Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: The Great Corrective -- Laughing Silently -- Wellesian Laughter -- Jerry Made His Day -- Noir at Play -- "So Bad It's Good": Critical Humor in Science Fiction Cinema -- Wrenching Departures: Mortality and Absurdity in Avant-Garde Film -- Time's Timing and the Threat of Laughter in Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now -- The Gangster Giggles -- If Only They Had Meant to Make a Comedy: Laughing at Black Swan -- Foolish Bum, Funny Shit: Scatological Humor in Hal Hartley's Not-So-ComedicHenry Fool -- Homeric Laughter in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre -- "Why So Serious?": Battling the Comic in The Dark Knight -- The Laughter of Robots -- Contributors -- Works Cited and Consulted -- Index -- Back_Cover.