4 Oct
2010
Last night a friend of E's came over for dinner. While I was preparing dinner, they made a "kick me" sign (an age old favorite) and a more updated PC version that said "laugh at me". While attempting to tape these on Jenny and I, they kept busting out in laughter. Later at Dinner, I explained to them how the key to a good practical joke is in the "reveal" - that you can't give the joke away to early.
As an example, I told the about the classic practical joke called, "A Piece of String." The short version goes like this: A man is standing on a busy street corner in London holding a piece of string. He stops a gentleman and says, "Pardon me sir, I am surveying this building and I was hoping you might help me for a moment by holding this piece of string." The gentleman takes hold of the piece of string while our jokster takes the other end around the corner of the building where he stops a second gentleman and gives him the same line. He then walks away leaving the two gentleman standing there. For how long he doesn't know, but that is part of the beauty of the joke.
I had been thinking about the piece of string story the day before when I first read about and then saw videos regarding the new movie "
I'm Still Here" starring Joaquin Phoenix and directed by Casey Affleck. Until a week ago it was a documentary based on Joaquin's decision to quit acting and become a rapper. As the cameras followed Joaquin, he starts to unravel in a major way. To the point of a now infamous appearance on
Letterman. Well on the eave of the films nationwide release it was revealed that it was in fact a hoax. Not a documentary at all, but a two year, beyond the frame acting experiment.
For me, they have seriously changed the movie, and not in a good way (more Cohen than Kaufman). After playing a part on screen and in public for the better part of two years, they couldn't wait a few weeks until after the movie was in full release or better yet, not tell us at all. They had to let us all know it was a joke, "ha ha everyone". Affleck and Phoenix can
justify their decision anyway they want, but in my eyes, they blew the reveal.
-m
Some interesting footnotes:
When discussing it with my cousins, they immediately concluded Joaquin did have a break down and that the "hoax idea" is a cover story.
After telling the kids the story of "A Piece of String", they replied "that's dumb, the whole idea is to laugh at your friends and then with them." Maybe it is generational.