It’s a grand adventure on Mount Everest — not!
Laughter may be the best medicine, but bad comedy is as horrific as chugging decades-old syrupy cough medicine. Why is it that there are certain woeful jokesters who are shoved before our faces with disturbing regularity, while there are great ones whom we rarely see?
Portly TBS voice-guy Frank Caliendo probably takes the cake among the overexposed so-called funnymen these days. There’s Frank doing a bad Seinfeld on a commercial. On a football pregame show. On a promo at the movies. Then there’s Dane Cook, who, admittedly, is not a bad stand-up comedian if frat-boy catchphrases are your idea of bold humor. But why is he being given starring roles in major motion pictures? And don’t even get me started on Jay Leno, the man who, to me, symbolizes all that is wrong with network comedy.
This trio of idiocy — there are many others to add to the list — can’t seem to stop working, while Garry Shandling is — say, where’s Garry Shandling? And why is it that Albert Brooks is onscreen less and less? Happily, sometimes a good comic vet like David Allen Grier gets a chance to shine (he’s currently the star of his own Comedy Central series, “Chocolate News.”) But too many great minds just disappear.
That brings us to the great Chris Elliott — you know, the blond, bearded deadpan master best known for his longtime work with David Letterman. But consider Elliott’s resume. Minus a few disappointing years on one of the worst incarnations of “Saturday Night Live,” he starred in the quickly canceled cult favorite “Get a Life” (a sitcom whose staff featured a young writer by the name of Charlie Kaufman), appeared in such films as “Groundhog Day” and “There’s Something About Mary,” and, yes, developed the story and starred in another cult classic, “Cabin Boy.” This is the quite funny but often derided film in which Letterman himself made a cameo, memorably asking, “Want to buy a monkey?”
But there is good news afoot for Elliott fans. His daughter Abby has, ironically, joined the cast of today’s incarnation of “Saturday Night Live,” and Elliott himself has just released his second book, the delightfully witty faux-travelogue “Mounting Mount Everest.” This is actually his second “novel,” as he refers to it, following 2005’s well-received “The Shroud of Thwacker.” And on the page, as on the screen, his is a presence not, perhaps, for everyone. But for those who appreciate his often warped sense of humor, “Into Hot Air” is a real treat.
The template here is Jon Krakauer’s modern classic “Into Thin Air,” a white-knuckle nonfiction account of a disastrous Everest climb; he’s also the author of “Into the Wild.” Embracing “Air”’s whatevercan-go-wrong-does-go-wro n g aesthetic, Elliott adds a nice parody of both reality television and celebrity lunk-headedness. The story begins with the knowledge that his missing great-uncle Percy was, in reality, the first person to reach the top of the mighty mountain — not Sir Edmund Hillary. (Hey, this is satire. The facts can, and are, played with.)
Soon, Elliott has put together an all-star cast to accompany him: A former sitcom star named Tony who sings Sinatra with an, ahem, thick accent (“Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knews / When I bits off, mores than I could chews”); an aged movie goddess named Lauren (“It was actually Lauren,” writes Elliott, “who had given me my third elbow after a
painful arm-wrestling match one night”); a portly, baseball-cap clad documentary filmmaker named Michael; a former star of “The West Wing” named Martin; and several others.
Elliott is not particularly taking shots at these celebs, but he certainly turns his eye to our current obsession with seeing stars in peril, and the complete lack of self-awareness that many reflect. OK, so he loves to tweak Tony’s habit of speaking in plural, but that’s fine. (“Aaaaaahs!” squeals the boob-tube mainstay during one near-death experience.)
Believe it or not, it’s all in good fun, especially so for those who have read Krakauer’s text.
I hesitate to give much away, plot-wise, except to point out that the group runs in to such notaries as the Dalai Lama and Richard Gere, a “Who’s the Boss” flag makes it to the top of Everest, and Chris’ uncle Percy might not be dead after all. Plot, as you have guessed, is secondary here. But it must be said that in addition to being laugh-out-loud funny, the story is rollicking enough to work. Elliott has created a “novel” that works on multiple levels, and shows him to be both a fine storyteller, and as strong a comic writer as he is a comic actor.
Good for him. It’s wonderful to think that Chris Elliott, author, might finally receive the recognition that Chris Elliott, comedian, has long deserved.
FICTION
Into Hot Air: Mounting Mount Everest
By Chris Elliott
Weinstein Books
352 pages, $23.95
Christopher Schobert is a freelance Buffalo reviewer.
