Tuesdays with Media: Ignoring Mr. Fields' Sound Adivce

W. C. Fields has been attributed to having said "Never work with children or animals" as one of the secrets to success in filmmaking.  On Monday, Ian and I ignored this bit of wisdom and attempted to make a quick and silly video with Henry and Clara.

Part of the problem with working with kids is when they still don't know how to read.  I would read the line for Henry to repeat, but sometimes he'd forget the last word, so we'd have to start all over again.  Or he'd say the line right, but not be looking in the right direction.  Or he'd say the line right, but not with the right emphasis or emotion.  Or the cat would walk in front of him, distracting him.  My point is that being five, it was hard for him to understand why he had to keep saying the same thing over and over again and he started getting frustrated and wanted to stop when we nearly had all the shots we needed.  We were able to convince him to stick with it until the end, but it took a lot of cajoling.

Finally, we were ready to move on and shoot Clara's scenes when Ian realized that he never turned on the microphone.  We had to shoot everything again!  He told Henry, who just collapsed into a pile of frustration and disappointment.  After weighing the options, Ian decided to call it a day and break the set.  Henry was happy to get out of his costume, but Clara was so disappointed that she started bawling.  Even after she stopped crying, she just would not cheer up.  I even picked her up and swung her around, which usually gets a big squeal of laughter out of her, but this time I got nothing.  The only thing that got her out of her funk was teaching her how to do a basic clapping game.  The act of learning and playing a game together put a smile on her face and she was fine for the rest of the evening.

Was it a mistake to try to make a movie with the kids?  No, but it was a real test of patience for everyone involved.  I can imagine that if we weren't related to the kids, it would be easy to swear off working with children ever again.

Tuesdays with Media: Jim Gaffigan

Stand-up comedy has been around for a while.  Some vaudeville comedy routines transitioned into people simply standing on stage telling jokes.  However, as time has gone on, there have been more and more comedians that push the boundaries of decency.  It's not unusual for a popular comic's album to be have a language warning on the cover.  Fortunately, not everyone has decided follow this trend.

Jim Gaffigan has made a name for himself as a family-friendly comedian.  And while the above clip does have a little bit of toilet humor, it's minor and unoffensive.  I feel the need to point out that he didn't always keep things so clean.  His first album had it's share of swearing, but all of his later albums have been in the PG range of things.  He may have been motivated by trying to set a good example for his five kids or maybe he realized that without the swearing, his routine was TV-ready.

Another reason that I really like Gaffigan's work is that he has a lot of bits about food.  Like, a lot.  I think that might be the thing he's most known for.  And not only is eating something we can all relate to, but with my main hobby being "making delicious food," I especially appreciate his humor.

The one area that he jokes about that I don't care for is religion, though even then he's careful to make fun of his own religion's (Catholicism) quirks rather than religion or Christianity in general.  Also, even his Catholic jokes are still pretty innocuous, so even then he's not really offensive.

It's getting harder and harder to find a stand-up comedian that's safe to share with kids, but as long as Jim Gaffigan's around, we'll have a least one.