VITAL DIFFERENCE NO. 6: That rarest of treasures - a great comedic actress.

It is a lack of appreciation of the power of art to transform (and not just reveal) that consistently leads people to undervalue comedic art. "Sure, it's funny," they say, "but it's not really profound." I would argue otherwise. Just as I think that Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner is at least as great as Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and that Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is as great as his Othello, so too do I value comedic art and comedic artists.

Comedic acting becomes a more precious commodity when we consider how rare great female comedic actors are. Previously, the greatest comedic actress of all time was Carole Lombard. Other great actresses such as Jean Arthur and Irene Dunne also had great timing, but Lombard separated herself from them by also knowing how to use her body to create a physical acting style. Now we have Maura Tierney, who handily surpasses Lombard in both timing and physical acting.

Comedic timing is a poorly understood talent, but it is the most vital ingredient to comedic acting. It is timing that allows an actor to deliver a line or gesture for comic effect. (Timing was the reason why the great Phil Hartman could say a line that was not funny on paper and make it hilarious.) The reason that so many talented dramatic actors look so bad in comedies is because of their lack of timing. Conversely, the great comedic actors have always been underrated because so few people understand what timing is about. (The most famous case of a dichotomy between timing and dramatic talent was Marion Davies - the 1920s and 30s actress who married Randolph Hearst and was successful in comedies but not drama.) As for Tierney, let me say that her timing is supreme, and in her entire career I have never seen her even a fraction of a second off the mark. In Forces of Nature Tierney hits every comic moment she has with spot-on timing, providing welcome relief to a rather turgid (if surprisingly poetic) work of art.

Tierney is far from just a comedic actress. (In fact, I regard her tortured performance as the anti-hero Madeline Foster in Oxygen as probably the best and most complete dramatic performance in cinema history). Her greatness in both comedy and drama is incontrovertible evidence of a complete acting style. However, if I hold Tierney's comedic performances as especially precious it is because she has no competition as a great comedic actress.

Note that there is a vital difference between a comedian and a comedic actor. Liar Liar provides us an example of the difference. Jim Carrey is the greatest physical comedian of our generation - his ability to create comedy is unsurpassed. Tierney is the greatest physical comedic actor of our generation - she uses comedy as a means to communicate moral, emotional and psychological states. A comedian creates laughs, but after the laughing stops leaves nothing but emptiness. A comedic actor communicates emotionally, psychologically or morally, using comedy as a tool; after the laughing stops, what has been communicated (or signified) stays with us. (Jim Carrey will be a formidable comedic actor rather than a great comedian when he finds a way to harness his talent into an acting style that is natural and true, something he has been trying to do without success so far.)

A proper discussion of NewsRadio, which I regard as the foremost masterpiece amongst screwball comedies, would be too lengthy and would exceed the parameters of this article. However, since the Lisa Miller character has been so pivotal in Maura Tierney's career to this point, some words about NewsRadio are in order.

Firstly, NewsRadio is distinguished from all other television 'sitcoms' by its use of visual comedy (also referred to as physical comedy or sight gags). All other sitcoms rely on verbal comedy. Occasionally, NewsRadio would use purely visual comedy without any verbal content. For example, in "The Secret of Management" Mr. James brings Lisa to his place to teach her the Secret of Management. On the street Lisa heads for the stretch limousine, expecting this to be Mr. James' transportation, but he instead steers her towards a World War II motorcycle with sidecar. Furthermore, he gives the keys to Lisa and gets into the sidecar. The whole scene transpires without a word. Most of the time however, the show utilized a perfectly seamless combination of visual and verbal comedy. In other words, NewsRadio's staple was the gag as opposed to the one-liner. In particular, the complex 'group hug' gag at the end of "Rose Bowl" remains, along with Chaplin's soup gag from Modern Times and his boot gag from Sunnyside, one of the most elegantly constructed gags in the history of cinema. The gag involves practically every member of the cast, building intensity at just the right tempo. It is the final twist of this gag that is the payoff, and it is elegant because it surprises us completely without ever cheating (all the elements for the final twist are there before our eyes before the final punch-line is delivered). This is just one of the many, many gags that can only be appreciated by seeing them rather than just hearing about them.

It is only when you understand the style of comedy perpetrated by NewsRadio that the vital importance of Tierney's acting becomes apparent. Who else was better suited for a visual comedy style than an actor with a physical acting style (and impeccable comedic instincts to boot)? Furthermore, NewsRadio featured a particularly serendipitous pairing of Maura Tierney and Dave Foley, the master of subtle facial expression and reaction shots. She is 'action' and he is 'reaction,' and the two played off each other wonderfully. Moreover, the physicality of Tierney's acting allowed her to dispose of a gag with inordinate efficiency. Tierney simply took less time to convey a comedic moment than most actors. A body gesture communicates faster than the spoken word, and the lightning-fast pace of the show's comedy was often maintained by her involvement. For the most obvious examples of Tierney's comedic efficiency I recommend the Lisa Miller scenes from "Spooky Rapping Crypt" or the Abby Lockhart scene from the ER episode "Viable Options" (where she has only an entrance, two lines and an exit, but is able to leave a vivid impression regardless).

   Secondly, as already mentioned, NewsRadio belongs to the genre of the screwball comedy. It follows in the tradition of Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, My Man Godfrey, and Arsenic and Old Lace, except played on a larger scale. The screwball comedy is a special breed of animal unto itself. Andrew Sarris perceptibly describes the screwball comedy as a "sex comedy without the sex."³ It is by no means a coincidence that screwball comedy only came into existence in 1934 when the Hays Code began to regulate morality on the Hollywood screen. (The Hays Code even went so far as to explicitly specify the maximum amount of time that a man and woman could hold a kiss on screen.)

   In actual fact, a screwball comedy need not be devoid of sex (as the comedies of Preston Sturges prove), but it must contain sublimated sexual energy that manifests itself in the zany antics and behavior that are the hallmarks of screwball. Screwball comedy allows male and female characters to interact with each other in 'physical play' while maintaining relationships charged with varying degrees of sexual attraction and tension. While some of this energy came from the Catherine Duke-Joe Garelli and Catherine Duke-Bill McNeal relationships, most of the show's sublimated sexual energy was derived from Tierney's Lisa Miller. We can see this more clearly by comparing Beth and Lisa. Beth's relationship with Max Louis in season five possessed no sexual charge at all. However, when needed, Lisa's scenes with Max were replete with sexual tension, such as when she plays her "psyche" game with Max in "Freaky Friday." In fact, Lisa's relationships with all the men of NewsRadio (yes, even with Matthew Brock) were charged with varying degrees and types of sexual tension. In addition, no matter how many references were made to Dave and Lisa "doing it" in the office or in the bedroom, Tierney could still generate sexual tension at will in the Dave and Lisa relationship through the physicality of her acting style.

   It can be said that each character on NewsRadio had a specific primary role in the comedic framework. It was Bill McNeal's role to light the fires, Lisa Miller's role to provide the sexual fuel for them, Dave Nelson's role to react to them, and Jimmy James' role to either propel the crew on their zany trajectories or to bring them back home. These four characters were the 'pillars' of the NewsRadio cast. Interacting with them were the four 'walls' of the cast - with Catherine Duke providing the punctuation marks for the comedy, Beth providing the compassion and heart, Joe Garelli providing the balancing force, and Matthew Brock providing the vital change-ups. The interactive, dynamic nature of the ensemble cast reveals the exact reason why the loss of Bill McNeal through Phil Hartman's death was so devastating. (The show would also have been even better had Khandi Alexander stayed on in the role of Catherine Duke for the show's duration. Nevertheless, because she did not function as a 'pillar' of the comedic framework it was easier to compensate for her loss.) In fact, losing any of the four pillars of the cast would have been devastating. Without Tierney's Lisa Miller the show would still have been funny, but without Lisa to deepen the comedy it would have been much emptier art.

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