In the pantheon of comedy history, few bits are as polarizing as Gallagher‘s Sledge-O-Matic. The late prop comedian, whose legal name was Leo Gallagher, filled his stand-up performances with wordplay and demonstrations of his elaborate homemade gadgets. But he closed every show with a tried-and-true crowd pleaser that came to define his entire life. He placed a watermelon on a stool, performed a monologue that mocked infomercials for kitchen products, and then smashed the melon with a sledgehammer.
The audiences who willingly bought tickets (and donned the required plastic ponchos to sit in the front row) were always amused by the gag. But to outsiders, it was the height of hackery. Stand-up comedy is a time honored art form that can be used to package eloquent thoughts about human society in a way that entertains audiences and relieved cultural tension. In the eyes of its purists, relying on props and gags feels like taking the easy way out. You never saw George Carlin or Richard Pryor resort to smashing produce.
But filmmaker Josh Forbes didn’t think the situation was so black-and-white. A fan who grew up watching Gallagher’s 1980s Showtime specials, he saw the potential for a documentary as the comedian’s life became increasingly complicated in his later years. As Gallagher battled dwindling ticket sales, an acrimonious legal battle with his brother who launched his own competing fruit-filled comedy act, criticism for insensitive racial jokes, and a general sense of bitterness about being synonymous with smashing melon, Forbes began to make a film about him.
Shot over the course of seven years, “Gallagher” is a portrait of a prop comedian in the winter of his life. What compels an artist to devote years of their life to a story with so many watermelons?
“I think it’s kind of a hack take to just go, ‘Oh, this guy smashes things what an idiot ha, ha, ha,’” Forbes said during a recent conversation with IndieWire. “If you look at the history of comedy or clowns, making a mess is funny, pie fights are funny, slipping on a banana peel is funny. And I think because it’s so overtly silly, it’s an easy target. And I always liked the underdog, I always liked the outsider, I always liked the guy who’s misunderstood.”
Forbes initially planned to center his film around reuniting the comic with his brother, an idea that Gallagher quickly vetoed. The project then evolved into a portrait of a comic on the road — and life was never dull for Forbes as he followed the eccentric comedy from gig to gig.
“I had me and my sound guy and my camera guy in one room and we’re in staying in the same motel, and he’s like, ‘Well, in my room it’s just one guy and you guys have three guys. Why don’t one of use you guys stay with me?’” Forbes recalled. “So I ended up sharing a bedroom with him, which was crazy because he never wore a shirt. And at one point I was in the hotel room with him, I was checking my phone and I smelled something. I looked over and he had his wet underwear on a lamp just in our room. He was just a total wild man.”
Much of the documentary’s appeal lies in the juxtaposition between the ridiculous subject of smashed watermelons and the real human drama that emerged from the dark side of Gallagher’s life. The film dives into his shortcomings as a father, his feud with his brother, and the many fans he lost at the end of his career when he resorted to filling his sets with cheap jokes that struck many as racist and homophobic.
Forbes was well aware of this tension while he filmed, but he noticed that Gallagher used his comedy persona as an emotional wall. While the comic was always eager to brainstorm new bits they could include in the documentary, he often grew quiet and defensive when a topic came up that required real vulnerability. The comedian was utterly disinterested in separating the man inside him from the character he played on stage, to the point where he even insisted that acquaintances refer to him simply as “Gallagher” in private life.
“It felt like it was some sort of defense mechanism,” Forbes said. “Anything that closely resembled the truth or his past especially, he didn’t want to talk about it, and he didn’t see how it was funny. He only wanted to do things that were funny.”
Things reached a boiling point when Forbes suggested filming a scene where Gallagher visited a grocery store to select watermelons for his act. The filmmaker made all of the logistical arrangements, even convincing a store to bring in extra melons when they weren’t in season. But when he pitched the idea to his subject, Gallagher exploded with rage and temporarily quit the project before re-joining the following day.
To Forbes, the incident spoke to one of the defining themes of Gallagher’s life: anger over being viewed as the guy who smashes fruit. The comic was an entertainment renaissance man who wrote endless lines of poetry, built his own props, and had countless ideas for movies and TV shows that nobody ever took seriously. No matter how hard he tried to be seen as something more, people only wanted to see Gallagher wreak havoc on watermelons.
“He completely resented it,” Forbes said of Gallagher’s complicated relationship with his career-defining bit. “It’s like a band having a big radio hit and then kind of hating the audience… But I think he also enjoyed it, he enjoyed the thrill of making the audience cringe and go wild and get messy and all that, he loved that aspect of it. But I think the most difficult thing for him was just being a brilliant comedian, but people just want him to smash things.”
“Gallagher” premiered at DOC NYC 2024. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
