Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Looking for some quality comedy entertainment to check out?
Who better to turn to for under-the-radar comedy recommendations than comedians?
Weird Al Yankovic knows a thing or two about what constitutes a good parody.
Out of all the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker films,Top Secret!might be the least recognized and referenced.
Its not really high-concept in the traditional sense.
Its not an easy movie to explain.
Apparently that didnt bring the audience to the theater in droves!
In their mind, they thought the plot was too convoluted or difficult for people to latch onto.
For that reason, they think that it didnt work.
Maybe it didnt work for a lot of people, but I didnt mind a lack of cohesive plot.
It just really appealed to me.
Is there a particular bit that you could call the best or your favorite?Its just jam-packed.
I mean, theres so many its hard to pick.
The underwater bar room fight scene was amazing.
Just a lot of sight gags and a lot of bizarre wordplay.
The songs you write and their accompanying music videos are distillations of the ZAZ brand of farce and parody.
Certainly the ZAZ one is the machine-gun approach as you said, theres a gag every five seconds.
But all the humor, all the gags are very fine-tuned.
Theyre not all clever, and thats okay.
Some of them are dumb because its nice to mix the very clever comedy with dumb comedy.
Thats my favorite balance.
Monty Python did that all the time.
Thats my favorite thing.
To me,Top Secret!is the zenith of that particular brand of comedy.
It was pretty obviously a pale imitation.
Its not easy to get that kind of sensibility exactly spot-on.
They basically pioneered it.
I think those are pretty strongly modeled after that ZAZ brand of humor.
you’re free to draw a direct line between their work and my work especially in those instances.
As you just mentioned, we dont really see this style of silly satire anymore.
The ZAZ train ended withMafia!in 1998.
The last high-concept spoof we got from Mel Brooks wasDracula: Dead and Loving Itin 1995.
A brilliant and hilarious comedy is not as heralded as a brilliant drama.
I especially love the Lonely Island, Tenacious D, and Flight of the Conchords.
On this particular tour, it was really all about the music.
And its almost all original songs.
This tour was really about focusing very intently on the music.
So the fact that theres an audio record of the entire tour is a pretty cool thing.
I dont know how long the entire thing is, but its 77 shows and theyre full concerts.
I wouldnt recommend listening to the whole thing.
Theres a lot to go through.
Every single show on the tour was different.
We mixed it up from night to night and tried to give people a real variety.
I cant imagine anything in the world Id rather do.
After all this time, people still care.
My style hasnt changed a whole lot.
But the sensibility is pretty much the same, I think.
The industry has changed.
The way music is delivered has changed.
The way music is enjoyed is much different now than it was when I first started out.
Ive made rules for myself for when Im doing parodies.
Remember when that happened in pop culture?
It is just basically them going, Heres a thing.
My humor is sort of an offshoot of my personality, so you oughta do what works for you.
But always confirm that itsyouthats shining through.
