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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

September is the time for TCM slapstick

Dan Webster

What makes you laugh?

I can remember sitting in a first-run Spokane screening of "Raising Arizona" (this had to be sometime in 1987) and being the only person laughing in a North-Side theater. In similar fashion, the year before I remember sitting in front of a guy who guffawed loudly all through a Spokane Valley screening of "¡Three Amigos!" a movie that barely made me smile.

Truth is, we tend to have personal reactions to comedy. Some of us like political humor (Bill Maher, Jon Stewart). Others of us like observational humor (Louis CK, Margaret Cho). Still others of us like physical humor (Gallagher, Carrot Top). And so on. The list of comics is near endless, the variations wide-spread and complex.

One of the classic styles of comedy, known as slapstick, will be on display all through September, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, on the cable/satellite channel Turner Classic Movies. Beginning Tuesday, Sept. 6, you'll see slapstick as it evolved in the silent-movie era (featuring such performers Harold Lloyd).

As the month progresses so will the decades, starring the likes of Charlie Chaplin, The Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello, and such comic films as "Our Gang," "The Bank Dick," the 1958 French comedy "Mon Oncle" and "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World." (The list includes two Peter Sellers classics, "A Shot in the Dark" and "The Party.")

The movies will run throughout the day and through the month (ending on Wednesday Sept. 28).

Click here for more information. And because hardly anyone will be spending all day, every day, watching these worthy films, you can use this as a good excuse to finally clear out that DVR.