Lily Salter's Blog, page 976

David Spade: This is why Eddie Murphy hated me, wouldn’t come back to “Saturday Night Live”

My infamous run-in with Eddie Murphy has been discussed and repeated so many times over the years, by so many people, that I’m sort of done with it. But I feel like I should put it down in print one final time, to sort of put the bow on it and move on. That way, when the aliens come looking for some mildly amusing anecdotes to take back to their planet when they blow ours to smithereens, this one will be primed and ready to go. When I finally came up with my Hollywood Minute sketch, as previously recounted in great (and probably excruciatingly boring) detail, it was a huge relief to me. I needed something to stick. Things were so dire for me then that whenever I saw Adam Sandler in his office tuning his guitar I’d just crumple up whatever I was writing, go out for pizza, and stick a gun in my mouth between bites. Because he always killed. The first joke I used on Hollywood Minute went along with a photo of Michael Bolton. The line went “Hey, Michael Bolton, your hair is really long in the back, but guess what? We all know what’s happening on top. It’s called Rogaine, look into it.” Then came “I know you’ve sold eight million albums but guess what? I don’t know anyone that has one!” Laughs all around. I did “the min” (gross term for it that I never actually called it) again two weeks later, and then as often as I could despite everyone probably rolling their eyes whenever I brought it to the table. The bit was working and now the cast and other writers were baiting me, daring me to go after certain people. Jim Downey was notorious for egging me on, and I was easily swayed by him because he was my boss, he is a great writer, and I was desperate to impress him in any way I could. Plus I needed attention. (Barf.) As time went on, I hit some peeps pretty hard, but I only did so if I felt they deserved it. It’s a fine line between clever and just mean. I did cross it a few times, but I went for laughs. Some of my favorite jokes back then were ripping on Downtown Julie Brown after she had left MTV (Wubba wubba wubba, my career’s in trubba trubba trubba), and M. C. Hammer (Do do do doot do doot do dooot, it’s over). I went for Jim Carrey once, and I can say it was too soon—people loved him too much. I loved him, too, frankly, but this was a case of writers egging me on, daring me to go after him. I did the joke at dress rehearsal, but I got so many hisses that I pulled it. I liked it though: “Jim Carrey was hospitalized this week on the set of his movie after mixing over-the-top pills with play-it-too-big juice. It can be a deadly combo. He’s fine now and quietly overacting at home.” A lot of the time I was going after friends, friends who happened to be in the news, so it felt like an omission if I skipped the story. But in the case of Jim Carrey, I’m glad that joke didn’t make it to air. Now we come to the infamous Eddie Murphy Hollywood Minute. Here’s the story, as I remember it. After this I swear I am never talking about this again. (Of course I will.) One week I was writing my dopey Hollywood Minute, my bread and butter and basically the only thing keeping me from going back out on the road doing shows at the Gut Busters in Omaha or working in the skateboard shop. I was sort of addicted to doing them because it was the only thing keeping me in front of the camera. So I’m sitting in my dumpy office and I realized that Eddie Murphy had put out two back-to-back flops. (By the way, there couldn’t be a harsher word to hit your ear when you’re an actor than flop. It’s brutal. Short, harsh, and to the point. The past tense is even worse, as in “I heard your movie FUCKING FLOPPED!” So awful, and I should know. I’ve heard it a lot. That and bombed. But I hate flop more.) I think the two films were Harlem Nights and Vampire in Brooklyn. So, I casually write a joke about Eddie Murphy for my piece that week. You know the line. “Look, kids, a falling star! Quick, make a wish . . .” The burn skims by on air, gets sort of a laugh mixed with an, “Ooo no you di‑int” response, and I think nothing of it. Especially because it’s buried in the middle of ten or twelve of these rapid-fire sizzles that come and go quickly. So, on the following Monday at around 5 p.m. I was sitting in the writers’ room reading the paper and waiting for the meeting with that week’s host when an NBC page came into the room. He looked at me a little oddly and said, “Eddie Murphy is on the phone for you.” My heart stopped. WTF? “Um, seriously?” I squeaked. “Yes, line two.” “Ummmmmmmmm. I’m not here, take a message.” She walked away. I could tell she was a bit starstruck (by him, not me) and curious as to why Eddie was calling me. Also curious as to why I wasn’t sprinting to the phone. Meanwhile, I was quietly shitting diarrhea into my Dockers, out the window, and down Sixth Avenue, thinking, Holy shit! Why is this famous motherfucker calling me? My spider senses are tingling. He has to be pissed! What do I say? I just did that joke about him. That has to be it! In other words I was freaking the fuck out. I didn’t know if I should call him back, or act like I didn’t know he had called, or hide under Lorne’s desk till this crazy storm blew over or what . . . I was starting to have an actual, official panic attack when . . . RIIIIINNNGGGGGGG!! The phone seven feet from me in the writers’ room started ringing. One of the assistants picked it up. “Writers’ room . . . hang on . . . David, it’s Eddie Murphy.” “Can’t find me,” I said casually, staring a hole through People magazine, pretending to read it, frozen in total, unmitigated fear. By now my heartbeat had picked up the pace a bit. She hung up. I broke out of my trance and realized I needed to enlist Chris Rock. He covers all bases. He’s my black friend, so any black-related problems go across his desk. He gets cc’d on everything. And he’s Eddie’s buddy, too, so he knows what I’m dealing with. He will have special insight, like when a movie brings in a real forensic criminologist to be a consultant. Rock knows what makes this guy tick. He could solve this. But before I could even get up to find Rock, I had a new problem. RIIIIINNNGGGGGGG!! HE’S CALLING AGAIN! WHAT. THE. FUCK. “Eddie Murphy again . . .” the page said. “I’m in a meeting,” I lied. “He says he knows you’re not in a meeting, because it’s five forty-five p.m. and the Monday host meeting is at six and it’s never on time. He says call him back right now, or he’s driving in from Brooklyn to talk to you in person.” I was staring at this page in disbelief. Why on God’s green earth was this superstar blowing me up three times in a row?? Didn’t he have money to count or chicks to bang? (One day, twenty years later, someone had this very thought about me! Success!) Chris Rock then walked in and said, “You better call him; you don’t want him coming down here. Don’t forget, he’s still a black guy.” No shit. I don’t want this guy coming to have a talk with me. Even if he’s famous. He scares me. I have no choice. So I take his number and asked Chris to get on the other phone to listen in and protect me. I dialed . . . My heart was pounding. I didn’t want to do this, especially since I had zero game plan. “Hello?” A woman’s voice answered! My heart leapt! Perhaps I had dialed the wrong number. “Um, is Eddie there? It’s . . . David Spade.” I’m sure my voice cracked like Peter Brady in that Brady Bunch episode where he goes through pubie. “Hang on,” she said. Then, muffled, “It’s him.” Stomach in knots, I heard, “Hello.” “Hey, Eddie, it’s Spade.” (Dramatic pause. If this was a Lifetime movie we would definitely fade to commercial at this point.) Now here comes Eddie . . . “David Spade, who the fuck do you think you are?!! Honestly? Who. The. Fuck. Going after ME?? You dumb motherfucker! I’m off-limits, don’t you know that? You wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t for me. Talking shit about me??” Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera . . . on and on and on and making me feel like shit. I barely spoke. I just stared at Rock in disbelief. It was so much worse than I had imagined. I wanted to apologize, explain the joke, anything, but nothing came out. Here was one of my favorite comedians of all time ripping me a new asshole. I had worshipped this dude for years, knew every line of his stand-up. And now he hated me. Like, really really hated me. The opposite of Sally Field. It was horrible. I didn’t hate him. Of course not. He just got caught in friendly fire and my deep desire to make an impression on my bosses and keep my job. How pathetic. I took my beating and then he hung up. Rock felt bad for me. He was caught in the middle. Old friend of Eddie’s, new friend of mine. I said, “Rock, Eddie makes fun of Mr. T getting AIDS and a million other people in his HBO special. This joke was barely a flesh wound; it won’t hurt him. WTF is he freaking out about? I’m nobody!” Rock tried to make me feel better but there was nothing he could do. He split back to his office. I kept thinking it wasn’t fair. But the truth was that when you are famous, you never want someone on a supposedly cool show to say you’re not cool. Even if the person saying it is a nobody like me. Fame is so fragile and fleeting, and it can disappear for a million reasons. A jab like the one I had directed at Eddie can be the thing that starts to turn public opinion against someone. I try not to think of the casualties when I do rough jokes, but there are consequences sometimes. I know for a fact that I can’t take it when it comes my way. It’s horrible for all the same reasons. I’ve come to see Eddie’s point on this one. Everybody in showbiz wants people to like them. That’s how you get fans. But when you get reamed in a sketch or online or however, that shit staaaangs. And it can add up quickly. Then before you know it you’re a punch line—just look at Vanilla Ice and five hundred million others. Eddie was mad. No one had dared go after him. And he wanted it to stop there. After that incident I had some close encounters with Mr. Murphy. Once was at the opening of the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, when a bunch of celebs got invited to see a private Rolling Stones concert. (What a douche thing for me to mention in my book.) I brought one of my idiot buddies from high school. This was a fucking star-studded event. Brad Pitt to my right, Depp and DiCaprio at noon and six. There couldn’t have been more celebs there and we were packed in like stardines. (Lolololololol, stardines, not sardines. Stay close.) I was having the time of my life when for some reason I glanced back to the row behind me. I think it was just to let those people know that I knew all the words to “Gimme Shelter.” When who do I see down the row but Edward Murphy and Chris Rock? Oh fuck. My kryptonite was in the house. Suddenly . . . feeling . . . weak . . . I didn’t want to get beat up in front of the Stones. It was going to be Altamont all over again. So I snuck another glance and saw Rock mouth to me, “I can’t talk to you. I’m with Eddie.” I understood. That Rock was a chickenshit. I’m kidding. I was never mad at Rock because he was always half kidding, but I was freaking out enough that Brad noticed. He asked what was going on, so I filled him in with the short version. “I’ll protect you,” he said. Like I’m a chick. Which I am. Sort of. So I laughed quietly and hoped he was serious. Whenever I’d see Rock after that, for years, he’d say “Saw Eddie last week. He still hates you.” It sort of impressed me that it still bugged him. In a recent Rolling Stone cover story, Eddie Murphy was asked about this infamous incident. I was told he said he was mad at everyone about this, not just me. He was mad that Lorne would let that joke through to air. He was mad that the show turned on him, and that’s why he has never hosted after that or done the reunion shows. (After that article came out he briefly appeared at the fortieth.) He says he’s over this now. I hope that’s true. About a month after that cover story, I was crossing the street in Beverly Hills and I saw a Mercedes Gullwing (a supernice car) parked in front of Coffee Bean. A black guy walked out with a hot blond chick on his arm and got in the car. Like the jerk I am I thought, I wonder who that guy plays for? Then as he started to pull out of the parking lot and I got to the other side of the street, I realized it was Ed Murphy. My old-school fear came crashing back. Should I say something? We hadn’t spoken in almost twenty years at this point. Before I knew it, Murphy had spotted me through the windshield. Maybe he thought I was Miley Cyrus. Either way, for some reason I gave a half wave and quick nod. It was my equivalent of the white flag. This can be a risky move if it goes unreciprocated. Then I heard the sound of a window going down. Once again, I was paralyzed by doubt. Do I look? I looked. He stopped in the middle of the street and I walked over. Through the open passenger window he said, “Hey, Spade, how are you doing?” I reached in and shook his hand. I said, “Hey, Eddie. Glad we’re good.” “Take it easy,” he said, and drove away with a girl young enough to be . . . well, my date. (She was superhot.) My Watergate with Eddie Murphy was over. My burden was lifted. After all those years, that stupid joke can just be that, a stupid joke. And I can go back to appreciating what a funny motherfucker he is. From the forthcoming "ALMOST INTERESTING: The Memoir" by David Spade. Copyright © 2015 by David Spade. To be published on October 27, 2015 by Dey Street Books, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.My infamous run-in with Eddie Murphy has been discussed and repeated so many times over the years, by so many people, that I’m sort of done with it. But I feel like I should put it down in print one final time, to sort of put the bow on it and move on. That way, when the aliens come looking for some mildly amusing anecdotes to take back to their planet when they blow ours to smithereens, this one will be primed and ready to go. When I finally came up with my Hollywood Minute sketch, as previously recounted in great (and probably excruciatingly boring) detail, it was a huge relief to me. I needed something to stick. Things were so dire for me then that whenever I saw Adam Sandler in his office tuning his guitar I’d just crumple up whatever I was writing, go out for pizza, and stick a gun in my mouth between bites. Because he always killed. The first joke I used on Hollywood Minute went along with a photo of Michael Bolton. The line went “Hey, Michael Bolton, your hair is really long in the back, but guess what? We all know what’s happening on top. It’s called Rogaine, look into it.” Then came “I know you’ve sold eight million albums but guess what? I don’t know anyone that has one!” Laughs all around. I did “the min” (gross term for it that I never actually called it) again two weeks later, and then as often as I could despite everyone probably rolling their eyes whenever I brought it to the table. The bit was working and now the cast and other writers were baiting me, daring me to go after certain people. Jim Downey was notorious for egging me on, and I was easily swayed by him because he was my boss, he is a great writer, and I was desperate to impress him in any way I could. Plus I needed attention. (Barf.) As time went on, I hit some peeps pretty hard, but I only did so if I felt they deserved it. It’s a fine line between clever and just mean. I did cross it a few times, but I went for laughs. Some of my favorite jokes back then were ripping on Downtown Julie Brown after she had left MTV (Wubba wubba wubba, my career’s in trubba trubba trubba), and M. C. Hammer (Do do do doot do doot do dooot, it’s over). I went for Jim Carrey once, and I can say it was too soon—people loved him too much. I loved him, too, frankly, but this was a case of writers egging me on, daring me to go after him. I did the joke at dress rehearsal, but I got so many hisses that I pulled it. I liked it though: “Jim Carrey was hospitalized this week on the set of his movie after mixing over-the-top pills with play-it-too-big juice. It can be a deadly combo. He’s fine now and quietly overacting at home.” A lot of the time I was going after friends, friends who happened to be in the news, so it felt like an omission if I skipped the story. But in the case of Jim Carrey, I’m glad that joke didn’t make it to air. Now we come to the infamous Eddie Murphy Hollywood Minute. Here’s the story, as I remember it. After this I swear I am never talking about this again. (Of course I will.) One week I was writing my dopey Hollywood Minute, my bread and butter and basically the only thing keeping me from going back out on the road doing shows at the Gut Busters in Omaha or working in the skateboard shop. I was sort of addicted to doing them because it was the only thing keeping me in front of the camera. So I’m sitting in my dumpy office and I realized that Eddie Murphy had put out two back-to-back flops. (By the way, there couldn’t be a harsher word to hit your ear when you’re an actor than flop. It’s brutal. Short, harsh, and to the point. The past tense is even worse, as in “I heard your movie FUCKING FLOPPED!” So awful, and I should know. I’ve heard it a lot. That and bombed. But I hate flop more.) I think the two films were Harlem Nights and Vampire in Brooklyn. So, I casually write a joke about Eddie Murphy for my piece that week. You know the line. “Look, kids, a falling star! Quick, make a wish . . .” The burn skims by on air, gets sort of a laugh mixed with an, “Ooo no you di‑int” response, and I think nothing of it. Especially because it’s buried in the middle of ten or twelve of these rapid-fire sizzles that come and go quickly. So, on the following Monday at around 5 p.m. I was sitting in the writers’ room reading the paper and waiting for the meeting with that week’s host when an NBC page came into the room. He looked at me a little oddly and said, “Eddie Murphy is on the phone for you.” My heart stopped. WTF? “Um, seriously?” I squeaked. “Yes, line two.” “Ummmmmmmmm. I’m not here, take a message.” She walked away. I could tell she was a bit starstruck (by him, not me) and curious as to why Eddie was calling me. Also curious as to why I wasn’t sprinting to the phone. Meanwhile, I was quietly shitting diarrhea into my Dockers, out the window, and down Sixth Avenue, thinking, Holy shit! Why is this famous motherfucker calling me? My spider senses are tingling. He has to be pissed! What do I say? I just did that joke about him. That has to be it! In other words I was freaking the fuck out. I didn’t know if I should call him back, or act like I didn’t know he had called, or hide under Lorne’s desk till this crazy storm blew over or what . . . I was starting to have an actual, official panic attack when . . . RIIIIINNNGGGGGGG!! The phone seven feet from me in the writers’ room started ringing. One of the assistants picked it up. “Writers’ room . . . hang on . . . David, it’s Eddie Murphy.” “Can’t find me,” I said casually, staring a hole through People magazine, pretending to read it, frozen in total, unmitigated fear. By now my heartbeat had picked up the pace a bit. She hung up. I broke out of my trance and realized I needed to enlist Chris Rock. He covers all bases. He’s my black friend, so any black-related problems go across his desk. He gets cc’d on everything. And he’s Eddie’s buddy, too, so he knows what I’m dealing with. He will have special insight, like when a movie brings in a real forensic criminologist to be a consultant. Rock knows what makes this guy tick. He could solve this. But before I could even get up to find Rock, I had a new problem. RIIIIINNNGGGGGGG!! HE’S CALLING AGAIN! WHAT. THE. FUCK. “Eddie Murphy again . . .” the page said. “I’m in a meeting,” I lied. “He says he knows you’re not in a meeting, because it’s five forty-five p.m. and the Monday host meeting is at six and it’s never on time. He says call him back right now, or he’s driving in from Brooklyn to talk to you in person.” I was staring at this page in disbelief. Why on God’s green earth was this superstar blowing me up three times in a row?? Didn’t he have money to count or chicks to bang? (One day, twenty years later, someone had this very thought about me! Success!) Chris Rock then walked in and said, “You better call him; you don’t want him coming down here. Don’t forget, he’s still a black guy.” No shit. I don’t want this guy coming to have a talk with me. Even if he’s famous. He scares me. I have no choice. So I take his number and asked Chris to get on the other phone to listen in and protect me. I dialed . . . My heart was pounding. I didn’t want to do this, especially since I had zero game plan. “Hello?” A woman’s voice answered! My heart leapt! Perhaps I had dialed the wrong number. “Um, is Eddie there? It’s . . . David Spade.” I’m sure my voice cracked like Peter Brady in that Brady Bunch episode where he goes through pubie. “Hang on,” she said. Then, muffled, “It’s him.” Stomach in knots, I heard, “Hello.” “Hey, Eddie, it’s Spade.” (Dramatic pause. If this was a Lifetime movie we would definitely fade to commercial at this point.) Now here comes Eddie . . . “David Spade, who the fuck do you think you are?!! Honestly? Who. The. Fuck. Going after ME?? You dumb motherfucker! I’m off-limits, don’t you know that? You wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t for me. Talking shit about me??” Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera . . . on and on and on and making me feel like shit. I barely spoke. I just stared at Rock in disbelief. It was so much worse than I had imagined. I wanted to apologize, explain the joke, anything, but nothing came out. Here was one of my favorite comedians of all time ripping me a new asshole. I had worshipped this dude for years, knew every line of his stand-up. And now he hated me. Like, really really hated me. The opposite of Sally Field. It was horrible. I didn’t hate him. Of course not. He just got caught in friendly fire and my deep desire to make an impression on my bosses and keep my job. How pathetic. I took my beating and then he hung up. Rock felt bad for me. He was caught in the middle. Old friend of Eddie’s, new friend of mine. I said, “Rock, Eddie makes fun of Mr. T getting AIDS and a million other people in his HBO special. This joke was barely a flesh wound; it won’t hurt him. WTF is he freaking out about? I’m nobody!” Rock tried to make me feel better but there was nothing he could do. He split back to his office. I kept thinking it wasn’t fair. But the truth was that when you are famous, you never want someone on a supposedly cool show to say you’re not cool. Even if the person saying it is a nobody like me. Fame is so fragile and fleeting, and it can disappear for a million reasons. A jab like the one I had directed at Eddie can be the thing that starts to turn public opinion against someone. I try not to think of the casualties when I do rough jokes, but there are consequences sometimes. I know for a fact that I can’t take it when it comes my way. It’s horrible for all the same reasons. I’ve come to see Eddie’s point on this one. Everybody in showbiz wants people to like them. That’s how you get fans. But when you get reamed in a sketch or online or however, that shit staaaangs. And it can add up quickly. Then before you know it you’re a punch line—just look at Vanilla Ice and five hundred million others. Eddie was mad. No one had dared go after him. And he wanted it to stop there. After that incident I had some close encounters with Mr. Murphy. Once was at the opening of the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, when a bunch of celebs got invited to see a private Rolling Stones concert. (What a douche thing for me to mention in my book.) I brought one of my idiot buddies from high school. This was a fucking star-studded event. Brad Pitt to my right, Depp and DiCaprio at noon and six. There couldn’t have been more celebs there and we were packed in like stardines. (Lolololololol, stardines, not sardines. Stay close.) I was having the time of my life when for some reason I glanced back to the row behind me. I think it was just to let those people know that I knew all the words to “Gimme Shelter.” When who do I see down the row but Edward Murphy and Chris Rock? Oh fuck. My kryptonite was in the house. Suddenly . . . feeling . . . weak . . . I didn’t want to get beat up in front of the Stones. It was going to be Altamont all over again. So I snuck another glance and saw Rock mouth to me, “I can’t talk to you. I’m with Eddie.” I understood. That Rock was a chickenshit. I’m kidding. I was never mad at Rock because he was always half kidding, but I was freaking out enough that Brad noticed. He asked what was going on, so I filled him in with the short version. “I’ll protect you,” he said. Like I’m a chick. Which I am. Sort of. So I laughed quietly and hoped he was serious. Whenever I’d see Rock after that, for years, he’d say “Saw Eddie last week. He still hates you.” It sort of impressed me that it still bugged him. In a recent Rolling Stone cover story, Eddie Murphy was asked about this infamous incident. I was told he said he was mad at everyone about this, not just me. He was mad that Lorne would let that joke through to air. He was mad that the show turned on him, and that’s why he has never hosted after that or done the reunion shows. (After that article came out he briefly appeared at the fortieth.) He says he’s over this now. I hope that’s true. About a month after that cover story, I was crossing the street in Beverly Hills and I saw a Mercedes Gullwing (a supernice car) parked in front of Coffee Bean. A black guy walked out with a hot blond chick on his arm and got in the car. Like the jerk I am I thought, I wonder who that guy plays for? Then as he started to pull out of the parking lot and I got to the other side of the street, I realized it was Ed Murphy. My old-school fear came crashing back. Should I say something? We hadn’t spoken in almost twenty years at this point. Before I knew it, Murphy had spotted me through the windshield. Maybe he thought I was Miley Cyrus. Either way, for some reason I gave a half wave and quick nod. It was my equivalent of the white flag. This can be a risky move if it goes unreciprocated. Then I heard the sound of a window going down. Once again, I was paralyzed by doubt. Do I look? I looked. He stopped in the middle of the street and I walked over. Through the open passenger window he said, “Hey, Spade, how are you doing?” I reached in and shook his hand. I said, “Hey, Eddie. Glad we’re good.” “Take it easy,” he said, and drove away with a girl young enough to be . . . well, my date. (She was superhot.) My Watergate with Eddie Murphy was over. My burden was lifted. After all those years, that stupid joke can just be that, a stupid joke. And I can go back to appreciating what a funny motherfucker he is. From the forthcoming "ALMOST INTERESTING: The Memoir" by David Spade. Copyright © 2015 by David Spade. To be published on October 27, 2015 by Dey Street Books, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.My infamous run-in with Eddie Murphy has been discussed and repeated so many times over the years, by so many people, that I’m sort of done with it. But I feel like I should put it down in print one final time, to sort of put the bow on it and move on. That way, when the aliens come looking for some mildly amusing anecdotes to take back to their planet when they blow ours to smithereens, this one will be primed and ready to go. When I finally came up with my Hollywood Minute sketch, as previously recounted in great (and probably excruciatingly boring) detail, it was a huge relief to me. I needed something to stick. Things were so dire for me then that whenever I saw Adam Sandler in his office tuning his guitar I’d just crumple up whatever I was writing, go out for pizza, and stick a gun in my mouth between bites. Because he always killed. The first joke I used on Hollywood Minute went along with a photo of Michael Bolton. The line went “Hey, Michael Bolton, your hair is really long in the back, but guess what? We all know what’s happening on top. It’s called Rogaine, look into it.” Then came “I know you’ve sold eight million albums but guess what? I don’t know anyone that has one!” Laughs all around. I did “the min” (gross term for it that I never actually called it) again two weeks later, and then as often as I could despite everyone probably rolling their eyes whenever I brought it to the table. The bit was working and now the cast and other writers were baiting me, daring me to go after certain people. Jim Downey was notorious for egging me on, and I was easily swayed by him because he was my boss, he is a great writer, and I was desperate to impress him in any way I could. Plus I needed attention. (Barf.) As time went on, I hit some peeps pretty hard, but I only did so if I felt they deserved it. It’s a fine line between clever and just mean. I did cross it a few times, but I went for laughs. Some of my favorite jokes back then were ripping on Downtown Julie Brown after she had left MTV (Wubba wubba wubba, my career’s in trubba trubba trubba), and M. C. Hammer (Do do do doot do doot do dooot, it’s over). I went for Jim Carrey once, and I can say it was too soon—people loved him too much. I loved him, too, frankly, but this was a case of writers egging me on, daring me to go after him. I did the joke at dress rehearsal, but I got so many hisses that I pulled it. I liked it though: “Jim Carrey was hospitalized this week on the set of his movie after mixing over-the-top pills with play-it-too-big juice. It can be a deadly combo. He’s fine now and quietly overacting at home.” A lot of the time I was going after friends, friends who happened to be in the news, so it felt like an omission if I skipped the story. But in the case of Jim Carrey, I’m glad that joke didn’t make it to air. Now we come to the infamous Eddie Murphy Hollywood Minute. Here’s the story, as I remember it. After this I swear I am never talking about this again. (Of course I will.) One week I was writing my dopey Hollywood Minute, my bread and butter and basically the only thing keeping me from going back out on the road doing shows at the Gut Busters in Omaha or working in the skateboard shop. I was sort of addicted to doing them because it was the only thing keeping me in front of the camera. So I’m sitting in my dumpy office and I realized that Eddie Murphy had put out two back-to-back flops. (By the way, there couldn’t be a harsher word to hit your ear when you’re an actor than flop. It’s brutal. Short, harsh, and to the point. The past tense is even worse, as in “I heard your movie FUCKING FLOPPED!” So awful, and I should know. I’ve heard it a lot. That and bombed. But I hate flop more.) I think the two films were Harlem Nights and Vampire in Brooklyn. So, I casually write a joke about Eddie Murphy for my piece that week. You know the line. “Look, kids, a falling star! Quick, make a wish . . .” The burn skims by on air, gets sort of a laugh mixed with an, “Ooo no you di‑int” response, and I think nothing of it. Especially because it’s buried in the middle of ten or twelve of these rapid-fire sizzles that come and go quickly. So, on the following Monday at around 5 p.m. I was sitting in the writers’ room reading the paper and waiting for the meeting with that week’s host when an NBC page came into the room. He looked at me a little oddly and said, “Eddie Murphy is on the phone for you.” My heart stopped. WTF? “Um, seriously?” I squeaked. “Yes, line two.” “Ummmmmmmmm. I’m not here, take a message.” She walked away. I could tell she was a bit starstruck (by him, not me) and curious as to why Eddie was calling me. Also curious as to why I wasn’t sprinting to the phone. Meanwhile, I was quietly shitting diarrhea into my Dockers, out the window, and down Sixth Avenue, thinking, Holy shit! Why is this famous motherfucker calling me? My spider senses are tingling. He has to be pissed! What do I say? I just did that joke about him. That has to be it! In other words I was freaking the fuck out. I didn’t know if I should call him back, or act like I didn’t know he had called, or hide under Lorne’s desk till this crazy storm blew over or what . . . I was starting to have an actual, official panic attack when . . . RIIIIINNNGGGGGGG!! The phone seven feet from me in the writers’ room started ringing. One of the assistants picked it up. “Writers’ room . . . hang on . . . David, it’s Eddie Murphy.” “Can’t find me,” I said casually, staring a hole through People magazine, pretending to read it, frozen in total, unmitigated fear. By now my heartbeat had picked up the pace a bit. She hung up. I broke out of my trance and realized I needed to enlist Chris Rock. He covers all bases. He’s my black friend, so any black-related problems go across his desk. He gets cc’d on everything. And he’s Eddie’s buddy, too, so he knows what I’m dealing with. He will have special insight, like when a movie brings in a real forensic criminologist to be a consultant. Rock knows what makes this guy tick. He could solve this. But before I could even get up to find Rock, I had a new problem. RIIIIINNNGGGGGGG!! HE’S CALLING AGAIN! WHAT. THE. FUCK. “Eddie Murphy again . . .” the page said. “I’m in a meeting,” I lied. “He says he knows you’re not in a meeting, because it’s five forty-five p.m. and the Monday host meeting is at six and it’s never on time. He says call him back right now, or he’s driving in from Brooklyn to talk to you in person.” I was staring at this page in disbelief. Why on God’s green earth was this superstar blowing me up three times in a row?? Didn’t he have money to count or chicks to bang? (One day, twenty years later, someone had this very thought about me! Success!) Chris Rock then walked in and said, “You better call him; you don’t want him coming down here. Don’t forget, he’s still a black guy.” No shit. I don’t want this guy coming to have a talk with me. Even if he’s famous. He scares me. I have no choice. So I take his number and asked Chris to get on the other phone to listen in and protect me. I dialed . . . My heart was pounding. I didn’t want to do this, especially since I had zero game plan. “Hello?” A woman’s voice answered! My heart leapt! Perhaps I had dialed the wrong number. “Um, is Eddie there? It’s . . . David Spade.” I’m sure my voice cracked like Peter Brady in that Brady Bunch episode where he goes through pubie. “Hang on,” she said. Then, muffled, “It’s him.” Stomach in knots, I heard, “Hello.” “Hey, Eddie, it’s Spade.” (Dramatic pause. If this was a Lifetime movie we would definitely fade to commercial at this point.) Now here comes Eddie . . . “David Spade, who the fuck do you think you are?!! Honestly? Who. The. Fuck. Going after ME?? You dumb motherfucker! I’m off-limits, don’t you know that? You wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t for me. Talking shit about me??” Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera . . . on and on and on and making me feel like shit. I barely spoke. I just stared at Rock in disbelief. It was so much worse than I had imagined. I wanted to apologize, explain the joke, anything, but nothing came out. Here was one of my favorite comedians of all time ripping me a new asshole. I had worshipped this dude for years, knew every line of his stand-up. And now he hated me. Like, really really hated me. The opposite of Sally Field. It was horrible. I didn’t hate him. Of course not. He just got caught in friendly fire and my deep desire to make an impression on my bosses and keep my job. How pathetic. I took my beating and then he hung up. Rock felt bad for me. He was caught in the middle. Old friend of Eddie’s, new friend of mine. I said, “Rock, Eddie makes fun of Mr. T getting AIDS and a million other people in his HBO special. This joke was barely a flesh wound; it won’t hurt him. WTF is he freaking out about? I’m nobody!” Rock tried to make me feel better but there was nothing he could do. He split back to his office. I kept thinking it wasn’t fair. But the truth was that when you are famous, you never want someone on a supposedly cool show to say you’re not cool. Even if the person saying it is a nobody like me. Fame is so fragile and fleeting, and it can disappear for a million reasons. A jab like the one I had directed at Eddie can be the thing that starts to turn public opinion against someone. I try not to think of the casualties when I do rough jokes, but there are consequences sometimes. I know for a fact that I can’t take it when it comes my way. It’s horrible for all the same reasons. I’ve come to see Eddie’s point on this one. Everybody in showbiz wants people to like them. That’s how you get fans. But when you get reamed in a sketch or online or however, that shit staaaangs. And it can add up quickly. Then before you know it you’re a punch line—just look at Vanilla Ice and five hundred million others. Eddie was mad. No one had dared go after him. And he wanted it to stop there. After that incident I had some close encounters with Mr. Murphy. Once was at the opening of the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, when a bunch of celebs got invited to see a private Rolling Stones concert. (What a douche thing for me to mention in my book.) I brought one of my idiot buddies from high school. This was a fucking star-studded event. Brad Pitt to my right, Depp and DiCaprio at noon and six. There couldn’t have been more celebs there and we were packed in like stardines. (Lolololololol, stardines, not sardines. Stay close.) I was having the time of my life when for some reason I glanced back to the row behind me. I think it was just to let those people know that I knew all the words to “Gimme Shelter.” When who do I see down the row but Edward Murphy and Chris Rock? Oh fuck. My kryptonite was in the house. Suddenly . . . feeling . . . weak . . . I didn’t want to get beat up in front of the Stones. It was going to be Altamont all over again. So I snuck another glance and saw Rock mouth to me, “I can’t talk to you. I’m with Eddie.” I understood. That Rock was a chickenshit. I’m kidding. I was never mad at Rock because he was always half kidding, but I was freaking out enough that Brad noticed. He asked what was going on, so I filled him in with the short version. “I’ll protect you,” he said. Like I’m a chick. Which I am. Sort of. So I laughed quietly and hoped he was serious. Whenever I’d see Rock after that, for years, he’d say “Saw Eddie last week. He still hates you.” It sort of impressed me that it still bugged him. In a recent Rolling Stone cover story, Eddie Murphy was asked about this infamous incident. I was told he said he was mad at everyone about this, not just me. He was mad that Lorne would let that joke through to air. He was mad that the show turned on him, and that’s why he has never hosted after that or done the reunion shows. (After that article came out he briefly appeared at the fortieth.) He says he’s over this now. I hope that’s true. About a month after that cover story, I was crossing the street in Beverly Hills and I saw a Mercedes Gullwing (a supernice car) parked in front of Coffee Bean. A black guy walked out with a hot blond chick on his arm and got in the car. Like the jerk I am I thought, I wonder who that guy plays for? Then as he started to pull out of the parking lot and I got to the other side of the street, I realized it was Ed Murphy. My old-school fear came crashing back. Should I say something? We hadn’t spoken in almost twenty years at this point. Before I knew it, Murphy had spotted me through the windshield. Maybe he thought I was Miley Cyrus. Either way, for some reason I gave a half wave and quick nod. It was my equivalent of the white flag. This can be a risky move if it goes unreciprocated. Then I heard the sound of a window going down. Once again, I was paralyzed by doubt. Do I look? I looked. He stopped in the middle of the street and I walked over. Through the open passenger window he said, “Hey, Spade, how are you doing?” I reached in and shook his hand. I said, “Hey, Eddie. Glad we’re good.” “Take it easy,” he said, and drove away with a girl young enough to be . . . well, my date. (She was superhot.) My Watergate with Eddie Murphy was over. My burden was lifted. After all those years, that stupid joke can just be that, a stupid joke. And I can go back to appreciating what a funny motherfucker he is. From the forthcoming "ALMOST INTERESTING: The Memoir" by David Spade. Copyright © 2015 by David Spade. To be published on October 27, 2015 by Dey Street Books, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.

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“Star Wars” lets Princess Leia age realistically: Is this an alternate Hollywood universe?

The most breathtaking moment in the new trailer for "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" trailer doesn't involve explosions or lightsabers or ominous references to the Dark Side. It's an eyeblink-long shot of Princess Leia herself, Carrie Fisher, in the embrace of Harrison Ford's Han Solo. It's a moment of a weary-looking woman with graying hair and lines on her face. Holy science fiction, Hollywood — somewhere, in a galaxy far, far away, a grown woman has been given permission to look like a grown woman. I want to go to that planet! Fisher, who turns 59 this week, has for years been a sardonic and brutally honest chronicler of her own struggles with addiction, bipolar disorder (including a hospitalization just two years ago), and weight — all while working in an industry that isn't known for being easy on even seemingly perfect women. A few years ago, when the vicious cracks about Fisher resembling Jabba the Hut (actual sexist BS trolling entertainment story) were hitting peak cruelty, she became a spokesperson for Jenny Craig. But even as she dropped fifty pounds — and seemed to hint at some other changes when she said of her fellow "Star Wars" cast members that "We all look a little melted. It's good to see other melted people" — she's maintained her sense of humor and realism. As she observed a few years ago, "I swear when I was shooting those films I never realized I was signing an invisible contract to stay looking the exact same way for the rest of my existence." In an April interview, she reiterated the sentiment, saying of her early sex symbol image, "I didn't like that, because you have to live up to something there." And in an interview with Palm Beach Illustrated, she jokingly replied to a question of what Leia would be like now by tartly saying, "Elderly. She’s in an intergalactic old folks’ home. I just think she would be just like she was before, only slower and less inclined to be up for the big battle." Of course, this is still the entertainment industry -- the one in which Anne Hathaway is already losing roles to younger women -- and it comes with its inherent inevitable pressures. Speaking about the new "Star Wars," Fisher's mother, Debbie Reynolds, confessed to reporters last year that her daughter had "worked her body off for one year to not have a body," and Fisher confirmed, "They didn't hire me, they hired me minus 35 pounds." And when a colleague remarked this week how wonderful it was to see the new trailer showing the actress with her costar as "an age-appropriate-looking couple," I couldn't help recalling that Harrison Ford is fifteen years older than Fisher. But in a business — and God knows, in particular a genre — in which women are all but invisible and women who are over thirty are practically unheard of, the sight of an older, softer Leia is cause for cheering. Gone are the cinnamon buns over her ears. Gone is the gold bikini. And yet she's still here, still a character worth rooting for. Who needs special effects when you've got her? Last year, Fisher joked of her younger costars, "The new actors are great. I go: 'Just you wait till you get a fanbase that's going to follow you around for forty years.'" But she added, "I am Leia and Leia is me." Leia, just like the woman who plays her, is indeed now forty years older. That she endures is a triumph of survival, in Hollywood as it is in space, and it's proof that both Carrie Fisher and Princess Leia are forces to be reckoned with.The most breathtaking moment in the new trailer for "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" trailer doesn't involve explosions or lightsabers or ominous references to the Dark Side. It's an eyeblink-long shot of Princess Leia herself, Carrie Fisher, in the embrace of Harrison Ford's Han Solo. It's a moment of a weary-looking woman with graying hair and lines on her face. Holy science fiction, Hollywood — somewhere, in a galaxy far, far away, a grown woman has been given permission to look like a grown woman. I want to go to that planet! Fisher, who turns 59 this week, has for years been a sardonic and brutally honest chronicler of her own struggles with addiction, bipolar disorder (including a hospitalization just two years ago), and weight — all while working in an industry that isn't known for being easy on even seemingly perfect women. A few years ago, when the vicious cracks about Fisher resembling Jabba the Hut (actual sexist BS trolling entertainment story) were hitting peak cruelty, she became a spokesperson for Jenny Craig. But even as she dropped fifty pounds — and seemed to hint at some other changes when she said of her fellow "Star Wars" cast members that "We all look a little melted. It's good to see other melted people" — she's maintained her sense of humor and realism. As she observed a few years ago, "I swear when I was shooting those films I never realized I was signing an invisible contract to stay looking the exact same way for the rest of my existence." In an April interview, she reiterated the sentiment, saying of her early sex symbol image, "I didn't like that, because you have to live up to something there." And in an interview with Palm Beach Illustrated, she jokingly replied to a question of what Leia would be like now by tartly saying, "Elderly. She’s in an intergalactic old folks’ home. I just think she would be just like she was before, only slower and less inclined to be up for the big battle." Of course, this is still the entertainment industry -- the one in which Anne Hathaway is already losing roles to younger women -- and it comes with its inherent inevitable pressures. Speaking about the new "Star Wars," Fisher's mother, Debbie Reynolds, confessed to reporters last year that her daughter had "worked her body off for one year to not have a body," and Fisher confirmed, "They didn't hire me, they hired me minus 35 pounds." And when a colleague remarked this week how wonderful it was to see the new trailer showing the actress with her costar as "an age-appropriate-looking couple," I couldn't help recalling that Harrison Ford is fifteen years older than Fisher. But in a business — and God knows, in particular a genre — in which women are all but invisible and women who are over thirty are practically unheard of, the sight of an older, softer Leia is cause for cheering. Gone are the cinnamon buns over her ears. Gone is the gold bikini. And yet she's still here, still a character worth rooting for. Who needs special effects when you've got her? Last year, Fisher joked of her younger costars, "The new actors are great. I go: 'Just you wait till you get a fanbase that's going to follow you around for forty years.'" But she added, "I am Leia and Leia is me." Leia, just like the woman who plays her, is indeed now forty years older. That she endures is a triumph of survival, in Hollywood as it is in space, and it's proof that both Carrie Fisher and Princess Leia are forces to be reckoned with.

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Paging Noam Chomsky: Our horrific, brutal ally gets a cozy meeting with the State Department

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The GOP establishment’s impotent panic: Why they can’t make Donald Trump & Ben Carson go away

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” – H.L. Mencken As the Republican presidential race drags on, it’s becoming increasingly clear, despite pundits' predictions to the contrary, that Donald Trump and Ben Carson aren’t going away. The latest batch of polls shows, yet again, that the two outsiders have a commanding lead over the rest of the field. The CNN/ORC poll, for instance, has Trump at 27 percent and Carson at 22 percent, with establishment favorites Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush both trailing at 8 percent apiece. The remaining polls are consistent with these numbers; a Monmouth poll released today showed outsider candidates Trump, Carson, Ted Cruz, and Carly Fiorina combining for 62 percent support, while Rubio and Bush combined for just 11 percent -- less than half Trump's total. Republican insiders have secretly hoped for months that Trump and Carson would collapse under the weight of their own incompetence, but that’s not happening. And it’s not going to happen either. Republican voters, to paraphrase Mencken, know what they want and are getting it good and hard. And what they want, it seems, are politically inept blowhards. A report in the Washington Examiner illustrates just how panicked the Republican establishment has become. “This weekend was an inflection point in the Republican presidential race,” writes Byron York, “a moment in which some significant part of the GOP establishment came out of denial and realized Donald Trump might well become their party’s nominee.” On MSNBC, Joe Scarborough related that he no longer hears “anybody saying [Trump] can’t win the nomination.” Trump’s invincibility is now so worrisome that Republicans are preparing for an all-out assault. York writes:

Insiders have watched as Trump defied what many believed were the immutable laws of the political universe. First they thought Trump wouldn’t run. Then they thought voters wouldn’t take a reality-TV star seriously. Then they thought gaffes would kill Trump as they had other candidates. None of that turned out as expected. But there is one belief Trump has not yet tested, and that is the political insiders’ unshakeable faith that negative ads work.

I understand the panic here, but I’m not so sure a blitzkrieg of negative ads will work against the Donald. The man says and does one stupid thing after another, and Republicans love him a little more every time. An anonymous Republican insider quoted in York’s piece says there will be “massive resistance” to Trump because “He’s not a conservative.” Ok, but primary voters don’t love Trump because he’s a conservative; they love him because he doesn’t give a shit and because he promises to blow everything up. As York notes, conservative groups can question Trump’s conservative bona fides all they want, “But what if a large number of his voters are not wed to conservative orthodoxy as defined by Washington-based organization?” Another prominent conservative, Pete Wehner, published a similar lament in the New York Times today, writing:

Republican voters are in a fiercely anti-political mood. As a result, the usual ways voters judge a candidate – experience, governing achievements, mastery of issues – have been devalued. People are looking for candidates not only to give voice to their anger but to amplify it. Reason has given way to demagogy…Such rhetorical recklessness damages our political culture as well as conservatism, a philosophy that should be grounded in prudence, moderation and self-restraint…Mr. Carson doesn’t abide by such niceties, and he may be accurately gauging the mood of many Republicans. The Times reports that advisers who once fretted about his inflammatory rhetoric have now decided to let Carson be Carson.

Wehner is right that Carson and Trump are resonating with Republican voters across the country, but it’s not because they’re anti-political; it’s because they’re anti-government. Conservatives have been losing the culture wars and the legislative battles for years now, and they just don’t give a damn anymore. They want to explode the system. Trump and Carson are not just outsiders; they’re candidates without a coherent governing philosophy or even a tacit interest in policy. For that reason, they’re free to say whatever they want, no matter how insane, so long as it speaks to the angst of their core supporters. This is obviously what Republican voters want, and if the establishment thinks they can advertise their way out of this problem, they don’t quite understand what’s happened to their party. [image error]“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” – H.L. Mencken As the Republican presidential race drags on, it’s becoming increasingly clear, despite pundits' predictions to the contrary, that Donald Trump and Ben Carson aren’t going away. The latest batch of polls shows, yet again, that the two outsiders have a commanding lead over the rest of the field. The CNN/ORC poll, for instance, has Trump at 27 percent and Carson at 22 percent, with establishment favorites Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush both trailing at 8 percent apiece. The remaining polls are consistent with these numbers; a Monmouth poll released today showed outsider candidates Trump, Carson, Ted Cruz, and Carly Fiorina combining for 62 percent support, while Rubio and Bush combined for just 11 percent -- less than half Trump's total. Republican insiders have secretly hoped for months that Trump and Carson would collapse under the weight of their own incompetence, but that’s not happening. And it’s not going to happen either. Republican voters, to paraphrase Mencken, know what they want and are getting it good and hard. And what they want, it seems, are politically inept blowhards. A report in the Washington Examiner illustrates just how panicked the Republican establishment has become. “This weekend was an inflection point in the Republican presidential race,” writes Byron York, “a moment in which some significant part of the GOP establishment came out of denial and realized Donald Trump might well become their party’s nominee.” On MSNBC, Joe Scarborough related that he no longer hears “anybody saying [Trump] can’t win the nomination.” Trump’s invincibility is now so worrisome that Republicans are preparing for an all-out assault. York writes:

Insiders have watched as Trump defied what many believed were the immutable laws of the political universe. First they thought Trump wouldn’t run. Then they thought voters wouldn’t take a reality-TV star seriously. Then they thought gaffes would kill Trump as they had other candidates. None of that turned out as expected. But there is one belief Trump has not yet tested, and that is the political insiders’ unshakeable faith that negative ads work.

I understand the panic here, but I’m not so sure a blitzkrieg of negative ads will work against the Donald. The man says and does one stupid thing after another, and Republicans love him a little more every time. An anonymous Republican insider quoted in York’s piece says there will be “massive resistance” to Trump because “He’s not a conservative.” Ok, but primary voters don’t love Trump because he’s a conservative; they love him because he doesn’t give a shit and because he promises to blow everything up. As York notes, conservative groups can question Trump’s conservative bona fides all they want, “But what if a large number of his voters are not wed to conservative orthodoxy as defined by Washington-based organization?” Another prominent conservative, Pete Wehner, published a similar lament in the New York Times today, writing:

Republican voters are in a fiercely anti-political mood. As a result, the usual ways voters judge a candidate – experience, governing achievements, mastery of issues – have been devalued. People are looking for candidates not only to give voice to their anger but to amplify it. Reason has given way to demagogy…Such rhetorical recklessness damages our political culture as well as conservatism, a philosophy that should be grounded in prudence, moderation and self-restraint…Mr. Carson doesn’t abide by such niceties, and he may be accurately gauging the mood of many Republicans. The Times reports that advisers who once fretted about his inflammatory rhetoric have now decided to let Carson be Carson.

Wehner is right that Carson and Trump are resonating with Republican voters across the country, but it’s not because they’re anti-political; it’s because they’re anti-government. Conservatives have been losing the culture wars and the legislative battles for years now, and they just don’t give a damn anymore. They want to explode the system. Trump and Carson are not just outsiders; they’re candidates without a coherent governing philosophy or even a tacit interest in policy. For that reason, they’re free to say whatever they want, no matter how insane, so long as it speaks to the angst of their core supporters. This is obviously what Republican voters want, and if the establishment thinks they can advertise their way out of this problem, they don’t quite understand what’s happened to their party. [image error]

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Chris Matthews applauds Donald Trump for destroying the falsehood that George W. Bush kept us safe: “Democrats never had the stones”

Chris Matthews opened Monday night's edition of "Hardball" remarking on what he called the most striking development of the 2016 campaign thus far: "It took a political newcomer, Donald Trump, to say something we already knew but nobody had said before, that President George W. Bush did not keep us safe in the eight years he was president of the United States." Matthews, noting the ongoing "war of words" between establishment favorite Jeb Bush and the dominating political neophyte over the national security legacy of George W. Bush, applauded Trump for bringing his brashness to this latest fight, something Matthews charged, "the Democrats never had the stones" to do. “I'm not a big fan of Donald Trump on many occasions," Matthews said before arguing that Trump had "awakened us all" to the fact that Jeb is dishonest when he praises his big brother for "keeping us safe." "He didn't keep us safe or the people on those planes, those four planes, safe that day," Matthews charged. "He didn't keep those safe, those men and women forced to choose between jumping from 100-story roof and being killed by the smoke and the fire. And he didn't keep safe the hundreds of firefighters killed that day doing their courageous duty." Matthews then took umbrage with Republicans' gall to hold Hillary Clinton personally responsible for the deaths of four Americans in "in a remote building in war-torn North Africa, miles, 400 miles from the capital of that country," while ignoring "a concerted, highly coordinated attack using our commercial airliners and our training," in order to give George W. Bush a pass. "Again, I want to thank Trump, and Jeb, of course, for finally getting this one out in the open, by throwing out the red meat. By saying, 'he kept us safe," Jeb let us know what we knew already, that actually, W. didn't keep us safe, did he?" Watch Matthews, via Mediaite:

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The Lena Dunham Industrial Complex is expanding: Learn how to live your “best life” from her new feminist podcast

In addition to "Girls," various film projects, her forthcoming HBO show and her buzzy "Lenny Letter" newsletter, Lena Dunham is getting into the podcast game. Coinciding with the paperback release of her book “Not That Kind of Girl,” Dunham and BuzzFeed are teaming up for a podcast titled "Women of the Hour," featuring “news and wisdom you can use from women living their best life." The audio-program will feature Dunham and a slew of her famous, feminist friends — including Emma Stone, June Squibb, Emily Ratajkowski, Amy Sedaris and Zadie Smith -- chatting about sex, friendship, love, work, bodies and more. “I decided to explore the themes of my book further, talking to an array of women I love and admire in order to bring you an audio collage/feminist variety hour in the form of this pod-cast: Women of the Hour,” wrote Dunham on Twitter Tuesday. “Please subscribe if you like bad-asses, deep questions, giggling, sexual healing, Gaia life force, style, summer-camp, cute kids, the Internet and feminine power,” she added. Check out a preview below: [image error]In addition to "Girls," various film projects, her forthcoming HBO show and her buzzy "Lenny Letter" newsletter, Lena Dunham is getting into the podcast game. Coinciding with the paperback release of her book “Not That Kind of Girl,” Dunham and BuzzFeed are teaming up for a podcast titled "Women of the Hour," featuring “news and wisdom you can use from women living their best life." The audio-program will feature Dunham and a slew of her famous, feminist friends — including Emma Stone, June Squibb, Emily Ratajkowski, Amy Sedaris and Zadie Smith -- chatting about sex, friendship, love, work, bodies and more. “I decided to explore the themes of my book further, talking to an array of women I love and admire in order to bring you an audio collage/feminist variety hour in the form of this pod-cast: Women of the Hour,” wrote Dunham on Twitter Tuesday. “Please subscribe if you like bad-asses, deep questions, giggling, sexual healing, Gaia life force, style, summer-camp, cute kids, the Internet and feminine power,” she added. Check out a preview below: [image error]

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Let us now blame George Bush: Trump and Jeb force a long overdue debate about 9/11

If the Republican presidential primary race were a Thanksgiving dinner, Donald Trump would be the crazy old uncle who drinks too much and says outrageous things that embarrass everyone at the table. Sometimes those things are embarrassing because they’re brazenly bigoted, or absurdly boastful, or otherwise generally unconnected to reality. But occasionally he says something embarrassing precisely because it’s true. Trump’s repeated tweaking of Jeb Bush for Bush’s preposterous claim that his brother “kept us safe” during his presidency falls into the latter category. Trump’s mockery is of course more than justified. On its face, Jeb’s claim would be analogous to Exxon boasting about its record of keeping the Alaskan coastline mostly free from oil spills, or the governor of Texas taking pride in executing mostly guilty defendants. Jeb’s defense of his brother on this score is patently absurd, but this should not obscure the fact that, in making the claim, Jeb is merely repeating many years of GOP dogma. That George W. Bush kept the nation safe from terrorism, is, bizarrely enough, something that Republicans argued constantly when he was in office. The argument was (and continues to be) that W. shouldn’t be held responsible for by far the worst terrorist attack in American history, even though his administration was warned about it in advance, because he only had nine months to do something about it, and Al Qaeda was already around at the time he took office, and also Al Gore is fat. But in all seriousness, the genuinely freakish doublethink Republicans indulge in on this subject requires further explanation. Two factors help explain why it’s possible and indeed commonplace for people to give Jeb’s younger brother a kind of historical mulligan in regard to terrorism, to the point where it’s necessary for Crazy Uncle Donald to remind everyone that the whole 9/11 thing happened well into W’s presidency. First, consider the power of what sociologists call “framing.” The cultural frame that the Republican party has so successfully managed to build up since the days of Ronald Reagan is one in which Democrats are weak—kneed appeasers and semi-pacifists, while the GOP is the party of strong, war-like Daddy figures, who know how to deal with foreign threats with unsentimental ruthlessness. You would think it would be impossible to assimilate the 9/11 terrorist attacks to this frame, but you would be wrong. Such is the power of this pre-ordained narrative that, when America suffered a catastrophic terrorist attack under a Republican president, this inconvenient fact was, for enormous numbers of people, magically whisked down a kind of collective memory hole. The power of this frame to distort perception is evident if we consider a counter-factual in which something like the 9/11 attacks happened during the term of any Democratic president. Imagine if 3,000 Americans had been murdered by foreign terrorists nine months into the Obama administration. It’s almost inconceivable that it would occur to anyone to claim subsequently that Obama had “kept us safe,” because such a claim wouldn’t be supported by the powerful distortions of a cultural frame that turned the combat-dodging ne’er do well son of George H.W. Bush into some sort of heroic warrior. Second, not ascribing any blame to W. for 9/11 was and is another way of treating the events of that terrible day as a kind of inexplicable cataclysm, that was visited upon the nation by irrational and cowardly evildoers, whose motivations were either impossible to understand, or wholly irrelevant, or both.   To try to ascribe any responsibility to the Bush administration for letting 9/11 happen could lead to uncomfortable questions of, among other things, whether and to what extent American foreign policy had played a role in creating the conditions that allowed those attacks to happen. It’s understandable that, in the immediate aftermath of the attack, almost no one wanted to consider such questions. Fourteen years later, we no longer have any excuse not to do so – and that applies especially to GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush.If the Republican presidential primary race were a Thanksgiving dinner, Donald Trump would be the crazy old uncle who drinks too much and says outrageous things that embarrass everyone at the table. Sometimes those things are embarrassing because they’re brazenly bigoted, or absurdly boastful, or otherwise generally unconnected to reality. But occasionally he says something embarrassing precisely because it’s true. Trump’s repeated tweaking of Jeb Bush for Bush’s preposterous claim that his brother “kept us safe” during his presidency falls into the latter category. Trump’s mockery is of course more than justified. On its face, Jeb’s claim would be analogous to Exxon boasting about its record of keeping the Alaskan coastline mostly free from oil spills, or the governor of Texas taking pride in executing mostly guilty defendants. Jeb’s defense of his brother on this score is patently absurd, but this should not obscure the fact that, in making the claim, Jeb is merely repeating many years of GOP dogma. That George W. Bush kept the nation safe from terrorism, is, bizarrely enough, something that Republicans argued constantly when he was in office. The argument was (and continues to be) that W. shouldn’t be held responsible for by far the worst terrorist attack in American history, even though his administration was warned about it in advance, because he only had nine months to do something about it, and Al Qaeda was already around at the time he took office, and also Al Gore is fat. But in all seriousness, the genuinely freakish doublethink Republicans indulge in on this subject requires further explanation. Two factors help explain why it’s possible and indeed commonplace for people to give Jeb’s younger brother a kind of historical mulligan in regard to terrorism, to the point where it’s necessary for Crazy Uncle Donald to remind everyone that the whole 9/11 thing happened well into W’s presidency. First, consider the power of what sociologists call “framing.” The cultural frame that the Republican party has so successfully managed to build up since the days of Ronald Reagan is one in which Democrats are weak—kneed appeasers and semi-pacifists, while the GOP is the party of strong, war-like Daddy figures, who know how to deal with foreign threats with unsentimental ruthlessness. You would think it would be impossible to assimilate the 9/11 terrorist attacks to this frame, but you would be wrong. Such is the power of this pre-ordained narrative that, when America suffered a catastrophic terrorist attack under a Republican president, this inconvenient fact was, for enormous numbers of people, magically whisked down a kind of collective memory hole. The power of this frame to distort perception is evident if we consider a counter-factual in which something like the 9/11 attacks happened during the term of any Democratic president. Imagine if 3,000 Americans had been murdered by foreign terrorists nine months into the Obama administration. It’s almost inconceivable that it would occur to anyone to claim subsequently that Obama had “kept us safe,” because such a claim wouldn’t be supported by the powerful distortions of a cultural frame that turned the combat-dodging ne’er do well son of George H.W. Bush into some sort of heroic warrior. Second, not ascribing any blame to W. for 9/11 was and is another way of treating the events of that terrible day as a kind of inexplicable cataclysm, that was visited upon the nation by irrational and cowardly evildoers, whose motivations were either impossible to understand, or wholly irrelevant, or both.   To try to ascribe any responsibility to the Bush administration for letting 9/11 happen could lead to uncomfortable questions of, among other things, whether and to what extent American foreign policy had played a role in creating the conditions that allowed those attacks to happen. It’s understandable that, in the immediate aftermath of the attack, almost no one wanted to consider such questions. Fourteen years later, we no longer have any excuse not to do so – and that applies especially to GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush.

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So a thief walks into a comedy club: Trevor Noah, Louis C.K. and the war over plagiarized punch-lines

Since the announcement in March that up-and-coming South African comedian Trevor Noah would succeed Jon Stewart as host of the "Daily Show," Noah has come under his fair share of scrutiny for things like years-old tweets and drooping ratings. Last week, the Hollywood Reporter upped the ante with a report implying that Noah may be a joke thief. Noah’s 20-minute stand-up set at a political convention last weekend in L.A. included a bit quite similar to a joke from Dave Chappelle’s 1998 HBO special. Both jokes centered on differences in racism across cultures, and used the phrase “racism connoisseur” — a degree of similarity that raised speculation about whether Noah has sticky comedic fingers. As THR and other outlets pointed out, Noah has faced other accusations of joke-theft in the past. But Noah is only the latest in a long line of comedians to face heat for stealing gags. Just as stand-up comedy has evolved as an art form since its 19th century beginnings, so too have the ethics and repercussions of poaching other peoples’ material. While these discussions typically unfolded within the comedy community in the past, social media makes it easier than ever for joke theft charges to go viral, but the impact that will have on would-be thieves remains to be seen. Historians peg the birth of stand-up comedy to the late-19th century vaudeville era, when a variety of acts including burlesque dancers, musicians, jugglers and sketch comedy duos toured theaters across the country. Vaudeville shows specifically catered to the sensibilities of the multiethnic working class, which meant the sets had to be fast-paced, fun and easy to understand. These criteria gave rise to slapstick based on simple tropes, as well as to the idea that performers could “borrow” and “build off of” other acts. This permissive attitude about joke theft was probably at least partially fatalist — it’s awfully tough to prove a joke’s origin when acts are constantly touring from town-to-town. But the nature of the shows likely encouraged this behavior as well, since comics who recycled familiar bits had a better chance of satisfying both censorious theaters and audiences who spoke limited English. The “pie in the face” gag began as a vaudeville go-to, as did “The Aristocrats,” the classic dirty joke comics still put their own spins on today. As more and more comedic vaudevillians began to performing material “in one” — that is, standing alone on a stage — the free-wheeling rules of the past no longer fit. Then the rapid rise of moving pictures thoroughly disrupted the vaudeville industry: theatre after theatre closed, since they couldn't compete with bargain prices at the cinema. Comics were competing more and more for dwindling live-performance slots, as well as to be cast in film, and having highly original material was an obvious way to set oneself apart from the pack. By the time vaudeville finally flatlined in the early 1930s, comedians' bits were being filmed to be shown in pre-movie reels, making it slightly harder for aspiring copycats to simply smuggle ideas over to the next town. The open source ethos of the early vaudeville days have led some to argue that joke theft is no big deal — and as cases like “The Aristocrats” illustrate, can even spark creative oneupmanship. But nearly all comedians reject this argument. Patton Oswalt even once reminded Time Magazine that even vaudeville legend W.C. Fields famously “beat the living s**t” out of anyone who copied his act. Besides — the vaudeville rules regulated an art form that was economically and creatively very different than modern stand-up. In a cut-throat industry where up-and-comers compete ferociously for five-minute TV spots, the stakes of a lifted joke are far higher than two similar slapstick acts getting paid in two different cities where no one has televisions. If the advent of film helped to stigmatize joke theft, it certainly didn't stop it. The debuts of the first comedy album in 1958 and the first comedy club in 1963 both entrenched the idea that a stand-ups success would be determined not only by how good their material was, but how much of it they had. A vaudevillian could happily cash-in with the same 10 minute set in 50 different cities — but a stand-up would need a solid hour to headline a club or record an album. The quantity of material a given comic had was now directly tied to their livelihoods. This meant that a minute of stand-up was essentially commodified as comedic currency, to be safeguarded by those who have it, and snatched by those who don’t. This can still be the case today. In one 2013 viral essay, Oswalt, perhaps the comedy world’s most outspoken voice against joke theft, described watching a young comedian passing off massive chunks of a buddy’s set as his own to score more lucrative feature gigs. When confronted, the thief insisted that he needed to steal, since he couldn't possibly clear 30 minutes using only his own material. Whatever pay boost he got as a feature instead of an opener was money made off the sweat of funnier brows. Frustration with that same entitled calculus sparked comedians’ high-profile clash with the “Fat Jew,” who earlier in 2015 made headlines for successfully monetizing an Instagram feed comprised solely of pilfered jokes. Many outlets characterized the controversy as being over proper attribution, but it was really over the fact that he was benefiting from a brand he didn't do anything to create. For most comedians, Fat Jew’s penance wouldn't just be attribution, it would be writing his own damn jokes. Aside from economics, most comedians are moved by convictions of creative ownership over their own work. Stand-up has grown into a far more bonafide art form than its silly slapstick predecessor, further affirming the immorality of thievery. But even if stand-ups have long agreed that stealing jokes is wrong, they are still faced with an obvious problem. What exactly are they supposed to do about it? While other fields may be governed by strict rules regarding plagiarism and can enforce copyright laws through the courts, stand-up comedians have little formal recourse when someone helps themselves to their big closer. The problems with copyright as related to stand-up comedy were succinctly explained by Slate: “Copyright law defends the expression of an idea, but not the idea itself. So even if somebody stole your joke about bad airline food, there’s little you can do if that person tells the same joke with slightly differently wording—no one owns the idea of mocking bad airline food. And even when a comedian does have a legal basis to accuse somebody of copyright infringement, it can be expensive to do anything about it.” (Indeed, it’s hard to imagine an open mic comic who makes ends meet waiting tables retaining a copyright lawyer to protect his Tinder joke.) Industry professionals aren't very interested in defending the sanctity of comedy either, so the business of policing joke theft falls largely to comedians themselves. In 2007, researchers at University of Virginia Law School produced a report on strategies the comedy community implements to reduce theft and hold offenders accountable. While they found no examples of comic-on-comic copyright suits, they nonetheless concluded that stand-ups had managed to hone a well-functioning system to preserve their art. Punishments for joke thieves can range from badmouthing and tarnished reputations, to coordinated “blackballing,” to the rare-but-possible physical altercations in the style of  W.C. Fields. Examples of just how comedians’ interactions with thieves play out stretch back for decades, many of which were recounted by Larry Getlen in a 2007 feature for Radar Magazine. In the 1980s, comics at the Hollywood Improv reportedly devised a blinking light system to warn performers when known joke thieves showed up. (Among the most notorious was Robin Williams, who was even said to pay off comics who complained about stolen bits.) At the L.A. Comedy Store in 2007, comedian Joe Rogan went so far as to interrupt Carlos Mencia onstage over his habit of rampant joke theft. Rogan also posted a video of the confrontation online, harkening an era in which discussions over joke theft frequently happen publicly online. It’s quite possible this degree of transparency applies pressure to industry gatekeepers, who kept hiring Carlos “Menstealia” for years until the public began to turn on him. Of course, video can have a “gotcha” effect on stand-up beyond cases of premeditated, filmed ambushes of notorious thieves. Some people believe video may finally be having the effect hypothetically imagined back when film began edging out vaudeville. They contend that the fact that bits can be uploaded and watched online may convince potential thieves not to bother, or act as an insurance policy for comedians wishing to ward off vultures. If all else fails, side-by-side evidence can allow a wider audience to weigh in — like with the Hollywood Reporter story comparing Noah to Chapelle. But objective truth isn't always so easy to come by. Joke theft has never been as straight-forward a crime as, say, jewelry theft, because accusations of “joke theft” can point to several different things. Certainly, there are deplorable instances of outright, consciously purloined material. But there are also many innocent cases of what comedians call “parallel thought,” when people simply happen to come up with the same gag independently. (Last week’s announcement that Playboy would cease publishing nudes, for example, sparked endless “now you can really read it for the articles!” quips on social media.) And then there’s an ambiguous “other” category that includes things like “unconscious plagiarism,” when comics subconsciously internalize someone else’s joke, or material born out of conversations between comics where the actual owner might be ambiguous. Art Markman, a psychology professor at University of Texas, confirmed in an email that this phenomenon exists when it comes to generating creative ideas. Leveraging public opinion against joke theft can be effective in cases like Mencia’s, when it’s time to dole out comedy justice to those who really deserve it. But when it comes to the considerable grey area beyond the realm of copy-and-paste, the best judgment certainly lies with the people who have been negotiating these issues all along: the comedians themselves. Joke theft is a severe charge that impugns a person’s character and talent. Accusations have almost certainly branded some comics undeservedly — damage easier than ever to do in the age of social media. It’s impossible to say what happened in Noah’s case, but parallel thought or unconscious plagiarism seems likely. Perhaps the most interesting rumination on joke theft in the digital era unfolded in a 2011 episode of "Louie" that featured Dane Cook, whom Louis CK had been accusing of joke theft since 2005. In the episode, the two men hash out a barely fictionalized version of the issue in a way that feels honest and cathartic. When Louis asks Dane to help score concert tickets for his daughter, Dane agrees on the condition that Louis publicly admit Dane never stole his bits. When Louis protests that Dane did steal, Dane retorts: “Dude! Why would I steal three jokes from you when I have hours of material. Why? Why! Why would I do that? Risk my reputation! […] The one thing that, like, really just, gets to me, is the whole thing about people saying that I stole the joke about the itchy asshole. Because I get an itchy asshole. A lot. So for you to think you're the only person who got an itchy asshole in America? I mean, that's bullshit.” In doing so, CK added nuance to a narrative that had all but condemned Cook. Whatever happened between the two comedians, the episode made it clear just how much their art and community means to them, and how difficult a firm resolution can be.

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We were promised hoverboards: Of course “Back to the Future II” got 2015 mostly wrong — here’s why

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Wednesday is October 21, 2015 – the date visited by Marty McFly in the time-traveling DeLorean 26 years ago in “Back to the Future: Part II” – and we do not have hoverboards. I repeat, hoverboards do not exist — these toys don't count.  In fact, not much of the technology that appears most ubiquitously in the 1989 classic seem to have materialized. Our cars don’t run on garbage — indeed, as a hilarious Funny or Die skit observed, our refusal to break free from carbon fuels has destroyed our planet in the twenty-six years since the film’s release — and our highways are still confined to terra firma. That’s just the tip of the iceberg: We don’t have self-lacing sneakers or self-drying jackets, there are no robots to pump our gas, our weather forecasts are still unreliable, doorknobs haven’t been phased out by thumb scanners, and miniature pizzas still remain fun-sized after you stick them in an oven. Instead of merely observing where “Back to the Future: Part II” was wrong — or, for that matter, noting the occasional odd area where it may have actually been prophetic (could the Chicago Cubs win the World Series?) — perhaps it would be more useful to analyze why it was wrong in certain areas. What does that tell us about how we viewed the near-future back in the late ‘80s and how does that compare to other famous sci-fi stories that also made their own prognostications? More importantly, how can we apply those lessons to the predictions we might make today? When it comes to technological innovation, the practical beats the glamorous Because science fiction writers are meant to depict future worlds that audiences will find entertaining, they tend to predict technological advancements that are wondrous to behold. The problem, of course, is that ideas which look good on a page or screen often don’t make sense in real life. Jet packs, for example, were a staple of comic books, TV shows, and movies in the mid-twentieth century, but when they were invented in 1961 it became apparent that they were too fuel-inefficient for average consumers and too high-risk for the military (a soldier in a jet pack makes for an easy target). Similarly, although space age predictions about regular trips to the stars (see “Star Trek"), moon bases ("Project Moon Base"), and martial colonies ("Total Recall") seemed plausible when our budget regularly included generous allocations to NASA, the end of the Cold War wound up removing a major incentive behind American investment in space exploration — our competition with the Soviet Union. Incidentally, this rule explains why the flying cars of “Back to the Future: Part II” aren’t a reality. They might look cool, but they’re also expensive, sensitive (they’d be hard to drive in bad weather), and dangerous (even the slightest malfunction would cause you to fall out of the sky). Medicine has improved, but the basic rules of human biology are unchangeable Though it often isn’t remembered, “Back to the Future: Part II” did take a stab at biotech prediction. In one scene, Doc Brown tells Marty that he went to a rejuvenation clinic that repaired his hair, transfused his blood, and replaced his spleen and colon to add “thirty to forty years” to his life. This is consistent with a long history of sci-fi writers making absurdly optimistic predictions about how technology will improve our lives — certainly we are farther along now than we were in 1989, but nowhere near that level. The same can be said for “Brazil,” which correctly predicted our obsession with plastic surgery but grossly overestimated how long a human lifespan could be extended, or “Blade Runner,” which assumed we would have genetic clones (or replicants) that could perform slave labor or serve as organ farms. This isn’t to say that we haven’t made remarkable advances in medicine since the 1980s, but scholars tend to agree that science fiction and fantasy writers often engage in wish fulfillment (usually assuming we will be immortal or at least live for significantly beyond the usual 75-to-100 year life expectancy) instead of making reliable predictions. When technological progress merges with politics, the results tend to be more rather than less democratic The future depicted in “Back to the Future: Part II” may be utopian from a technological standpoint, but it is distinctly dystopian when it comes to the social order. Doc Brown makes an offhand reference to how Marty McFly’s son is arrested, tried, and convicted in the same day (because lawyers have been banned, har har), while Biff’s grandson is able to publicly bully Marty Jr. with apparent impunity. Fortunately, as economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson have pointed out, countries with democratic institutions tend to thrive technologically when compared to their despotic counterparts. Since it can be assumed that a nation which rushes suspected criminals into prison is far from democratic, the world of “Back to the Future: Part II” can be safely lumped in with the unrealistic high-tech dystopias seen in films like “Blade Runner,” “Fahrenheit 451” or “Logan’s Run.” As for the bullying… Well, Funny or Die’s skit addressed this best when it joked that while there are still bullies, our tendency to shame those who publicly abuse their victims has caused much of the worst bullying to occur anonymously online. The notion that a Griff could brazenly assault a weakling in the light of day without alerting the police and causing a social media scandal seems practically quaint. None of these observations are meant to detract from “Back to the Future: Part II.” I rewatched the film twice for this article and can attest that, as a moviegoing experience, it remains as smart, funny, and engaging as ever. That said, if future science fiction scribes want to write about the future in a way that will prove prophetic, they may be well-advised to learn from exactly how that film went wrong.Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Wednesday is October 21, 2015 – the date visited by Marty McFly in the time-traveling DeLorean 26 years ago in “Back to the Future: Part II” – and we do not have hoverboards. I repeat, hoverboards do not exist — these toys don't count.  In fact, not much of the technology that appears most ubiquitously in the 1989 classic seem to have materialized. Our cars don’t run on garbage — indeed, as a hilarious Funny or Die skit observed, our refusal to break free from carbon fuels has destroyed our planet in the twenty-six years since the film’s release — and our highways are still confined to terra firma. That’s just the tip of the iceberg: We don’t have self-lacing sneakers or self-drying jackets, there are no robots to pump our gas, our weather forecasts are still unreliable, doorknobs haven’t been phased out by thumb scanners, and miniature pizzas still remain fun-sized after you stick them in an oven. Instead of merely observing where “Back to the Future: Part II” was wrong — or, for that matter, noting the occasional odd area where it may have actually been prophetic (could the Chicago Cubs win the World Series?) — perhaps it would be more useful to analyze why it was wrong in certain areas. What does that tell us about how we viewed the near-future back in the late ‘80s and how does that compare to other famous sci-fi stories that also made their own prognostications? More importantly, how can we apply those lessons to the predictions we might make today? When it comes to technological innovation, the practical beats the glamorous Because science fiction writers are meant to depict future worlds that audiences will find entertaining, they tend to predict technological advancements that are wondrous to behold. The problem, of course, is that ideas which look good on a page or screen often don’t make sense in real life. Jet packs, for example, were a staple of comic books, TV shows, and movies in the mid-twentieth century, but when they were invented in 1961 it became apparent that they were too fuel-inefficient for average consumers and too high-risk for the military (a soldier in a jet pack makes for an easy target). Similarly, although space age predictions about regular trips to the stars (see “Star Trek"), moon bases ("Project Moon Base"), and martial colonies ("Total Recall") seemed plausible when our budget regularly included generous allocations to NASA, the end of the Cold War wound up removing a major incentive behind American investment in space exploration — our competition with the Soviet Union. Incidentally, this rule explains why the flying cars of “Back to the Future: Part II” aren’t a reality. They might look cool, but they’re also expensive, sensitive (they’d be hard to drive in bad weather), and dangerous (even the slightest malfunction would cause you to fall out of the sky). Medicine has improved, but the basic rules of human biology are unchangeable Though it often isn’t remembered, “Back to the Future: Part II” did take a stab at biotech prediction. In one scene, Doc Brown tells Marty that he went to a rejuvenation clinic that repaired his hair, transfused his blood, and replaced his spleen and colon to add “thirty to forty years” to his life. This is consistent with a long history of sci-fi writers making absurdly optimistic predictions about how technology will improve our lives — certainly we are farther along now than we were in 1989, but nowhere near that level. The same can be said for “Brazil,” which correctly predicted our obsession with plastic surgery but grossly overestimated how long a human lifespan could be extended, or “Blade Runner,” which assumed we would have genetic clones (or replicants) that could perform slave labor or serve as organ farms. This isn’t to say that we haven’t made remarkable advances in medicine since the 1980s, but scholars tend to agree that science fiction and fantasy writers often engage in wish fulfillment (usually assuming we will be immortal or at least live for significantly beyond the usual 75-to-100 year life expectancy) instead of making reliable predictions. When technological progress merges with politics, the results tend to be more rather than less democratic The future depicted in “Back to the Future: Part II” may be utopian from a technological standpoint, but it is distinctly dystopian when it comes to the social order. Doc Brown makes an offhand reference to how Marty McFly’s son is arrested, tried, and convicted in the same day (because lawyers have been banned, har har), while Biff’s grandson is able to publicly bully Marty Jr. with apparent impunity. Fortunately, as economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson have pointed out, countries with democratic institutions tend to thrive technologically when compared to their despotic counterparts. Since it can be assumed that a nation which rushes suspected criminals into prison is far from democratic, the world of “Back to the Future: Part II” can be safely lumped in with the unrealistic high-tech dystopias seen in films like “Blade Runner,” “Fahrenheit 451” or “Logan’s Run.” As for the bullying… Well, Funny or Die’s skit addressed this best when it joked that while there are still bullies, our tendency to shame those who publicly abuse their victims has caused much of the worst bullying to occur anonymously online. The notion that a Griff could brazenly assault a weakling in the light of day without alerting the police and causing a social media scandal seems practically quaint. None of these observations are meant to detract from “Back to the Future: Part II.” I rewatched the film twice for this article and can attest that, as a moviegoing experience, it remains as smart, funny, and engaging as ever. That said, if future science fiction scribes want to write about the future in a way that will prove prophetic, they may be well-advised to learn from exactly how that film went wrong.

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A shocking HBO rape turns the tables on a notorious approach to female nudity, assault

“The Leftovers” is not an easy show. From its inception, it’s been a tough nut to crack—a story with a science-fiction premise that refuses to engage with the unexplained, because it is focused, instead, on endless sorrow. Showrunner Damon Lindelof told Alan Sepinwall in this excellent, lengthy interview that he was “really depressed” while writing season one, and it shows — “The Leftovers” is more about emotional devastation than anything else. So if anything, it’s surprising that it’s taken them this long to portray rape. In a lot of television — which has months and years to tell characters’ stories, unlike most films — sexual assault is either a catalyst of or signifier of emotional devastation. I would hazard that it is used more in this way than other awful traumas, such as the death of a loved one or physical wound, partly because the evidence of the assault is minimal, at best, to the outside world, and partly because closure, even in the most ideal world, is very hard to find. Not coincidentally, there is another trauma that shares those two characteristics, and it is loved ones who go missing. “The Leftovers” is a world built around a mysterious disappearance that snatched away about two percent of the planet’s population in one fell swoop. Even those people that did not lose anyone in particular are shaken to the core by the undermined foundations of their universe. This has led our main characters to do some very strange things out of immeasurable grief, fear, anger, and frustration: One woman stabbed herself in the neck with a shard of glass; another pays prostitutes to shoot her, while she’s wearing a bulletproof vest. In last night’s episode, “Off Ramp,” it leads one character to rape another, in the back of a truck. Not coincidentally, again, these are two characters that have evidenced some of the most trauma, and have not moved any closer to healing, acceptance, or moving on. The rapist is Meg (Liv Tyler), who has become a leader of the Guilty Remnant, a rather dour cult that militantly forces people to remember the losses of the “departure”; the victim is Tommy Garvey (Chris Zylka), who has spent the last five or six years desperately searching for meaning all across the country, and failing to find it. His latest act has been to infiltrate the Guilty Remnant and spring out disillusioned members. When he’s inevitably caught, the cult members tie him up and drive him out to a deserted bit of highway—the titular off-ramp, perhaps—where they meet Meg, waiting in her car. Like everyone in the Guilty Remnant, Meg is wearing all white—but on her, out on the highway, where full sun is beating down on them, the white clothes look less like mourning attire and more like the lacy trappings of a hippie angel. Tyler, who plays Meg, did once literally play an elven queen; the look suits her. And because she is wearing a full-length sundress, there is a bit of a bridal quality to it, too. She sends the other attendants away, and without speaking to them or to Tommy, strips him of his pants and straddles him. He’s still bound at the wrists, and keeps trying to protest. She maintains eye contact, because she knows exactly what she’s doing. Meg then proceeds to douse him in gasoline and wave a lit lighter very close to his body, before snapping it shut to offer him a weird, sad reprieve. Partly because we struggle to have a productive dialogue about rape in general—but specifically because we struggle to believe that a woman can rape a man—the most notable aspect of the scene is that Tommy’s genitalia is visible both when Meg strips him and after, when she and her cronies threaten to immolate him. “The Leftovers” has made headlines about depicting a penis before—though last season, it was just through a pair of sweatpants. Justin Theroux, the lead of the show, is obviously a very handsome man, but the real draw here is a gaze that caters erotically to viewers who find men attractive, instead of viewers who find women attractive. (It’s a more complicated category than just “women,” but Lili Loofbourow’s words on the topic is, as always, instructive.) Some of that could lay at the feet of two of television’s most talented directors, who both happen to be female: Mimi Leder and Lesli Linka Glatter, who are both producers on the show (and Leder was just bumped to executive producer for this season). Whatever male gaze is inherently in the camera is being at least a little disrupted. But I think the roots of this are deeper. There are times where the use of rape to tell a character’s story strikes profoundly, and there are times where it comes off as a lazy plot device. With “The Leftovers,” because the show is saturated with a state of mind what Lindelof terms “emotional apocalypse,” sexual assault takes on different meaning. Or rather, it takes on, no meaning—“The Leftovers”’ characters confront meaninglessness in its endless loops and eddies. The pain and humiliation of rape is just another facet of the same dark landscape. The opening scene of this season features a cavewoman, for lack of a better term, struggling to keep herself and her baby survive. She is wholly unconnected to the plot of “The Leftovers” thus far—you’d be forgiven for worrying that you’d pushed play on the wrong title and somehow ended up in a nameless Terrence Malick film. And over the course of her 10-minute screen life, many bad things happen to her; crucially, she also has to do a lot of rather gruesome things. She steals eggs from a nest and beats a rattlesnake to death; when the bite from the rattlesnake festers, she dies out on a rock by the river, with her infant squirming next to her. She is naked, save for a loincloth, for the entire segment, and yet it is steadfastly unerotic; her body is a burden as much as it is a tool for life, one that is highly capable and also highly fragile. Later on in the pilot, a character dreams or has a vision of three girls running naked through the woods by the river, in the present day. All three girls, by the end of the episode, will have disappeared for different reasons. Their bodies are emphasized for their mutability, or even their disposability. Indeed: It’s quite rare for “The Leftovers” to offer up a sex scene, or to otherwise show humans enjoying being physical sacks of flesh. Instead the show is interested in the weaknesses of the body—including a range of disability, from Erika Murphy (Regina King, new this season)’s deafness to Mary Jamison (Janel Moloney)’s wheelchair-bound catatonia. The show is not offering up nudity with a mind to eroticize it, or to simply eroticize it; “The Leftovers” is horrified by bodies, and struggles to understand their role in the world. So Tommy is shamed and humiliated, through the exposure of what would otherwise be his sexual power; so too is the way television typically depicts rape subtly indicted. I was extremely frustrated with season one of “The Leftovers” at various points; it’s a show that demands a lot from the viewer, without clear rewards. Season two isn’t a more upbeat show, but it’s one that is moving out of the stasis of depression towards a more dynamic engagement with why it’s so sad all the time. Tommy, who can’t communicate his rape to his mother—who once mentored Meg—ends the episode by committing to a lie he might half-believe, a lie that might save other people’s lives. It’s a sad form of closure, but it’s difficult to deny Tommy whatever closure he can get.“The Leftovers” is not an easy show. From its inception, it’s been a tough nut to crack—a story with a science-fiction premise that refuses to engage with the unexplained, because it is focused, instead, on endless sorrow. Showrunner Damon Lindelof told Alan Sepinwall in this excellent, lengthy interview that he was “really depressed” while writing season one, and it shows — “The Leftovers” is more about emotional devastation than anything else. So if anything, it’s surprising that it’s taken them this long to portray rape. In a lot of television — which has months and years to tell characters’ stories, unlike most films — sexual assault is either a catalyst of or signifier of emotional devastation. I would hazard that it is used more in this way than other awful traumas, such as the death of a loved one or physical wound, partly because the evidence of the assault is minimal, at best, to the outside world, and partly because closure, even in the most ideal world, is very hard to find. Not coincidentally, there is another trauma that shares those two characteristics, and it is loved ones who go missing. “The Leftovers” is a world built around a mysterious disappearance that snatched away about two percent of the planet’s population in one fell swoop. Even those people that did not lose anyone in particular are shaken to the core by the undermined foundations of their universe. This has led our main characters to do some very strange things out of immeasurable grief, fear, anger, and frustration: One woman stabbed herself in the neck with a shard of glass; another pays prostitutes to shoot her, while she’s wearing a bulletproof vest. In last night’s episode, “Off Ramp,” it leads one character to rape another, in the back of a truck. Not coincidentally, again, these are two characters that have evidenced some of the most trauma, and have not moved any closer to healing, acceptance, or moving on. The rapist is Meg (Liv Tyler), who has become a leader of the Guilty Remnant, a rather dour cult that militantly forces people to remember the losses of the “departure”; the victim is Tommy Garvey (Chris Zylka), who has spent the last five or six years desperately searching for meaning all across the country, and failing to find it. His latest act has been to infiltrate the Guilty Remnant and spring out disillusioned members. When he’s inevitably caught, the cult members tie him up and drive him out to a deserted bit of highway—the titular off-ramp, perhaps—where they meet Meg, waiting in her car. Like everyone in the Guilty Remnant, Meg is wearing all white—but on her, out on the highway, where full sun is beating down on them, the white clothes look less like mourning attire and more like the lacy trappings of a hippie angel. Tyler, who plays Meg, did once literally play an elven queen; the look suits her. And because she is wearing a full-length sundress, there is a bit of a bridal quality to it, too. She sends the other attendants away, and without speaking to them or to Tommy, strips him of his pants and straddles him. He’s still bound at the wrists, and keeps trying to protest. She maintains eye contact, because she knows exactly what she’s doing. Meg then proceeds to douse him in gasoline and wave a lit lighter very close to his body, before snapping it shut to offer him a weird, sad reprieve. Partly because we struggle to have a productive dialogue about rape in general—but specifically because we struggle to believe that a woman can rape a man—the most notable aspect of the scene is that Tommy’s genitalia is visible both when Meg strips him and after, when she and her cronies threaten to immolate him. “The Leftovers” has made headlines about depicting a penis before—though last season, it was just through a pair of sweatpants. Justin Theroux, the lead of the show, is obviously a very handsome man, but the real draw here is a gaze that caters erotically to viewers who find men attractive, instead of viewers who find women attractive. (It’s a more complicated category than just “women,” but Lili Loofbourow’s words on the topic is, as always, instructive.) Some of that could lay at the feet of two of television’s most talented directors, who both happen to be female: Mimi Leder and Lesli Linka Glatter, who are both producers on the show (and Leder was just bumped to executive producer for this season). Whatever male gaze is inherently in the camera is being at least a little disrupted. But I think the roots of this are deeper. There are times where the use of rape to tell a character’s story strikes profoundly, and there are times where it comes off as a lazy plot device. With “The Leftovers,” because the show is saturated with a state of mind what Lindelof terms “emotional apocalypse,” sexual assault takes on different meaning. Or rather, it takes on, no meaning—“The Leftovers”’ characters confront meaninglessness in its endless loops and eddies. The pain and humiliation of rape is just another facet of the same dark landscape. The opening scene of this season features a cavewoman, for lack of a better term, struggling to keep herself and her baby survive. She is wholly unconnected to the plot of “The Leftovers” thus far—you’d be forgiven for worrying that you’d pushed play on the wrong title and somehow ended up in a nameless Terrence Malick film. And over the course of her 10-minute screen life, many bad things happen to her; crucially, she also has to do a lot of rather gruesome things. She steals eggs from a nest and beats a rattlesnake to death; when the bite from the rattlesnake festers, she dies out on a rock by the river, with her infant squirming next to her. She is naked, save for a loincloth, for the entire segment, and yet it is steadfastly unerotic; her body is a burden as much as it is a tool for life, one that is highly capable and also highly fragile. Later on in the pilot, a character dreams or has a vision of three girls running naked through the woods by the river, in the present day. All three girls, by the end of the episode, will have disappeared for different reasons. Their bodies are emphasized for their mutability, or even their disposability. Indeed: It’s quite rare for “The Leftovers” to offer up a sex scene, or to otherwise show humans enjoying being physical sacks of flesh. Instead the show is interested in the weaknesses of the body—including a range of disability, from Erika Murphy (Regina King, new this season)’s deafness to Mary Jamison (Janel Moloney)’s wheelchair-bound catatonia. The show is not offering up nudity with a mind to eroticize it, or to simply eroticize it; “The Leftovers” is horrified by bodies, and struggles to understand their role in the world. So Tommy is shamed and humiliated, through the exposure of what would otherwise be his sexual power; so too is the way television typically depicts rape subtly indicted. I was extremely frustrated with season one of “The Leftovers” at various points; it’s a show that demands a lot from the viewer, without clear rewards. Season two isn’t a more upbeat show, but it’s one that is moving out of the stasis of depression towards a more dynamic engagement with why it’s so sad all the time. Tommy, who can’t communicate his rape to his mother—who once mentored Meg—ends the episode by committing to a lie he might half-believe, a lie that might save other people’s lives. It’s a sad form of closure, but it’s difficult to deny Tommy whatever closure he can get.

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