i say he got baited...

the 2 dingbats were at fault, and he got carried away in his reverse heckling... the racisme point is then over exagerated

think about it , if it were Eddy Murphy or Chapelle or Chris Rock

wouldn't have mattered what color the heckler would have had
they would have called the heckler a lot more names then this
white man "Crackka" "Okie" and the black man "Nigga", asians would have been called "ching chong chinaman" or whatever

but when a white man does the same he's a racist...

the thing that didn't help is that M.R. doesn't have the casual look when he rants... he doesn't come over as comfortable on stage like the 3 others i mentioned .... and as such it looks worse then it is...

This little episode just goes to show ya what a bunch of retards we have on this Board...and especailly U DEEEDEEE...as U live is Hollyweird land...

ANddd OOOO telll us why Ohh great Tabdula....

Many years ago Michael Richards got his start on a late night comedy program much like SNL....called Fridays....One night they had a guest on called Andy Kaufman...who belittled women to the point of it almost t being a fight on air. Kaufman later went on several talk shows to apologize. It was all a setup without the cast of Fridays knowing about it.

Does this ring a bell....

Perhaps his attitudes are juvenile, but he has a sophisticated understanding of the pace and momentum of film, along with the effect of sound/music, not to mention that he is a master of writing dialogue. Make no mistake, within academic film circles, Tarantino is slowly-but-surely being canonized, and in 15-20 years he will appear on syllibi along with Ford, Hitch, Wells, et al.

dd74, when PULP FICTION was produced (1994? 96?), Tarantino already had a multi-picture deal in place with Miramax, thanks to the massive success of RESERVOIR DOGS. I don't think the man needed to do a lot of script shopping. Moreover, I don't see PULP FICTION as being an incredibly racially-charged movie.

I'm still not sure what you mean about racially-charged films not getting made. One of the biggest movies of 2005 was CRASH, non?

I just watched it... I agree that it looks like he's trying to pull off a Lenny Bruce type act, but he fails to make it funny. He was trying to be outrageous, but I think there has to be irony or self-deprecation in order to make it work.

I kinda feel bad for him; it's bad enough to bomb, but it'd be really hard to be painted as a racist over a really, really bad gag.

This whole thing reaks of reverse-racism and double standards.

If you are white you have to be PC or your career is over. If you are not white it's a whole different story.

+1

I think parts of this is a total set up! The camera rolled to catch this outburst, MR starts using the N word all up and down and the black guy stands up and says "thats uncalled for"?! I don't know what you guys are doing on the west coast but thats just not realistic to me.

Nikita

How so? Do you consider screaming "nigger" at a black person that you are upset with a matter of simply not "being PC"? :confused:

If so, we've got some real closeted racists here that I was not aware of. PC has nothing to do w/ it. I hate political correctness, but the only one who played the race card in this deal was white. Richards was having a verbal spat w/ some people that had nothing to do w/ race, ("you're not funny"), and he told the guy that he would have been "hung upside down w/ a fork up your ass" 50 years ago and started screaming "nigger" at him.

Yeah, 50 years ago....., the good ole' days before PC. :rolleyes:

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you two are just idiots, not true racists.

Stupid crackers.

I don't give a rat's arse if Richards called a heckler the N word, just as I don't care when black comedians call whites honkeys or crackers.

The fact that so many people DO take issue with Richards, but DO NOT raise an eyebrow when it happens the other way, smacks of what I consider reverse discrimination. If that makes me a racist in your eyes........well I won't lose any sleep over it.

I don't think pointing out something which you perceive to be true about our culture makes you a racist, Tim. It makes you perceptive. It's one thing to call a black man the "N word", it's quite another to point out the unfair biases in our culture.

There are a lot of shades of grey in racial issues; a lot of this has to do with intent. When a show like SOUTH PARK uses racially-charged terms, it is obvious that Parker/Stone et al. are attacking prejudices in culture. When Michael Richards lashes out in anger at a heckler, however, the intent is very different.

Well, we know who the next patient in the Betty Ford Center will be. Very predictable... every celebrity has their obligatory meltdown and subsequent recovery. Then he'll write a book about his experience and hawk it on Oprah...

Darn it Tim, what's the point of having speeder on the ignore list if you quote his posts? ;)

Sorry Sammy! :D
Speedy is OK some of the time (unlike a few "way out there" lefties here....:D Hi Rodeo SmileWavy ).)

+1 :D

My soon to be sister in law met Kramer at a party she did the catering for in Mahattan. She said he was the biggest ass she had ever met. It ruined Sienfeld for me and after her story this does not suprise me.

This is America the land of second chances and short attention spans. His career will bounce back like everyone else that screws up in Hollywood.

You think this was a setup?

If that's the case, and its a repeat of something that happened in the past, what's the plan/goal? How is it supposed to play out?

There are some parts of it that make it seem staged, some of the dialog, the fact that someone happened to be filming it (which I'd guess isn't generally allowed).

But I dunno. I guess if I'd have to guess, gullible old me would say it wasn't staged, the guy isn't a racist (or at least not necesarily more racist than the average person, black or white), just lost his cool and in doing so wanted to verbally hurt the heckler as much as possible. If a white guy wants to launch all out verbal nuclear war on a black guy, you know what word he's going to pull out.

If it's a setup, it was pretty damn ballsy. It's one thing to set up a fight with some little old lady in the audience. This is in another league altogether.

Watch some of Andy Kaufman's old setups. The goal was to make the audience uncomfortable.

Reminds me of a similar situation.

Not that I ever cared for him, but my sister while working in Chicago had the unfortunate job of working with Jesse Jackson for a charity event. She said when the cameras were off, he was hitting on the women and talking like a street hood....as soon as the cameras were on him, he morphed into "the most honorable reverend Jesse Jackson". :rolleyes: