39 Facts About Comedy

Hi, I'm John Green. Welcome to my salon. Uh-oh

Well, that's supposed to be a fire. Anyway, did you know that Mel Brooks once said, tragedy is when I cut my finger and comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die

Well, that's the first of many facts about comedy I'm going to share with you today. We're going to talk about everything from comedians to sitcoms to movies to talk shows

So let's get started. Most of the worldwide highest grossing comedy films are children's movies like Toy Story

3, Frozen, The Lion King, three of the saddest comedies ever made

I mean, I don't think Simba thinks his life is a comedy. Is E.T. a comedy? But the three top grossing comedies that aren't kids' movies are Mamma Mia, Men in Black

and the saddest comedy of all time, The Hangover Part 2. Speaking of the box office, the 1997 film Trojan War, starring Will Friedle and Jennifer

Love Hewitt, cost $15 million to make. It played in one theater, earning a total of $309 from ticket sales

But back to The Hangover briefly, in the first movie, The Good One, Ed Helms really didn't

have a tooth. He normally has a tooth implant there because one never grew in

He just removed the implant for the movie. The Big Lebowski has inspired its own philosophy slash religion, Dudism, also known as the

Church of the Latter-day Dude. According to its website, 200,000 people have been ordained as dudist priests

There are 399 curse words in South Park, bigger, longer, and uncut

Believe it or not, this is a Guinness World Record for animated films, even beating out

Beauty and the Beast. A film that could have also had a lot of cursing, Home Alone

Apparently, Joe Pesci had a lot of trouble not swearing during filming

Director Chris Columbus encouraged him to use the word fridge as a stand curse Fortunately we don have that problem on the f mental floss set do we Mark The classic all line in When Harry Met Sally was Billy Crystal suggestion

Director Rob Reiner loved the idea. It's actually his mother who says the line

The Stanley Kubrick comedy Doctor Strangelove was originally supposed to end with a pie

fight, but it got cut for a couple reasons, including the fact that the actors had so

much fun filming it that they were smiling and laughing throughout the entire scene

But Kubrick later referred to the entire affair as, quote, a disaster of Homeric proportions

I think you meant Homeric pie portions, Mr. Kubrick. Anybody? Pie portions? Hmm? Slices

No? Alright. It's always fun to picture what movies would be like if they'd had different stars. Here

are a few examples. Mel Brooks offered John Wayne a role in Blazing Saddles. Wayne, of

course, turned the role down, but allegedly told Brooks that he'd be first in line to see the film. Johnny Depp, Jim Carrey, and Tom Cruise were all considered for the role

of Ferris Bueller, which would have meant three very, very different movies

And Betty White turned down a role in As Good As It Gets because of a scene in which Jack

Nicholson puts a dog down a garbage chute. I wonder if Betty White would have accepted the role if they'd just pushed this puppy-sized

elephant down the garbage chute. Alright, on to talk shows. During Johnny Carson's final Tonight Show in 1992, Comedy Central didn't air any programming

Instead, it showed a simple message, watching Johnny Carson's last show, and so should you

That's the kind of thing they would never do now. By the way, The Tonight Show is the oldest talk show in the world that's still on the air

so no pressure, Jimmy Fallon. Speaking of Fallon, in elementary school he was voted most likely to replace David Letterman

So accurate, yet so inaccurate, like most elementary school superlatives. Another thing about Jimmy Fallon, he is a picture book author and his editor also edited the

novel The Fault in Our Stars. The first comic ever to appear on Late Night with Conan O was none other than Louis C Alf as in the alien lifeform from the 80 sitcom had his own talk show in 2004 on TVland

It lasted for seven episodes. And you know what they say, if you can't make it on TVland, you can't make it

The highest paid late night talk show host is actually Jon Stewart. I bet it used to be ALF, but then his show got canceled

Let's move on to comedians. Kevin Hart did his first stand-up gig under the name Lil Kev, which makes sense, he's

not a tall man. Jerry Chase signed up to be roasted on Comedy Central, but he ended up hating the roast so much that they don't air it anymore

Anthony Michael Hall was the youngest ever SNL cast member. He joined the show when he was just 17

Meanwhile, when I was 17, I ate fruit roll-ups for dinner. In 2005, John Cleese auctioned off a piece of his colon

No context there, I'm just telling you. Mike Myers was offered the role of Shrek at the premiere of Saving Private Ryan

He was actually asked to replace Chris Farley, who recorded most of Shrek's dialogue before

dying in 1997. While attending NYU, Aziz Ansari interned at The Onion

And Bob Newhart's real name is George. Everything I've ever believed is a lie

Steve Martin worked at Disneyland for eight years. He sold lassos in Frontierland and later moved on to Fantasyland, where he worked in Merlin's

Magic Shop. Tyra Banks wanted to be a sketch comedian. In fact, she took classes at the LA improv comedy troupe The Groundlings, and then she

She went on to make the comedy gold of course that is life size, and also every elimination

speech in America's Next Top Model. I'm gonna finish up with some facts about sitcoms

Lucille Ball got pregnant IRL during I Love Lucy, but CBS wouldn't let the show use the

word pregnant. They were only allowed to refer to her as expecting

In season one of the show Roseanne, Korn is seen or mentioned at least once in every single episode

In 1990 there was a British sitcom about Hitler titled Heil Honey I Home was cancelled after one episode in a shocking turn of events The working title of the Married With Children pilot was Not The Cosbys And speaking of pilots the original unaired pilot of It Always Sunny in Philadelphia

was created and shot for $200. The network FX saw it and bought the show

Ellen DeGeneres turned down the role of Phoebe Buffay on Friends. Comedy legend Richard Pryor wrote a few episodes of Sanford and Son

Leave it to Beaver was created by Joe Connolly who was also responsible for the Munsters

which makes sense because both shows are equally realistic. The name Barney Stinson, aka Neil Patrick Harris's character in How I Met Your Mother

is the name of a heroin dealer in the book LA Confidential. It's widely believed that this is probably not a coincidence

For the first season of Scrubs, the janitor character was written as a possible figment of JD's imagination

like he doesn't actually talk to any other characters, but once creator Bill Warrant's realized that the show was going to, like, last for several seasons, he nixed the twist

And finally I return to my still fireless place to tell you that while most know Seinfeld as the show about nothing

that's only an idea that they talk about inside the show. According to Jerry Seinfeld, it was originally pitched to NBC as a show about how comedians get their ideas

Thanks for watching, Menoplas here on YouTube, which is made with the help of all of these nice people

Every week we endeavor to answer one of your mind-blowing questions. This week's question comes from Lou314 who asks

Were there ever any carnivorous plants large enough to eat mammals? Bad news, Lou. There still are. The carnivorous plant with the largest trap is a pitcher plant called Nepenthes attenburagi

It was recently discovered in the Philippines, it's named after David Attenborough, and unlike other pitcher plants, which mainly live off insects, the Nepenthes attenburagi specializes in rats

If you have a mind-blowing question you'd like answered, please leave it in comments. Thank you again for watching, and as we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome