This is Sid.
For more about him, skim this article.
Some of you might have seen this guy in an early media arts class, or perhaps you have a grandparent who interrupted a Real World Road Rules Marathon to regale you with remembrances of the glory days of television. Either way, watch Sid in this sketch. It's a masterful display of timing and physicality. It's eight minutes long, but it's worth it, even for modern folk.
I realize that this is a film comedy blog, that Sid is somewhat out of place here. He has appeared in films, but he never found the success on the silver screen that he did on the golden box. So why bring him up?
Sid Caesar managed to assemble some of the greatest comedic minds of the last fifty years all into one room. He wasn't the head of the Friars Club. They were all in his writers room. At one point or another, during the run of his two variety shows (Your Show of Shows, Caesar's Hour) Caesar had Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart, and Carl Reiner all pouring their brain juices into his comedy sketches. I can't even fathom. Take a look at our syllabus and think about the cosmic coincidence of the whole thing. In this little summer class slice of comedic film we've got Allen, Brooks and Simon. If we continued of into the Seventies and the Eighties we'd no doubt his Reiner (The Jerk) and Gelbart (Tootsie.) Start here
and do some surfing. See how many of these guys were involved in your favorite comedies. It boggles my mind.
Can you imagine that writer's room? It's like taking Bird and Magic and putting them on the Bulls in the nineties with Jordan... that's a terrible metaphor for an Emerson College blog, but hopefully the point comes across. It's just so unlikely. It's raining out, youtube some more Sid. My personal favorites: The Clock, The 3 Haircuts, and From Here To Obscurity.
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