To be fair, though, the thing with Kaufman on "Fridays" was... mostly a work, in wrestling lingo. Richards knew Andy was going to do it, it was cleared with... one or two of the creative staff, etc. Most of the cast and most of the crew and so on were unaware but Richards was in on the gag and definitely acting.
Sort of like the bit with Pam Anderson in "Borat"... she was in on it, her handlers were in on it and the higher-ups at the Virgin Megastore were in on it... but the other people in the line and some of the low-level people at Target were out of the loop so as to get maximum "real" reaction with minimal risk of things getting so far as actual injury/actual police intervention/etc.
"Fridays" had just enough people involved to get the joke off the ground and to prevent the gag from being cut away to commerical or anything like that. One of the people who runs out to "break up the fight" after all is... Andy's friend/co-writer Bob Zmuda, thinly disguised as a crew member. You'd have to imagine crew and cast started catching on right there.
My thought with Richards is... yeah, clearly, he's racist on some dark level but... there's no way a sane person would say things THAT over the top in THIS media age without having a VERY VERY clear wink or scenario or character to hide behind. Borat has the conceit that... (a.) it's a character (b.) the character's racism is consistently structured as a racism of ignorance and cultural misunderstanding, in line with the parody of central Asia he comes from, and not deeply-held and deeply-considered hate and (c.) generally, the most virulent racism he holds without being lead into it by real people or real American media culture is toward... Jewish folk... and the "real" Cohen is not only Jewish but fairly orthodox Jewish and a thoroughly-well-educated British Jew to boot.
Whereas... Richards had no character to play, no stunt to be couched within and no... record of having been involved in any sort of provacaturism in the last... twenty years, practically. Part of the point with Kaufman was that he had long established a pattern of involving himself in more and more elaborate put-ons and so nothing he said was to be taken seriously.
Even when Andy wasn't hiding behind make-up or accent, he was clearly playing... a bad guy wrestler. Or et cetera.
Richards is a comic actor, regardless of the fact that the dude is definitely racist deep down, and not a stand-up comic. The skill set is totally different and the dude clearly couldn't take a heckle... especially now with the best days of his "fame" clearly behind him. Hollywood is a weird place and... fame is a goddamned addictive drug.
Dude rode high on that hog for a long time, y'know. He's probably having a hard time... dealing with not having the adulation anymore. That's why people who made more than enough money still... write books after their glory days are gone, take parts beneath their talent, try to reinvent themselves as singers or directors... end up debasing their very humanity to get on a reality show on VH1 or Fox... come out of retirement to hit .205 for a minor league ballclub... sign photos at comic book shows.
One more run. One more round of applause. One more burst of people treating you like a god and special and never gonna die. Fill that gaping hole in your soul one more time but ram it harder this time and... ultimately... make the whole even harder.
Fame is not just a whore, my friends, but she is a jealous whore. She doesn't just make you pay and pay heavily for every pleasure she provides but as time passes and your needs for her grow stronger, she pushes away every distraction you might have from ponying up the goods for another taste of her. Good distractions... family, love, friends... bad distractions... heavy drugs, weird sex, obscene wealth... when she has her hooks in you, she'll have you cast them all aside for her.
Donald Trump is richer than Nazis and... he needs to be on the teevee. Paris Hilton is richer than solid-gold ***** Nazis and... she needs to be talked about so badly that she'll flash her cooch to the paparazzo.
There has to be... something broken inside of you to want that much, ultimately... or something inside you has to break along the way when, where you started, you just wanted to get rich or... you know... the arts were the only thing you were good at or... whatever. This is the same problem I have with the entire idea of high-profile elected office:
If you want power and acclaim so much that you'll make all the compromises and give up so much of your real life to attain them... as you have to, to become a president or a senator or a governor... that you are probably not mentally healthy enough to actually wield that power.
There are exceptions. There aren't many.
The thing is that... fame's such a jealous whore that... even after you've given it all up to be with her, your family, your real goals and dreams, your loves, your sanity... when everything is stripped away but you and her and a cheap hotel bed? She still charges.
And so Michael Richards joneses for fame so much that he tries to reinvent himself as a stand-up and... he's not very good... and he's not skilled to deal with heckling at all.
So he's desperately trying to get back to that place where everyone worships him that... he's doing this thing he doesn't really know how to do and... he's doing it in West Hollywood on a weekend, a long walk from where I am right now and... you know, he's where the decision makers are and... he's where the people who decide if he can get back to that place are and...
He's failing. Miserably. He's a giraffe on dry land, trying to get oxygen out of the air and feeling. Full-on Faith No More video.
And something snaps. The man... the peon... the nobody heckling him... taking away his shot at the warm breath of adulation again happens to be black. Everything starts pouring out, all his racism but also all his anxiety, all his fear of no longer being worshipped, of no longer being immortal, of no longer being a god without a man in the back of a chariot to tell him that he isn't one as the laurel wreaths fly in from the worshipful crowds... every one of these fears blows out at once.
And he's just screaming the worst things he can possibly think of.
A dying man cursing the gods for not letting him be one of them.
A total nervous breakdown at the collapse of his own once-and-future divinity and...
It just happens that the heckler was black and Richards has racism in his heart.
It was racist, yeah, completely and abhorrent but... we can't only see it through that prism. The racism was just the straw on the camel's back. You could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice, the hate toward African-Americans was secondary to his... hate of himself, his hate of irrelevance, of failure, of vulnerability, of knowing he was never going to go back up that goddamned whore of a mountain we call fame.
It was his Sunset Boulevard moment... and ironically... right on Sunset and Laurel.
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Topic: Kramer's Racist Rant (Read 6689 times)