IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN Jerry Seinfeld’s movie, “Comedian,” you should. If it’s not playing near you, or if it’s no longer playing anywhere, buy the video when it hits the stores. Watch it often, buy several more, and give them to your friends, especially anyone who’s ever said, “Ooh, I love ‘Survivor.’ Wouldn’t miss it.” Then insist that they pick up a bunch themselves and give them to their friends.
Show it to your children just before they go off to college. Then slip one into their luggage next to the copies of “Why America Is Always Wrong” and “The Hell With God” and the rest of their required freshman reading.
Now repeat the whole process, like the instructions on a shampoo bottle.
Okay, I liked the movie. But that’s not why you should see it. I’m a comedian, and every comic feels an obvious bond with the process that “Comedian” chronicles. But that’s not why you should see it. It’s very funny, immensely funny, laugh-out-loud funny, and virtually no movie or TV show these days can say that. But that’s not why you should see it. And Christian Charles, the movie’s English director and editor, has made, with this film, a true work of art in an era when the phrase “work of art” has lost almost all meaning. But that’s not why you should see it.
The reason you should see “Comedian” and get others to see it, is that it unfurls and plants a flag, a flag that has, for a long time, lain buried and forgotten in the attic of American culture, a flag that catches the breeze and billows into the sunlight and says just two words: Hard Work.
In fact, that could’ve been the name of the movie, because that’s what it’s really about: “Hard Work.” “Comedian” is a metaphor for America, or at least America from 1776 until about thirty years ago. With apologies to Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence could’ve started something like, “When, in the course of human events, the mother country stupidly tries to prevent its colonists from deliriously working their butts off and reaping the benefits, well, then, those colonists have the right to say, ‘We’ll be going now, and you can kiss my Yankee Doodle Dandy.'” Come to think of it, that’s pretty much what the Declaration did say.
What is the American Dream? A fast car, a big house, a ton of dough, and a buxom blonde? No. While these things may make for a terrific weekend, they won’t fill a life or a soul. I know it’s fun to tease to the contrary. As my friend Lotus Weinstock used to say, “I’m looking forward to some day being able to look back and say, ‘Fame and fortune did not bring me happiness.'” Okay, sure, money is a dandy thing to have (in case you haven’t noticed), but how many zillionaires wind up sitting alone in a “Citizen Kane” mansion, surrounded by silly vases, bored to tears, and ten minutes away from blowing their brains out? No, it’s not about money.
And it’s not about another cliché of the last couple of generations: “Find something you love to do.” That’s misleading. I love being in show business, but that doesn’t mean I spend each workday skipping around and giggling. I’ve got many friends who have jobs they don’t like at all, but who have made the deal with themselves to stick it out and support their families, and I think they’re the greatest guys in the world for it. If you’re lucky enough to love what you do, that’s grand, but it’s not the Holy Grail.
Work is. Hard work. That’s the American Dream. Whether it’s in an emergency room or a factory or even a comedy club: doing a job, doing it well, never shirking, using everything God gave you to the fullest. That’s a deep and quiet joy. You throw in the Golden Rule and the chance to love someone, and you’ve not only got yourself a fine life, but a pretty good report card to read when you sit on the other side of that desk one day, and the Great Judge is flipping through your file.
I’m not talking about being a workaholic. Working hard doesn’t mean never taking time off for a few drinks or a trip to Vegas (if that’s not redundant). All work and no play not only makes Jack a dull boy, it makes him annoying to hang out with. (“Can I top that off for you, Jack?” “No, thanks, I’d better get back to that flow-chart.” “Suit yourself. Could you please leave now?”)
By the way, implicit to me in the phrase “hard work” is honesty and ethics. Ken Lay certainly put a lot of sweat into his job, but to what end? How many Americans would do what he did if they could be certain they would never be caught? How many think Tony Soprano has life knocked? How many yearn for some sort of goofy fame, as if appearing in the first six pages of “People” would ever bring fulfillment? One of the saddest things I’ve seen in a long time was an interview with a 12-year-old girl who answered the question “What would you like to be in life?” with, “Famous.” When the reporter followed up by asking what it was she wanted to be famous for, she replied, with a big smile, “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Just famous. A star.” With God’s help and her own common sense, she won’t be saying that in twenty years, or ten, or even a week. Is Michael Jackson happy, the poor soul? His plastic surgeon is, most likely, and he should probably be in jail.
As you all well know, the issues of the day in our country, and in the world, are titanic. If this moment in the universe is not apocalyptic, it’s certainly not more than a step or two down. Viewed in that context, cleaving anew, culturally, to the principle of individual hard work may not seem that important alongside the images of daily, intentional slaughter, or the last moments of a hero like Mike Spann.
But maybe it is. Maybe it is that important. Especially now. Hard work. The American Dream.
See “Comedian.” It’s funny. And a lot more.
Larry Miller is a contributing humorist to The Daily Standard and a writer, actor, and comedian living in Los Angeles.
