The farewell for Chuckles the Clown on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and the British send-off in "Death at a Funeral" have one thing in common: pain filtered through comedy.

That's how director Frank Oz sees it.

"I think obviously funerals are painful. I've been to too many myself for family members and friends, and the pain is very great," Oz said in a recent phone call. "We're putting that through a comic filter, so by no means does anybody act that way at normal funerals."

The 1975 television episode called "Chuckles Bites the Dust" has long been considered the best or one of the best in TV history. The WJM gang mourned the clown who had been dressed as Peter Peanut for a circus parade when a rogue elephant tried to shell him.

In "Death at a Funeral," opening Friday at AMC Loews, the Manor and SouthSide Works Cinema, there are mishaps with the coffin, a mysterious guest with a secret, a mourner who accidentally gets his mind blown with designer drugs, a bout of hypochondriacal panic and a case of long-simmering sibling rivalry, for starters.

Screenwriter Dean Craig had been inspired by unexpected and inappropriate events at his grandfather's funeral and decided a service could be rich fodder for a black comedy.

Oz suggests that any place or event where guests are supposed to be serious, such as funerals, weddings, other church services and libraries, is ripe for people not behaving that way. "People need a sense of release, they just can't be dead serious all the time. I mean, in the United Nations, I'm sure they tell some dirty jokes."

		Listen in Frank Oz, director of "Death at a Funeral" talks with Barbara Vancheri about ... On whether the movie could be set in the States. On mining comedy from TV or movie funerals. Working with actors.

The ensemble cast of "Death" includes Matthew Macfadyen and Rupert Graves as brothers whose lives have taken different paths, Peter Dinklage as an unfamiliar mourner at their father's funeral, Daisy Donovan and Alan Tudyk as an engaged couple, and Peter Vaughan as the family's elder statesman who is not very statesmanlike.

Oz, an English-born American, thinks "Death" could never work in the States. "We don't keep secrets. We're very gregarious, the secret would come out in 10 minutes.

"It was written by a Brit and set in England, and I would have had to do it there or in ... Japan or some place where one has to keep a sense of propriety about himself, especially in the upper middle classes. We don't have that class system here. We have a different class system here, we have a money class system."

Playing the outsider is Dinklage, whose roles range from Simon Barsinister in "Underdog" to a man whose dwarfism makes him a social misfit in "The Station Agent."

"Although the part was written for a normal-size person, I always thought he was a terrific character actor. A terrific actor, period. And so I met him in London and didn't read him because I knew his work," said Oz, who asked most of the cast to audition.

"I said, 'I know, Peter, to the audience this is going to be a sex-dwarf joke, for the first 15 minutes. I know it and you know it. But I believe, with the kind of actor you are, people eventually will overlook that and start getting involved with the story,' and I think that's what happens."

Since "Little Shop of Horrors" is the only movie Oz has done "word for word," the 63-year-old director was open to improvisation.

"But you can't improv unless you do it with rigor and with discipline. You can't do it unless you have a terrific script in my opinion, and the writer was always with me when we changed it."

Oz may be open to ad-libbing but he leaves little to chance. He and the production designer checked out coffins of different sizes, styles and makes, and Oz found a way to help Donovan and Tudyk feel like an on-screen couple.

"I felt in the rehearsals they didn't have the opportunity to really be a couple as close as I'd like them to be. I asked them if they wanted to come one weekend to my apartment."

Tudyk, a Texas native who plays an uptight, hard-working British lawyer, showed up in suit, character and accent. "Daisy came over, and Daisy and Alan and I walked along a few blocks to a Starbucks, in character," with Oz, coincidentally playing the boss.

"I asked them questions in order to rile Daisy, to make her more protective of Alan, so the relationship would get stronger." And Tudyk kept the British accent when he placed his order at the coffee shop.

Oz began his career as a puppeteer for Jim Henson, brought Yoda to life in "Star Wars" and directed such movies as "The Muppets Take Manhattan," "What About Bob?" "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," "In & Out" and "The Score."

He says, "It's much more difficult to shoot a movie with puppet characters, so there's kind of a sense of freedom when you can just shoot people." Dead or alive.