Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project

Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project (2007)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Extremely entertaining documentary from director John Landis opens up with him talking about the first time he met Don Rickles and then we get to see the man himself from a Las Vegas show in 2006 where it's obvious that he hasn't lost a step over the decades. We then countless footage of Rickles from his movies, TV shows, appearances on Johnny Carson and other shows and just about every other form of media out there. You know you're popular when a documentary on you can bring in the number of famous faces that we see here talking about Rickles. Just a few of them include DeNiro, Eastwood, Scorsese, Rock, Borgnine, Crystal, Williams, Corman, Goldberg, Larry King, Leno, Caan, Richard Lewis, Newhart, Philbin, Carl Reiner, Poitier, Sarah Silverman, McMahon, Harry Dean Stanton, Debbie Reynolds and many, many more. If you're a fan of Rickles or if you're someone who has never heard of him, this documentary is going to appeal to both sides because Landis really does do a great job at not only telling you the life story of the man but we get so many great stories that you can't help but walk away from this feeling as if you know him. The film does a very good job at mixing all of the interview segments in with the archival footage and then we get the added bonus of Rickles himself talking about various stages in his career. This includes how he was discovered, working Las Vegas and various other personal things like his marriage, which has lasted over forty years. I think the best thing the film has going for it are the various clips that really make you realize what a talent Rickles was and you realize that he really wasn't afraid to go after anyone. We get some terrific clips from The Tonight Show, The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast and various other specials that the comedian did. Plus there's a terrific bit from a 2006 concert where Rickles is just on a full attack against everyone.

Obviously it is very hard to be a stand-up comic. It requires good material, immense courage, and perfect timing. The ability to improvise may be very important. John Landis says Don Rickles, who is now 81 but still performing with amazing vigor, is not a comic but a performance artist. In fact, he does not tell jokes. He also does not use prepared material. He is a Jewish comic, though. He identifies himself as Jewish. He uses his schtick--he insults people--and he works with what comes up. National origin, weight, looks, a bad hairpiece, anything is fair game. Why do people love it?

This is what veteran filmmaker ('Animal House', 'The Blues Brothers'; Michael Jackson's 'Thriller') John Landis aims to tell us.He isn't looking for flaws, secret sorrows, bad relationships. He has told the press Rickles hasn't any of those. Landis has been a friend and admirer of Rickles for decades; he was an eighteen-year-old gofer on the set of 'Kelly's Heroes' in the Seventies when he first met the man. (Rickles has been in a lot of movies and TV shows and the film documents that.) This is an affectionate portrait. And it works. It's impossible to walk away from it without liking Rickles and wearing a smile.

Some of the speakers: Debbie Reynolds, Chris Rock, Martin Scosese, Joan Rivers, Clint Eastwood, Robert De Niro, Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Sidney Poitier, Ernest Borgnine (he and Rickles played 'The Odd Couple' on Broadway), Roseanne, Bob Newhart, Carl Reiner, and many others--all admirers.

There are segments of a 2006 Las Vegas performance, and it is this, of course, that best shows what Rickles does and how good he is at it, but this is not a concert film. It's the story of the working life and an affectionate portrait of a man who, it seems, has practiced his trade of being "the king of insults" for 48 years and yet made no enemies?

How has he done that? The simplest answer is, Because he's good. He pulls out the worst clichés: a man says he's German and he goose-steps on stage. He makes you laugh in spite of yourself. In the end you may realize it's really good-natured stuff. It clears the air. Joan Rivers, Landis has said (Aaron Hills retells the story in the Village Voice) once recounted how a Florida judge came backstage where they were both performing and invited Rickles to play golf with him and Rickles replied, "Listen: One, I'm leaving town. Two, you're a putz. You're loud, obnoxious, incredibly boring, and I wouldn't play golf with you because I don't live here and you couldn't fix a ticket. No." But, Landis says, Hills left out the most important part: the judge loved it. He laughed uproariously.

Such an exchange makes one--it made the judge--into a figment of the imagination, the wild imagination--of a very funny man. It is an honor to be insulted by such a comic genius. Rickles has the good material, the immense courage, and the perfect timing. And they have never left him.

He also has been married for thirty years, has two sons, and is loved. He is, Landis said, in a long monologue at the NYFF press Q&A, a great "schmearer" (Yiddish term for tipping): everywhere he goes he passes out bills so when he comes back, he's more than welcome. But this isn't a payoff; it's niceness.

The film also shows some clips of Dean Martin roasts. Rickles obviously is the king of the roast--a gathering, among friends, where someone is honored by being affectionately insulted by everyone. The insults show they're friends. In a sense, by insulting his audiences at shows in big rooms at Vegas or Miami or Indian casinos, he's showing them they're friends; he's establishing trust. Otherwise, obviously, it would just be ugly.

One of the side benefits of the film is its portrait of Las Vegas. Extraordinarly, all the entertainers who performed when the town was run by the mafia are nostalgic for those days--when, they say, everyone was treated very well.

Again, the NYFF is not a venue for great documentaries. This is a very good-looking, neatly edited film. It will be shown on HBO. It is not a milestone in the art of documentary. John Landis was very entertaining at the press Q&A. He loves this subject.

A New York Film Festival 2007 official selection.

Loving documentary about comedian Don Rickles from director John Landis. Part biography, part tribute by past and contemporary entertainers, and also a dissection about why Rickles racist and seemingly mean-spirited schtick goes over so well with audiences. For anyone familiar with Rickles, the film doesn't really cover any new ground, but the best part of the film is the interviews with the people who worked with him in Las Vegas back in the Rat Pack days. Sadly there aren't so many of them still alive, but there are chats with the likes of Bob Newhart, Steve Lawrence, Ed McMahon, Debbie Reynolds, Jack Carter, Joan Rivers, Keely Smith, Tom and Dick Smothers, and Frankie Avalon. It's their behind the scenes stories from back in the day that I found most interesting and wish the film had focused more on, although it is also somewhat interesting to hear younger generations of comedians commenting on Rickles' influence (Richard Lewis, Chris Rock, Sarah Silverman, Whoopie Goldberg, Robin Williams, Rosanne Barr, Dave Attell, Christopher Guest, Billy Crystal, Penn Jillette, Bobby Slayton, George Lopez, Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel, Harry Shearer, Bob Saget) or hearing actors and filmmakers he's worked with share stories (Harry Dean Stanton, Clint Eastwood, Robert De Niro, Sidney Poitier, Martin Scorsese, Ernest Borgnine, Carl Reiner, Roger Corman, James Caan, John Lasseter, John Stamos). Overall, this is worth watching for fans of Rickles, but is not really insightful enough to draw in a wider unfamiliar audience.

John Landis's new documentary on Don Rickles, Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project, works best when focused squarely on its star attraction. Every so often Landis gets distracted in telling (or rather showing other people like Bob Newhart) go on about the glory days of a mob-run Las Vegas, and it starts to loose a little of its focus. And every so often he takes a misstep with the editing. But since comedy is Landis's strong-suit as a director, anyway, it's fitting that his film works best when his subject is given the full-treatment, either in clips of his performances, his old Johnny Carson appearances, or with some of his adulators telling it like it is: he's one of the funniest stand-up comics of his time. And still today he kiss: watching him completely skewer every single race and both sexes in a Vegas audience is dynamite (sometimes you just wait for him to drop his microphone in ironic disgust).

Just hearing the man tell stories, or talk about his wonderful (and wonderfully Jewish) mother, or doing lovingly stupid imitations of his wife (the tongue is what clicks it), is entertaining. He's a man who takes his fame completely in stride, but not for granted. He tells of a cruel prank done on the set of Run Silent Run Deep involving him and Clark Gable; he goes overboard as host of the Tonight Show by breaking Carson's box or whatever, and Carson goes right next-door to the set of Rickles's show, where after he apologizes he says "ladies and gentlemen, Johnny Carson!" And then the testimonies themselves bring up laughs (Sarah Silverman comments how Rickles taught her what black people were like living secluded in New Hampshire), even if it's just repeating old Rickles lines. His is a very precise shtick where finding the line and only going across it so much is like an art- you don't want to make it into a totally sensationalist exercise, but the audience still has to have a good time at not only others' expenses, but their own. It's a kind of all-inclusive comedy, be it the schmuck who's 300 pounds and with a dopey wife, or the president, or, of course most brilliantly, Dean Martin.

It's not exactly a great documentary, but it's a fine showcase, and the kind of remembrance for one of those old kings of comedy that haven't yet kicked the bucket, like (unfortunately) so many in show-biz have in recent years. 7.5/10

Don Rickles, for 55 years, has found ways to turn even the most awful and bigoted subject into hilarity. Revered by comics of the younger generation, Rickles has managed to somehow stay the biggest secret in the comic business (at least for those of us under the age of 40!). There are comics by the dozens who imitate Rickles' style, from the yelling and personal attacks to his "disdain for sensitivity." He will make fun of your ethnicity, your weight, your hair, your clothes, your money, your wife...it will be incredibly offensive, and it will be hilarious. To say I was thrilled to discover that Mr. Warmth was being made is an enormous understatement.

Mr. Warmth: the Don Rickles Project, is a story about a man who has become famous by insulting those around him, which, as comedian after comedian mentions in the film, is perhaps the hardest thing to do. His genius lies in the availability of material; every night, his audience changes, and so every night, so does the act. Don Rickles is an insult-improv- comedian. It is simply marvelous to watch.

John Landis does not attempt to stuff Rickles' humor down our throats. It is bad enough that I spent the last two paragraphs telling you how funny this man is; the film would be pointless without some tape to augment the tale. From a Las Vegas appearance in 2006 (at the age of 80) Rickles begins his show by going out into the audience and picking out some favorites.

"Christ look at the front row, I'm working a state home for Christ-sake! Go home and die!" "Who let the Chinaman in here? 40 million Jews, I got a chink sitting in the goddamn front!" "Are you a queer?" "Chinese? Philippino? Japanese! 3 years in the jungle looking for your father!"

Out of context, the man sounds like a bigoted ass. Yet people laugh. Why? Why do they laugh? Why has this man been so successful for so long? This question, more than anything else, seems to be the point of Mr. Warmth.

While it seems improper for me to answer this myself (the documentary does such a superb job of it), I did find several flaws in its creation. Mr. Warmth, for all of the sparkle of its main character, got far too sidetracked in certain spots, and relied far too heavily on the interviews of other comedians. 5-6 minutes without Don threw me off track, and while the information was interesting, it was not quite relevant. Furthermore, I honestly wished John Landis could've found someone, a celebrity, who found Rickles' humor to be insulting and racist (Pat Boone, if he were still alive). It would've provided some much needed contrast to a documentary that comes off as one sided. These are the only flaws preventing me from giving this film a 10.

I would highly recommend Mr. Warmth, whether or not you are already a fan of Don Rickles. In a world full of PC comics whose idea of being "racy" is to use the f-word, Rickles is the only man carrying on the legacy of Lenny Bruce, George Carlin and Redd Foxx. He knows know boundaries, and his lack of respect for our stuck-up attitudes makes us laugh every time. May you live forever Don, because there will be no one like you again.