Posted on 06/20/2009 10:33:43 PM PDT by tang-soo
Why I Walked Out of ‘Year One’ Crying
by Victoria Jackson
I had a date with Judd Apatow. It was around 1991 and I was between husbands: the out-of-work-Jewish-Gypsy-fire-eater-musician, and the high-school-sweetheart-Baptist-helicopter-police-pilot.
I needed a date to a premiere. I knew the rules of engagement for a Hollywood career, and I tried to follow them. It’s difficult to do this when you carry the burden of ethics around with you, but I tried to do it and stay within the bounds of morality.
1) Go to the right places. I went to the Playboy Mansion to find an agent, and I did. I was 21 and a Baptist virgin, and I found Betty from the William Morris commercial department there. Check.
2) Wear something provocative to a Hollywood premiere so you can get free publicity. I did that. When I was an SNL castmember trying to increase my movie roles, I attended some Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan premiere (go figure - it was a flop!) in a see-through black shirt with a flowered bra underneath. I felt ashamed, but I did get my picture in a few magazines. All press is good press, and press leads to opportunity.
3) Date famous men or up-and-coming smart Jewish comedy writers. I went on a date with Arthur Godfrey right before he died, and ten years later, when I was 30, I asked Judd Apatow to escort me to some Century City event. I was pretty much invisible to him the whole night, but we did get our picture in People Magazine.
That is about it in my list of cliché things I have done to help my career move along.
Well, today I walked out of a Judd Apatow movie crying. It was the scene where the obese homosexual is fortune-telling by looking at the bowels of a sheep that has been sodomized by a person.
The movie was “Year One.” I tried to be open-minded as I watched the first 20 minutes of masturbation, fornication, circumcision jokes, continual penis references, bestiality, violence, and Biblical blasphemy. I told myself this was a PG-13 movie and the writers were “lost” so they didn’t know how vulgar they were being. I looked at the ten-year-old and his father sitting next to me. I must be old-fashioned or something. But, then I noticed no one was laughing. No one was walking out either. I was hoping that the crude jokes were flying over the heads of the poor children who were sitting there wide-eyed and innocent.
My daughter is 15 and she loves Jack Black and the guy from “Juno,” so I thought we could have a Mom/teenager date. I asked myself, “Vicki, is this movie making you feel good?” Myself replied, “This movie is making me angry, very sad, hopeless, and dirty-feeling.” As the onscreen obese gay man poked at the bloody intestines and told the fifth anal sex joke, I looked at my daughter, and we got up and walked out.
I started crying in the parking lot as we walked to our car. I am not from this world. I am an alien. No wonder me and Apatow never hit it off.
Wow ! You never saw it, even on tv ? What was the last film you saw in a theater in ‘56 ? Just curious.
“What was the last film you saw in a theater in ‘56 ? Just curious.”
Couldn’t tell you since it was in a drive in movie and the purpose of going wasn’t to see the movie!
I think maybe the last movie I saw was probably a Disney movie my mother took me to in the early 1940s.
Ah. Well, if you haven’t seen it, you should at least watch “The Ten Commandments.” Good ole epic. I think they still run it yearly at Easter on ABC (for how much longer, I don’t know).
I remember seeing her on Hannity one night. She was about to drive Beckel crazy. LOL.
Hollywood writers produce crap because they have no talent. Couldn’t tell a decent story if their lives depended on it..
I totally agree. And I didn't appreciate the graphic descriptions of homosexual acts when we had taken my youngest son and his girlfriend with us. I'll never watch anything Jack Black does again.
A considerable portion of the comedic entertainment industry players, have not just lost their way, they have lost their minds.
I’ve got a potty mouth. I’ve told and listened to my share of off color jokes. I don’t consider myself to be a prude. Some of the comedy movies out there these days aren’t just offensive, they’re a downright insult to lower life forms, let alone humans.
And this stuff is rated so that 13 year olds can go see it. Oh who am I kidding, any kid of any age can see any movie they like these days. The theaters don’t give a damn. The parents drop the kids off, and the theater owners let them go into any “R” movie they want to see.
And movies like this make it so they don’t have to bother going to see “R” movies to be subjected to filth that is unfit for human consumption.
If this doesn’t poison the minds of those who see it, then their minds were destroy before they bought the ticket.
Victoria Jackson was an important humor element in the years of my extremely awkward adolescence.
Here was a beautiful woman, who was incredibly talented with a gift to make people laugh. At the same time, she still seemed to be a good person. She also had ‘a goofy girl next door’ thing about her. I almost never missed a show, even though she wasn’t the only reason I watched. It was a great cast, top to bottom back in those days. Comedy Legends.
I knew she was a great person throughout. I just had a hunch. I found out later that she was a born-again Christian. This made sense to me.
She was beautiful then and she is still beautiful now and it is nice to hear from her.
I was watching some program on Hollyweird not so long ago and this one guy suggested (somewhat seriously) that bringing back the Hays Code might go a long way in improving the quality of the writing of filmmaking again. I don’t mind off-color stuff, but when it’s a constant litany in the absence of everything else, that’s not good, it just becomes numbing and not funny anymore.
Dennis Miller is another Great American of interest, for sure.
Victoria Jackson always made me laugh and she looked great doing it.
I don’t know what it is about Jack Black, he tries too hard to be funny and falls flat. I don’t think I could name anything of his I’ve found to be particularly amusing or enjoyable. His “TT” character was just grating. I even thought Robert Downey, Jr.’s performance was not as good as made out to be (certainly not groundbreaking) and only had a few sporadic laughs. I couldn’t believe he received an Oscar nomination for it. The film itself sounded like a good idea in theory and perhaps on paper, but the execution left a lot to be desired. Satires are REALLY hard to do (think of a film like Paddy Chayevsky’s “Network”, which is probably one of the best ever done, predicting too well of the decline of network tv from the ‘70s onward).
I was thinking of other so-called comedians today, and although he is a very polarizing figure on FR, with folks either loving or hating him, I rather like Sasha Baron Cohen (Borat), but he just ain’t for the kiddies.
;^D
O2
My 19 year old went the other day.
She came home and said “Dad, save your money.”
Only if you’re a conservative. Do it while espousing some lefty cause about trade or taxes or union labor and you’ll be right as rain.
I am glad to know this. My kids love Jack Black too (as do I) but I won’t take them to a movie that is making a joke about anally raping a sheep for God sake!
I know how Lot felt now.
I agree 100% with Victoria. This garbage is what passes as humor from Hollywood these days, BUT as long as movie-goers keep feeding this particular beast, the vulgarization of American culture will continue.
Dear Victoria,
One look at the poster of Year One told me the comedy would be at the moronic level or lower. This of course made me have little interest in seeing it in the first place but thank you for confirming things. I am only sorry you had to go through the test run so to speak. At least you have now warned a good number of people about it.
Did it run this year? I tried to catch it (it's a "Passover Thing" for me), but never was able to see it... However, it seems that the Easter/Passover/Egypt theme has been updated, because it seems as if "The Mummy" was on TBS every 6 hours. I swear, it was like that channel that runs "A Christmas Story" continually on Christmas.
Mark
Jack Black is DISGUSTING!
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