I'm not sure if I agree with that distinction. When I think of classic wits, I think of Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, the Algonquin Round Table, etc.. All of whom were (cleverly) making fun of how stupid other people are.

I guess I sort of know what you mean, if you're talking about comedy where there's some actual wordplay or insight rather than "Ha, he fell down! What an idiot!" But someone's usually the butt of the joke.

I think The Office is predicated on great insight into humanity, which is why it's so difficult at its best. But yes, like Twain and the other classic wits Strega mentioned, someone gets to play the ass.

Withnail and I, witty.

I read an essay once to the effect that the difference between humor and wit is the difference between using the feather and the whole chicken.

Which I hadn't thought about before -- wit is exposure, shock, something absurdly revealing and attractive and offputting all at the same time. It's like, ha ha ha, you didn't think I'd actually go there, did you? Well now I have.

And here I thought that was the difference between kink and perversity.

I think of wit as being a particular kind of verbal play based on concision and the quick turnaround. Though, of course, wit can also be expressed visually - I think it still has a highly compressed, quick, allusive quality.

I want to see this movie! The Decay of Fiction

The Decay of Fiction, Pat O'Neill's magnum opus (opening for a one-week run next Wednesday at Anthology), takes the historical phantom zone first evoked by Wilder [in Sunset Boulevard] as its subject. Literally superimposing dream on documentary, it defines sunshine noir. Special-effects whiz O'Neill uses a combination of 35mm location shooting and a digital overlay to transform the once grand, long-shuttered Ambassador Hotel into a haunted mansion. The Ambassador has enjoyed a curious afterlife as a movie set (used in Pretty Woman, Forrest Gump, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, to name a few). O'Neill allows the hotel to represent itself in a state of physical deterioration.

The past feels material. Everything is time-lapse. Empty rooms are animated by creeping shadows, fluttery curtains, and the memory of guests past. Silver ghosts gather around the derelict swimming pool. The old Coconut Grove nightclub, originally furnished with papier-mâché monkeys and the fake palms from a Rudolph Valentino vehicle, is a moldering wreck populated by gangster apparitions. O'Neill coaxes the suggestion of a story out of various movie moments, bits of soundtrack, and references to the Ambassador's legendary past (including Robert Kennedy's assassination in the hotel kitchen), but The Decay of Fiction is less a narrative than a monument. In its abstract movie-ness, this 74-minute carnival of souls exudes a wistful longing to connect, not so much with Hollywood history as with the history of that history.

It's like, ha ha ha, you didn't think I'd actually go there, did you? Well now I have.

So, The Aristocrats?

I think Shaun of the Dead was damn witty.

The description of The Decay of Fiction reminds me of the book House of Leaves.

I like this discussion on wit:

In his book Paradigms Lost, John Simon points out that humor and wit are nearly polar opposites. Humor is inclusive: it invites everyone to join in on the laugh and feel like one of the crowd. Wit is exclusive: it addresses itself only to those who are in the know, and if the other people in the room feel uncomfortable because they don't get it — hey, that's a bonus.

But I'm not sure how to apply it. I think, a lot of the time, the witty bits are the bits that have me saying "Oh, it's meant to be funny" in some confusion.

Which I hadn't thought about before -- wit is exposure, shock, something absurdly revealing and attractive and offputting all at the same time. It's like, ha ha ha, you didn't think I'd actually go there, did you? Well now I have.

I don't see wit as that at all. To me it doesn't require shock--in fact, I don't associate the two. Wit is deft. Humour isn't in any way orthogonal to wit, though wit doesn't have to be funny. It has to be pointed, deft, perhaps painful, whereas humour can be gentler, or broader, or more overwhelming.

What ita said.

I pretty much agree with Simon's statement also, except I think wit is a subset of humor. Humor includes wit, but wit does not include all of humor.

I read an article some years back on insider/outsider humor, and how one will be more popular than the other depending on what the society is experiencing. The article postulated than when society was stressed, laughing at someone's misfortunes (Charlie Chaplain, Buster Keaton, Three Stooges, Tom Cruise) was ascendant, and when society felt confident, humor that required the audience to be "in the know" was more popular (Johnny Carson, SNL, Eddie Izzard).

I'm not sure I agree with that broad a generalization, but I do think that humor is often consumed as a reassurance. And I think "insider" and "outsider" might apply to wit vs. broader humor.