Clown Film as Realistic as Rubber Nose--and Less Funny

Lucky the Clown wasn’t smiling. “One of the greatest advertisements I’ve seen in the last 20 years to promote censorship,” he said. “That’s why they put doors on bathrooms.”

Ouch.

Lucky, who is Bill Baldwin of Anaheim when he’s not in costume, had just seen “Shakes the Clown,” the movie that does for the image of clowns what “Scarface” did for Italians. While watching a movie that’s supposed to be a comedy, Baldwin, as far as I could tell, didn’t laugh once.

The movie, which opened last week in Orange County, has upset clowns nationwide with its depiction of them as--take your pick--foul-mouthed, coke-sniffing, womanizing, beer-swigging degenerates.

Bobcat Goldthwait, the writer-director-star of the film, has sneered at the criticism, telling Associated Press recently: “It’s pretty easy to step on somebody’s toes when they’re wearing 32 longs.”

I invited Baldwin--at 47 a fledgling clown with an act of face-painting, magic and balloon animals--to see the movie and offer a review.

Baldwin, who speaks with the diction of a five-time “Jeopardy” champion, warmed easily to the task.

“I did not find it to be humorous,” he said. “I found it to be merely offensive. It displayed the poorest of possible taste. It was being cruel because one is permitted to be cruel--not to accomplish anything.

“Probably the most polite thing I could say was that it was slow. It was obscene for its own sake. Humor shouldn’t have to include profanity to be one of its key ingredients.”

Baldwin said that he knew of the controversy over the movie but that he “tended to approach it with a blank slate” because he didn’t know the particulars.

But sitting next to him in the theater, I sensed Baldwin’s displeasure when the movie opened with a scene of a young boy urinating on Shakes, who had passed out in the bathroom of the boy’s house after a one-night stand with his mother.

Two hours later, Baldwin was still looking for that first laugh.

“The depictions were totally out of character,” he said. “Becoming a clown is not a capricious act. It’s the result of a reasonable body of study and knowledge. To depict people who are trying to bring a little light into an otherwise dark situation in such a degrading light is offensive. It’s not merely the profanity. This is just totally non-clown: The makeup was wrong, the actions were wrong, the characters are wrong.

“I can think of nothing that was portrayed accurately. They came up with a few one-liners that were moderately cute, but as far as any scene portrayals, no, I didn’t see anything that I’d expect to find a clown involved in. They tried to play sight gags and physical comedy and did it so poorly that a groan would be a more correct response than a laugh.”

The movie’s characterizations were uniformly misguided, Baldwin said. “Among the specific things that were unrealistic were the characters constantly being portrayed in makeup, which is something you wish to get out of as soon as possible,” he said. “They were involved in drinking while in costume; this is not in the same time zone as the rest of the real world.”

Baldwin brought with him the Seven Clown Commandments, one of which specifically forbids drinking while in costume and also prohibits drinking “any alcoholic beverage prior to any clown appearances.” The code also calls for shedding clown garb and changing into street clothes quickly after a performance “so that (a clown) cannot be associated with any incident which may be detrimental to the good name of clowning.”

Baldwin said clowns take the code seriously.

I asked him if he could see how a depraved-clown premise could make for entertaining dark comedy.

“I think I understand what (Goldthwait) was trying to do as a film, per se, but I think he could have had an equal level of success trying to portray a shoe salesman in the amputee ward. He would have achieved about the same level of comedy,” he said.

Although Baldwin was happy to trash the film, he said he is worried about protesting too much: “I find myself saying, ‘Should we just ignore this and let it go away?’ This is such a bad movie, it’s going to self-destruct anyway. That might be the more prudent way to deal with the problem.”

“So there’s nothing good you can say about it?” I asked as he was getting ready to leave.

“It ended,” he said.