One of my favorites happens in The Hudsucker Proxy, after The Caretaker jams the gears of Hudsucker Clock. “Strictly speaking, I ain’t never 'sposed to do this.”
I was thinking about this the other day because I saw an absolutely GREAT example of this on a sit com. It’s not one I regularly watch, but I believe it was Yes, Dear (it stars that comedian from Boston Common).
Anyway, they needed a new couch, and the husband points out how the wife is responsible for every item in the living room, and she makes a comment on how it should reflect his personality as well. He later buys a couch, and redesigns the living room so the sofa is facing AWAY from the audience. Everyone else comes in, sits on the sofa with their backs facing the fourth wall, and keep talking about how, for some reason “It just doesn’t feel right.”
“What’s not right? I mean, you can see the fireplace, the front door, the window. I mean, what’s over there?” and everyone would peer over and look at the camera, think for a minute, look back away and say something along the lines of “Yeeeah, but this is just too wierd.” It was very witty and incredibly well done.
I have to admit, I absolutely hated the little break at the end of Election where the guy from American Pie addresses the camera for no reason. That was poorly done.
Cuffs was another good example, though.
The best 4th wall gag was Woody Allen’s “Marshall McLuhan” bit in Annie Hall.
While waiting on line in a movie, the guy behind Allen keeps spouting nonsense about McLuhan – much of it completely wrong. Allen steps out of the line and addresses the audience about how you always get stuck in front of a jerk like this. The jerk addresses Allen and the audience, saying, “aren’t I entitled to my opinion.” Allen tells him and us he’s wrong; he insists he knows McLuhan. Then Allen goes behind a movie poster and says, “I happen to have Marshall McLuhan right here,” and brings him out to put down the jerk. Allen then turns to us and says, “wouldn’t it be great if we could do things like that?”
In addition to She-Hulk, Ambush Bug often talked to the audience and to Julie Schwartz, his editor.
Just to be pedantic, I should note that “breaking the wall” is not a modern idea. In fact, it’s pretty ancient.
Shakespeare’s characters sometimes speak directly to the audience… and even in Shakespeare’s day, the idea was old.
In fact, there are many scenes in the comic plays of Aristophanes in which characters step out of the action and address the audience.
Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if the gimmick was old when Aristophanes did it!
El Elvis Rojo, the scene from Yes, Dear was what inspired this thread. I never watch the show either, but I caught it switching channels and thought it was extremely well done.
And yes, it was Byrne, not Moore. Don’t know how I managed to confuse those two. She-Hulk would occasionally rip through the other pages to get to action taking place later in the comic.
Duck Amuck really pushed the envelope, I loved that. At the end of What’s Opera Doc? Bugs address the audience while his still form is being carried away by Elmer, “You expected a happy ending?”
Jack Benny and his “audience”. He mugged and made asides to a studio audience that wasn’t really there. I loved that. Sometimes it was direct to the camera some times it wasn’t.
The whole show within a show format was rather interesting. I don’t think it was intional, like the Garry Shandling show was, but instead they moved a radio program with a live audience into a TV studio and added the canned laughter. They pretended to keep the audience for those familar with the Radio show.
I’ve been trying to find a cite to back up this assertion if any one has evidence supporting or to the contrary I’d like to see it.
4th wall breaks, asides to the audience and (I don’t know what to call it when you’re shown it’s a set) happen all through Blazing Saddles. My personal favorite: “Drive me off this picture.”
Who said it was new? I read the whole thread and I didn’t see anyone say that. I must’ve missed it.
Anyway, I have to agree with Zoe, about that moment in Harold and Maude - done to great effect. I can close my eyes and just see Bud Cort cutting his eyes up to the camera, but I can’t remember the scene. I’m trying to remember, is it right before he does the hara kari scene with the Drama date?
And total agreement with the David Attison moments from Moonlighting. Those were brilliant.
The only problem I have with breaking the fourth wall is that I can’t KEEP my students from doing it. They’ve grown up going to English pantomimes and are rather adamant that they should get to shout at the actors onstage, in response to the plot of the story. It’s a bit disconcerting.
Two examples where the fourth wall was broken but no-one speaks are a couple of my favorites.
One was in A Christmas Story. Although an adult “Ralphie” (voiced by Jean Shepard, the author of the book on which A Christmas Story is based) provides narration throughout the movie, the fourth wall remains intact until near the end. Ralhpie is sitting in his bathroom, sobbing as his mom washed his face after he faked getting hit in the eye with an icicle. As his mom focuses her attention and wetting a washcloth, Peter Billingsly looks at the screen and smiles. I wonder how many takes that took!
Another one was in a recent Saturday Night Live. Jimmy Fallon and Seth Myers play two Irish pub-goers who host a TV show from their favorite pub. They begin talking about Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz in Gangs of New York. One of them asks, “Who wants to watch a bunch of non-Irish people play Irish people?” Fallon and Myers then look at each other, at the audience, and back at each other.
Here’s one I don’t like. It’s the scene neat the end of A Christmas Story, when Ralphie has just “shot his eye out” and made up a story to fool his mother into thinking a giant icicle was to blame. She falls for it, and Ralphie momentarily looks at the camera and giggles in victory. It’s the only time in the whole movie when you lose the feeling that you’re watching real people instead of actors playing characters. I’ve always thought it was way out of place in an otherwise perfect film.
Whoa! :eek:
Talk about the weirdest simulpost OF ALL TIME!
JINX!
Holy crap! When I previewed my post HeyHomie’s wasn’t there yet, so we must have posted that at EXACTLY the same time!
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
“Would you believe it? There was a mare sweating not two streets from here”
"An honest virgin! What a terrible combination! "
I understand the concept, but why is this called “breaking the forth wall”?
To fully appreciate this, you have to remember that this bit is taken directly from the Broadway version of Animal Crackers, which spoofed the way that Eugene O’Neill used soliloquies to the audience as a way of giving the characters’ inner thoughts in Strange Interlude, from 1928. (Which is why Groucho prefaces it the way he does.)
Broadway audiences would get the reference, of course, but the movie version of Strange Interlude didn’t come out until after Animal Crackers so most of the movie audience must have thought that Groucho had simply gone, well, crackers.
I also like Groucho turning to the camera before a Chico piano piece and saying, “I have to stay here but there’s no reason you folks shouldn’t go to the lobby until this thing blows over.”
Picture a stage set with three walls. The audience is observing the scene through the non-existant forth wall, the one between the stage and the first row. By breaking that wall, the players acknowledge the fact that they are in front of an audience, actors not real people.
What you see in the Greek comedies (and arguably in the tragedies as well, although this is a point of scholarly debate) is not actually “breaking the fourth wall” because at that time the convention of the fourth wall had not been established. The audience had no expectation that the actors onstage would pretend not to notice them. It was no more a gimmick for Aristophanes to have his characters address the audience than it is for modern playwrites to refrain from doing this.
Consider the audience perspective vs. the performer perspective. The audience sees the perfomers on a set or stage with three walls, while the performers normally don’t acknowledge the audience–they act as if there’s a fourth wall between them and the viewers. From inside the story, the fourth wall is just a regular wall doing regular wall things likes supporting pictures and keeping Peeping Toms at bay. Every now and then, a performer will break that illusion by interacting directly with the audience. The performer metaphorically breaks a hole in the wall from inside, hence “breaking the fourth wall”.
Wouldn’t that be the ceiling? 
Buffy also looks at the camera and sings “And You can Sing Along” during her “Something to Sing About” song for Sweet.
Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile breaks the fourth wall repeatedly.