THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT

The unsinkable Martin Short; comments on the Comedy Issue; R.I.P., Freaks and Geeks; getting a sense of Canadian humor; editing Albert Brooks; and a comedy-duo reunion

LETTERS

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Just read your Comedy Issue. Kudos to Judd Apatow for including a long article on Martin Short ["The Cat's Meow," by A David Kamp, January], one of the genuinely great originals. If anyone belongs in the pantheon with the likes of Jonathan Winters, Sid Caesar, and Ernie Kovacs, it is, hands down, Martin Short. When he returns to perform in New York City, we will be right there in line (and a line there will be) for tickets.

HOWARD KOPELSONNew York, New York

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED

A longtime subscriber to your fine magazine, I save all of my Vcmity Fairs in a back-issue library in a shed behind my house. The January Comedy Issue, guest-edited by Judd Apatow, will be saved to a bookshelf inside the house—that's what a treasure it is! Not only is it a hilarious compendium of the 21st century's pop-culture comedy geniuses, it also includes features on The Blues Brothers (which I've loved with religious fervor since my Chicago childhood) and Freaks and Geeks (late, great, brilliant, all-timefavorite TV show). I gasped aloud with each page turn. It was as though you'd rolled all of my favorite things into one issue, just in time for the end of the world. I've been a fan of Apatow's since The Ben Stiller Show (another late, great, but prematurely canceled work of genius), and I applaud his well-deserved success.

Bravo on this fantastic issue.

ELLEN JO ROBERTSClarkdale, Arizona

I picked up this issue with high hopes of some interesting reading and good laughs. But after the 10th reverential reference to Judd Apatow's new him and the uncanny coincidence of the timing of its release and Apatow's guest-editing, I began to suspect that this issue was nothing more than one big pitch in the best (or worst) Hollywood tradition. I expect more from Vanity Fair than to devote an entire issue to the promotion of a movie none of us will remember in a year. That said, the issue was still an interesting experiment, and, I must admit, I laughed out loud a few times.

LEIGH SPRAGUEMilwaukee, Wisconsin

I'm a regular V.F. reader and addicted Daily Show viewer who appreciates the irony of often getting better journalism from both than from the mainstream media. That's why I was mystified that Kit's otherwise admirably comprehensive Comedy Issue seemed to go out of its way to ignore Jon Stewart, as well as Stephen Colbert, though both were mentioned in passing.

Maybe I'm oversensitive, as a 27-year expat living in Helsinki who held on to a slipping grip on his American identity from the Bush years through the rise of the Tea Party primarily thanks to Stewart's reminder of what America is really all about. But it seems a crying shame that V.F. failed to adequately recognize Stewart's Daily Show for what it is: pure genius that can stand shoulder to shoulder with anything else profiled in V.F., and, more importantly, that has raised comedy to a level where it shames both the media and the politicians into aspiring to something higher.

KEITH SILVERANGHelsinki, Finland

REBELS WITHOUT A TIME SLOT

Good 2 Be 4gotten: An Oral His'2 tory of Freaks and Geeks" [by Robert Lloyd, January] was a glorious glimpse into the making of one of my all-time favorite TV series. As a viewer of the series when it originally aired (and there weren't many of us), I encouraged (O.K., nagged at first) my children, then aged 11 and 12, to watch it with me every week. The perfect combination of humor and life lessons was not to be found anywhere else on TV. We were all heartbroken when we heard the terrible news that Freaks and Geeks had been canceled.

My kids are now out of college and on their own in the world, but when we get together it is not uncommon for one of us to come up with a quote from the show. We all enjoy watching the episodes repeatedly—watching together is a rare treat these days, but it does happen on occasion. And we wonder what would have happened if this gem had been allowed to run one more season, at least. There were so many possibilities. Unfortunately, we will never know.

LINDA BELMONTOak Ridge, New Jersey

DON'T BLAME CANADA

I greatly enjoyed the current edition of Vanity Fair, featuring as it does many of our talented Canadian comedic exports to the U.S. In particular, Bruce McCall's piece on Canadian humor ["Of Moose and Men," January] was highly amusing, although not all Canadians will share that view.

You might like to know—and let Bruce McCall know—that on page 3 of our national newspaper The Globe and Mail is to be found today (December 19, 2012) a lengthy story with the big bold headline ARRESTS MADE IN HUGE MAPLE SYRUP HEIST. The big question now, of course, is whether the charges can be made to stick.

Only in Canada, you say.

BRIAN P. ANTHONYToronto, Ontario

Oh joy, oh rapture! An issue of my favorite magazine with flattering commentary and articles about my Canadian countrymen and -women! I must say, I was positively swelling with national pride. Thanks for pointing out the little-known fact that some of the funniest and ... nicest people on the planet are from Canada, eh?

LINDA MINNISHuntsville, Ontario

THE ELOQUENT MR. BROOKS

I hope that you will tell Mr. Brooks— and Mr. Apatow, too—how wonderful _l_ that interview was ["Our Mr. Brooks," by Judd Apatow, January], but most striking were Mr. Brooks's words to his kids, "You're already on the train." This is evidence that some persons are gifted with the ability to join the right words together to give life to a thought, a concept. I don't think I have ever read a Holocaust reference that touched me more deeply. Thank you, Albert Brooks.

RITA AGABASHIANLivonia, Michigan

More fromTHE V.F. MAILBAG

So, did the Comedy Issue kill? Depends whom you ask.

If, for instance, you consult Jill Yesko, of Baltimore, Sophia Matheson, of London, Gregg Lauer, of Atlanta, Catherine Gacad, of San Francisco, L. J. Ross, of Utopia, Texas, James MacLeod Carter, of Washington, D.C., or Elsie Hickman, of Lake Martin, Alabama, the answer would be no. Or as they put it, respectively, "a royal snooze," "Worst. Issue. Ever," "a total bomb," "the worst Vanity Fair magazine I have ever read," "boring," "one comedy routine that bombed," and "the worst issue in recent memory."

But Dan Aldrich, of Rockwall, Texas, Sue Papandrea, of Bonita Springs, Florida, Jade Thompson, of Sydney, Australia, and Becca Seamster, of Bedford, Texas, say yes—or, to be exact, "awesome," "surpassed my high expectations," "fabulous... stellar," and "love it," in that order.

In other words, few things are more subjective than humor.

Unless we're talking about Canadian humor ("Of Moose and Men," by Bruce McCall, January). Nothing subjective there. "Bruce McCall's article was insightful, amusing, and as polite as would be expected from a Canadian expat," writes Allan Levine, of Winnipeg, Manitoba. "You have a lot of Canadian subscribers, so you might want to think twice before describing us all as bland by definition," warns Katja Lutte, of Toronto—more ominous, it's true, but it nevertheless arrives at the same place.

"Who's Afraid of Nichols & May?," by Sam Kashner, January, prompted a couple of reminiscences from readers. Shaun Considine, of New York City, notes that after the pair split, in the early 60s, they performed together again for a George McGovern fund-raiser at Madison Square Garden in 1972: "Switching spontaneously from current critical issues such as the war in Vietnam to their former classic routines, they were incisive, dazzling, irreplaceable. Then, and now." And Steve Siporin writes from Palm Springs to say that when he worked on one of May's films in the 60s and asked for her autograph, she squiggled something on the back of a photo that he neglected to look at carefully until years later—when he noticed that instead of her signature "she had drawn a cartoon of a woman with a flourish of breasts and printed her name in very small letters." On the other hand, Sophie Sousoulas, of Memphis (another member of the worst-issue-ever brigade) wonders, "Who today is interested in Elaine May and Mike Nichols?"

So, what are we to conclude from all this? Maybe that dying is easy, comedy is hard, and comedy issues are harder still.

I enjoyed reading most of Judd Apatow's interview with Albert Brooks in the January issue. However, Brooks's recollections about Modern Romance differ from mine.

I was head of Columbia Pictures when I met Albert Brooks, and I really liked his comedic style. I envisioned Albert as someone who had the talent to become another Woody Allen as a filmmaker, and man-woman relationships seemed the right fertile ground.

Albert turned in a good script for what became Modern Romance. I had only one problem: he dumps the leading lady in the first scene. I met with Albert, praised the script, but suggested that audiences would dislike his character for this insensitive act. I explained that he'd be more sympathetic in the rest of the picture if the girl dumps him. Albert did not agree and could not be persuaded to change.

We proceeded to the next step with the normal test screening for a recruited audience. It didn't go well. It was clear from the focus-group comments that most of the audience, particularly the women, found Albert's character irritating and neurotic rather than funny. Afterward, I told him I thought we'd get much better results in a re-test if he'd shoot a changed opening. He was adamant and would not change the scene for such a test. I don't recall suggesting any scene with a psychiatrist. I just wanted the girl to dump him. I can't be positive that such a change would have made Modern Romance a more successful movie, but I wish we'd been able to try.

I wanted Modern Romance to succeed. After all, if it failed, I was the dumbbell who developed it and spent millions to make and market it. It got all the marketing support I could give a movie that audiences avoided in droves.

I wish my experience with Albert had ended with a better result. I've had a good record with the comedies I've developed and greenlighted, among them Tootsie, Groundhog Day, Ghosthusters, and Back to the Future. And generally the talented people I've worked with, such as Paul Mazursky, Harold Ramis, Sydney Pollack, and Bill Murray, say nice things about me. I still think Albert is a funny, talented guy. I wish he said better things about me.

FRANK PRICE Malibu, California

NICHOLS AND MAY: TAKE TWO

I can personally vouch for Sam Kashner's praise of Mike Nichols's quick wit ["Who's Afraid of Nichols & May?," January], One afternoon in the 1980s, while trying on a jacket in a men's shop on Madison Avenue, I turned away from the three-way mirror at the same time another man, whom I instantly recognized as Mike Nichols, turned away from his mirror. Both of us were wearing the same jacket, and we stared at each other. He nodded at me in a complimentary way and said, "Nice jacket."

MICHAEL MANGANO Greenwich, Connecticut

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