Walking in ski boots
Gad Elmaleh , compared with Martin Matte
Act out how absurd and robotic everyone looks clomping around in ski boots off the slopes.
Elmaleh does a silly stiff-legged walk to show how comic people look walking in ski boots. (paraphrase)
Stage show, 2005find on YouTube ↗
The Quebec comic mimes the ungainly walk of someone in ski boots to make the same observation. (paraphrase)
Stand-up special (Quebec), 2000find on YouTube ↗
Both make the same ski-boot observation and pay it off with a mimed robotic walk; no spoken lines are on record to compare.
- Premise 36/40
- Structure 20/30
- Punchline 18/30
- Premise36/40Same observation: people look absurd and robotic walking around in ski boots off the slopes.
- Structure20/30Both build to an acted-out walk; no transcript is on record to compare the order of beats.
- Punchline18/30The payoff in both is the mimed stiff walk itself; spoken wording is not on record.
Setup
People look comic walking around in ski boots
Setup
Same observation about the ungainly look of people in ski boots
Turn
Acts out a silly stiff-legged walk
Turn
Mimes the ungainly walk of someone in ski boots
Punchline
Payoff is the physical walk; wording not on record
Punchline
Payoff is the physical walk; wording not on record
Scores and beats are our editorial reading of the public record, not a ruling.
Context
When and where
Martin Matte mimed the comic walk in ski boots in a 2000 Quebec special. Elmaleh did a similar silly walk to make the same point in a 2005 show. CopyComic set the clips side by side in 2019.
What followed
It was one of about a dozen side-by-sides in a 2019 CopyComic video, which also lined Elmaleh up against Carlin, Steven Wright and Pryor. A Montreal comedy club declared him persona non grata, and Elmaleh later admitted 'I was inspired by other guys' and had borrowed from American comics 'out of laziness'.
Receipts
Photos via Wikimedia Commons: Gad Elmaleh by Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0; Martin Matte by Montreal.TV, CC BY 3.0