Tag: Richard Lett

Documentaries

Review: “Never Be Done: The Richard Glen Lett Story”

When you get fifteen minutes into this documentary, you wonder, why in the world would anyone give Richard Lett a platform? Lett has been dubbed the “Canadian George Carlin.” His comedy – if you can call it that – was demeaning, tactless, and truly reprehensible.

I had never heard of Lett before. My introduction to him was him degrading women, harassing his audience, and at one point, performed a horrendous song called the “Ballad of Robert Pickton” – Pickton was a serial killer in Canada who murder 50 women, most of them sex workers. I have watched awful “comedy” before but have never seen anything so reprehensible in my life. Continue reading Review: “Never Be Done: The Richard Glen Lett Story”

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Female Characters, Female Filmmaker, Film Reviews, Reviews

Review: All Joking Aside

For the last thirty or so years, stand-up comedy has been a massive part of popular culture in the West. On both sides of the Atlantic, comedians transcended their circuits’ clubs and stages and moved into screens both big and small, become household names on a par with the most successful movie stars and television personalities. In all that time though, the biggest names and faces in comedy were rarely women, and even fewer were women of colour; the latter being very much the case to this day, even when female comedians are beginning to get a bigger share of the stage.

Enter “All Joking Aside”, the directorial feature debut of Shannon Kohli, which tells the story of Charlene “Charlie” Murray (Raylene Harewood), a young woman with the ambition to become a professional stand-up comedian, a dream she shares with her late father. Continue reading Review: All Joking Aside

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