‘Well then dude, suck that shit...’

Trailer Park Boys reveal their comedy favourites

Cult Canadian mockumentary stars Robb Wells, John Paul Tremblay and Mike Smith – who are heading to the UK in May – reveal their comedy favourites:

Mr. Show: Show Me Your Weenus

Robb: Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, along with the rest of the talented cast of Mr. Show, were one of the best comedy troupes ever assembled in my opinion. Countless hilarious characters and slick Monty Python-style transitions provided me with a ton of laughs and entertainment.

Although I was a fan of every episode, one in particular stands out to me, Show Me Your Weenus, and in particular the Wyckyd Sceptre sketch. ‘Well then dude, suck that shit...’ Pure hilarity.

This Is Spinal Tap

Robb: One of the great comedic influences in my life. Christopher Guest boasts some of the greatest improvisational skills I have ever seen, and he helped create a completely new genre which I fell in love with, the ʻmockumentaryʼ.

In This Is Spinal Tap, Guest plays Nigel Tufnel, one of the funniest characters in cinematic history. The movie to this day still works, I continuously laugh out loud every time I watch it: ‘These go to 11...’ Genius.

Slapshot

John Paul: There is only one movie I ever watched four times in a row in one night.... Slapshot.

It was a Friday night, 1977, me and my street hockey buddies loaded up on 25-cent chocolate bars and chips and stole one of our parent's VHS copies of Slapshot. It felt as though it started off a little slow but the swearing kept us captivated. Then came the the Hanson Brothers!

These guys became instant heroes as we watched them get into fight after fight on the ice and then winding down afterward, playing with toys trucks in their hotel room. The fighting montages in this movie were unbelievably funny to us, especially when all three of the Hanson's brothers checked one player on the other team and then continued to beat him unmercifully with kicks and punches.

The Pink Panther Strikes Again

Mike: Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther series is undoubtedly one of the greatest characters ever created. The sequence where Clouseau interrogates the butler and staff about a murder may very well be the most brilliant performance ever committed to the big screen.

From the moment he accidentally mistakes the butlers’ ‘right this way’ gesture for a handshake, every single action that Clouseau takes for the next several minutes somehow backfires, screws up or has a completely unexpected reaction, and Sellers’s ability to react to these situations without winking the bit, or making it seem contrived, is an incredible testament to his talent.

The entire sequence is full of amazing subtleties, one of my favorites being when he asks the butler what switch he used to turn on the lights after he’s been on the treadmill in the dark. Once the lights come on, the audience naturally assumes Clouseau realizes that he himself switched on the treadmill when attempting to turn on the lights. But Sellers’ delay of that realization, until after he’s tried the light switch AND switches off the treadmill, with a perfectly timed ‘Ah!’, is pure genius. Still makes me laugh every time.

Immediately following that we see his brilliant attempt at hiding his pain after punching the heavy bag and then his incredible performance on the parallel bars that concludes with a dismount over the railing and down a flight of stairs. And at that point, he’s just getting started. Amazing

Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy

Mike: So....Noel Fielding. I was going to try to pick a favorite episode of Luxury Comedy but I just couldn’t do it. My advice to anyone who hasn’t seen it already is to strap in and watch the entire series in one sitting. Seriously. Then when you’ve finished watching, try to verbally recap an episode for someone who hasn’t seen it. You inevitably sound crazy: ‘You gotta see it, one episode starts with Noel sitting at his desk after he’s loaned his eyeballs to his go-kart instructor, Alfie, who’s a pineapple, and Alfie tells him about how great it is to have eyes and he saw Noel shaving his balls in the mirror and…’ Fucking genius.

Jerome ‘Curly’ Howard from The Three Stooges

Mike: The Three Stooges are, in my opinion, one of the greatest trios of all time. Jerome ‘Curly’ Howard had no formal training in comedy, but his natural ability to harvest funny from inanimate objects, simple tasks and routine situations, is still mesmerizing to watch 70 years later.

In ‘An Ache In Every Stake’ from 1941, Moe, Larry and Curly are preparing some food for a dinner party when Larry tells Curly to ‘go shave some ice’. It cuts to Curly with a block of ice sitting in his ‘barber chair’, with an apron on, as he sharpens his razor on a leather strap. Curly then proceeds to ‘shave‘ the ice making friendly conversation, even inquiring if the frozen block would enjoy a ‘hot towel’. His comic timing is genius.

This sequence is followed by Curly’s attempt at stuffing a turkey - another great display of his ability to make a simple task incredibly funny.

I’ve heard people say that Curly was a ‘one trick pony’, with his trademark ‘nyuk nyuk’ and finger snapping, but I argue that if you concentrate on his facial expressions and mannerisms, when he’s listening rather than only watching, you’ll see that the character actually had layers of feeling and complexity. And remember…. Curly had NO template to work from! Undoubtedly, one of the greatest of all time.