Speaking of which: straightforward comedies that break the fourth wall, yeah, granted, that can be good stuff, I like it just fine. But when the new James Bond noted that this never happened to the other fella?
What the heck does this mean? I don’t mind an easy google where the acronym is right on top of the page, but this isn’t even close.
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
That was in Return of the Man from UNCLE, where George Lazemby played “J.B.”
As is the ending to Monty Python & the Holy Grail-albeit while Mel Brooks simply ran with the idea until total chaos was the result, the MP film simply grinds to a total halt, with no resolution.
The TV series Moonlighting, of course, was famous for them; here’s one typical example:
There was a great one on Rocky and his Friends on TV.
Wossamatta U is about to play a football game against a women’s college.
Rocky: What kind of games can you play with girls?
Bullwinkle (aside): Boy you can tell this is a kiddie show. (To Rocky) Parcheesi!
These sort of asides were common in theater. Shakespeare used them all the time.
Take it up with Da Bard, Thelma Looooo…
The audience silhouettes in Looney Tunes always confused me as a kid watching them on a TV set.
I recall Bugs Bunny asking “Is there a doctor in the house” to the audience.
A silhouette stood up to say, “I’m a doctor.”
Guess what Bugs said next…
Poor timing. The Doc is already up.
My favorite from Moonlighting was from “Atomic Shakespeare,” their rendition of “The Taming of the Shrew.” Bruce Willis lets go Petrucchio’s “Coins in my purse…” speech. Then he turns to the camera and says “Didn’t think I could pull it off, did you?”
I don’t mind it when it’s part of the texture of the film-- when it happens all along, and is written that way, or when one of the characters is essentially narrating the film, but I agree that I don’t like it when a straight film has one brief out-of-style moment. Usually it’s an actor goofing off for a take that some editor decides to use, and that wasn’t scripted.
That said, there’s a funny moment in The 400 Blows, which was technically a scripted film, but it was a “loose” script. It told the characters what to talk about in a scene, but didn’t have actual lines for them to memorize.
When the main character, who is a barely adolescent boy, is being interviewed by what we’d probably now call “child services,” he’s asked about his experiences with girls-- essentially, if he’s a virgin. He looks right at the camera-- probably right at Truffaut, and his eye pop. Then he gathers himself, and gets back into character and answers the question very well.
Laurel and Hardy were masters of breaking the fourth wall. I still laugh whenever Ollie looks exasperatedly into the camera while Stan giggles and points at him mockingly.
Completely different example: Peter Sellers toward the end of A Shot in the Dark. When the suspects are arguing and Inspector Clouseau can’t get a word in edgewise, he gives a frustrated glance straight into the camera. I first saw the movie when I was ten years old, and that moment has stuck in my mind ever since.
BTW, George Lazenby said “This never happened to the other fella!” at the start of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, when Tracy leaves Bond high and dry on the beach. I saw Return of the Man from UNCLE when it was aired, but don’t remember the line being used there.
I remember when the temperature in Frostbite Falls got above freezing, and all the thermometers broke:
TOWNSMAN: (To audience) Well, consarn it, we ain’t never had a heat wave before!
The TV Show Supernatural is infamous for this and mocks itself mercilessly. In-universe the evil-smiting brothers stumble upon a guy who wrote a book series about them, and… well, it just takes off from there.
I think my favorite is the Supernatural high school musical which is an elaborate teen slash fiction (The song A Single Man Tear which mock’s Dean’s macho sensitivity had me rolling), but I have to give major props to the comedic acting in the episode “The French Mistake” where they stumble onto an alternate-reality set of their own show and are forced to act as themselves… but their lack of acting experience is painfully obvious. (Misha is also spot-on as a self-obsessed version of himself.)
That was a fun show.
One of my favorites.
Along with Ryan O’Neal in What’s Up Doc? saying to us “He’s calling her Burnsie.”
Galavant: “We’re not gonna die yet, we still got three episodes left”.
I think that scene in The 400 Blows was actually unscripted. From IMDB trivia:
So pleased with Jean-Pierre Léaud and his screen test (an informal conversation with the film’s director being off-camera), François Truffaut doctored it into the finished film by using fade-outs and substituting his voice with off-camera female psychiatrist’s voice.
Jean-Pierre Léaud’s answers to the questions given to him by the psychologist at the camp near the end of the film were not scripted.
Francois Truffaut told Leaud in advance about the scene for what to expect to a certain extent, and did provide some minor coaching when Leaud answered the question in between takes as to what was working and what was not, but at large, Leaud’s answers are unscripted and ad-libbed, per Truffaut’s wishes, who wanted the scene to feel spontaneous and believable.
A few years before Austin Powers, Mike Meyers played the fourth wall in Wayne’s World. I can’t find it online and am not a big fan anyway, but I loved that scene. He’s complaining bitterly to us about his predicaments, and when the camera starts to turn away, he realizes he’s being unbearable and says something like, “No, wait! Don’t go! I’m sorry!”