The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived
by Allan Lazar, Dan Karlan & Jeremy Salter
Wedding Crashers is the one of the worst comedies I have ever seen. And I say this not because the movie itself is uncomfortably unfunny or anything like that (it does have some great scenes) but because the movie should have been a slam-dunk winner right from the get-go. The idea behind Wedding Crashers was so simple and ingenious that any auto-piloted script could have generated an Anchorman- or There’s Something About Mary-quality movie. Instead, there were too many cooks in the kitchen and the end result was that way too many questionable decisions were executed w/r/t the finished product. Why again did the brother need to be some bizarre amalgam/carricature of a homosexual goth artist who exhibits traits of being sexually abused rather than just being plain old weird? How is it possible that the casting of Christopher Walken resulted in no awkward humor, the thing by which we know is Walken’s comedic wheelhouse? But, most importantly, who decided that a potentially classic male-driven comedy needed to include an unbearably uninspired romantic core involving Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams? I realize that the movie could not end without the Ironclad Rule Of Comedic Movie Romances coming into play–this rule stipulates that the two main characters must get together, come rain or shine, or being involved in a series of implausible situations that would make any normal man run away after a half hour–but its ultimate failing was the potential it had to be something truly memorable. Anchorman at least had the sense to make Will Ferrell and Christina Applegate’s relationship comedically ridiculous from the start instead of trying to pretend that something real–something we could somehow identify with–might exist inside.
I mention all of this because The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived is like the book equivalent of Wedding Crashers. The idea is brilliant but the execution is deeply, deeply flawed. Because this book is written by three different men, there are three different voices writing here and two of those voices (I do not know who wrote which pieces as there are no specific credits mentioned in the book) are of people who think they are funny, but are instead the type of “comedic writers” you would probably find working on the set of Two And A Half Men or Yes, Dear. Which is to say that the comedy tries way to hard to be smart. For instance, a quote from the piece about Icarus, who flew too close to the sun with his wax wings even though his father warned him repeatedly:
“Daedalus warned Icarus to keep a middle course over the sea and avoid approaching the sun. But the boy, in his excitement, flew too high. The sun had melted his wings and he fell into the sea and drowned. His father, who complied with all FAA regulations, flew on to Sicily and safety.”
See, because the FAA wasn’t around during the time of Icarus… ugh.
It is writing like this, and there are a lot of these poor quality jokes throughout most of the first two-thirds of the book, that completely detracts from the brilliance of the idea of the book and of the well-written pieces that are a delight to read towards the end. For example, this segment from the piece about Captain Ahab from Moby-Dick:
“Unlike Jonah, who was imprisoned in a whale for refusing God’s commands, Ahab is itching for a conflict. He is willing to risk everything in a contest that pit him against all the forces of darkness. He forges his own harpoon and baptizes it in blood, in the name of the devil. [...] The first mate, too decent to kill Ahab in his sleep, dooms the crew by his inaction, almost as surely as if he’d murdered the whole crew himself.”
Then there is the list aspect of The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived. Here is the top twenty, in order:
1. The Marlboro Man
2. Big Brother
3. King Arthur
4. Santa Claus
5. Hamlet
6. Dr. Frankenstein’s Monster
7. Siegfried (legendary warrior used in German propaganda for both world wars)
8. Sherlock Holmes
9. Romeo and Juliet
10. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
11. Uncle Tom
12. Robin Hood
13. Jim Crow
14. Oedipus
15. Lady Chatterly
16. Ebenezer Scrooge
17. Don Quixote
18. Mickey Mouse
19. The American Cowboy
20. Prince Charming
On the surface, this seems like a pretty good arrangement of fictional people who have really mattered, in one way or another, societally. But then the rest of the list seems a little strange. Hester Prynne is higher than Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Willy Loman’s at #95 while Hiawatha is at #71? Atticus Finch doesn’t crack the top 50? Smokey Bear is #21? Nora Helmer, a character that most people probably could not recall is at #25 while Mary Richards is at #39 and Dorothy Gale is at #91?
Which leads me back to why this book is so frustrating: the debates about the merits of this ranking could have been genuinely inspired, except that the writing behind it is so mediocre or below average at times that the book is severely undercut. It becomes unmemorable, even as you are reading it. Coincidentally, it reminds me of this story I once heard about two men, John Beckwith and Jeremy Grey, who revolve their summer schedules around weddings that they somehow manage to get into and…
