Film

The Director of ‘Joker’ Is Getting Dunked On For Saying That “Woke” People Have Killed Comedy

Phillips claimed that the left have forced him to retire from comedy and like, uh, sure buddy.

by Joseph Earp  3 October 2019
Joaquin Phoenix in Joker

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Director Todd Phillips is best known for making The Hangover films, Old School, and now Joker. What he’s not well-known for is his incisive social criticism.

So perhaps it’s unsurprising that Phillips’ recent press tour has been something of a disaster. Rather than letting his already distinctly provocative new film do all of the talking for him, the director has instead spent the last few weeks sounding off on literally every topic that has come to his mind.

First, he echoed a bizarro version of Donald Trump’s comments after the Charlottesville incident, saying that the left and the right are as bad as one another. Now, leaning into that shit-stirring tendency, he’s argued that the “woke” left are making it impossible for comedians to do their best work any more.

“Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture,” he told Vanity Fair as part of a profile on Joker star Joaquin Phoenix. “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.’ I’m out, and you know what? With all my comedies — I think that what comedies in general all have in common — is they’re irreverent. So I go, ‘How do I do something irreverent, but fuck comedy? Oh I know, let’s take the comic book movie universe and turn it on its head with this.’ And so that’s really where that came from.”

Phillips’ comments have been met by widespread derision, not least of all by actual comedians. Everyone from Patton Oswalt to New Zealand’s own Taika Waititi have decried the director’s take.

It’s also worth noting that Phillips’ ‘retirement’ from comedy is probably premature anyway. The dude follows trends wherever they go; as if he won’t eventually try to make a buck off the next big thing in comedy.