The Aristocrats

By now you have probably already heard about The Aristocrats, Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza's huge little movie. (Click here for Google Reviews.) It's a documentary that takes as its subject a single joke, but it's as much a performance film as a documentary, and the joke isn't really a joke at all, though it's very funny, and unexpectedly eminent, having been told from the days of vaudeville right up to the present.

If you're wondering what kind of joke merits such fuss, it goes something like this. A man walks into a talent agent's office and says: 'Boy, do I have a family act for you.' The jaded agent chomps his cigar and growls: 'What have you got?'
The man proceeds to outline an act that involves some combination of bodily fluids, incest, bestiality and sexual practices you didn't even know existed. When he's finished his pitch, the agent gasps: 'God, that's horrible! What do you call an act like that?' With a proud flourish, the man declares: 'The Aristocrats!' Boom boom!

The whole thing about this one joke is not the punchline but who tells it and when. It is dirt funny.