Author(s): Bob McCabe

Fiction

Cracking open a whole barrel-load of movie mirth, The Rough Guide to Comedy Movies gives you the ultimate lowdown on laughter in the cinema, from Airplane! to Withnail and I, and from John Belushi to Billy Wilder. Features include:

• The comedy story: Tells the tale of the genre, from the mayhem of the silents to the 'gross-out' films of the 1990s, and the dark indie humour of the twenty-first century.
• The comedy canon: A selection of fifty comedy movie greats, from Chaplin's classic The Gold Rush to Wes Anderson's Rushmore via Preston Sturges'Sullivan's Travels and Woody Allen's Manhattan.
• Comedy movie icons: The directors and performers that have kept us laughing including Marilyn Monroe, Steve Martin, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Fatty Arbuckle and Jacques Tati.
• Comedy teamwork: The genre's greatest double-acts and comedy combinations from Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Bros, to the Coen Brothers and the Pythons.
• Laughing on the other side: A look at comedy cinema around the world.