Home > The M.O. > Archives > 2007 > October > 18 > Entry
Review: ‘Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project’
Directed by John Landis (“Animal House,” “Coming to America”) who, as an 18 year-old gopher on the set of “Kelly’s Heroes” met Rickles for the first time, pays homage to the comic who broke ground with his acerbic wit and scathing treatment of minorities and concert goers.
Rickles, whose comedy career began after his dreams of being a serious actor fizzled out, came to prominence playing for wise guys and Frank Sinatra’s cadre of friends in night clubs in Florida. Never afraid to play the role of court jester, Rickles spared nobody with his personal attack, even the king. Despite his personal and decidedly non-politically-correct humor (decades before that term came into vogue), Rickles always got away with comedic murder due to the fact that he was genuinely funny.
As Chris Rock says in the film, “Being funny is like being a pretty girl — you get away with a lot of stuff.” And, boy, what Rickles got away with. The balding, portly comic considered nothing sacred, but opposed to our current climate, when so many stars take themselves so seriously (save the occasional George Clooney and a few notable others), it was considered a badge of honored to be publically skewered by Rickles during his show. “If you hadn’t been insulted by Rickles, you hadn’t made it,” writer-director Carl Reiner says in the documentary.
Eventually Rickles found himself as one of the showcase acts in the Las Vegas of old, when the Rat Pack and the Mafia ruled the roost. Strangely enough, several of the featured stars in the film actually talk about the halcyon days of Mob-controlled Vegas.
While Landis does a decent job of showing the back-story that led to Rickles’ life in comedy and portraying his touching relationship with his friends, notably Bob Newhart, staff, and his family, the movie works mostly to glorify a bygone era of comedy, when nothing was off-limits and people lived their lives with a little less vainglory than today, and to pay homage to a comedy outlaw still working rooms across the country today. Landis and his spartan crew were allowed access to film a couple of Rickles’ shows, heretofore never allowed, and spliced footage of his current act with talking heads who are legend in the cinema and comedy businesses. From Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese to Robin Williams and Dave Attell, stars of yesterday and today bent over backwards to praise and genuflect over the groundbreaking greatness that is Don Rickles.
Despite his best efforts, however, the film falls short in probing what inspired Rickles’ (once)-unique brand of humor. Like many clowns, Rickles humor and manic visceration belies a sadness in the man which is never fully revealed. Nonetheless, it is a touching, if safe, portrait of a man who changed the world for comics across the country, a man, who despite all of his bluster was, as one of his featured songs proclaims, like so many comics, simply looking to “trade you laughter for love.”
Producer Robert Engelman hung around after this, only the second public screening of the film, to discuss the project. He stated that more stars than could be accommodated wanted to participate in this film, which they intend to air on HBO and to release on DVD in December, just in time to buy as a Christmas gift for that sarcastic uncle or father you love so dearly. Despite proclaiming that Rickles “tells the truth through his comedy,” Engelman admitted that he felt Rickles, who had always longed to “be seen as a serious actor,” “greatest disappointment would be that he never really made it on film.” Maybe there, then, is the source of the sadness that fueled the humor.
