Commentary : FETING COMEDY IS A TICKLISH BIZ

By LAWRENCE CHRISTON

May 21, 1987 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

Toward the end of the first American Comedy Awards ceremony, which was shown live nationally on ABC-TV Tuesday night, Lily Tomlin speculated about why comedy gets short shrift from an industry that traditionally basks in self-awards.

“There’s something undignified about comedy, like somehow you don’t think of it as being high or ennobling,” she said backstage, by way of trying to explain why it hasn’t become ceremonially formalized. “We think of it as the less-dignified side.”

But comedy is always our psychic ace in the hole.

Tomlin slipped into her character of Trudy, the bag lady in tune with extraterrestrials, who notes, “We stumbled across humankind on the first day it made an ass of itself. Guess what? It’s the first day humanity laughed.”

Tomlin, like almost everyone else there, was trying to come to grips with what it means to canonize--via the modern televised awards show--the form that draws its greatest energy from being on the outside looking in, and laughing at the view.

The desire to be acknowledged, and the perplexity over the sudden and maybe dangerous institutionalization of a form that has always flourished in a free-fire zone where no one is accountable for the true word spoken in jest, formed an undercurrent to the show.

Was this genuinely an awards show or was it a TV special designed to win ratings? No one seemed quite sure.

Tomlin reflected the performers’ ambivalence about the program. “I was sitting at the table with Eileen Brennan and Bette Midler, who like to make fun of the pompousness of humanity,” she said, implying that they laughed at as well as with what they saw. “This is just television. It’s not real life,” she added, her antennae up, “though it has a bearing on one’s life as a professional.”

In one respect, it was your typical Hollywood dress-up-and-be-seen gala, the moneyed and showy self-celebration of an industry that ritualistically tries to allay its anxiety over living in a state of permanent and uncontrollable transience.

In another, it was an attempt to acknowledge the people, some traditional, some new, who have skillfully offered America enough laughing gas to make its working day and its dark night of the soul momentarily bearable.

The awards (a gold comedic mask permanently frozen in a block of transparent plastic) were given in 14 categories, based on nominations initially solicited from about 2,100 performers, producers, directors, writers, talent bookers, studio and network executives, cable companies and club owners. Seven hundred comedy performers voted to select the finalists, and again to choose the winners.

A TV-show-biz Zeitgeist prevailed. While it was good and welcome to see the work of Jonathan Winters and Sid Caesar acknowledged, there were innovative equals who never drew mention, such as Mort Sahl, Jackie Gleason and Ernie Kovacs (Richard Pryor drew a passing mention in one category, and didn’t win a thing).

The categories were occasionally muddled. Whoopi Goldberg and Lily Tomlin were nominated for best female stand-up comic awards, whereas both are essentially comedic actresses. Johnny Carson and David Letterman more appropriately belong in the category of TV comedy talk shows, not in plotted comedy series such as “Cheers” (for which Ted Danson was nominated) and “Family Ties” (ditto Michael J. Fox), though all wound up in the same bundle: Funniest Male in a Television Series.

There was a tentative foray into comedy in movies, where Woody Allen was nominated for Funniest Male Performer of the Year, when he never appears live as a stand-up anymore and was one of the lesser figures in his movie “Hannah and Her Sisters.” If funny American directors are cited, what about Paul Mazursky, who gave such a leg up to Bette Midler--big winner of the night with five awards--in “Down and Out in Beverly Hills”?

And if the show wants to venture outside the world of TV, what about political humor, or comedy writing in movies, books, the theater, (God forbid) poetry, or even TV itself (Woody Harrelson of “Cheers” won for Funniest Newcomer, but he isn’t a newcomer and he surely didn’t write his lines).

Everywhere there was TV’s attempt to indemnify the hot newcomer with celebrity equal to that of the established pros. The real merit of Whoopi Goldberg’s talent remains to be seen (she’s been skillfully marketed, especially by herself); Bob Goldthwaite’s semi-coherent, electro-shock yowling prompted Lily Tomlin to snatch the award away from him, saying “I was unnecessarily humble the last time” (though it could be argued that some of Goldthwaite’s comments were the most refreshing of the night). Sam Kinison’s appearance was restricted to one film clip, featuring his characteristic primal scream.

The tempo of art and entertainment has speeded up so much that time no longer confers value on a performance or an artist. (To avoid confusion or debate, everyone nominated for the Lifetime Achievement Award won, which prompted Midler to say, “Hey, I’m only 29. I’m not through yet.”)

The awards ceremony, the apotheosis of gossip and quick opinion, now fulfills that role instead. If you consider it as part of that metier, the first American Comedy Awards did well. It saluted a lot of people who have given us pleasure and it surrounded them with the glitz that today passes for the honorific. Maybe in the future it’ll be more fun and a little less show-bizzy sanctimonious (though most of the performers did their best to liven things up). Someday we may even see a bit of comedy’s wacko courage, when a winner gets up to demand a recount.

George Schlatter produced, Digby Wolfe and Bob Arnott were the writers and Walter C. Miller directed.

Here is the full list of winners.

Funniest Female Performer of the Year: Bette Midler.

Funniest Male Performer of the Year: Robin Williams.

Funniest Female in a Motion Picture: Bette Midler, “Ruthless People.”

Funniest Male in a Motion Picture: Woody Allen, “Hannah and Her Sisters.”

Funniest Female in TV Series: Betty White, “The Golden Girls.”

Funniest Male in TV Series: Johnny Carson, “The Tonight Show.”

Funniest Television Star in a Special: Robin Williams, “An Evening at the Met.”

Funniest Female Stand-Up: Lily Tomlin.

Funniest Male Stand-Up: Robin Williams.

Funniest Record and/or Video--Male, Female or Group: Bette Midler, “Mud Will Be Flung Tonight.”