Artist Jenny Hart is a guest blogger on Dinosaurs and Robots, and she blogged this great video she worked on. She says it's a "a re-creation of Abbott and Costello's famous Who's On First? routine, recited by two actors completely unfamiliar with the sketch, using their natural speaking voices. Watching the finished version brings my mind to a halt."
Re-creation of "Who's On First routine"
Artist Jenny Hart is a guest blogger on Dinosaurs and Robots, and she blogged this great video she worked on. She says it's a "a re-creation of Abbott and Costello's famous Who's On First? routine, recited by two actors completely unfamiliar with the sketch, using their natural speaking voices. Watching the finished version brings my mind to a halt."
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not so much funny as it is painful
It's impressive that they found two people who are unfamiliar with that skit.
The idea of trying it again from scratch is interesting.
The idea of doing it with deliberately bad not-even-conversational timing... isn't.
Yeah, sorry. Experiment or not, the end result is uninteresting.
12 seconds. That's the longest I could watch.
Sorry, Mark. Mind numbingly boring.
For a more enjoyable experience, paste the text of the skit into a program that can read text and listen to it "perform."
Adobe Reader has much better timing than the people in this video.
Ok, I'm clearly in a minority here, but I thought it was brilliant. I've always loved that routine.
I liked it. Maybe some a Gavin Bryars soundtrack would improve it. :)
Better yet: put the script through text-to-speech (with 2 different voices). It would probably be even more wonderfully uncomfortable and not funny.
Only semi-related, the Los Angeles Dodgers currently have a utility player on the roster named Chin-lung Hu (from Taiwan.) Every single time he gets a hit, regardless of my surroundings, I am compelled to shout, "Hu's on first!"
Sure I'm a dork, but it gives me an enormous chuckle. Every time.
What #2 said. I'm saddened that they could find an 2 American actors, who seem to be in their twenties, who have never seen/heard the skit. Didn't they study the history of their profession?
If art is pain, this is true art.
I found this hysterically funnier than the original. Maybe it's a sports-hating, girlie man thing.
Well it's sure no McGillicutty and Green.
That was a brilliant Kids in the Hall sketch with Kevin McDonald as the comedic half of a vaudeville duo and Dave Foley as his painfully literal straight man.
McG: So Mr. Green, I hear you manage a baseball team.
Grn: No. No, I'm a vaudevillian.
Most brilliant riff on Who's on First ever, especially when Foley suddenly stops in the middle and goes, "Oh, I see what your problem is!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfXFOllCE7s
Slow day in the blogosphere?
That was excruciatingly, mind-numbling dull.
Gotta go with the other posters, here. Couldn't get past 30 seconds or so. I skipped ahead, and I'm sure my entire dorm heard that woman scream and whimper. Not sure what they think I'm watching...
It was painful to watch, but then near the end (if you got that far) it got actually very interesting, when she starts going off in either another language I don't recognize, or a crazed phonic salad. He's, dare I say it, far too straight for the role of Abbott.
Because this is the internet I'm not at all sure that this is simply a reading of the routine by two people who don't know the routine. If they are aspiring actors they are possibly the worst actors ever. The way it is shot I'm not even sure they were reading it at the same time until the end when they do the two shot. At the end when the woman gets really frustrated I'm not sure what to make of that. If she doesn't know the material and seemingly doesn't understand it why does she get frustrated?
Rain Man called. It wants its bit back.
It's two androids running a Turing test against each other.
after they take over, what are the AIs going to call the meat-detector test?
That was sad. I want my money back.
I shudder to think of how they're going to incorporate Fukudome into the next one.
I enjoyed.
Oh! That's "art". I get it.
Can I have my precious time back please? No? Sigh.
Somehow I enjoyed that.
Got real weird at the end.
"what's the point" is on deck.
Robbie Alomar gets a "thank you" credit at the end...for having his rookie card prominently displayed?
Q: You know what the key to the original skit was?
A:
Q: I said, you know what the...?
A: TIMING!
i laughs every time...
Calling these people "actors" is a bit of a stretch.
Calling these people "actors" is a bit of a stretch.
#10 - "Every single time he gets a hit, regardless of my surroundings, I am compelled to shout, "Hu's on first!""
NICE!
This also uses an actor unfamiliar with the original routine, but much more effectively.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJVWjIpIkqI
Watching this while high would be hiLARious...
Watching it straight is just frightening.
The comments were far more entertaining.
Here's a variation based on a bit first published on McSweeny's.
Hilarity ensued.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00uNakSDJ3o
I think by "actors" we may just mean "college students". Sure looks that way.
Of course, I could only watch 5 seconds before it decided to not play anymore and the progress bar went scrolling really fast.
But we actually studied this routine in 5th grade (I had an AWESOME teacher that year). Everyone thought it was hilarious.
#36: yeah I read that McSweeny's bit a while back, really glad someone made a video out of it! I lol'd hard.
It really really reminded me of the 419eater prank that resulted in a couple of Nigerian scammers sending over their rendition of the Dead Parrot sketch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvyrzQldOKE
Who's on first as directed by David Lynch. All that's missing is Jack Nance and Kyle McLaughlin
That was way better than when my third grade class read it many years ago.
...Not quite sure why the lady has an orgasm at the end....but it works!
This rendition reads like a Pinter play.
(pause)
With uncomfortable pauses.
(pause)
That force you try to fill in what's missing.
NOT funny. NOT interesting. NOT art.
I want my 5 minutes back.
I thought it was wonderful.
I think everyone else is being a little impatient.
I didn't like it either.
I don't think we are seeing what we are told we are seeing. First, the pauses between lines is way too long. Second, shouldn't there be at least some small flicker of understanding of the bit? Maybe it is too deeply burned into my brain, but I would think that any adult should figure out what is going on even if they have never been exposed to it. I think it is more probable that they are fine actors who probably know the bit.
Watching that gave me excruciating physical pain.