Trying to Get Physical

I’ve been sick again. Three years in Arizona without so much as a cold has weakened my immune system to that of a syphilitic goldfish. Any change in temperature or sudden change in the wind sends me through three weeks of coughing, wheezing and voice loss.

At least this time my illness foreshadows the promise of spring. With spring comes more days running outside and less days shivering at the bus stop waiting for an inattentive driver to swerve onto the curb and put me out of my misery. Due to my impatience, a week and a half ago I went running from my humble abode in McKinley Park to Hyde Park on the south side. It was an 8.6 mile run that took me through the Burnham Park lakeside trail and thus within spitting distance of the lake. That run may have lengthened my illness.

I took an easy run on the treadmill the other day so as not to make things worse – a slow pace of 5 miles in about an hour and a half. I know at this stage I should be challenging myself but when it’s a challenge to stay upright and flop-sweat free, I wasn’t about to go hog wild. While doing so I watched my a film by famous French comedian and clown Pierre Etaix, The Suitor.

Etaix stars as an unnamed and largely silent young man whose sole desire to study astronomy in solitude is frustrated by his parents desire to see him married off. After a few inspired moments of slapstick and childlike whimsy, Pierre finally gathers the nerve to woo a menagerie of Parisian women, but finds he’s woefully incapable of closing the deal with any of them. And boy brother can I relate.

Etaix’s oeuvre was in legal limbo for the better part of a century so it’s easy to see why his sharp features and delicate approach to physical comedy has escaped my wondering eye. He was a contemporary of Jacques Tati who had a tendency to stretch the logic of the world around him. Etaix’s approach feels slightly more genteel, starting from a relatable, personal space. His comedy is situational and in certain modes just as fantastical as Tati or for that matter Buster Keaton and Harry Langdon but everything seems motivated and grounded by a strong emotional center.

Part of the struggle for me as an aspiring comedian is finding jokes that have that are relatable to my audience. My upbringing would hardly be described as normal, let alone my life now. The Suitor in a way reminds me that relatability is ultimately determined not by the commonality of experiences but by the emotions that surround them. Everyone has been bullied in elementary school; I was just bullied by high schoolers who attended the same campus I did. Everyone’s been sent to bed without supper; I just had to because of a national strike. Everyone has gone through stranger danger as a kid; I just had the increased possibility of those strangers being connected to a terrorist group. Everyone has felt frustrated, rejected, angry and sullen; the experiences themselves are just colored bubbles.

Some of his quietest gags in The Suitor got the biggest laughs out of me. In one scene he asks for a cigarette lighter from a would-be mate. He absentmindedly picks up her lipstick by mistake and breaks the baton in his hands. The lipstick then becomes a prop in a seamless escalation of gags that culminate with him alone and the rest of the restaurant patrons being slightly lesser off for knowing him. It’s melancholic to be sure but never mean-spirited or overly wacky – it just is. The Suitor is chalked full of these wonderful little moments that tickle you with simple household objects and subtly amplified sound effects.

I watched the film from the beginning of my run to the end, the subtitles guaranteeing that my eyes would be permanently fixed to the screen. After a small stretch and a shower, I packed for an upcoming business trip confident that I could incorporate some of Etaix’s innovating clowning into my comedic sets.

Out of all the great film comedians, I’ve always had a soft spot for Charlie Chaplin. His childlike demeanor combined with his movies themes of finding beauty in tragedy and egalitarianism in industry meshed well with my personal sensibilities. As an older, more jaded man in my thirties, Pierre Etaix is a welcomed fresh face (fresh to me anyway). He’s a reminder that no matter how lost one can feel and how badly the mechanisms of life my maim you, laughing at the inanity of life may just be the best medicine.