Hi I'm Aaron from New Jersey. I'm Will in Atlanta. The Sound of Young America is an independent

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I'm Jesse Thorne, live on tape from My House in Los Angeles. It's the Sound of Young America

from MaximumFun.org and PRI, public radio, international.

Welcome to a special podcast only edition of The Sound of Young America. I'm your host Jesse Thorne.

The movie A Thousand Clowns has always been near and dear to my heart and as I've gotten older,

I've found more and more people in the world of comedy especially for whom it's a really

important film. In my case, the significance of the film is very personal. My folks,

let's just say they've never gotten along well. They were divorced when I was a very young child

and pretty much at each other's throats until I was a teenager and they don't agree on much,

frankly. In fact, I think you could probably boil down the list of things on which they

agree to about two. One of them is James Brown. I think pretty much everybody can agree on James

Brown. The other one is A Thousand Clowns. A Thousand Clowns is a movie about a comedy writer,

comedy writer who's living the life of a non-conformist or I guess you could say an eccentric,

making up holidays, giving people nicknames, collecting eagles and other weird things,

and taking care of a young man, a 13-year-old. The thing is, his life is sort of

falling apart. He's been unemployed for a long time since he quit his job on a television show

that he considered to be beneath him. The kid wants him to get a job but he's refused

and now social services is at his door. They say if he doesn't reform, he'll have to give up his

nephew. The central question of the film is how he'll change his life to become an adult

without giving up what makes him special. I mentioned that this movie is a favorite of both

...