Illustration by Mat Greaves
Perhaps no other modern director so perfectly captured the comedy of brotherly bonds as John Landis - from Pinto and Flounder in National Lampoon's Animal House to David and Jack in An American Werewolf in London, from Louis and Billy Ray in Trading Places to Emmett and Austin in Spies Like Us, and from Lucky, Dusty, and Ned in ¡Three Amigos! to Jake and Elwood in The Blues Brothers - all of these unforgettable characters were a celebration of male camaraderie with roots in one of the earliest and most celebrated pairs to ever grace the silver screen: Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. From his wonderful essay in Danny Perry's Close-Ups: The Movie Magazine to his delightful commentary on Trailers From Hell, Landis is one of the biggest admirers of The Boys, and it was a blast to chat with him about their timeless films and inimitable silver screen partnership...
John Landis: Similar to The Three Stooges and Abbott & Costello, they used to be on television every day but haven't been in years, you don't see them anymore. Maybe it's because they're in black and white, but people aren't exposed to them.
I really love the piece that you wrote on them for Close-Ups.
That was thirty years ago!
Do you remember what initially drew you to their films?
I don't remember my exact first exposure, but clearly it was television. I just adore them. I think there's something really special about Stan and Ollie, something unique to them. I'm not sure how to explain it. They do a lot of routines that were repeated by Abbott and Costello & Martin and Lewis, but somehow Laurel and Hardy just remained so pure - they're so childlike and innocent, there's a sweetness between them, even when they're mad at each other.
If you've ever seen Towed in a Hole (1932), there's a wonderful scene in the beginning where they're driving down the street and Oliver shouts, "Fresh fish," and Stanley blows on his horn - they're just happy, they love their job and everything is right in the world. Stanley says, "Hey, I have an idea - if we owned a boat, we could do the fishing ourselves and then sell the fish directly, eliminating the middle man." This idea is expressed clearly and coherently, and Ollie immediately pulls over and says, "Say that again," and Stanley is incapable of repeating it. The next thing we see is them buying a used boat, and the rest of the two-reeler is essentially them repairing it. It is pure slapstick and very, very funny. It ends in disaster, like a lot of them do. The byplay between the two of them... you don't even need anything else, they're just so amusing by themselves. They really are a complete unit. I just love them.
Their best work, like Sons of the Desert (1933), is extraordinary. It's filled with such interesting throwaways and details - one of them being that they are sneaking off after lying to their wives (Stanley saying Ollie is ill and he's going on a voyage to Hawaii for his health), meanwhile they are going to Chicago for a convention. There's a moment where the wives are in the movie theater and the newsreel comes on showing this parade down Michigan Avenue and we see Stan and Ollie so happy and dancing right by the camera - the wives do a double-take as Stan and Ollie come back into frame to wave and be silly. It's just such a funny, pure idea that they're fucked because the wives know now. I love that movie.
Is there one scene that defines their comedy?
It's so hard to define what makes them different because a lot of their routines and themes were repeated by other comedians, but they really were unique in the way that they related to one another - they were childish and childlike, but at the same time, Oliver was pompous in the way that he'd say, "Will you let me do that?"
But even when they are being mean, it's different than the other comedy teams...
Moe Howard clearly has contempt for the other Stooges, and Abbott and Costello are constantly selling each other out - I mean, Bing Crosby sells Bob Hope into white slavery at one point! They're all ready to betray each other in a heartbeat. Stan and Ollie's relationship seems so strong.
They were some of the few people to go straight from the silents into the talkies when everyone was worried about how they would sound, even Chaplin was afraid of the talkies and continued making silent films, but Laurel and Hardy just continued. They're so relatable. I love when Oliver Hardy does camera takes to us. In Sons of the Desert there's a scene where Stanley comes over and there's a bowl of wax fruit on display and he reaches in to take an apple, polishes it on his coat, and takes a big bite. Of course, he's having terrible difficulty chewing it when suddenly Oliver notices - he's just watching him. Mae Busch says, "Oh, so that's where it's been going!" It's such a wonderfully insane idea.
I know they were famous during the silent era, but the combination of English and Southern accents add a whole new layer which shouldn't work, but it does...
You accept them as a unit. They're always in dire circumstances together. The ideas are very straightforward, but it's the way they do them - their reactions are so funny.
I'm sure it's safe to assume that Eddie Murphy's glance at the camera was directly inspired by Hardy?
Of course, that one specifically was! The Duke brothers are being so patronizing explaining this stuff to Eddie and he just looks at the camera, like Oliver, as if to politely say, "Can you believe this?" One of my favorite moments in movies is in Way Out West (1937) where Stan and Ollie have a deed to this gold mine that a dying miner left to them, with instructions to deliver it to his daughter. We see that she's basically an indentured servant to Mickey Finn (James Finlayson) who owns this rough saloon and is a real villain and very cruel to the daughter, Mary (Rosina Lawrence). There's this wonderful scene where the two of them, who are such lambs, get his attention and naively tell this total stranger everything about the deed. Mickey tells them that if they give him the deed, he can give it to Mary. There's a lyric in My Fair Lady where Professor Higgins is describing this Hungarian character as, "oozing charm from every pore, He oiled his way around the floor," - that's Mickey Finn, just so evil. In their innocence, Stan and Ollie are happy to give the deed to him and Finlayson does a camera take, as if to say with delight, "Can you believe these two idiots?"
I've always like breaking the fourth wall, but you really have to be careful when you do it that it doesn't take you out of the movie. It has to be within character.
Do you know if Oliver Hardy was the first to do that notably?
No, but he became known for it. Camera takes have been around, you have to remember that the fourth wall exists in theater, and when you go to a movie you're basically watching a proscenium. You have to be careful because if you do it too much, you lose any semblance that these characters are in a movie.
We should talk about Jimmy Finlayson...
Like the Sennett Company, he made a lot of movies, then supporting roles. Have you ever seen any of the Buster Keaton / Fatty Arbuckle shorts? You should find them, they are so funny. The slapstick within them is insane! Arbuckle was a big man but incredibly athletic and light on his feet like a dancer, and he's always doing huge falls and insane physical stuff. The two of them together gets really frenetic, they're wonderful.
There's so much great work that was done in the silents. I still love the Keystone Cops. One of the things I love about them is that they keep falling down, and very often for no reason - for amusement, I guess. I have a real appreciation for comedy, which they say evolves, but something that was funny in 1926 is still funny in 2026. There are all kinds of things that change, like fashion... well, you've watched the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby films, they are just as funny today as they were in the '40s. They get very surreal. I like how silly the lyrics are for Road to Morocco (1942)... "Like Webster's Dictionary, We're Morocco bound".
I can't tell you how many times I have watched The Blues Brothers and every time I still find myself laughing.
That's like Duck Soup (1933) for me, I love that Marx Brothers movie. There's a scene in that where they cut to Groucho in his bedroom where he has a fireman's pole and surrounding him are piles and piles of Ritz crackers. He's talking seductively on the phone to Margaret Dumont and invites her over, and before he hangs up says, "Bring some cheese!" It's so silly. I like a lot of the surreal stuff.
Way Out West is very surreal...
Oh yeah, and they build upon gags. There's a two-reeler called A Perfect Day (1929) where Stan and Ollie's families live next to one another and they are going for a picnic together - the entire short is basically them getting from the house to the car. Edgar Kennedy plays Uncle Edgar and has gout, a very painful disease, and they have his foot in a huge bandage like a mummy. There's a gag that they have a thousand variations on, which is smashing Kennedy's foot - closing doors on it, dropping things on it, sitting on it... it's so clever how many ways they can smash his foot, and it's never not painful. Finally, the car goes about five feet and falls apart.
They never truly seem to be defeated...
Well, I don't know - in Helpmates (1932) they have that wild party in Ollie's apartment and it looks like a bomb went off, the place is totally fucked up. He calls Stanley to come over and help him clean it up because his wife is coming back from a trip, if she finds out he had a party he'd be in trouble. The whole short is basically Stanley helping him clean up and there are so many gags that by the end of it they have destroyed the house, it literally blows up. Oliver is sitting there in these bricks and ruined furniture and then it starts to rain - he wipes the water from his eyes and looks at us, and it's so funny. His whole life is ruined because his friend Stanley came over to help him. It's wonderful.
Were you channeling them in The Blues Brothers?
Laurel and Hardy experience a lot of vehicle destruction and are in a lot of cars that just completely fall apart. When the Bluesmobile falls apart, that was very much what I was thinking about. I also like those movies like The Battle of the Century (1927) where one pie from a pie truck that's accidentally thrown becomes hundreds of people involved in this massive pie fight. They have a short called Tit for Tat (1935) where Charley Hall has this grocery store next to Laurel and Hardy's electrical supply store and they break something in his store, so he destroys something in their store, getting them into bigger and bigger battles. In Two Tars (1928) they are sailors on the highway with two girls in terrible traffic, and this road rage incident turns into this massive destruction where everyone is pulling each other's cars to pieces. It's insane. In Big Business (1929) they play Christmas tree salesmen where Finlayson destroys their car and they destroy his house. It builds to be more and more violent until Tiny Sanford, a very big man, comes by and just watches in disbelief.
Are there any comedies today that make you laugh the same way?
I'd have to think about it. There's a lot of comedies that I just don't think are very good. I'm trying to think of the last comedy that really made me laugh. Did you see Death of Stalin (2017)? It's brilliant. It's a very dark comedy that made me laugh really hard. There was a movie years ago called Soapdish (1991) which is terrific with a great cast, it's played high speed and very sincere. Kevin Kline is brilliant in it and there's Sally Field, Robert Downey Jr., Carrie Fisher, Whoopi Goldberg... it's remarkable who's in it. It has a very clever screenplay and is really funny.
There's a lot of television comedy that I love. I think the American version of The Office is better than the British version, which is very unusual. Steve Carrell's character was awful, he continuously did the worst things and was wonderfully dense. Dwight is a very unique, completely insane character, the way that he and Jim crank one another is really funny.
I love the Pythons, who were so prolific and funny, and their movies like Life of Brian (1979). In the film, Jesus is treated with great respect, it's not about him at all, but about how fucked up people are. I love when his mother says, "He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy!"
Everyone in the film is so eager to follow a false prophet, very true to life.
Kind of like Trump! We're in a situation now where the only way I can explain it that makes any sense to me, because it's so horrific, is that it's a cult. They are treating this narcissistic, lying crook who is obviously out of his mind - an ignorant, dangerous lunatic who is a total fascist - like their cult leader. If you watch him give speeches at rallies, he doesn't even make coherent sense - he just repeats blatant lies and catchphrases. Joseph Goebbels is the one who came up with the Nazi's "big lie" theory, which is to just say the lie and never back down, and keep repeating it until it becomes the truth. The people who still think there was something funny with the 2020 Presidential election are really disturbing to me. I mean, with no evidence and all of these insane conspiracy theories...
The only rational explanation is brainwash at this point...
Yeah! I don't get it. It makes no sense. These blue collar people, the ones he's aggressively going to fuck as he raises their taxes and lowers the taxes for the rich... he's the antichrist! Everything he says is frightening. A cult always has this kind of leader that people believe in absolutely, like David Koresh or Charles Manson, they will all listen. When Jim Jones said "drink the Kool-Aid, we're all going to die," his followers said, "okay, Mr. Jones!" When you have these leaders that are like the ones in Lubitsch's wonderful movie, To Be or Not to Be (1942), where they hijack the plane and a guy who is dressed like Hitler tells the two Nazi soldiers to jump and they both say, "Heil Hitler," and jump. It's very funny because it was true, you know? These people are just believing the most absurd, ridiculous, bizarre things. And these weird things, like removing confederate monuments and flags where you have the city council in South Carolina reversing it... the thing about the Confederacy is that these guys weren't great heroes from some romantic Gone with the Wind notion of the noble south, they were fighting about slavery! They were fighting about owning other human beings! They were also traitors! There's nothing admirable about them. It's this false nostalgia. It's weird. It's all around the world, this swing to the right. It's very disturbing.
But, anyway... Laurel and Hardy were great. (laughs)
This is way off topic, but I have always wanted to ask you about your work for Disneyland...
Everyone who grew up in Anaheim worked at Disney, I know so many people who worked at the Parks, from Steve Martin to Michelle Pfeiffer. I once directed a whole thing with Michael Eisner, Tony Danza, and Goofy (laughs). It was Disneyland's 35th Anniversary Special. It was an insane story with some brilliant stuff and some terrible stuff in it, it was made under crazy circumstances.
Jim Henson, who was a good friend of mine, called me and said, "John, we just arrived at Disney in Anaheim and we are supposed to take part in this special..." - they had hired some schlock production company to make the show and Jim was appalled. The script was so worthless that we threw it out and reinvented it. It's gone now, but did you ever see Jim Henson's Muppet*Vision 3D? I thought that was brilliant. It was the last thing Jim did. Anyway, Marie Osmond was supposed to be the musical guest, but I replaced her with a group I had just seen on MTV, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. I flew them out from Philadelphia and it was the first time they were on television. They did a rap version of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. The show was so half-assed, we were literally making it up as we went along. Some of it is really good and some of it is just like, "what the fuck?"
Back to The Boys - where do you recommend a newcomer start with Laurel and Hardy?
I'd give them a bunch of the silents and the shorts, then I'd give them Way Out West and Sons of the Desert. I adore those films. There's so many things about Laurel and Hardy I adore - and you're right, who would have thought this southern portly gentleman and this thin English guy would make such an extraordinary team?
You described it in your essay as the "brotherhood of man" being one of the main things to stand out to you about them.
Well, I just love that they're a unit no matter what. Even when they have all of these childish fights, you know that they're never going to be broken up - they're always going to be together. They love each other.
In One Good Turn (1931), Oliver thinks that Stanley has done something wrong to this sweet little old lady and he's just furious. He says to Stanley, "and to think after all these years I've been fostering a common thief. A viper in my bosom!" He goes on and on, calling him a snake in the grass, a sheep in wolf's clothing, and Judas. Finally, he goes, "You... you...," and Stanley says, "Stop! Don't call me a you-you!" It's really silly stuff that totally works because it's them.
You once said that A Chump at Oxford (1940) always makes you cry?
I love that one. The ending always moved me terribly. "Stan! You know me!" So wonderful. Do you know who's in that movie? Peter Cushing! He came to Hollywood when he was very young to find a career and was in a couple of movies here before he went back to England.
Do you like any of the later films?
They were very mistreated at the studios, like a lot of people. When MGM was releasing their pictures made by Hal Roach Studios, they were still so funny - but once MGM had them they didn't know what to do with them. By the 1940s they were at Fox, who really didn't know what to do with them. It's heartbreaking because they were these brilliant guys.
There's so many great comedians - like Harold Lloyd, whose feature The Freshman (1925) has more laughs per minute than anything because he would just go out and preview them over and over and cut them down. There are four of his features that are just extraordinarily funny. Buster Keaton was the great genius, but he was destroyed by alcohol. He was so misunderstood at MGM that they had him writing gags for Red Skelton movies. His last good movie, The Cameraman (1928), was made at MGM and has a wonderful sequence that takes place in Chinatown during a Tong War with massive fighting in the streets. The General (1926) is not only a brilliant comedy, but a great American film.
I just re-watched The Twilight Zone episode with Buster Keaton, "Once Upon a Time", which is about an aging silent film star.
I haven't seen that one! There's a scene in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950) where Bill Holden's character calls in the "waxworks", all friends of Norma Desmond who were big stars from the silent era, and they're playing cards. They're presented as pathetic old people, and what's so extraordinary is that it's Buster Keaton, H.B. Warner, and Anna Q. Nilsson who were famous only forty-five years prior, and in the film Norma Desmond is only 50. You realize that Animal House is more than forty years ago!
Did you see Stan & Ollie (2018)?
I did. I thought John C. Reilly's makeup was very good, but I hated the movie. Hated it. It was a lie! Bernard Delfont, who brought them to the U.K., was not a schmuck but a wonderful guy - and they had great success, but here they showed them as failures. They were a huge hit! They never had a fight or even a real disagreement, but the film created a false rivalry between them, and it really pissed me off because they had a real respect for one another. Stanley was a workaholic and Ollie, while professional, would be at the race track or playing golf when he could.
The weirdness was that Hal Roach had them under separate contracts at different times - so when Stanley's contract was up, Oliver had no choice but to keep working. He made Zenobia in 1939 with Harry Langdon about a small town in Mississippi where the mayor is the stuffy-but-sweet Oliver Hardy at his most officious. A circus comes to town and there's an elephant named Zenobia who falls in love with his character. It's a very simple and sweet little movie. He also made this terrible movie with John Wayne in 1949 called The Fighting Kentuckian. It's not worth watching. My point is that their money issues would have been with Hal Roach, not each other - he made it so that their contracts were never up at the same time so that they couldn't leave together.
A sad story is that Jerry Lewis, who is responsible for getting Stan Laurel his honorary Oscar, would go visit him at his apartment in Santa Monica after Oliver Hardy died. In an interview, Lewis gave the impression that Stanley was living in poverty and needed money - and he wasn't! He had money, he was fine. Thousands of people sent him money and he was mortified by it. Stanley had a typewriter in his apartment that he used to answer every fan letter, which I always regretted not writing him as a kid.
I just love Laurel & Hardy, and they inspire great loyalty among their fans. They were once on an ocean liner pulling into Cork, Ireland in 1953, and all of the church bells were ringing The Dance of the Cuckoos with thousands greeting them.
One of the odd things is that they always did their own dubbing before it was even invented, learning and speaking their lines in other languages (Italian, French, German, and Spanish) phonetically. The Spanish just thought they were talking funny. Do you know who invented dubbing? Norma Shearer's brother, Douglas - a genius who ran the sound department at MGM.
The first time we met was in 2009 while you were working on Burke & Hare, whom you told me were akin to an "evil Laurel & Hardy" - are there any other references to them that we may have missed in your work?
Oh, so many that I can't even think of them. One of the movies I made that I can watch and really think is funny is ¡Three Amigos! (1986), which has lots of really silly, surreal humor. Those three characters are very vain but very simple, and there's a lot of dialogue and physical gags that could have worked with Stan or Ollie.
There's not a hint of impropriety, they're like kids.
(John Landis directing The Blues Brothers)