Trivia / The Aristocrats

• All-Star Cast: The film features a veritable who's who of contemporary comics and other celebrities telling and/or talking about the eponymous joke, including Jason Alexander, Hank Azaria, Shelley Berman, Lewis Black, Jimmy Buffett, Mario Cantone, Drew Carey, George Carlin, Margaret Cho, Billy Connolly, Tim Conway, Andy Dick, Phyllis Diller, Susie Essman, Carrie Fisher, Whoopi Goldberg, Gilbert Gottfried, Dana Gould, Eric Idle, Eddie Izzard, Richard Jeni, Lisa Lampanelli, Richard Lewis, Bill Maher, Howie Mandel, Michael McKean, Larry Miller, Martin Mull, Kevin Nealon, Taylor Negron, Rick Overton, Gary Owens, Trey Parker & Matt Stone, Penn & Teller, Emo Philips, Kevin Pollak, Paul Reiser, Andy Richter, Don Rickles, Chris Rock, Bob Saget, Harry Shearer, Sarah Silverman, The Smothers Brothers, Doug Stanhope, Jon Stewart, Larry Storch, Rip Taylor, Dave Thomas, Fred Willard, Robin Williams, and Steven Wright.
• Corpsing:
  • Bob Saget spends half his time laughing at himself. This is in comparison to other comedians, such as George Carlin, who tell the joke ruthlessly deadpan. In fairness, the unedited version of Saget's rendition of the joke is available on the internet and shows that he wasn't corpsing as much as he appeared to be; they just left in the corpsing because those are the funniest bits.
  • Kevin Pollak can't stop chortling through his rendition either, which might be because he's performing it in a Christopher Walken impression.
• In Memoriam: The film ends with one for Johnny Carson, who named the Aristocrats his favorite joke of all time. Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza had regularly been in contact with Carson during the production of the film, and had agreed to screen the film personally for him after its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. Carson, however, he passed away shortly after the Sundance premiere, and thus the dedication end-card was one of the very last additions to the film.
• What Could Have Been: Rodney Dangerfield and Buddy Hackett were both originally going to have scenes, but had to opt out due to health issues. Both of them passed away before the film's release.
  • Penn Jillette admitted that he had seriously considered asking Johnny Carson to contribute, but opted not to go through with it out of respect for Carson's retirement.
  • The creators of the film also wanted Richard Pryor to participate but he was too ill.

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