Dying Is Easy, Comedy Is Hard

There’s an old saying about the theater that goes, "Dying is easy, comedy is hard." The adage has been attributed to various luminaries, including heralded 19th century British actor Edmund Keane, 19th century American stage star Edwin Booth, 19th century writer and wit Oscar Wilde, playwright George Bernard Shaw, and English actor Donald Wolfit, who purportedly uttered it as a deathbed quip in 1968, although the phrase is usually associated more with the difference between playing tragedy and comedy than with knocking on death’s door. Through time, a number of actors whose careers either started in or remain rooted in roles of wrongdoing, villainy, and assorted acts of mayhem and maleficence have found out how hard (or, for the fortunate few, how easy) comedy is.

Classic merchants of menace Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, and Peter Lorre found renewed popularity during the drive-in theater phenom of the 1960s when they united to more or less goof their earlier macabre reputations in "The Raven" and "The Comedy of Terrors." Karloff once commented, "Being a bogey-man, like baggage-smashing and truck-driving, is apt to be a rather exhausting occupation. I know, because I’ve tried all three. On the whole, I think I would prefer truck-driving to house-haunting."

Even the ‘60s surf comedies churned out for bubble-headed teens contributed to the retirement coffers of the aging chill-masters. Peter Lorre, whose film history began with a disturbing portrait of a tortured child killer in "M," appeared - albeit uncomfortably - in "Muscle Beach Party," while Boris Karloff, the first - and favorite - Frankenstein’s monster of sound motion pictures, guest-starred in "Bikini Beach" and "The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini." Vincent Price portrayed Big Daddy in "Beach Party" and starred in "Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Marchine" and the sequel "Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs." His roles in the ‘70s horror films "The Abominable Dr. Phibes," "Dr. Phibes Rises Again," and "Theater of Blood" were darkly comedic twists on his sinister renown. On the small screen, he was always proud of his several comic appearances on "The Red Skelton Show," as well as on "The Hollywood Squares," on which he became a featured regular, and of his recurring role as guest villain Egghead on "Batman," where, legend has it, he gleefully initiated a spontaneous, off-camera egg fight with the stars. (Other Hollywood heavies who hammed it up as campy baddies on the "Batman" TV series included Otto Preminger, George Sanders, Victor Buono, and Walter Slezak.)

Sadly, another of the old school horror stars was never able to make the transition to lighthearted parody. Bela Lugosi did pop up in the rare comedy, such as "Ghosts on the Loose" (also known as "The East Side Kids Meet Bela Lugosi") and "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein," but he was merely playing a bored straight man to the lowbrow hijinks of the starring comedians. Lugosi ended his career and life - addicted to the painkillers morphine and methadone - working in the 1950s with filmdom’s worst director of all-time, Edward Wood, Jr., in a handful of poverty-row thrillers, including "Bride of the Monster" and "Plan 9 from Outer Space." At one time harboring an ambition to play comedy, he also wished, "I’d like to quit the supernatural roles and play just an interesting, down-to-earth person." Instead, he wistfully resigned himself to the admission, "Now I am the boogie man."

For some screen bad guys, one scene will forever be branded in the viewer’s recollection as the defining benchmark of depravity. In the case of Jack Palance, it is the moment in "Shane" when , as the amoral hired gun Jack Wilson, he cold-bloodedly blasts sodbuster Elisha Cook Jr. off his feet into the muddy street of a desolate Wyoming town. Of course the son of a bitch will meet his own ignominious end, but for years, Palance - whose gaunt, unsettling visage was, in part, the unfortunate result of a fiery, disfiguring plane crash when he was a pilot-in-training during World War II - was typecast as a villain’s villain, from westerns to gangster melodramas to historical epics. It was only late in his career, when he turned in an Oscar-winning performance as Curly, a gristled modern-day trail boss in "City Slickers," that he surprised audiences with a talent for self-parody ("Hi, Curly, killed anyone today?" - "The day ain’t over yet"), capped by a show-stopping display of his prowess at one-arm pushups in front of co-star Billy Crystal during the broadcast of the Academy Awards. Palance would go on to appear in the sequel to "City Slickers" and to play long-suffering straight man to comedian Chevy Chase in "Cops and Robbersons."

Another baddie in numerous westerns with a strikingly familiar face - thanks to a lazy, off-kilter left eye that was knocked sightless in a childhood fight - Jack Elam became gainfully employed in comic roles as he grew older, fatter, and increasingly less menacing, specifically as the inept Dr. Van Helsing in Burt Reynolds’ "Cannonball" movies.

I wish I would have been the first to recognize that character actor Steve Buscemi somehow inherited the sad, snake-hooded eyes of Peter Lorre, but somebody else beat me to it. Noted for his role as Mr. Pink in "Reservoir Dogs" Buscemi is also remembered for a grisly demise through a wood-chipper in "Fargo" and for getting whacked by Tony Soprano on "The Sopranos." "My favorite review," he once said, "described me as the cinematic equivalent of junk mail. I don’t know what that means."

"It’s weird," he told one interviewer, "I was not a really tough guy in high school, but I end up playing all of these psychopaths and criminals." His unexpected flair for comedy came in "Billy Madison" (1995), in the uncredited role of a lipstick-smearing former classmate of Adam Sandler’s. Alongside roles in subsequent Sandler vehicles "The Wedding Singer," "Big Daddy," "Mr. Deeds," and "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry," Buscemi likewise lightened up as the weaselly "Map to the Stars Eddie" in "Escape from L.A.", as the heart attack-prone Donny Kerabatsos in "The Big Lebowski," and as the voice of Templeton the Rat in "Charlotte’s Web."

While on-location in North Carolina for the 2001 thriller "Domestic Disturbance," starring John Travolta, Buscemi received knife wounds to his arm, throat and face when trying to break up a barroom brawl between his friend and co-star Vince Vaughn and a local. (The deep slash to his face left a noticeable scar on his cheek, hidden in his performances by heavy makeup.) Vince Vaughn, who played the creepy, brutalizing stepfather in that film, was no stranger to roles of disturbing intimidation, having starred as Norman Bates in the 1998 remake of "Psycho." In the early 2000s, he promptly shifted gears to lighter fare in "Old School," "Dodgeball," "Wedding Crashers," "The Break-Up" (this from a guy who once proudly declared, "I’ve never done a romantic comedy"), and "Fred Claus." According to some accounts, Vaughn is considered the leader of "The Frat Pack" (inspired by "Old School"), which includes Will Ferrell, Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Steve Carrell, Owen Wilson, and Luke Wilson.

From the near-musical staccato of his dialogue, to the strikingly gaunt facial features and laser-like penetration of his eyes, to - everyone’s favorite - the frenetic range of his bizarre hairdos, Christopher Walken has made his singular mark as one of the cinema’s most unsettling and threatening wingnuts, such as, to name but a few, 007 villain in "A View to a Kill," homicidal father in "At Close Range," vicious gang lord in "King of New York," evil tycoon in "Batman Returns," and fallen angel in "The Prophecy." Truth be told, Walken, a stage-trained song-and-dance man (he attempts to incorporate an impromptu dance move into every screen role), is a domestic pussycat at heart who is deathly afraid of firearms.

Starting in the 1990s, Walken began appearing regularly in less-than-serious if not outright comic roles that more or less played upon his oddball notoriety, including parts in "Wayne’s World," "Pulp Fiction," "Mousehunt," "Antz," "Joe Dirt," "Wedding Crashers," "Click," "Hairspray," and "Balls of Fury," not to mention several appearances on "Saturday Night Live," most hilariously as the sleazy, chronically inept playboy "The Continental." In an interview, he said, "People think that my favorite roles to do are villains, but I find comedy to be the most challenging and rewarding."

Although not a career villain, per se, Jack Nicholson has played his share of evildoers, including the criminally insane Joker in "Batman," a monstrous Marine officer in "A Few Good Men," and a mob boss in "The Departed." Not unlike the previously mentioned merchants of menace from an earlier generation, the Jack has good-naturedly poked fun at his intense, if not manic characterizations, as the abrasively unorthodox behavior therapist in "Anger Management" and as the Devil himself, beleagured, bothered and bewildered by a coven of novice sorceresses in "The Witches of Eastwick." In more subdued performances he has been equally impressive, in the romantic - albeit nervy - comedies "As Good as It Gets," "About Schmidt," and "Something’s Gotta Give."

Like Nicholson, Robert De Niro’s resume includes a rich array of bad guys, starting in 1970 when he played one of Ma Barker’s murderous brood in "Bloody Mama." In the years since, he has portrayed Don Vito Corleone in "The Godfather Part II," a Jewish gangster in "Once Upon a Time in America," Al Capone in "The Untouchables," a vicious ex-con in "Cape Fear," and a crazed stalker in "The Fan." It wasn’t until 1999, when he starred as a "conflicted" mobster opposite Billy Crystal’s psychiatrist in "Analyze This," that he revealed a willingness for self-satire. That was followed by the inevitable sequel, "Analyze That," along with roles in the comedies "Meet the Parents" and its inevitable sequel, "Meet the Fockers," an appearance as Fearless Leader in the live action/computer-animated "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle," and voice talent for the family feature "Shark Tale."

It has certainly been said of Al Pacino that a number of his dramatic roles border on self-parody, particularly when the director drops the reins and he bolts untethered. What comes to mind are "…And Justice for All," "Scarface," "Scent of a Woman," "The Devil’s Advocate," and "Any Given Sunday." His one crack at an aboveboard family comedy came in "Author! Author!", a 1982 Neil Simon-esque tale depicting the plight of a playwright who has a new production opening on Broadway just when his unfaithful wife walks out on him and leaves him with their children. The movie co-starred Dyan Cannon and Tuesday Weld, and we have yet to hear from anyone who has admitted to viewing it.

Pacino likes to tell interviewers, "Did you know I started out as a stand-up comic? People don’t believe me when I tell them." When he was cast as gangland kingpin Big Boy Caprice in Warren Beatty’s "Dick Tracy" (1990), he finally had the opportunity to soar over the top in a no-holds-barred performance of comic inspiration (in special effects makeup he designed himself).

The last word goes to Robert De Niro: "Some people say that drama is easy and comedy is hard. Not true. I’ve been making comedies the past couple years, and it’s nice. When you make a drama, you spend all day beating a guy to death with a hammer…Or you have to take a bite out of somebody’s face. On the other hand, with a comedy, you yell at Billy Crystal for an hour, and you go home."