Vital stats:
Format: jokey movie talk
Duration: 50m-1h10m
Frequency: one per month to one per week
Archive available on iTunes: all
Depending upon where you put the emphasis, that title could mean a few different things. Emphasis on Comedy? Then it’s a show that strings jokes along the clothesline of film nerdery. Film? Then it’s a show that has a laugh, spiced occasionally by the nasal snort of the overenthusiast, while it bears down on things cinematic. Nerds? Then it’s a show about the things engineered to get overenthusiastic about, with wisecracks thrown in for levity and a film slant for some focus. All of these setups have potential.
And Comedy Film Nerds [RSS] [iTunes] is, to varying degrees at various times, all of them. But it’s never totally any one of those things. Its feed description, “Movie reviews by stand-up comics and filmmakers Graham Ellwood and Chris Mancini,” also gets at a certain, prominent aspect of the podcast, yet it’s only one aspect. The most evocative way I can describe the show is to declare it the most even confluence yet of two pounding, volumnious currents in podcasting: programs driven by comedy and programs driven by movies. This is what it’s like when worlds collide.
More specifically, one of these colliding worlds is actually that of Southern California comedy podcasting, which, as my time in the Podthinking trenches continues to reveal, is just barely a subset of comedy podcasting as a whole. Without being particularly experienced in the Southern California comedy scene(s), I’ve somehow gotten dozens of names of performers, venues and events lodged in my mind that have no associations besides my having heard them mentioned over and over again on podcasts. And not just ostensible comedy podcasts! Graham Ellwood’s is a name I’ve heard endlessly, to the point where it would always ring a loud, clear bell in my head, yet that ring would never resonate in any way. Now I can at least think, “Yeah, one of the Comedy Film Nerds dudes.”
To pile even more specificity atop that specificity, the other world that collides with the world of Southern California comedy podcasting is populated not so much by the I-love-film breed as the whoa-there-I-don’t-like-film-I-like-movies one. A subtle distinction, perhaps, but surely you can appreciate it. The “film nerds” portion of the title starts to feel somewhat disingenuous when you realize just how much time Mancini, Ellwood and their guests spend discussing pure cultural detritus like Bounty Hunter, the Clash of the Titans remake, Cop Out, It’s Complicated, Alice in Wonderland 3D or Avatar. At first, this doesn’t make sense, just as it doesn’t on other shows that try to get comedy podcasting in their film podcasting, or vice versa. But I think I’ve finally figured it out.
Comedy, by its very nature, requires a steady stream of jokes. While these don’t necessarily need to be so classically formed as two rabbis walking into a bar or what have you, they should be somehow crafted to provoke laughter. While it’s possible to fire off killer lines about masterpieces of cinema, it’s unnatural enough to be difficult to keep them flying at a standard comedy-podcast rate. It’s a hell of a lot easier to get the big yuks by ridiculing crap. Hence all the talk about movie ephemera on this comedy-film podcast hybrid and others: sure, the subjects of the jokes themselves will be forgotten by the Thursday after next, but they present awfully target-rich environments, as they say in the military. When the specter of quality arises, as when one of the hosts attempts to discuss Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet, he gets partially buried under half-assed wisecracks. It’s kind of a no-win situation.
But it’s really hard to argue that Comedy Film Nerds won’t be okay. Mancini and Ellwood bring in beloved Southern California comedy guests like Mike Schmidt [MP3], Jackie Kashian [MP3MP3]. They keep the energy up. They have a good time. And hey, if you happen to actually be interested in hearing about something like Kick-Ass, boy, have I got a podcast for you.
[Want to hire Podthinker Colin Marshall to Podthink at your slumber party? colinjmarshall at gmail.]