My Favorite Comfort Food: Duck Soup
By Paul Feig

"I got a good mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it."

In 1974, when I was about twelve years old, the Marx Brothers movie Animal Crackers was re-released into theaters. I had never heard of the Marx Brothers, but my mother, who was always trying to expose me to things she had grown up watching or listening to, took me to see it. She knew I loved comedy and so told me that the Marx Brothers were very funny.

As soon as the movie started, I immediately wondered if I had gotten duped. First of all, it felt like I was watching a stage play because the people in it were singing and talking really loudly and overacting. I started to worry that maybe my mother had made a mistake and that this was going to be the kind of movie that grown-ups find funny but that kids are completely bored by.

And then Groucho came onto the screen.

I couldn't believe my eyes and ears. This was the funniest man I had ever seen or heard. He made non-stop jokes, he was dressed funny, and he didn't seem to take anything seriously. His jokes were different from any that I had ever heard. Some were insults, others were puns, and still others didn't seem to make any sense, which made me laugh even harder (when Harpo entered dressed in formalwear and Groucho said, "The gate swung open and a fig Newton entered," it was like that one joke had suddenly taught me an entirely new school of comedy).

When Chico entered and started a logic-free discussion about how much his band charges to play (Chico: "We get ten dollars an hour." Groucho: "How much do you get not to play?" Chico: "Twelve dollars an hour."), I found myself both laughing and marveling at how funny something nonsensical could be.

And then when Harpo arrived to complete the triumvirate (I know, I know, Zeppo is one of them too, but the poor guy never got to do anything funny in any of their movies, although word has it that off-screen he was the funniest of them all), my brain became completely unhinged. He didn't speak, and the things he did were sheer anarchy. The butler takes off Harpo's coat to reveal that Harpo is wearing only shorts and a tank top, and then Harpo grabs one of Groucho's guns and starts shooting up the place.

If this wasn't comedy from another world, I didn't know what was.

As the movie played and the college students who were in the audience laughed and cheered and made funny kissing sounds when the two lead ingénues kissed during their romantic scenes that none of us cared about, I felt my life and my future literally changing. Because I was discovering what would become my favorite kind of comedy:

Comedy that you have to think about.

Comedy that surprises you.

Comedy that you can't predict.

Comedy that's performed by people who are truly committed to what they're doing.

In short, comedy that is really, really funny.

I was immediately a Marx Brothers junky. I bought any and all books about them I could find. I dressed up like Groucho for Halloween. I found albums that contained some of their most famous routines and memorized them all. I even taught myself how to talk like Groucho.

And then I saw Duck Soup.

If Animal Crackers was anarchy, then Duck Soup was a revolution.

From the very opening titles, shown over live ducks swimming around in a pot of water with flames licking up from underneath it, you know you're about to experience something unlike anything you've ever experienced before. Whereas the Marx Brothers in the past had inserted themselves into more standard social situations (a party in Animal Crackers, a hotel in The Cocoanuts, a college in Horsefeathers, and an ocean voyage in Monkey Business), now they were literally going to run a country and have the power to send it into war.

Which they do.

(If this is your first time seeing Duck Soup, don't worry. I'm not giving away a big plot moment. Besides, if you're following the plot in a Marx Brothers movie, then you're not watching it correctly.)

Of all their movies, Duck Soup is the one that just seems to get everything right. There's no romance between some young couple you don't care about, there're no musical numbers that don't get subverted by one or all of the brothers, there're no slow scenes advancing a plot that nobody in the audience really cares about, and (please forgive me, Harpo) there's no harp solo that you have to pretend you enjoy because you don't want to look like a cretin who doesn't enjoy a good harp number in the middle of his or her comedy. (Whenever you see other Marx Brothers films and the harp solo ends, there's always somebody in the audience who claps to show the rest of us how cultured they are. With Duck Soup, you don't have to put on any airs - even if you do enjoy a good harp solo.)

There's only comedy. Tons of it. Coming at you non-stop, and always making you laugh.

And by the end of the film, an end that comes as close to making the least amount of sense of any movie ever made, you know that you were just in the presence of greatness. And you realize that as long as there's a Marx Brothers movie playing, all is right with the world.

Because Groucho, Chico, Harpo and, yes, even Zeppo, refused to ever let us take it too seriously.

Paul Feig is the creator and executive producer of the Emmy-nominated Freaks and Geeks that launched his career as a television writer, film writer and director and author. His numerous projects including film festival-award winning I Am David and first book Kick-Me - Adventures in Adolescence, reflect his penchant for projects that thoughtfully probe the complexities and vitality of youth.

© Paul Feig