world of a children’s cartoon, where the sight of a dog and a cat in kimonos attending a bottle-service nightclub circa 2009 isn’t as absurd as it would be in live action. Still, if watching those same characters sword-fight around the bowl of an enormous jade toilet sounds like fun to you or your children, this may be the movie of the summer for you.Paws of Fury: The Legend of HankRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

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      in Television

      Janeane Garofalo Never Sold Out. What a Relief.

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      That concept might be the reason her trailblazing stand-up career has been overshadowed; it may also be the reason she’s still so sharp, our critic argues.On a rainy Wednesday night in Brooklyn, after an introduction with a minimum of fanfare, Janeane Garofalo walked onstage at the Eastville Comedy Club and looked out at a dozen people so scattered that calling them a crowd seems like a stretch. She spotted one man by himself who had attended a show of hers a few days earlier and happily pointed him out.Third on a bill filled with young unknowns, Garofalo, 57, settled into her set with supreme comfort, wandering into multiple tangents and digging into self-deprecation. “When someone tells me I can’t do something,” she said, holding the pause with precision timing honed over three and half decades of telling jokes, “I’m grateful.”It was a humble setting to see one of the most consequential comics of the past half century. Garofalo is a pioneer and Generation X icon who for a few years, it was reasonable to argue, meant for stand-up what Kurt Cobain did for music. The only moment during the set that hinted at her legacy came when Garofalo walked out of the spotlight and into the audience. The couple in the front row, already laughing, sat up a little straighter.Later in the set, she turned to her career. “The ’90s were good, but then it dipped,” Garofalo said, adding dryly that she now realized that comedy was not her forte. “You know what is? Filibustering.”Janeane Garofalo performs constantly in New York on bills with other comics, though you might not know it because she has little to no public profile. She’s not on Twitter, Instagram or any social media. She has no website or podcast, hasn’t done a special in years and doesn’t even have a computer, smartphone or email address. She turned down interviews with me twice. If you want to see her perform — and I recommend it — you have to search her out and sit in the room with her. I periodically stumble across her in a show and it always comes as a happy surprise from another time, like discovering a storied zine that only a few people still knew existed.As she made jokes about refusing to go to the doctor and her inability to apply herself, a cringeworthy thought occurred to me: Is this what not selling out looks like?I always found that pejorative phrase ridiculous: Selling out. Isn’t that the goal? It never made sense to me that a band stunk as soon as it signed with a major label. Or that artists should be shamed for making money to pay the rent. But as the stigmatization of selling out has faded over the past few decades, so vanished from the conversation that you rarely hear it used without sarcasm, I confess that I miss it. Something useful has been lost.In his shrewd new book “The Nineties,” Chuck Klosterman argues that nothing defined that decade more than the concept of selling out. To illustrate, he focuses on “Reality Bites,” now considered the quintessential Generation X movie. It also happens to feature Janeane Garofalo as a jaded eye-roller who delivers quips like “Evian is naïve spelled backwards.”The movie centers on an aspiring filmmaker played by Winona Ryder who is pursued by a responsible corporate striver (Ben Stiller, the film’s director) and a caddish poet who hates the right things (Ethan Hawke). She chooses Hawke. Klosterman writes that while Hawke’s character seems irresponsible to boomers and toxic to millennials, he was the right choice for Generation X. For them, and only them, Klosterman argues, “an authentic jerk was preferable to a likable sellout.”“Reality Bites” was released when I was in college, and most people I knew didn’t root for either of Winona Ryder’s options so much as against the movie, sensing a cynical attempt to capture the youth market, a major studio romanticizing indie credibility. Stiller screened it on campuses across the country, and at my school, he was received with hostility at the postshow Q. and A. One student questioned the filmmakers for mocking corporate greed while taking product-placement money from the Gap and R.J. Reynolds. Stiller bristled, saying it cost money to make a movie.In promoting “Reality Bites,” Garofalo took a cannier approach. Appearing on “The Late Show With David Letterman,” she short-circuited complaints about hypocrisy by criticizing Universal Pictures for trying to market “Reality Bites” as a Generation X story. It’s not, she said, dismissing the term as a buzzword, which was how I saw it at the time, too, and telling the flummoxed Letterman that she was uncomfortable following the script mapped out with his producers for their conversation. She sold the movie perfectly by performing contempt for selling a movie.The partnership between Stiller and Garofalo is an even better representation of the 1990s divide on selling out than “Reality Bites.” They dated briefly and worked together throughout the decade, starring on TV shows and appearing in movies, co-hosting the MTV Movie Awards and co-writing a self-help spoof, “Feel This Book.” Stiller was a bigger star, but Garofalo had more cachet. (On Entertainment Weekly’s 1997 list of the 50 Funniest People Alive, she came in 39th, five spots ahead of him.) While his fame has grown, her seismic significance to comedy has been forgotten enough to make a refresher necessary.Just as the 1980s comedy boom was going bust, Garofalo — along with Colin Quinn, Dana Gould and Alan Gelfant — put on a show at a bookstore in Hollywood that became a weekly magnet for talented young stand-ups looking beyond conventional club comedy. Stiller performed there and used some of the comics on his breakthrough television series, “The Ben Stiller Show.” So did David Cross and Bob Odenkirk, who met through Garofalo and went on to make another sketch comedy landmark, “Mr. Show.”This bookstore was one of the centers of a blossoming new comedy scene. Some called it alternative comedy, others balked at that term. The cool move was to embrace it ironically as Garofalo did in one of her early television appearances. When the host of “The Dennis Miller Show” made a joke about her Doc Martens, she deadpanned: “I’m the alternative queen.”Garofalo didn’t just help shift the comedy scene away from clubs. Her style represented a sea change from the polished, tight and desperately relatable bits ready-made to translate into a sitcom or a late-night appearance. In jean shorts and tights, she inched stand-up closer to the eccentric solo show, where a sharply honed point of view mattered more than accessible setups and hard punch lines. Her humor leaned on stories and a political sensibility, refracted through a culturally savvy lens. She fiercely skewered the fashion industry for giving women body image issues and fashionistas later pushed back by putting her on worst-dressed lists. Her jokes scoffed at cliché (“I don’t even speak during sex for fear of sounding trite”), and she dropped references in televised sets that not everyone would get (Antigone, Sub Pop Records) and continually teased the crowd.On her 1995 HBO half-hour, she walked onstage to applause that she immediately mocked: “You just did that because this is on television.” In the beloved “Larry Sanders Show” and the cult movie “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion,” she played sarcastic (and now very meme-able) misanthropes, becoming the rare comic who represented something larger in the culture. Original writers for “Friends” and MTV’s “Daria” have cited Garofalo as an inspiration for characters for their shows. In his recent memoir “Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama,” Odenkirk argues that Garofalo’s early stand-up anticipated much of the ambitious work in our current scene. “Janeane was the spark of the big bang, of a comedy reinvention that still resonates.”Garofalo, with Chris Farley, left, and George Clooney, during her short tenure on “Saturday Night Live.”Alan Singer/NBCU Photo Bank, via Getty ImagesWhereas Stiller shifted into blockbuster movies in the 1990s, Garofalo ran into choppier waters in the mainstream in ways that now seem clearly sexist. Her stint at “Saturday Night Live” was chronicled in an infamous New York magazine piece that included scenes of Al Franken yelling at her, Adam Sandler giving her the silent treatment and a writer unleashing his wrath after she called a sketch sexist. She compared her treatment there to “fraternity hazing” and didn’t last a full season. When it came to the big screen, she dismissed her one major leading role, a female Cyrano in “The Truth About Cats and Dogs,” as “not my kind of movie.”It’s hard to say if these experiences changed her view on establishment success or confirmed it. But at the end of the decade, in her book with Stiller, she gave this advice: “Being popular and well liked is not in your best interest,” before adding, “If you behave in a manner pleasing to most, then you are probably doing something wrong. The masses have never been arbiters of the sublime, and they often fail to recognize the truly great individual. Taking into account the public’s regrettable lack of taste, it is incumbent on you to not fit in.”When The Times did a story on the new generation of alt comics in 1997, Stiller recalled that when Garofalo had a bit that killed, she would not repeat it out of fear of being hack. “It’s almost like she was going too far the other way, because she didn’t want to be accepted,” he said. Odenkirk hit similar notes discussing her in “We Killed,” an oral history about women in comedy: “Anything successful is something she’s not interested in,” he said. “That’s not a good thing in the long run.”That may be true if the goal is conventional Hollywood success. But what if you actually believed the 1990s discourse about selling out? Or short of that, just internalized it? Then some skepticism about success makes sense. And why not? Only a fool thinks the funniest comics are the most popular or that deeply respected ones don’t remain obscure. Moreover, it’s entirely reasonable to look at the state of popular culture and just roll your eyes.There has always been something off-putting about self-righteousness over selling out. Indie music snobs are easy to parody. And obsession with credibility can paralyze artists. “Nothing was more inadvertently detrimental to the Gen X psyche” than anxiety over selling out, Klosterman wrote, expressing a view darker than my own, so alert to cost that it gives short shrift to the benefits.Though it can seem otherwise, the ’90s critique of selling out was not only used to sneer. Besides directing a bit of shame at product placement, the most valuable thing it did was provide a powerful vision of making it that didn’t rely on money and popularity. A close read of early issues of The Baffler, a small, influential journal that at its inception that decade was something of a think tank for the dangers of selling out, offered hints at a positive ideal. It could be found in zines, indie music labels, offline.This utopian view of a culture independent of corporate interference was defiantly local, uncompromising and wary of fame. Today, when everyone is trying to go viral and artists are judged by the most soulless Internet metrics, the value of an alternative seems more important than ever. The current stand-up of Janeane Garofalo fits in nicely.Speaking of Garofalo, Bob Odenkirk once explained, “Anything successful is something she’s not interested in.”Roberto Ricciuti/Getty ImagesThat doesn’t mean she sees it that way. Her current comedy is filled with self-deprecating jokes about her failures, flaws, projects that didn’t get picked up. After the ’90s, she helped start Air America, the influential liberal radio station that collapsed but not before giving early platforms to Rachel Maddow and Marc Maron. She has taken scores of acting jobs in film and television, but they have little bearing on the one constant: her stand-up, the rare form where you can have near total control over your art.We live in an age of dumb demographic stereotypes. Millennials, we’re told, are entitled snowflakes and boomers are selfish egotists. Describing huge groups of people in a few traits is absurd, but that doesn’t mean those reductionist ideas don’t shape us. The water in which you swim matters. I was reminded of this at a birthday party for my daughter’s friend. A dad my age told me of being in a band in the ’90s that signed to a major label and how he still talks to his therapist about selling out. Back then I never identified with Generation X, but now I do. When I watch “Reality Bites” today, not only do I like it more, but I can find something to relate to in every character, too.In movies and plays from the 1990s (“Clerks,” Eric Bogosian’s “subUrbia”), the slacker could be a goofy kind of hero. Compare that with the ethos today summed up by Bo Burnham in his special “Inside,” which features his song “Welcome to the Internet.” The refrain goes: “Apathy’s a tragedy and boredom is a crime/anything and everything all of the time.”Garofalo’s stand-up always made apathy and boredom look cool, glamorous and, most important, sensible. About boomers, she joked: “They got married and worked hard so their kids didn’t have to, and guess what, we don’t.” There’s a performance in this, of course, since she has always worked hard, but the hustle and grind has never been her brand, to use a word she probably wouldn’t.Garofalo isn’t that different today than she was three decades ago, less likely to skewer those who promulgate unrealistic body standards than to confess her own. Her hair is longer, more tangled, but her clothes remain darkly colored, rumpled. “I’m not ready for Eileen Fisher,” she said in characteristic deadpan. “I can’t cross that Rubicon.”Her affect remains wry, offhanded; she walks onstage holding papers and uses references more highbrow than your typical joke slinger, but she is also often disarmingly personal and self-loathing.The main impression you get from her act is of a restlessness that is physical, as she roams into the crowd, but also intellectual, as she repeatedly entertains new ideas, following them down rabbit holes even at the expense of the joke. There is a real excitement and unpredictability about her sets that can be captured only in live performance. She never tells a joke the same way twice. Her comedy always seems resolutely present, frequently vulnerable, challenging and delighting her audience in equal measure.It would be easy to see Garofalo performing with comics half her age to a sparse Brooklyn crowd as a portrait of decline. But to my Generation X eyes, it looks like a kind of triumph. More

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      in Theater

      Larry Storch, Comic Actor Best Known for ‘F Troop,’ Dies at 99

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      His well-honed comic timing, and the mimicry skills he had developed in nightclubs, served him well on one of the sillier sitcoms of the 1960s.Larry Storch, who played a memorable television oddball on the 1960s sitcom “F Troop” and for years carried a secret in his personal life that was odd in an entirely different way, died on Friday at his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He was 99.His stepdaughter, June Cross, confirmed the death.Mr. Storch had a long career as a nightclub comic and as a character actor on the stage and the big and small screens. But his other work was dwarfed by the impression he made during the two-season run of “F Troop” on ABC, from 1965 to 1967.The show was a slapstick comedy about an outpost called Fort Courage in Indian country just after the Civil War, and Mr. Storch played Cpl. Randolph Agarn, one of the bigger misfits in a unit full of them. Agarn and his business partner, Sgt. Morgan O’Rourke, played by Forrest Tucker, were constantly hatching moneymaking schemes, most of them involving the local Indian tribe, the Hekawis.O’Rourke was the brains of the partnership; Agarn provided the idiocy, and Mr. Storch’s well-honed comic timing served him deliciously in the role. So did the mimicry skills he had honed in nightclubs, where his act included all sorts of impersonations: In various “F Troop” episodes he played not only Agarn but also assorted Agarn relatives, who somehow found their way to the fort from far-off locales. “I had cousins who came from Moscow, Mexico, Montreal,” Mr. Storch recalled in a 2009 interview. “F Troop” wasn’t on long. But, like many sitcoms in that era of limited television choices, it burned itself into the minds of those who watched it, perhaps in part because it trafficked in the kinds of stereotypes — especially those hard-drinking, firewater-brewing Indians — that would soon disappear from television.Mr. Storch, in a 2007 interview with The Asbury Park Press, credited Mr. Tucker with securing him the role of Agarn.“I was supposed to be the sergeant,” Mr. Storch said, “but when they saw Forrest Tucker dressed in a cavalry suit — he looked like a polar bear — they said, ‘That’s going to be it.’ And Forrest Tucker said: ‘Wait a minute. I’m going to need a corporal around here, and I think he and I would have good chemistry.’” The “he” was Mr. Storch.When not clowning around on the stage or screen, Mr. Storch was party to an unusual secret at home. Before he and his wife, Norma Greve, were married in 1961, she had had a biracial daughter, Ms. Cross, with a Black performer named Jimmy Cross. Mother and child left Mr. Cross soon after June’s birth in 1954, but since the girl was dark-complexioned enough that she could not pass as white, she and her mother began encountering racism. When June was 4, Norma asked friends, a middle-class Black couple in Atlantic City, N.J., to raise her.Later, when the Storches were married and living in Hollywood, June would come to visit, and they would explain to friends that she was an abused child of former neighbors and that they had adopted her, but that she lived most of the year with Black friends.“In those days, people were encrusted in prejudice,” Mr. Storch explained to People magazine in a 1996 interview. “We saw no reason to rock the boat.”June Cross later became a television producer and then a professor at Columbia University. In 1996 she told her story in “Secret Daughter,” a documentary broadcast on PBS, which won an Emmy Award. The personal story of Mr. Storch and his wife has another wrinkle as well. In 1948, years before they were married, they had a daughter, whom they put up for adoption. After Ms. Cross’s documentary came out, the Storches and that daughter, Candace Herman, were reunited.After “F Troop,” Mr. Storch found steady work on other TV shows. He played a reporter who impersonates a priest in a 1969 episode of “The Flying Nun,” with Sally Field.ABC Photo Archives/Disney via Getty ImagesLawrence Samuel Storch was born on Jan. 8, 1923, in Manhattan. His father, Alfred, is described in several biographical listings as a real estate agent, though in a 1983 interview with The Washington Post Mr. Storch said he was a cabdriver. His mother, Sally (Kupperman) Storch, was a telephone operator who later had a jewelry store and ran a rooming house.Ms. Cross, in a telephone interview, said that as a child Mr. Storch would pick up voices and accents from the rooming house guests (Orson Welles, he always said, was one) that served him well later as a comedian.Mr. Storch left high school during the Depression when he found that he could make a few dollars doing impressions in the city’s clubs and acting as M.C. for vaudeville shows. He served in the Navy during World War II. By the time television came along, he was a well-established comic in the city and had used his mimicry skills to gain a foothold in radio.He first came to the attention of television audiences in 1951 as a guest host of “Cavalcade of Stars,” and in 1953 CBS picked him to host the summer replacement show that filled Jackie Gleason’s Saturday night slot. A string of television appearances followed, including a recurring role on “Car 54, Where Are You?” Mr. Storch was also the voice of the TV version of Koko the Clown in scores of cartoon shorts, and teamed with his friend Don Adams as one of the voices in the 1963 cartoon series “Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales.”Then came “F Troop,” which brought Mr. Storch an Emmy nomination in 1967. He worked steadily in television through the 1980s, doing guest spots on “The Flying Nun,” “The Love Boat,” “Love, American Style” and numerous other shows. In 1975 he reunited with Mr. Tucker in a live-action children’s show called “The Ghost Busters,” in which the two men played detectives who searched for spooks. (The show was unrelated to the later “Ghostbusters” movies.)One of Mr. Storch’s Navy friends was a fellow sailor named Bernard Schwartz, who became better known as Tony Curtis and gave Mr. Storch roles in several of his films, including “40 Pounds of Trouble” (1962), “Sex and the Single Girl” (1964) and “The Great Race” (1965).Mr. Curtis and Mr. Storch teamed up again years later, in 2002, in a stage musical version of “Some Like It Hot,” the 1959 Billy Wilder movie that had starred Mr. Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe. (The show drew upon the 1972 Broadway musical “Sugar” and added new material.) Mr. Curtis played not his original role, a musician on the run from gangsters who joins a band disguised as a woman, but the millionaire Osgood Fielding; Mr. Storch played the band manager, Bienstock.That show, which toured the country, never made Broadway, but Mr. Storch had a half-dozen Broadway appearances to his credit, beginning with “The Littlest Revue,” a 1956 show that also starred Joel Grey. In 1958 he appeared in the play “Who Was That Lady I Saw You With?,” and he had roles in revivals of “Porgy and Bess” (1983), “Arsenic and Old Lace” (1986), “Annie Get Your Gun” (2000) and “Sly Fox” (2004). His other films included Blake Edwards’s “S.O.B.” and the disaster movie “Airport 1975.” His vocal talents turned up in numerous cartoons as well as in McDonald’s commercials (“the most money I ever made,” he said in 2009).Mr. Storch’s wife died in 2003. His brother, Jay, an actor who used the name Jay Lawrence, died in 1987. In addition to Ms. Cross and Ms. Herman, he is survived by a stepson, Lary May, the author of several books on film and popular culture; five grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. Mr. Storch at a birthday party for Jerry Lee Lewis at B.B. King Blues Club and Gril in Manhattan in 2017. He continued to make public appearances late in life.Derek Storm/Everett CollectionMr. Storch was still making public appearances late in life. In June 2014 he served as mayor for a day of Fort Lee., N.J., a town where he had once performed. That September he appeared at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles and was honored with a star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars.In 2016 he was honored by Passaic, N.J., the city the fictitious Corporal Agarn called home. Mayor Alex Blanco said at the ceremony that Passaic had been mentioned all over the world because of “F Troop”; Mr. Storch said that he had never been there before, but that he had chosen Passaic for his character’s hometown because “it sounded tough.”In his later years Mr. Storch maintained an active Facebook page and posted videos on TikTok. He also put in appearances at Wild West City, a western-themed attraction in Stanhope, N.J. In July 2021, at 98, for what was billed as his final public appearance, he toured the site in a sporty red sedan, hamming it up for onlookers.Mr. Storch could sometimes be seen playing the saxophone, a lifelong hobby, in Central Park. Another signature activity, even late in life, was standing on his head. “It helps your breathing,” he explained in 2002 to a reporter for The Detroit News, while standing on his head. “The blood goes to your brain, whatever brain you have.” More

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      ‘Cop Secret’ Review: Bang Bang, Kiss Kiss

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      In this Icelandic spoof of Hollywood action movies, two rival police officers make a love connection.The big reveal in “Cop Secret” is out from the moment the unkempt Bussi (Audunn Blondal), Iceland’s toughest police officer, is forcibly partnered with Hordur (Egill Einarsson), his suave rival from a neighboring precinct. As Hordur strolls toward Bussi in swoony slow-motion, impeccable jacket slung roguishly over one bulging shoulder, Bussi’s stubbled jaw softens. The two may be vying for top dog, but it’s clear that — grooming discrepancies aside — copulation will soon take precedence over competition.Before Bussi’s ultramacho veneer can crack, though, this unruly send-up of Hollywood action movies, gleefully directed by Hannes Thor Halldorsson, hammers every genre cliché into wearying submission. The plot — a silly hodgepodge of explosions, bank heists and sexual repression — charges forward, its dialogue and setups merrily spoofing the buddy-cop canon. Familiarity might be the point, but a screenplay this coarse leaves the actors little wiggle room, reducing them to mouthpieces for recycled jokes.So we have a disfigured villain (Bjorn Hlynur Haraldsson) who shaves with what appears to be a serrated bowie knife; a hard-nosed female police chief (Steinunn Olina Thorsteinsdottir, whom fans of Nordic noir may recognize from the gripping TV series “Trapped”); and an anxious male sidekick, Klemenz (Sverrir Thor Sverrisson), whose chief purpose is to remind us repeatedly of Bussi’s contempt for proper police procedure.“You have no respect for the rules!,” Klemenz moans during the car chase that opens the movie and allows the cinematographer, Elli Cassata, to show off a bit. The sequence is goofy fun; less so is the transformation of a rather sweet gay romance into a cheap comic device.Cop SecretNot rated. In Icelandic and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters. More

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      At Comedy Shows in Lviv, Crowds Look for Humor Amid a Deadly War

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      At the Cultural Defense shows in Lviv, comedians and audiences look for humor amid a deadly conflict. Don’t mind the air raid alarms.LVIV, Ukraine — Some morsels of news are so grim and absurd that they sound like they were conceived in the warped imagination of bored satirists. Like the headline from Belarus a few weeks ago, reporting that 10th graders there were being taught how to aim rifles — using shovels.“What do you think about that?” asks the comedian Vadym Dziunko.Dziunko is onstage with two other comedians and a well-known singer. All are seated and holding microphones, gamely trying to find humor in a place and at a moment when the tragic is trouncing the funny by a spectacular margin.It’s a recent Saturday night at the Cult Comedy Hall, a comedy club in downtown Lviv, near Ukraine’s relatively peaceful western border. Some 100 people have spent about $13 apiece to eat, drink and listen to comics riffing about whatever crosses their minds, which is often the latest news about the war with Russia. Or in the case of this shovel-as-rifle business, the topic is the oddness of life in Belarus, a dictatorship a mere 150 miles to the north.“What do you expect from a country where a potato is a weapon?” says the comedian Oleksandr Dmytrovych. Then he imagines an instructor, giving tips to the kids.“‘We can’t give you rifles yet — —”“‘Because we only have one,’” finishes the third comic, Maksym Kravets.From left, Maksym Kravets, Oleh Luzanov, Bohdan Vakhnich and Oleksandr Dmytrovych riff on whatever crosses their minds.Emile Ducke for The New York TimesThis is Cultural Defense, an evening of unscripted and free-flowing humor staged in Lviv every few nights. It began two weeks after the Russian invasion, when Kravets, a Ukrainian intelligence officer by day and a comedian by night, called the co-creator of the show, Bohdan Slepkura, and pointed out that the Cult Comedy Hall was in a basement.“I said, ‘You know, the place is a bomb shelter,’” recalled Kravets, a burly and bearded 42-year-old.Kravets, wearing a T-shirt with “Wildness” on it, and Dmytrovych were sitting in another room in the club after the show recently. Initially, they said, they were not sure anyone in the country was in the mood for chuckles. The shock of the invasion was then fresh and hundreds of thousands of residents from the eastern part of the country were flowing into the city.“Before the first show, we thought, maybe this isn’t the right time for comedy,” said Dmytrovych, who is 30 and bearded, too. (“Without beards we’re ugly,” he explained.)“We were petrified,” he went on. “But after the first show, we came and sat in this room and realized, people want to laugh. They want to hear jokes about our enemy. From that first night, we understood this would be bigger than we had thought.”The shows are held in a basement space that is certified as a bomb shelter.Emile Ducke for The New York TimesThere has been exactly one international breakout star in Ukrainian comedy and he happens to be the president of the country, Volodymyr Zelensky. If this puts pressure on others in the business, it wasn’t obvious onstage on this Saturday, when nobody seemed especially pressed to land on a punchline and a singer, Mykhailo Khoma, spent a lot of time ruminating about his childhood.Ukraine has long had a modest live-comedy scene, though anyone accustomed to the standard setup at American clubs will find novelty in the show’s format. There’s no warm-up act, and at no point is anyone standing onstage alone. There are different guests every night. The evening starts with four men leading a raucous call and response in Ukrainian, like the rest of the show.Hosts: “Glory to the Nation!”Audience: “Death to enemies!”Hosts: “Ukraine!”Audience: “Above all else.”Hosts: “Putin!”Audience: Unprintable putdown!After that, the stars take their seats and start to talk.Some of the humor is self-deprecating. In a previous show — they’re all available on YouTube — Dmytrovych riffed about the news that Ukrainian soldiers had mastered a “single use” antitank missile called an NLAW. This was amazing, he said, because by nature and necessity, Ukrainians are accustomed to reusing everything, over and over.“I got slippers in a hotel in Egypt a year and a half ago and I’m still wearing them,” he said. “When they got dirty, I washed them. When they fell apart in the washing machine, I glued them together. Now these are slippers I offer to guests.”Kravets is a Ukrainian intelligence officer by day and a comedian by night.Emile Ducke for The New York Times“For as long as we’re laughing, we’re not giving up,” Dmytrovych said.Emile Ducke for The New York TimesThere are plenty of jokes at the expense of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who is scorned as a blustery idiot who underestimated the spirit and resolve of Ukrainians. The Russian military, on the other hand, is largely spared. The point, explained Dmytrovych, isn’t to belittle the invading forces, which Ukrainians regard as formidable and horrifying. It’s to lift the spirits of people who are not on the front lines, or who might have once lived near the front lines and have since relocated.So during one show, Kravets extolled the surprisingly polished beauty of checkpoints in Lviv (“I would not be surprised if they served lattes”), some of which have exceptionally long lines. (“I thought at the beginning they would take my order and at the end I’d be handed a Big Mac.”)Internal politics are a recurring theme. During a show a few weeks ago, a poll was cited that found 90 percent of Ukrainians want to join the European Union.How the Ukraine War Is Affecting the Cultural WorldCard 1 of 6Gavriel Heine. More

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      ‘Flux Gourmet’ Review: Mastering the Art of Fringe Cooking

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      Peter Strickland’s latest film is a speculative comedy about art, desire and gastrointestinal discomfort.What if the primary sensory goal of cooking were to stimulate the ears? What if you experienced a movie through your nostrils and taste buds, or felt it in your gut? These bizarre, intriguing questions are part of the foundation, the spine — the sofrito — of “Flux Gourmet,” the fifth feature by the British writer-director Peter Strickland.The first, “Katalin Varga” (2009) was a revenge drama set in Transylvania. Since then, Strickland has departed both from genre conventions and from known geography, conjuring parallel realities organized around particular aesthetic and erotic obsessions: Italian horror and sound design in “Berberian Sound Studio” (2013); entomology and B.D.S.M. in “The Duke of Burgundy” (2015); high fashion and Italian horror again in “In Fabric” (2019); and now cuisine.Not the kind you eat — though there are some awkward dinner gatherings and episodes of surreptitious snacking. Food, in the world of this film, is the music of love. Culinary sound collectives are the equivalent of rock bands, building walls of expressive noise from the whine of blenders and the sizzle of vegetables dropped in hot oil.One such group, which can’t agree on a name, has been granted a residence at an “institute devoted to culinary and alimentary performance” in a converted rural manor house. One narrative thread follows the simmering tensions between Jan Stevens (Gwendoline Christie), who is in charge of the place, and Elle di Elle (Fatma Mohamed, a Strickland stalwart), the visionary, vegetarian leader of the troupe. Elle adamantly rejects the slightest hint of constructive criticism from Jan, who believes that her largess entitles her to be heard.This tension exacerbates the rivalry within the group. Elle may be the leader, but her bandmates, a floppy-haired emo kid (Asa Butterfield) and an angular avant-gardist (Ariane Labed) have nascent creative agendas of their own. There’s also an element of sexual intrigue, as often happens when aesthetic passions are inflamed. Meanwhile, a rejected band of culinary artists lurks in the shadows, threatening violence.All of this is chronicled — mostly in Greek voice-over with English subtitles — by a saturnine fellow named Stones (Makis Papadimitriou) who works as the institute’s “dossierge.” A writer by trade and a wallflower by temperament, he observes Elle and her colleagues, filming their meetings and performances, interviewing them together and taking notes on their squabbles.The poor man has troubles of his own. Digestive troubles, to be precise, which disrupt his sleep and sour his already gloomy mood. The resident doctor (Richard Bremmer) is a pompous boor, and Stones spends a lot of his time in the lavatory, the rest of it wearing the unmistakable grimace of a man holding back considerable gas.There is obvious comic potential in his predicament, but Strickland doesn’t exploit it in the obvious ways. This isn’t “Blazing Saddles”; audible flatulence is restricted to a single plaintive note, rather than a full symphony. But the unheard music of Stone’s lower intestinal tract is nonetheless a key structural element, organizing “Flux Gourmet” into an elegant fugue of contrapuntal themes: grossness and refinement; pleasure and disgust; appetite and discipline.The film isn’t so much an allegory or fantasy as a witty philosophical speculation on some elemental human issues. We are animals driven by lust, hunger and aggression, but also delicate creatures in love with beauty and abstraction. Those two sides of our nature collide in unexpected, infinitely variable ways.“Flux Gourmet” is Strickland’s funniest film to date, with more outright jokes than its predecessors, and a few sublime visual gags, many of them involving Jan’s outfits (they were designed by Giles Deacon, with hats by Steven Jones). It’s like a Restoration comedy run through a John Waters filter and sprinkled with Luis Buñuel itching powder.Maybe such comparisons are unfair. Certainly Elle insists on the absolute integrity and originality of her work, and even as “Flux Gourmet” mocks her self-seriousness it also defends her dignity. Mohamed, fully committed to the bit, allows you to believe that Elle is both a courageous genius and a complete nut. I’m inclined to think Strickland is more of the former than the latter. I’ve never encountered a flavor palette quite like the one he assembles here, and while this movie isn’t always easy to digest, it’s a taste very much worth acquiring.Flux GourmetNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      Judge John Hodgman on Phish Shows

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      A woman’s fiancé wants to drag her along. Must she go?Rachel writes: My fiancé, Steve, wants me to go to a Phish show — he has been to more than 60 — but every time he turns on Phish, it puts me to sleep. I don’t want to pay for an expensive nap. Please order that he stops asking me to go to his hippie festivals.This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this dispute, so before you get married, you should know the law: In heterosexual marriages, every wife owes her husband one Phish show. Now, some husbands may never collect on this deal. But you are — and I’m sorry to write this for many reasons — on the hook. Phish is a whole world to its fans, and Steve deserves the chance to show what makes it special to him. If after this you decide Phish isn’t for you, the matter is closed. (Unless Steve buys an unused Compulsory Phish Show off some other husband. I like Phish fine, but you can have mine, Steve. Find me on Venmo. $5,000.)To submit a query: Send an email to ethicist@nytimes.com; or send mail to The Ethicist, The New York Times Magazine, 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018. (Include a daytime phone number.) More