It's Not Funny Anymore: Comedy in the Recession (Listening journal #3)

Producer: Maria Bartholdi
Narrator: Maria Bartholdi
Length: 18:09



The documentary was about a comedy club going out of business in Wisconsin. The owner, the comedians who work at the club and everyone involved in this club are soon to be out of business as the owner is filing for bankruptcy. The comedians in this particular club take comedy seriously and follow creative approaches involving their audiences in the skits making it more like one big happy family. Narrator Maria Bartholdi, approaches the recession topic emotionally, in the documentary, the fact that lots of lives are involved in a comedy club with the sole reason of putting laughs on the faces of people, and that those lives as well as this unique institution are jeopardized by the recession is presented in the documentary as heartbreaking. This is achieved through the utilization of Nat sound, parts of the interviews with the owner and the comedians and the description of the setting in which this sad transition is taking place.

This documentary was very interesting because, although a sad story is being told which was very clear through the narrator's voice, the use of nat sound, the music and the script showed hope and also let the comedians make fun about the whole situation to prove what big of a loss this is.

The quality of nat sound and narrator's voice were great although the use of use of some of the parts of interviews were not clear as they were voiced over by the narrator. The interviews were used effectively to go along with the tone of the piece, sad then happy then sad again.

The last segment in the documentary was especially very good because Maria Bartholdi at the end asked each one of the comedians about the way they feel in the last night and that successfully went along with the tone of hope the documentary introduced in the second half.

The documentary was about 18 minutes but it felt like 5 minutes or shorter; it was sad, funny, sad and then full of hope.

The documentary had a good start but the end was particularly strong because it closed with a conversation between Bartholdi and one of the comedians that ended in a hilarious punch line, and then a song started that really related to the documentary.