Biloxi Blues

Just finished watching - far from it being the first time, mind you - Neil Simon´s World War II bootcamp comedy "Biloxi Blues", with Matthew Broderick. Besides Broderick and his character (Private Eugene Morris Jerome), which seem to have been taylor-made for each other, the scene involves a sublime Christopher Walken (Sgt. Merwin J. Toomey) as the psichotic drill sargent, and an animalistic, neanderthal-like, but disciplined and exemplary foot-soldier (Private Joseph Wykowski), played by Matt Mulhern.

As usual, nearly had myself a collapsed lung at this following conversation:

-Sgt. Toomey: Enjoy your meal now, you hear?

-Pvt. Jerome: (mocking) Enjoy your meal now, you hear? That´s good. Hominy pigs and black-pea eyeballs. I've got to make you men strong because tonight we´re going to march the entire platoon off of a 3,000 ft cliff. Dying makes a man out of you. I died in the war. They had me cremated. The ashes were buried right here in my head.

-Pvt. Wykowski: You think it´s funny, Jerome?

-Pvt. Jerome: No, I think you´re funny, Wykowski. You forgot to eat the aluminum tray.

Why is it that certain playwrights, such as Neil Simon, for starters, have such a masterful mind for comedy? If not in "Biloxi Blues, take as another example his "Brighton Beach Memoirs", in which the first half of the play/movie is a comedic assault! You may or may not find what you read above as being funny, but Simon´s comedy is, at the very least, clever! On the other hand, comedy these days seems, in many cases, like it comes out of an assembly line. Very little is new, very little is intelligent, and most of all, very little is funny.
They certainly don´t make playwrights like they used to...