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Cult_Of_Frank
= Black Noise Maker =
Canada
11690 Posts |
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ProverbialCereal
- FB TabMaster -
USA
2953 Posts |
 Posted - 09/05/2006 : 18:40:46
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| I'll definitely be watching this later. Too impatient to wait for the ole buffering right now. Is this relatively new? |
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Daisy Girl
~ Abstract Brain ~
Belize
5305 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2006 : 18:45:56
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omg this is so funny. i just could only hope that the people i am interviewing against are that big of dorks. lol.
this is the first time i saw the british version of the office. i think it's a lot funnier.
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Edited by - Daisy Girl on 09/05/2006 19:05:51 |
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Cult_Of_Frank
= Black Noise Maker =
Canada
11690 Posts |
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HeywoodJablome
* Dog in the Sand *
USA
1485 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2006 : 22:06:29
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"If you want the rainbow you gotta put up with the rain, do you know which great philosopher said that? Dolly Parton, and people say she's just a big pair of tits."
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"My name is Doug and I'm outta hhhhheeeere." |
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Ziggy
* Dog in the Sand *
United Kingdom
2491 Posts |
Posted - 09/06/2006 : 07:00:15
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Both are excellent videos.
"Too much thinking makes Jack a mental case". |
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Suicide_Samurai
= Cult of Ray =
United Kingdom
431 Posts |
Posted - 09/06/2006 : 12:43:55
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It says Steven Merchant reprises his role from The Office, but I don't remember "The Oggmonster" behaving too much like this..
What were these videos made for by the way? Never seen them on tv and I doubt they were made just for the internet. |
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darwin
>> Denizen of the Citizens Band <<
USA
5456 Posts |
Posted - 09/06/2006 : 13:27:02
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They were made by Microsoft for Microsoft employees.
Mandela "he's been out for 18 years and hasn't reoffended." Brilliant. |
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Cult_Of_Frank
= Black Noise Maker =
Canada
11690 Posts |
Posted - 09/06/2006 : 13:28:00
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Agreed, this is not the oggmonster. The videos were made for employee training at Microsoft, really. M$.UK bought and paid for them.
And yeah, I particularly like the second half, but both hilarious.
 "Now you're officially my woman. Kudos. I can't say I don't envy you." |
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Daisy Girl
~ Abstract Brain ~
Belize
5305 Posts |
Posted - 09/06/2006 : 14:34:19
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| so this isn't the uk tv version of the office?? |
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Cult_Of_Frank
= Black Noise Maker =
Canada
11690 Posts |
Posted - 09/06/2006 : 14:41:41
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No, it's the creators of the UK Office. Ricky Gervais is his character in The Office (David Brent) who is played by Steve Carrel in the American version.
"Now you're officially my woman. Kudos. I can't say I don't envy you." |
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Daisy Girl
~ Abstract Brain ~
Belize
5305 Posts |
Posted - 09/07/2006 : 12:32:32
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| I think part of the comic genius of the UK version is that it looks like it could actually be a training video or just some employees goofing around. i wish we could get the uk version too. |
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darwin
>> Denizen of the Citizens Band <<
USA
5456 Posts |
Posted - 09/07/2006 : 12:35:48
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| It was on BBC America and is on DVD. |
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Cult_Of_Frank
= Black Noise Maker =
Canada
11690 Posts |
Posted - 09/07/2006 : 12:38:53
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Yes, the DVD is a must have.
"Now you're officially my woman. Kudos. I can't say I don't envy you." |
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PixieSteve
> Teenager of the Year <
Poland
4698 Posts |
Posted - 09/07/2006 : 13:33:11
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quote:
Originally posted by Daisy Girl
I think part of the comic genius of the UK version is that it looks like it could actually be a training video or just some employees goofing around. i wish we could get the uk version too.
wtf?
FAST_MAN RAIDER_MAN - June 19th |
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Carl
- A 'Fifth' Catholic -
Ireland
11546 Posts |
Posted - 09/08/2006 : 08:31:42
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Thanks Dean, I cracked up at those! I'd heard about these, but hadn't seem them-they've been removed from YouTube, and apparently Microsoft aren't too happy about them being leaked. Stephen Merchant is very natural and convincing there. I wasn't expecting much, but there are plenty of laugh-out-loud bits.
"Come five thirty, go home, have as much sex as you want....I don't mean all night so you arrive at work, knackered at your desk, y'know, fatigued through intercourse, y'know, your no good to man nor beast..."
I love the bit in the second video when Brent won't shut up with the jokes! "Finished?" "For now!"
I love the way Stephen Merchant says "If you didn't have any
weaknesses, that'd make you a kind of Christ-like figure."
Some Office (UK) bloopers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1ZeFfFLLtg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwe5-fToJpA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh8L38JPwUM
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Edited by - Carl on 09/08/2006 08:37:27 |
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Cult_Of_Frank
= Black Noise Maker =
Canada
11690 Posts |
Posted - 09/08/2006 : 08:49:07
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Yeah, Stephen does a great job. The second part is my favourite (see the part I transcribed on my site - the whole strengths/weaknesses thing). I actually love how it goes beyond 'being perfect' into 'being Christlike' and David just keeps asking if he can quote him on that. I laughed out loud at that whole bit and watched it again.
Plus his impression of whoever that is (Logan's Run?) was hilarious.
"Now you're officially my woman. Kudos. I can't say I don't envy you." |
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Carl
- A 'Fifth' Catholic -
Ireland
11546 Posts |
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Homers_pet_monkey
= Official forum monkey =
United Kingdom
17125 Posts |
Posted - 09/08/2006 : 10:52:27
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Genius.
Love it in the second part when it cuts back to David handing sticky tape over.
 I'd walk her everyday, into a shady place
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Edited by - Homers_pet_monkey on 09/08/2006 10:53:25 |
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Carl
- A 'Fifth' Catholic -
Ireland
11546 Posts |
Posted - 09/10/2006 : 09:38:32
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http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,14934-2343270,00.html
The Times September 09, 2006
Me in your series? You must be joking
Why do rich powerful stars line up to be mocked in Extras? Search me, its writer Stephen Merchant tells James Jackson
What was your favourite moment from the first series of Extras? Ross Kemp being compared with Zippy? Kate Winslet in a nun’s habit offering advice? Or tragicomic Les Dennis calling up Heat with fake celebrity sightings of himself? The first series, shown last year, was the equivalent of the difficult second album — how could Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant come up with a comedy that could match The Office? Amazingly, the on-set misadventures of the frustrated extras Andy and Maggie came mighty close. Gervais and his co-star Ashley Jensen won plaudits, but Merchant, as Andy’s peerlessly inept agent, stole every scene he was in.
While on his way to catch a plane to the Emmy Awards the other week, he took time out to offer The Knowledge his thoughts on the new series of Extras, its crop of celebrity guest-stars and, of course, “Barry from EastEnders”.
“The new show is about Ricky’s character’s rise to a level of celebrity, the things that happen around that, and his friendship with Maggie. His sitcom gets made and, despite the fact that it’s critically mauled, it is actually quite popular with the public. So he has this double-blind of being fairly well known, with people asking for his autograph and popping up on chat shows, and not having the credibility and critical respect he craves. So he is just as frustrated as he was when he was a lowly extra and it’s all about him dealing with these anxieties.
“It’s almost a parallel universe about where Ricky and I would have ended up if we’d made the wrong decisions. It also draws on our experience of the absurdity of celebrity. But of course, the greatest fun we have is through the comedy of embarrassment — people being in awkward situations. Somehow if you’re well known, those embarrassing situations are magnified. Suddenly, if you make a fool of yourself in a restaurant, you are in the papers.
“People keep asking why the stars want to mock themselves on Extras, and we can’t really figure it out. Maybe it’s because it is quite a fun day out. Actors like to act but if they’re on a big movie set, they’re sitting around all day in trailers drinking tea and reading magazines. With us you get to act pretty much non-stop, so hopefully it’s a fun day. It’s an Alton Towers for movie stars.
“Also, if you are a well-known face it is a tiresome fact that people have a perception of you that is normally completely misguided. Les Dennis is the most obvious example of that — the public perception of him is entirely wrong and doing our show was a way of countering that. Or it can just show a different string to their bow. But I would hate to suggest that the show is all about the stars — they’re just the icing on the cake.
“My character, as ever, has more interest in promoting ‘Barry from East- Enders’ than massaging the ego of my other client. It’s never really explained why he likes Barry so much — maybe he feels he owes him something after foolishly persuading him to leave EastEnders. Ricky and I love doing scenes together, so there’s a lot more of that.
“After this, we are both quite keen to get involved in drama. That doesn’t mean turning our back on comedy, it’s just something we’d like to experiment with.”
Extras, Thur, BBC Two, 9pm
Orlando Bloom
“We wanted a good-looking star. Orlando was the obvious choice. He was quite nervous — he did Pirates of the Caribbean with Mackenzie Crook and may have heard that Ricky used to rub his shoes on the carpet so he could give Mackenzie electric shocks.”
David Bowie
“Ricky had a short-lived music career and he was quite heavily influenced by Bowie, to the point of wearing flamboyant clothing. You assume he’s going to be this enigmatic, Ziggy Stardust figure, but as Ricky pointed out he is, ultimately, David Jones.”
Daniel Radcliffe
“We play up the fact that people think of him as an adolescent. He’s very respectful and polite. Not a spoilt brat, as you may imagine. I’m not a Harry Potter fan. I once met an adult who was re-reading it. Why? Did they miss some of the wizardy subtext?”
Ian McKellen
“He was a joy. We asked him to give a pompous diatribe about how to act. He was improvising with gusto, in rich, rolling speech. Eventually he cracked up midway through the scene. Ricky was finding it hard to keep a straight face, which is a good sign.”
Chris Martin
“The idea is that he’s taking part in one of these charity videos. People have an image of Chris as a little po-faced — we make that part of the joke. But he’s a very likeable, warm presence to have around; quite shy. It turns out he’s a really great actor, too.”
Robert Lindsay
“I loved him in GBH. We wanted someone who was a sitcom star, a mainstream comic face. But knowing that he’s got the ability to give a dark edge to what he does — he can do neurotic really well — we got him to incorporate some of those talents as well.”
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1866850,00.html
The Lennon & McCartney of comedy
Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant
Simon Hattenstone
Saturday September 9, 2006
The Guardian
It was his mother who first made Ricky Gervais laugh. "Why you up so early? Shat the bed again?" she used to say. As a boy he always wanted to be funny. "I had to be a funny friend. I had to be funny and clever. I wanted to win an argument and I wanted to make them laugh doing it." But he had other ambitions, too. Born in Reading, he went to university in London, became events manager at the student union, tried to be a rock star and briefly managed pop group Suede. After that, he meandered into a job on a radio station and teamed up with Stephen Merchant - his life in comedy began. He has some very clear ideas about what's funny, and they've made him hugely successful.
Comedy is all about aspiration, he says, patting his Paul McCartney wig into place. "It is a comedy staple - the difference between how you are perceived and how you perceive yourself." Take Hancock, he says, slipping into his circa 1965 leather boots. "You were laughing at his desperate aspiration to be part of a scene that he really wasn't." Then there's Captain Mainwaring from Dads' Army. He was working class aspiring to be posh. "The posh one was beneath him in rank, but he still got the upper hand because he had something Mainwaring couldn't have - class. Up until Basil Fawlty, comedy was all class, and now it's celebrity. Before, people wanted to be part of the aristocracy; now, they want to be famous."
Gervais and Merchant are best known for creating the television series The Office and Extras. Both David Brent from the former and Andy from the latter are mediocrities and wannabes - convinced they are worthy of fame and desperate to live their life in front of the cameras.
Gervais stops to look in the mirror, and is not happy with what he sees. "Our comedy's never been about getting people to laugh by putting on wigs," he grumbles. "We want to create our own iconography." It's true: rather than the comedy of dressing up, theirs is, if anything, the comedy of dressing down. In Brent, Gervais and Merchant perfected the comedy of squeamishness, creating a hideously believable character whose lines, delivery and dress were all so familiar, it was hard to watch. Brent is dictatorial, smug, egotistic, brutally insensitive (despite priding himself on his sensitivity), fantastically unfunny (despite priding himself on his humour) and supremely uncool; he always thinks he's right, yet he's full of insecurities. He should have been a monster, but somehow Gervais and Merchant created a character who, despite everything, we liked.
"Another thing about sitcoms," Gervais continues, "is that you have to be trapped. In Porridge, Fletcher is literally trapped - incarcerated. In Steptoe & Son, Harold is emotionally trapped - it's his father who ruins his life."
There was a time when he didn't understand why he laughed, Gervais says, and perhaps life was funnier for it. "I think it spoils it a bit if you break it down. I remember laughing at things and not knowing what I know now. I never saw the meta-levels. For example, I hated Steptoe & Son because I thought, 'Why didn't he leave home?' Then, when you get to 18, you go, 'Because it's his dad.' I watched Porridge because I thought Fletcher was a winner. He wasn't. He was a loser, caught between Harry Grout, Mr Mackay and doing the right thing by Godber. He was trapped. It's all about jeopardy."
He's still fretting about his costume and sounding more and more like Brent, same accent, same certainties ("I want to look back on a body of work and be proud of most of it"). Merchant, meanwhile, just seems happy we've found a suit that fits him. "It's not easy when you're six foot seven." In some ways, they make the classic comedy couple. For a start, there's the visuals: one small and chubby, the other long and skinny. Then the character: Gervais's bossy verbosity offset by Merchant's quiet warmth.
What first made Merchant laugh in life? "My dad. He'd do silly things. You know, if he was getting out of the shower, he'd be mucking around - he'd pull his underpants too tight and walk funny. When my sister was a teenager, she'd have friends over and he'd come down and try to embarrass her."
Merchant is 31, 14 years younger than Gervais. In 1997, he was hired by London radio station Xfm as assistant to "Head of Speech" Ricky Gervais. Soon after, they were given their own show. Merchant grew up in Bristol and John Cleese was his hero - not only was Cleese six foot four, he also came from nearby Weston-super-Mare. Even as a young boy, Merchant assumed he would grow up to be a comedian. "It never occurred to me that you couldn't make a living from it. It was like, 'Why not?' I thought I'd try to go to Cambridge and get into the Footlights. That was the way all my heroes had done it, but I didn't get into Oxford or Cambridge because my grades were predicted to be low. In the end, I did well, but it was too late. As it was, I was pleased that I didn't go because I think it would have created a particular style of comedy that wouldn't have suited me."
So how would he describe their style? "We are influenced by a lot of classic comedy. Laurel and Hardy are a big influence in subtle ways. We do lots of double acts - the way we write is two people talking, a stupid person and a slightly less stupid person, which is all very Laurel and Hardy, so in that respect it is very traditional."
They are ready for their photo call. Gervais morphs into McCartney circa 1965, all cheeky-boy mouth and appealing eyes, while Merchant's Lennon is more Liam Gallagher (near enough - Liam always wanted to be Lennon). Good comedy must be contextual, Gervais is saying. "We've never wanted to decapitate characters. Somebody can come out and have a funny face and step on a banana skin and you'll laugh, but if 30 seconds before they gave a cool speech about dignity and told the boss where to go, you know what I mean, it all mounts up to make that event funnier. It's all contextual."
If things went wrong on the telly, I say, you could always become a comedy lecturer. He looks appalled. "Oh God. 'How To Be Funny!' Imagine that ..." He's changing into his Help! outfit, still a touch reluctant - "I'm worried that I'm not giving you the best here, because I'm trying to do 30 things at once."
I ask Merchant if he thinks comedy has to be cruel. "Do you mean is it possible for the joke to be kind or do you mean ..."
Gervais jumps in. "All comedy has to have a subject and that subject has to be personified... What we do in comedy is create victims who don't exist, our own superheroes, so the cruelty comes guilt-free. If I do a joke about Cilla Black, that's one person at home going, 'Why is he having a joke at me?', whereas if I create a fictional character with all the attributes of real people, then that's satire. So it's types we have a go at."
With satire, he says, people are often confused about what's the butt of the humour. "So when people see the subjects we pick on in Extras, a girl with cerebral palsy, the butt of the joke isn't the girl but Andy's faux pas. Or in The Office when Brent goes over to the black guy and talks about Sidney Poitier, we're laughing at Brent's inability to treat him equally, we're not laughing at the black guy.
"I think we do have a responsibility. David Baddiel said comedy is your conscience taking a day off and I thought that was a great quote." He pauses, dramatically. "I don't agree with that now. I don't think your conscience can take a day off. You have to justify everything you do. I think we're right on. See, I keep getting things like, 'Ricky Gervais known for his challenge of political correctness'" - another dramatic pause - "I totally disagree. Everything I do is justified, and has some social satire or deconstruction that I can justify. I don't think 'It's just a joke' is good enough, I've heard that too often."
Whatever Gervais says, Extras does satirise individuals, taking to a new level their comedy of cringe - indeed, the thrill of it is watching the likes of Les Dennis and Ben Affleck portraying themselves as helpless losers or monomaniacs. In the Les Dennis episode, we see Dennis as the ultimate saddo - he's being two-timed by his blonde bimbo, she's spending all his money, he is suicidal, unfunny, needy, and he quotes the catchphrases from his shows when making love before being kicked out of bed.
Isn't that cruel? "No," Gervais says. "You could say it was an exorcism for him. We created a super-hero. He knew it wasn't him, it wasn't his life, he hasn't thought about suicide and he doesn't phone Heat. So he was secure in himself, joining in the fun."
What people confuse, and what Gervais and Merchant deliberately obscure, is realism and reality. The portrait of Dennis seems painfully close to what we know about him; it looks real. How brave of him to bare his soul, we think. Their point is that it's not real, it's realistic. "We are slaves to realism," Gervais says. "And it's really hard, because sometimes we just want the door to open and the funniest thing in the world to walk through. But we don't allow ourselves that, because it's a cheap gag, a quick fix, and it doesn't resonate. It's the difference between strategy and tactics. Strategy is better."
It's true they are slaves to realism, Merchant says, but they are not doing anything that wasn't being done in cinema decades ago. "Woody Allen in Play It Again, Sam is doing naturalistic performances, overlapping talking, loads of uncomfortableness. You see it in Spinal Tap, and in The King Of Comedy - Rupert Pupkin had so many elements of David Brent: he's desperate to be a comedian, he's trying to be funny, his comedy is terrible. At the time it seemed unbearably uncomfortable, but now it's regarded as a classic.
"For some reason in sitcoms, right through the 1980s and 1990s, people were still acting as if they were in another world. I always thought, why are people still on TV acting like they're performing in a comedy. Why can't they just speak like real people?"
What makes you laugh, I ask Gervais. "Very often not stuff that I do or stuff that I'm very good at," he says. "I like broad comedy or funny faces. I'm not a snob about what makes me laugh. I suppose I am a snob about what I do to make other people laugh. I don't want things to be disposable."
Does great humour always transcend the contemporary? "Well, American humour has. That's why most British humour doesn't make it over the pond, because it's too parochial. The only ones that really made it in America were Steptoe & Son, which was remade as Sandford And Son, and Till Death Us Do Part, which was All In The Family. And we're sort of the next - The Office is the first British remake export to make it in about 30 years. And I can say this because it's not my project; I'm not bigging up myself - I'm bigging up them. They're touting it as the new Seinfeld. It's on its 50th episode now, and it's getting 20m [viewers] and everyone said it wouldn't work." (Last week, it also won Gervais and Merchant an Emmy for best comedy series.)
Has that made him incredibly rich? He grins sheepishly. "I've already made more from the American version than from the English version. The American earnings are five times the English earnings. And the English Office, let's not forget, has been sold to 80 countries - on the surface, it seems quintessentially English humour, but it's not, it's got universal themes. The Office is quite existential. There was a romantic thread, too. There's been romance in America since I Love Lucy. And Friends was basically as much a romantic comedy as it was sitcom."
There's another photo call. "It's just impossible to give this poor man what he needs," he says, like Brent at his most sensitive. Afterwards, we find a quiet corner where he tells me what he looks for in great comedy. "My favourite was when it's Brent's best day and you knew it was going to go wrong - and then he dusted himself down and got on. I like people like that, and I like people like Stan and Ollie, you want to hug them... When you see somebody give a bit of themselves, you get tangled up in their life, and you go away and think about that the next day. The important thing in comedy is it hits you there." He punches his heart. "You could philosophise all you like, and get it down to a formula, but in the end you've got to like someone to laugh at them. If somebody's just hurt you, personally, or hurt your family, and they make the best joke in the world, you're not going to laugh. So you've got to be a likable presence, and you've got to be worse off than the audience. I hate these comedians who try to be cool. You can't be cool and sexy and be a comedian. You can't talk about how successful you are with women or how expensive your car is or that you're cleverer than the audience. Who wants to see that?
"You want to see someone come out who is vulnerable like you, who gets embarrassed like you, who loses out like you - that's what you want to see from a comedian." He's almost shouting. "You want to see someone who got their fuckin' hands dirty to be there, not somebody who swanned in and doesn't give a toss about you. Empathy is the most fundamental thing about comedy, and context, and that's why standalone things are not interesting"
Didn't he recently say that he and Merchant were going to give up on comedy to concentrate on drama? "No, I didn't say that. I said the next thing we'd do would be a drama maybe, but I'm not going to give up on comedy. It's..." And for once he struggles for words. "I'm good at it. I love it, and I love laughing, and I love evoking an emotion, and the best thing is to evoke all of them, to make somebody laugh and cry and cheer and get their blood boiling and then chill 'em out."
With that, he leaves to have photos of himself and Merchant taken, this time as themselves. And finally he seems happy. Merchant stands, hovering, a good neck and shoulder above him, staring at the camera with his wonderfully dour face. Every time Gervais looks up at him, he collapses into hysterics. "Whenever I'm in a bad mood, or have a headache, all I have to do is come in and see Stephen's face and it makes me crack up."
· The new series of Extras starts on BBC2 on September 14.
Fab two... Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant as Lennon & McCartney. Photograph: Karl J Kaul |
Edited by - Carl on 09/10/2006 09:48:08 |
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David Brent Applies to Microsoft
"No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself."