Sundance: Day Seven

Dave Calhoun checks out 'The Aristocrats' a documentary about a single, extremely dirty, joke.

Jan 31 2005

Day Seven: Heard the one about incest, paedophilia and bestiality?

Let me tell you a joke; the filthiest joke that you've ever heard...

That's the premise of 'The Aristocrats', a brilliant new American documentary that screened at the Sundance Film Festival today.

The film's title is also the punchline of a very old joke that every comedian - from Robin Williams to Chris Rock - in director Paul Provenza's film seems to know and love.

'The Aristocrats' explores the anatomy of that same joke by imploring about 50 mainly American comedians to retell it on camera.

The joke is actually not that great; most comedians admit as much. Yet its telling allows all the comedians in Provenza's quickfire film to indulge their own style and, most importantly, to spin their own very filthy takes on the joke in a way that would rarely be acceptable on stage.

Here's a couple of extracts:

'...then my 7-year-old daughter starts sucking off my 9-year-old son..'

'...here's the kick-in: grandma is dead.'

'...so I come up my daughter's arsehole and then my wife felches her.'

Get the point? 'The Aristocrats' is a playground for comedians of both sexes to indulge their dirtiest material.

Childish and prurient? Perhaps.

Very funny? Without doubt.