The content of this text could well belong to that section of the sadly defunct ‘Modern Life’ entitled ‘How we have changed’. The passage of time, luckily, is usually linked to a change in the sensitivities of society that affects the vast majority of its areas; and this includes, how could it be otherwise, the mechanisms with which comedy is articulated.
While some comedians, whether they belong to the stand-up sector or to the cinematographic medium, have adapted more or less willingly, others, as is the case of legendary director and screenwriter David Zucker, responsible for titles such as ‘Grab it as you can’, ‘Top Secret’ or ‘Police Squad’they have not digested these changes very well.
“This movie couldn’t be made today!”
In a video posted on Prager U, a website associated with the American extreme right where you can also find entries such as ‘How the woke movement killed country music’, ‘The woke movement is ruining sports’, ‘The lies of modern feminism’ or ‘I was liberal in Hollywood and now I fight for the truth’; filmmaker has contributed his grain of sand to the already recurrent joke of “this movie could not be made today”.
“When we do screenings of ‘Land Anywhere,’ we get asked if it could be made today. The first thing that comes to mind is, ‘Sure, just without the jokes.'”
Zucker goes on to give a concrete example, using the writing of a spoof movies of spies and the rejection of a somewhat moth-eaten joke by an executive whose gender he bothers to underline.
“My current writing partner Pat Proft and I wrote a parody of James Bond and Mission: Impossible. A female exec said, ‘This joke is a little off-color.’ It was a light joke about the female lead character. As it happened by the police department and by the FBI… he needed a breast reduction so he could fit the bulletproof vest.
It was pure oatmeal, very smooth. Not one of our funniest things, but even this was too much. I thought, ‘If this is the criteria, we’re in serious trouble.’ They’re destroying comedy because 9 percent of people don’t have a sense of humor.”
Of course, the nostalgia factor couldn’t be left out of the party, and Zucker alludes to greater freedom when it comes to shooting point-blank in all directions while embrace offense like the grail of comedy.
“We could be as offensive as we wanted. We went where the laughs were. We never thought we were offending anyone, but if we were offending people, we knew we were on the right track. As time goes on, we get to the 90s and the 2000 and things changed… We never worried about any of this with Grab It Anywhere or Scary Movie.
The comedy is in trouble, but I think it will come back. I think there is a pendulum and it will go back. I’d like to see comedy filmmakers do comedy without fear… We just want to make people laugh.”
Fortunately, we live in times when offense and transgression are no longer synonyms.