Joker dominates box office, actor calls out director for dumb comments

Did you see Joker this past weekend? I did, and I have thoughts. A whole lot of other people did, too, based on the movie’s box office haul. According to The A.V. Club, the movie banked $93.5 million domestically and $234 million worldwide, making it the biggest October opening of all time, beating out last year’s Venom. Not bad for a superhero movie without a special effect in sight, unless you count Joaquin Phoenix’s dancing, which was indeed especially effective.

So audiences are clearly eager to see director Todd Phillips’ take on the origins of Batman’s most famous nemesis, but during the lead-up to the release, the controversy around the film threatened to overshadow the movie itself. The NYPD was keeping an eye on screenings for fear of violence, family members of the survivors of the 2012 Aurora, Colorado mass shooting penned a concerned letter to Warner Bros., and the studio barred interviewers from the red carpet premiere. Then there’s Phillips, who’s been going around saying stuff like this to Vanity Fair:

"Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture. There were articles written about why comedies don’t work anymore—I’ll tell you why, because all the fucking funny guys are like, ‘Fuck this shit, because I don’t want to offend you.’ It’s hard to argue with 30 million people on Twitter. You just can’t do it, right? So you just go, ‘I’m out.’"

So woke culture killed comedy and funny people are leaving the industry because they’re afraid of offending people. I guess I’ve been enjoying too many hilarious TV shows to notice.

So what Phillips said is completely ridiculous. Comedian Marc Maron, who had a small role in Joker as a producer on Robert De Niro’s latenight talk show, sounded like he agreed on a new episode of the podcast WTF With Marc Maron:

"There’s plenty of people being funny right now. Not only being funny but being really fucking funny. There are still lines to be rode. If you like to ride a line, you can still ride a line. If you want to take chances, you can still take chances. Really, the only thing that’s off the table, culturally, at this juncture –and not even entirely– is shamelessly punching down for the sheer joy of hurting people. For the sheer excitement and laughter that some people get from causing people pain, from making people uncomfortable, from making people feel excluded. Y’know, that excitement."

I’d say that’s a pretty good read on the situation. Maron went on to say that people who can’t make comedy that’s “deep or provocative, or even a little controversial, without hurting people” are either “not good at what you do” or “maybe you’re just insensitive.”

"Bottom line is no one is saying you can’t say things or do things. It’s just that it’s going to be received a certain way by certain people and you’re gonna have to shoulder that. And if you’re isolated or marginalized or pushed into a corner because of your point of view or what you have to say, yet you still have a crew of people that enjoy it, there you go! Those are your people. Enjoy your people."

Preach, Marc Maron! Get yourself an Emmy for your role on GLOW.

Joker is out and I saw it and I liked it, and hopefully we can move on without piling on Phillips, but I feel like I’ve seen his position crop up before and it’s nice to have some well-articulated pushback. How you can say that comedy is in danger when funny people are putting out more hilarious content than ever…I’ll just chalk it up to a foot-in-mouth moment.

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Watch Game of Thrones for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels