The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Too bad Obama can't talk like Ricky Gervais

    By David Seaton on Fri, 01/21/2011 - 12:13pm |

    I wasn't really paying attention, but I read that there was this big hoohah about Ricky Gervais presentation of the 2011 Golden Globe awards, so out of idle curiosity I dialed it up on YouTube. I was ravished.

    It was wonderful. All these fat egos of today's overbloated, more than mediocre Hollywood, sitting there, waiting to be worshiped, and Gervais just flailed them alive. Delicious!  Reality invaded the Winter Palace like the Red Death in Poe's story.

    Everything about it was perfect, beginning with Gervais's working class English accent, just made for taking the mickey out of a troop of jackasses... Wonderfully "inappropriate behavior".  The entire absurdity of  our star worship stripped naked. Perfectly savage!

    When I was a young fellow, I went to school in England and I remember what a revelation it was for me how uncompromising and wildly funny their sense of humor was. Gervais brought it all back and what was best of all for me was the shocked reaction of all these princesses and princes of self-love.

    I couldn't help thinking how great it would be if Obama could talk like that to the Republicans and the Tea Party.  Perhaps that would be the only way to restore sanity to the Republic. Jon Stewart is much too tame.

    Cross posted from: http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com

    Comments

    Actually, at times, you kind of remind me of him. hahahahahaah


    by Richard Day on Fri, 01/21/2011 - 2:47pm

    Thank you Dickster.


    by David Seaton on Fri, 01/21/2011 - 3:01pm

    Or maybe this RIcky ?

    "Luthy ? Ethal ? Sombody's got some 'spainin todo"


    by cmaukonen on Fri, 01/21/2011 - 5:00pm

    Wow, I got curious and watched this footage. I have to say that even if everything Gervais said was true, even if every slam was common knowledge and had been done a thousand times before, this was a dismal failure as comedy.

    It just wasn't funny. Basically several things have to come together in the room in order for your stuff to be funny. (And btw I love British comedy.)

    Some people in the room have to think you're hilarious. It helps if they're well-liked by other people in the room.

    Any other time I've seen Gervais (except for a short bit of "Out of England" which I had to turn off because I was cringing for Gervais and his audience), his humor has been driven by surprise, a kind of innocent delight at having discovered and blurted out a joke. Then he shared an ordinary guy moment with the audience, which was fun.

    If it's a joke on people in the room, or people lower on the "ladder" than the joke-teller, the joke-teller has to find a way to humanize the joke in order for it to be funny. Gervais totally failed to do this, just droned on telling the harsh truth about everybody who had the misfortune to cross his path. God, he could have just put it in a letter and read it at the beginning just to get the thing over with.

    Watching this footage makes me wonder if something has happened to Ricky Gervais. Maybe losing weight took away his comic juju by putting him higher on the "ladder," or he's having serious problems of his own. I just don't think somebody at his level of talent would make a conscious decision to self-immolate like that in front of an audience of his peers.

    Who knows, maybe it was a conscious decision, designed to create some bad publicity which he could later turn into good publicity, but somehow I don't think so.

    Again, this has nothing to do with whether what Gervais said was true, only with whether it was funny, and I think he really failed to make it funny. JMHO


    by erica20 on Sat, 01/22/2011 - 4:57pm

    I found it screamingly funny and enormously provocative, but maybe that is because I once worked in the movie business for several years and have experienced the atmosphere of intensely supine tuchas licking and mutual self-adoration that is the default industry norm. So I know how shocked the audience really was. Gervais went through these people like a dose of salts. Much more of this is needed. I think Gervais should be on the air at least once a week to comment on the news... Stewart is tame stuff by comparison. JMHO


    by David Seaton on Sun, 01/23/2011 - 7:51am

    Laugh-out-loud hilarious, imo. Thanks for that.


    by Obey on Sun, 01/23/2011 - 9:54am

    "Let me introduce Ashton Kutcher's Dad, Bruce Willis!"

    I hadn't seen any of this. It's hilarious! Reminds me of the time when Charlie Rich - at the podium - dug out his cigarette lighter and set fire to the envelope rather than present the Country Music Association's "Entertainer of the Year" Award to John Denver.


    by SleepinJeezus on Sun, 01/23/2011 - 2:11pm