Director Todd Phillips just made a leap from making comedies like “Old School” “Due Date” and “The Hangover” trilogy to helming one of the darkest and disturbing films of the year, “Joker.”
On the press tour promoting his latest film, Phillips opened up about doing comedies and effectively saying it’s impossible to make them nowadays because of this new “woke culture,” which many people criticized him for his comments.
And comedian Marc Maron insightfully blasted Phillips for his uneducated comments about doing comedy.
“Cancel culture” has been a nationwide topic of discussion over the last several months. The expression is based largely around people of high American status, usually celebrities, who have been “cancelled” due to some skeletons they have in their closet – whether it be something they did or said.
Dave Chappelle and Bill Burr were at the forefront over the last month criticizing how overly sensitive some people are, these “woke” people who virtue signal, with their latest Netflix specials.
These new “woke” people are pretenders of being victimized and therefore; they hate their lives so much, they need to project their own insecurities on someone else. As Aaron Rodgers famously said “R-E-L-A-X.”
But “Joker” director Todd Phillips doesn’t want to do comedies anymore because he feels you can’t get away with things nowadays like you could in the past.
Phillips said in a Vanity Fair interview, “Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture. These articles written about why comedies don’t work anymore – I’ll tell you why, because all the f—king funny guys are like, ‘f—k this sh-t, because I don’t want to offend you.’”
Nope. Not true. Chappelle and Burr just did it.
And comedian Marc Maron noted that. It’s important to note Maron had a small role in “Joker” too.
He explained, “There’s plenty of people being funny right now. Not only being funny but being really f—king funny. There are still lines to be rode. If you like to ride a line, you can still ride a line. If you want to take chances, you can still take chances. Really, the only thing that’s off the table, culturally, at this juncture – and not even entirely – is shamelessly punching down for the sheer joy of hurting people. For the sheer excitement and laughter that some people get from causing people pain, from making people uncomfortable, from making people feel excluded. Y’know, that excitement.”
Maron also added, “As I’ve said before, it’s no excuse. If you’re too intimidated to try to do comedy that is deep or provocative, or even a little controversial, without hurting people, then you’re not good at what you do. Or maybe you’re just insensitive.”
Comedy is so subjective, of course, but really, no matter what kind of comedy it is; whether it’s raunchy, vindictive, slapstick or broad, there’s an audience for it. Remember that comedian, Gallagher, who used to smash watermelons with a sledgehammer? How about that goofy redheaded props comedian Carrot Top?
But more to the point, think about your favorite comedies of all time?
How many of them relied on being offensive in order to make the audience laugh?
Here’s a list:
“Dumb and Dumber”
“The Big Lebowski”
“Young Frankenstein”
“Airplane!”
“Monty Python and the Holy Grail”
“Anchorman”
“Ghostbusters”
“Groundhog Day”
“Step Brothers”
“Office Space”
“Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”
“The Blues Brothers”
How many of these comedies are “offensive?”
The greats don’t need a line like “paging Dr. f-ggot!” like what is said in “The Hangover” to be funny. The greats don’t need to rely on shock humor to be successful.