Comedian and journalist Craig Marshall Smith also writes a weblog. A recent offering which is posted on Golden Transcript is devoted mainly to one-liners. Here are some examples:
A dung beetle walks into a bar and says, “Is this stool taken?”
Julius Caesar walks into a bar, holds up two fingers and says, “Five beers please.”
Is that what you want? It’s beneath me. It’s under me. I think you are trying to preposition me.
He works his way around to a series of one-liners based on the Hollywood film adaptation of Waugh’s novella The Loved One:
Jerry Seinfeld? No. Jonathan Winters? Yes.
Winters plays brothers in the film version of Evelyn Waugh’s “The Loved One” – “the motion picture with something to offend everyone.”
Evelyn Waugh, a man, was briefly married to a woman named Evelyn. Evelyn Gardner.
“The Loved One” is called a “black comedy.” It came and went in 1965, but it is seen as something of a prize since then.
I admit that I laughed, and I rarely laugh.
Another blogger posting on FilmFanatic.org files a response to the review of the film adaptation of The Loved One in a classic list of “Must See” films by Danny Peary published in 1986. Here’s an excerpt:
Tony Richardson’s adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s 1948 novel — co-scripted by Christopher Isherwood and Terry Southern — is beautifully shot by DP Haskell Wexler, headily surreal (“Let me explain the dream to you — this entire place is a dream.”), and has “a scene to offend everyone”, but features “plodding” direction and fails to pack a satisfying overall punch. Part of the problem lies in failure to connect with Morse [playing Dennis Barlow], who lacks charisma and doesn’t inspire much investment. There are also far too many cameos and sub-plots, including several not present in Waugh’s original novel … By the time Dana Andrews shows up in a small role as a general, the story has twisted too many times to maintain interest. …
P.S. As Peary notes, “one of the best scenes has Morse visiting Comer’s unsteady house-on-stilts, which is built in a slide area”.
