Quick Sketch: Putting On The Ritz

 Recently I rewatched Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder's "Young Frankenstein" (Pronounced Frunkensteen).

I did so because I watched Lee Mack sit down with Tim Vine and do some Q&A event where Lee Mack listed 11 comedy movies he'd take to a desert island with him, because that makes sense and none of them were Young Frankenstein, nor musicals. 

Someone asked him why no musicals and he said like most sensible people that there's never a need to break into song when someone could just say the thing instead. Then someone asked him about Young Frankenstein and Lee Mack reminisced about "Putting On The Ritz" and then remarked maybe he did like musicals afterall.

Blah blah blah.

I looked up the scene on Youtube, found it funny, then watched the whole movie, the Putting On The Ritz scene is of course the highlight.

I don't believe in Spoilers, I'm persuaded to follow the science that says we are most engaged when we anticipate, when we reread, rewatch etc. so while I do think I obsess over this scene within the greater context but I'll get to that. Here:

It's just fucking ridiculous, that's the gag, worthy of ridicule. I can see Gene Wilder pitching it to Mel Brooks, we perform "putting on the ritz" and the monster can't like sing his lines.

Brooks and Wilder disagreed over the sequence where Frankenstein and his creation perform "Puttin' on the Ritz". Brooks felt it was too silly to have the monster sing and dance, but eventually yielded to Wilder's arguments.[5][20]

Which I totally understand, it's one of those jokes that to put down on paper it's just fucking nothing. Of course it is going to prompt an argument - Mel "This is dumb" and Gene "I know I know Mel, but the way we do it it's going to be amazing."

And that's what I'm obsessing over, the way they did it.

In the greater context, Putting On The Ritz is the ridiculous conclusion to a scientific demonstration of a reanimated corpse. So it's the punchline almost to a parody of the Elephant Man lecture from a movie released six years after it. All played quite straight just to set up this punchline.

The special sauce isn't the monster trying to sing "super duper", but the dignity demanded by Gene Wilder in his performance as Young Frankenstein, at least for me this is what ads so much depth to a brilliantly stupid joke.

Wilder I would describe as Jerry Lewis if Jerry Lewis was funny. He goes quite loud quiet loud like that 1990s sound and possibly should be credited with creating the 90's instead of the Pixies and Jane's Addiction. Most people of my generation know Wilder as the Willy Wonka that has never been eclipsed, the mysterious, poetic and lyrical screen presence that helps make that film.

What is amazing is that Young Frankenstein keeps going after the Putting On The Ritz scene, and obviously because the story hasn't concluded, but it pays off the opening scene where Frankenstein delivers a pretentious lecture to medical students, gets compared to his grandfather (of the Mary Shelley novel) and loses his shit, decrying the madness of trying to create life.

Then, with a premise deserving perhaps of a serious film, this man who insists upon his dignity and has spent his life trying to distance himself from his family name is presented with the recipe for creating life, he gets dragged into the very madness and succeeds.

I wish it had all been played straight, just scrubbed of all the little gags and Igor's winks to camera and explaining the jokes incase we the audience didn't get them and every time Frankenstein is uncharacteristically slapstick instead of a powder keg insisting on his dignity.

I wish they'd staked it all on Putting On The Ritz, such that it made the Academy angry because they couldn't give it Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay etc.

The first time I watched the sequence, the basic gag, that he is showcasing how intelligent and sophisticated his creation is who manages the dance part of "song and dance" but crows like a rooster when trying to say "putting on the ritz" and "super dooper".

The second time I saw it in the greater context, and you know, I don't like Broadway musicals, I don't really get them, but they are a quintessential part of New York City. It just made the gag so much better for me, because doing a little showtune for the scientific community, all the gleeful crowd reactions while it is going well, and the vegetable throwing when the crowd turns on the monster over a bad musical performance.

Right. Right? It's like if you gave Toho's Godzilla this treatment, I want a scene where the Kaiju monitoring agency demonstrate for Japan's Diet a performance of Noh theatre or Kabuki featuring Godzilla as the vengeful ghost of a murdered wife. Like just a dumb and ridiculous idea. Just the straight up pretention of it.

The third time, my laughter settles mostly on Gene's attempt to recover the scene, the "nothing! Nothing I tell you." and the "5, 6, 7, 8!" tap dancing over as a scientist presenting to scientists in an attempt to embody "the show must go on." His dumb fucking idea must continue.

It's just perfect execution. I think I recall Bill Hader or someone on some podcast, maybe Mark Maron's talking about when he started at SNL being sent down to watch Will Farell try and get a sketch into that weeks show. The sketch was simple, it was a teachers lounge or something and one of the teacher's played by Will dressed as Richard Greico or some other outdated minor celebrity from the 70s or 80s, and he learns that Richard Greico visited the school and nobody thought to tell him. That was the sketch, and it never made it, but Will impressed upon Bill how to take a so-so idea and elevate it with performance to make something out of it.

It's the vision, putting on the ritz is just vision and execution put together. It is worth obsessing over, dissecting. Maybe you don't find it funny at all, maybe it's just dumb to you. Maybe for you it's like me watching 3 straight hours of Bob's Burgers and wondering "yo where's the jokes at?" 

Clearly though, this gag worked for a great many people. Mel's still with us, Gene is gone. Gene gave it life, he literally presented how to bring something to life, in a scene where he presents the scientific breakthrough of life.

Wonderful.