PEARSON: Attack comics square off

Rickles may have invented caustic humor, but Griffin makes a worthy successor

By Mike Pearson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Kathy Griffin: Straight to Hell

* When and where: 9 and 11 p.m. today, Bravo. Repeats at 2 and 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Friday

Comedian Kathy Griffin is an acquired taste: You love her or hate her. But you can't just ignore her.

I'm in the pro-Griffin camp. I find her bitchy humor and penchant for skewering celebrities to be both refreshing and valuable, especially in an age where no celebrity's resume seems complete without a police mug shot.

In this new stand-up special, taped in Chicago and airing tonight, Griffin tackles everything from Paris Hilton to her time on The View with Barbara Walters to her own brush with infamy a few months ago, when she made an off-color remark about Jesus while accepting an Emmy award.

Griffin re-creates her entire acceptance speech, then details some of the fallout from the event, including a Christian theater group in Tennessee that took out a $90,000 ad in USA Today decrying her lack of sensitivity.

Is Griffin apologetic?

Not in the least, though she makes it clear her remarks were meant to be taken as a joke, not as proof of an anti-Catholic jihad.

The nice thing about Griffin is that she's not above making fun of herself, but the bulk of her acidic remarks are aimed at everyone else in Hollywood, including Paula Abdul. Indeed, when she talks about encountering people she's lampooned in her act, she clearly appreciates both their discomfort and their in-person charm.

Straight to Hell is not Griffin's best stand-up concert (Strong Black Woman still holds that honor). There's a hint more caution than in some of her previous Bravo specials, though clearly the hometown Chicago audience loves her.

And why not? She may be crude and caustic, but Kathy Griffin is funny.

Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project

* When and where: 8 p.m. Sunday, HBO. Repeats Dec. 4, 7, 9, 13, 19 and 29.

I've never been much of a Don Rickles fan. His shtick - insulting people - always struck me as one-dimensional.

Yet to his fans - and there are many of them - the 80-year-old comic represents the funny bone of "the greatest generation," never resorting to profanity to get a laugh.

The Don Rickles Project, directed by Hollywood veteran John Landis, wisely avoids the traditional stand-up format.

Instead, Landis lets Rickles tell the story of his career, interspersed with comments from a dozen major comedians (Griffin, Chris Rock, Billy Crystal, Richard Lewis, Dave Attell, Roseanne Barr) and other notables (Debbie Reynolds, Robert De Niro, Clint Eastwood, Jay Leno, Martin Scorsese) who talk about the first time they met Rickles and what he has meant for comedy.

There's plenty of Rickles onstage here; he's seemingly played every lounge in Las Vegas. And you can feel the warmth between him and his audience. His fans like being made fun of; they clamor to sit in the front row of his shows just so they can be called hockey pucks.

We learn about Rickles' upbringing and his strong mother. We meet his wife, his road manager and his best friend, Bob Newhart.

We see firsthand what has long been said of Rickles: Offstage, he's the sweetest man in the world.

We also gain insight into his relationship with The Rat Pack: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. Rickles was one of the few people who could insult Sinatra to his face and make him laugh. (It didn't hurt that their mothers were good friends.)

Some of the best moments in this 90-minute special come from Rickles' interaction with the late Johnny Carson. Clearly these good friends loved kidding each other. Carson's producers say Rickles is the only guest he never prepared for. He loved the spontaneousness of their encounters.

Project also gives some fascinating perspective on what it's like to perform in Las Vegas. Newhart and others talk about the transition from mob-controlled Vegas in the '50s to the corporate mentality that took over in the '60s. Performers and audiences felt secure when the wiseguys were running things. Once Howard Hughes came in and began buying up casinos, everything was measured by the bottom line.

In an age when insult comics are the norm, it's easy to forget that Don Rickles did it first and is still doing it a half-century later.