"Aw hell, Chewbacca": 10 genuinely funny stand-up routines or monologues about movies (UPDATED)

Patton Oswalt, one of the few stand-ups who publicly swore off Twitter when the site's popularity exploded ("I like having radio silence. I think radio silence is an important part of any public figure's day."), did the unthinkable in 2010 when he succumbed to the Twittersphere and started an account. As one can see from his stand-up act, his stint as a guest programmer at L.A.'s New Bev Cinema and his recollections of his most frustrating showbiz experiences during a recent must-listen edition of The Nerdist Podcast, movies are a topic the Hollywood script doctor and Zombie Spaceship Wasteland author is passionate about, and they've led to some of my favorite Oswalt routines. Maybe we'll get a taste of some more Oswalt material about movies on his Twitter page, where he's demonstrating why stand-ups and comedy writers are the best kind of celebrity to follow on Twitter (unlike most other celebs, their tweets are rarely boring or shallow). From last May, here are eight standout routines about cinema, and this time, they're joined by two equally funny monologues that popped up online after I first posted the list. Four of these bits are Oswalt's.

10. Richard Pryor rewrites The Exorcist
The horror genre has always fascinated the late Pryor's former writing partner Paul Mooney, who's done brilliant jokes about the Frankenstein monster, white filmgoers' fears of the shark from Jaws and movies that skeevily put women in romantic situations with sci-fi monsters. He must have had a hand in writing Pryor's material about The Exorcist, which he and Pryor actually saw together at its Hollywood premiere. When Pryor guest-hosted SNL and brought along Mooney as a sketch writer, they did an amusing Exorcist sketch in which a pair of black priests (Pryor and Thalmus Rasulala) lose their patience with the possessed kid (Laraine Newman), who taunts Rasulala's priest with the cleaned-up-for-TV "Your mama sews socks that smell."



9. Scott Thompson sinks Titanic during an interview on Late Night with Conan O'Brien
"I don't think that to be a leading man, you have to be Harrison Ford, but I do think that you should be able to do at least one push-up. When little Leo finally kisses big Kate, I thought it was a lesbian scene."



8. Oswalt wonders what Star Wars would have been like if Nick Nolte won the role he actually auditioned for: Han Solo
"Fuckin' droids, beep, beep..."

7. Robert Klein reenacts every single Our Gang short you've seen
I actually like this routine from the 1973 album Child of the 50's more than "I Can't Stop My Leg." Klein's recreation of the Our Gang score music ("Hal Roach had four tunes that he played over and over again") is priceless.