Word: laughed
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Akins charged that the U.S. had not really understood the causes of the Iranian revolution. Said he: "There were only two issues. They weren't land reform; you talk to Iranians about land reform and they laugh at you. They weren't women's rights, rights of minorities, all the things that appeared in the American press. One issue was corruption: that included the military expenditures, which were enormous, and the grandiose industrial developments. The other was civil rights: the fact that people were arrested, murdered, tortured, and disappeared, tens of thousands of them...
What those stomachs are supposed to provide is belly laughs, and all three networks are emphasizing comedy, with 15 comedy pilots being considered by NBC alone. Building on Different Strokes, Silverman hopes to win Friday night with laughter, just as ABC's giggles have locked up Tuesday. "People want to laugh," he says. "They just want to look at television and forget their troubles. I'm not a psychologist, but I would imagine that that's the root of the current trend...
Five months ago he was what Hollywood likes to call a complete nobody. A struggling comic, he had passed virtually unnoticed through improvisational clubs and two flop TV series (the revived Laugh-In, the Richard Pryor Show). Then, last fall, ABC unveiled its new offerings for the 1978-79 season. Robin Williams, 26, was given the lead in Mork & Mindy, a spacy sitcom, and he became what the moguls love to call an overnight star. For once the Hollywood hyperbole is actually appropriate; Mork & Mindy is often at the top of the charts and is seen by an average...
When a comedian makes a film, audiences come to the theater planning to laugh their heads off. Such expectations are best set aside by moviegoers who venture to see Real Life. Comic Albert Brooks' first feature is not as dark as Interiors, but neither is it designed as a hoot. What Brooks has wrought is a scrupulously honest satire: a film that sacrifices compulsive jokiness in the effort to reveal the nasty truth about its subject, TV's slice-of-life documentaries. Real Life is funny when it wants to be and stubbornly thoughtful the rest...
...Orbach's acting help the play transcend its excessive length and half its cast. Chapter Two is not a funny play; it is a fundamentally somber play with some funny lines. The man so often heralded as America's greatest comic playwright has now chosen not to make us laugh at human pain this time. With Chapter Two, Simon puts the hurts people inflict on each other center-stage, instead of allowing us an indirect glimpse through snappy one-liners...