‘Weird Al’ Yankovic: The Great American Novelty Songwriter
It was a few years ago that I went to see a movie on the life of Dr. Seuss. It, and its sequel, had been made in 1985. At the time, I wasn’t a fan of the author and I had never read any of his books. But I did love the music, it seemed to me, so I was willing to admit some skepticism to this popular author. On the basis of a brief interview I conducted after the screening, I realized that the man was brilliant. From an early age, he knew how to tell a story by painting each picture in the story with the most creative story technique.
His stories were not as straight as our most famous cartoonists because, through his talent for using the words of famous poets and authors to create a song, they could have been made into a cartoon book without the loss of originality.
I had a similar experience when I saw “The Lord of the Rings.” Although the movie had no shortage of humor, I was puzzled by the story’s plot and by the fact that no one seemed to have a clue about what was going on. All the books were like that. It was as if they were trying to tell a story about something that they had forgotten they’d heard. But the movie did an admirable job of portraying this story in a way that it really was.
When I watched “The Muppet Movie” the second time, I found myself thinking of how amazing it was that George Lucas could come up with all those funny scenes from the stories. The movie could not have been written in other ways if the actors and the director had been paid more money.
So it is with comedy. The first time I watched “Annie,” I was amazed. The humor they were using was so funny and so brilliant! I had never seen anything like it, and I was surprised that the movie could have been produced by so many people but only with
