It's Called Google, Asshole.

Ken Tucker:

The Aristocrats proves that sometimes you don't have to be a great filmmaker to make a great documentary. Basically, all Provenza and Jillette do is point the camera and listen closely; when one comedian make a throwaway jibe about Joe Franklin's impossibly cluttered office-apartment, the directors have the wit and sense to cut immediately to Franklin's abode, where the genial gnome delivers endearing non sequiturs (was Julia Roberts really once his secretary?). The Aristocrats is like the best home movie ever made, because the house is packed with such a huge variety of intelligent vulgarians who not only know how to deliver a line, but also can parse its meaning and its cultural implications. The Aristocrats refutes E. B. White's famous apercu about the process of dissecting humor: "Few people are interested and the frog dies of it." As Gilbert Gottfried would probably bellow, "Fuck the people and the frog!"

Well, well... We eagerly await that press release from M.I.T. announcing that they've decided to resuscitate their legendary documentary program -- once run by Ricky Leacock, who taught such filmmakers as Ross McElwee, Robb Moss and Mary Jane Doherty -- with Ken Tucker as the Chairman.

We have some issues with this, of course.

"Basically, all Provenza and Jillette do is point the camera and listen closely." This proves, somehow, that one needn't be a great filmmaker to make a great movie. Now, there's a pearl of wisdom. Mr. Tucker appears to be ignorant of the absolute scarcity of filmmakers that even know how to listen closely -- witness the abject failures of docs by Michael Moore and Oliver Stone, who only hear themselves, and don't give two shits about their subjects. The fact that P & J do this is no small thing. Incidentially, what is Tucker's definition of greatness?

"[W]hen one comedian make a throwaway jibe about Joe Franklin's impossibly cluttered office-apartment, the directors have the wit and sense to cut immediately to Franklin's abode." This is called editing, you feeb. This isn't intuitive, which is why there are so many goddamn bad movies. You think this is an accident?

As for the oh-so-sly parenthetical regarding Ms. Roberts, has Mr. Tucker thought to answer his own question? [doesn't NY Magazine have interns for this kind of shit?] Joe Franklin says yes. As for Julia... she couldn't be reached by press time.

And Ken, don't ever -- under any circumstances -- mention E.B. White again. The thought of your name on the same page as one of this country's finest essayists makes us nauseous.

That is all. For now.

UPDATE: After a cursory recounting of the actual joke, Tucker writes, with an insane degree of smarminess, "Oh, I know: ’tain’t funny on the page." Is he serious?