Within the pantheon of comedy historical past, few bits are as polarizing as Gallagher‘s Sledge-O-Matic. The late prop comic, whose authorized identify was Leo Gallagher, crammed his stand-up performances with wordplay and demonstrations of his elaborate home made devices. However he closed each present with a tried-and-true crowd pleaser that got here to outline his whole life. He positioned a watermelon on a stool, carried out a monologue that mocked infomercials for kitchen merchandise, after which smashed the melon with a sledgehammer.
The audiences who willingly purchased tickets (and donned the required plastic ponchos to sit down within the entrance row) have been all the time amused by the gag. However to outsiders, it was the peak of hackery. Stand-up comedy is a time honored artwork kind that can be utilized to bundle eloquent ideas about human society in a method that entertains audiences and relieved cultural pressure. Within the eyes of its purists, counting on props and gags seems like taking the straightforward method out. You by no means noticed George Carlin or Richard Pryor resort to smashing produce.
However filmmaker Josh Forbes didn’t assume the state of affairs was so black-and-white. A fan who grew up watching Gallagher’s Nineteen Eighties Showtime specials, he noticed the potential for a documentary because the comic’s life turned more and more sophisticated in his later years. As Gallagher battled dwindling ticket gross sales, an acrimonious authorized battle along with his brother who launched his personal competing fruit-filled comedy act, criticism for insensitive racial jokes, and a normal sense of bitterness about being synonymous with smashing melon, Forbes started to make a movie about him.
Shot over the course of seven years, “Gallagher” is a portrait of a prop comic within the winter of his life. What compels an artist to dedicate years of their life to a narrative with so many watermelons?
“I feel it’s form of a hack take to only go, ‘Oh, this man smashes issues what an fool ha, ha, ha,’” Forbes mentioned throughout a latest dialog with IndieWire. “In the event you have a look at the historical past of comedy or clowns, making a multitude is humorous, pie fights are humorous, slipping on a banana peel is humorous. And I feel as a result of it’s so overtly foolish, it’s a simple goal. And I all the time favored the underdog, I all the time favored the outsider, I all the time favored the man who’s misunderstood.”
Forbes initially deliberate to middle his movie round reuniting the comedian along with his brother, an concept that Gallagher shortly vetoed. The undertaking then advanced right into a portrait of a comic book on the highway — and life was by no means uninteresting for Forbes as he adopted the eccentric comedy from gig to gig.
“I had me and my sound man and my digicam man in a single room and we’re in staying in the identical motel, and he’s like, ‘Effectively, in my room it’s only one man and also you guys have three guys. Why don’t one in all use you guys stick with me?’” Forbes recalled. “So I ended up sharing a bed room with him, which was loopy as a result of he by no means wore a shirt. And at one level I used to be within the lodge room with him, I used to be checking my telephone and I smelled one thing. I appeared over and he had his moist underwear on a lamp simply in our room. He was only a whole wild man.”
A lot of the documentary’s attraction lies within the juxtaposition between the ridiculous topic of smashed watermelons and the true human drama that emerged from the darkish facet of Gallagher’s life. The movie dives into his shortcomings as a father, his feud along with his brother, and the numerous followers he misplaced on the finish of his profession when he resorted to filling his units with low cost jokes that struck many as racist and homophobic.
Forbes was nicely conscious of this pressure whereas he filmed, however he observed that Gallagher used his comedy persona as an emotional wall. Whereas the comedian was all the time desperate to brainstorm new bits they may embrace within the documentary, he typically grew quiet and defensive when a subject got here up that required actual vulnerability. The comic was totally disinterested in separating the person inside him from the character he performed on stage, to the purpose the place he even insisted that acquaintances check with him merely as “Gallagher” in personal life.
“It felt prefer it was some kind of protection mechanism,” Forbes mentioned. “Something that carefully resembled the reality or his previous particularly, he didn’t need to speak about it, and he didn’t see the way it was humorous. He solely wished to do issues that have been humorous.”
Issues reached a boiling level when Forbes recommended filming a scene the place Gallagher visited a grocery retailer to pick out watermelons for his act. The filmmaker made the entire logistical preparations, even convincing a retailer to herald further melons once they weren’t in season. However when he pitched the concept to his topic, Gallagher exploded with rage and quickly stop the undertaking earlier than re-joining the next day.
To Forbes, the incident spoke to one of many defining themes of Gallagher’s life: anger over being seen because the man who smashes fruit. The comedian was an leisure renaissance man who wrote limitless traces of poetry, constructed his personal props, and had numerous concepts for motion pictures and TV exhibits that no one ever took critically. Regardless of how laborious he tried to be seen as one thing extra, folks solely wished to see Gallagher wreak havoc on watermelons.
“He utterly resented it,” Forbes mentioned of Gallagher’s sophisticated relationship along with his career-defining bit. “It’s like a band having an enormous radio hit after which form of hating the viewers… However I feel he additionally loved it, he loved the fun of constructing the viewers cringe and go wild and get messy and all that, he cherished that side of it. However I feel essentially the most troublesome factor for him was simply being a superb comic, however folks simply need him to smash issues.”
“Gallagher” premiered at DOC NYC 2024. It’s at present in search of U.S. distribution.