Jugstore Cowboy said:

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If you haven't seen it already, this Office Space reunion is a great discussion on making a fairly low-budget comedy for adults. Of course, it wasn't a box office smash, but went to make an impression on the culture.

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So I just watched that discussion and it got me thinking, why would any decent comedy writer want to make a full feature-length film? Just hearing how Mike Judge had to constantly fight with Fox studio execs about how they wanted the film to be, it sounds miserable to have your creation constantly be tweaked or twisted to become what the studio envisions as what will make the best chance at financial return. Until recently, you had to deal with the studio as making a movie or sitcom where the only 2 ways to have a finically viable career being a creator outside of doing standup. Now the creators can go straight to the public via YouTube. Sure, there could be a big payday and even larger life changing money if the movie is a success. So its perhaps a combination of the scripts/ideas just arent coming in to the studios combined with the studios not seeing the possibility for instant ROI.

I think Vince Vaughn is right. But another factor is the cyclical nature of movie genres. R rated comedies will come back, just like they did in the late 90s with American Pie. Before that, there was maybe a decade where they were pretty non-existent.

There have been some decent ones in the last 10 years, they just don't always get the big studio treatment.

2 that come to mind right away are
-They Cloned Tyrone
-The Long Dumb Road

Probably lots of others in the streaming catalog that I haven't gotten to and may not ever find just sifting thru the menus. Yall have any other suggestions along those lines?

One of the greatest lines in the history of cinema:

Is it me or does David Herman seem like he has gone off the deep end?

I'm suspecting he was always off the deep end.

I loved The Wrong Missy as well, I thought the lead actress' performance was one of the best female comedic performances I have seen in a long time.

jokershady said:

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I'm just genuinely happy that this is coming from an interview from Hot Ones.

That guy is so dang good at interviewing people. This guy and Graham Norton get the best answers and genuine reactions out of people than any other talk show host.

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I agree, i was a lot more into this topic once i saw it was from Hot Ones

PatAg said:

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YouBet said:

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TCTTS said:

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Game Night, 2018.

The last great R-rated comedy, IMO, one that people are still quoting/meme-ing six years later, and has only seemed to grow in popularity.

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For some damn reason, I can't get my wife to watch this. It's drives me crazy.

I'll throw out a recent R rated movie that we loved. We laughed our ass off the whole movie - The Wrong Missy. It's not rated well but we thought it was hilarious.

I scanned this thread and I think to sum this all up what we are experiencing is (1) a function of massive technological changes and (2) a large portion of our society becoming an intolerant, humorless, and miserable lot that hates everything.

There is a reason you hear the saying "The left can't meme." When you have no ability to look inward and laugh at yourself, you lose the ability to laugh at anything or even think in terms of humor. And then it becomes a negative reinforcement loop when those are the people making films or who at least run in those circles and feel like they have to governor what they make even if they don't want to.

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There is no way this is actually a saying.

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I've heard it applied to both the left and right. Obviously you will only hear one or the other depending on which political safe-space you hang out in online once again proving the internet has fragmented society where it's hard for us to have shared cultural experiences and sayings beyond Hawk Tuah.

Quote:

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You think Blazing Saddles gets made today?

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Blazing Saddles is an extremely "woke" film on the issue of race and tearing down the traditional depiction of the American west. It was written by Richard Pryor and Mel Brooks. It likely could not get made today because it's not an existing property, not because of the film itself. We had Jojo Rabbit recently, which was no Blazing Saddles in quality, but certainly pushed certain lines and buttons.

Whose buttons did Jojo Rabbit press? Fantastic film, but not sure what you mean by that.

I think he has a valid point. I LOVE comedy. All of it. We watch Southpark as a family…with 15/16 year olds. We watch Dave Chappell. I love Rocky Gervais and I love raunchy off color humor. I can't even recall when I watched something that actually made me laugh in the last few years. We have this idea that we can't laugh at gays, handicapped, trans, Jews, Holocaust, ….we've gotten this "off limit" idea and that SUCKS. you don't get to decide what you find funny and I have no problem laughing out loud at things that would make most people feel really awkward.

The point made above all stems back to exactly what Vince is saying. Some jerk is worried about losing his job and so they can't make anything that's worth a crap.

If you can't laugh hysterically at something that's so bad you say "this is why I'm going to hell" then you aren't living. Lol.

None of that is an issue if you know where to look. The White Lotus was often funny. Much else? No, but that's why you have funny friends, and ideally a funny family too.

I was expecting this thread to have been bumped for another reason, directly relevant to Vaughan's comments:

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Another new nationwide entry was Lionsgate's big-budget Borderlands, which bit the dust in opening to $8.8 million, behind already muted projections and despite a star-studded cast including Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Black, Ariana Greenblatt and Florian Munbteanu.

Directed by Eli Roth, the video game adaptation which cost north of $110 million to produce was roundly panned by critics; audiences felt the same in slapping with a D+ cinemascore. Lionsgate insiders say the studio's losses will be minimized by selling off international rights.

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https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/it-ends-with-us-box-office-deadpool-1235971802/

SF2004 said:

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PeekingDuck said:

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One of the greatest lines in the history of cinema:

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A lot of words on this thread all trying to tip toe the elephant in the room.

This scene sums it up... you cannot say this in a movie now.

You have people dissecting old disney cartoons, 80s classics, etc. Trigger warnings before Looney Toons. Stealth editing of old films.

You think Blazing Saddles gets made today?

Revenge of the Nerds has a dude pretend to be another dude to sleep with a girl.

Porky's?

It is all a common theme and you all know why these movies do not get made any more.

Matt Damon is full of **** too... the revenue stream changed and you don't hear him say we have to cut actors salaries etc... it is "ho hum I can charge people $30 for a DVD".

"I don't want to be fired and canceled" /EOT

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Was watching wedding crashers last night and it was really funny. Feel like the 'wacky comedy' has gone away at least for right now. There really hasn't been an Anchorman or Talladega Nights or even Dumb and Dumber - those really didn't even have the edgy jokes in them.

At the same time, there are some things in the old movies that make me cringe a bit. You referenced 'Revenge of the Nerds' - I remember that scene. He put a Darth Vader mask on and pretended to be a girls boyfriend so he could have sex with her. That's straight up rape and played for a laugh. She was so impressed with his performance afterwords that she stayed with him. They installed camera's in the girls dorms and took naked pics and sold the pics for the fraternity party challenge. Again - we'd consider that wrong and illegal, but played for laughs.

The other I think about is 16 candles. Guy straight up hands over his blackout drunk girlfriend to another guy to have sex with. They both end up waking up in a parking lot the next day - she was so drunk she didn't realize it wasn't her boyfriend.

I don't have an issue with these kinds of things in movies. I do have an issue with them played off for laughs or 'I'm so happy you raped me last night - you're much better at sex than my boyfriend.' There is a reason those acts are illegal and it's not because it's funny.

Side note - worked at WB television distribution during the early 2000s. DVDs were the cash cow no one talked about. Television (domestic and international) were way more lucrative than than anyone realized and could go on long after a movie came out. Pricing for a movie to go to TV was based on how well a movie did at the box office though, in addition to how long ago it was released, format and a few other things. The movies that did get made had fewer avenues of distribution after the theater - so chances of Matt Damon getting a movie made because he wanted to were much higher.

Streaming was under the TV umbrella at that time and we got to see some of the netflix contracts for WB material. Commented at the time that we were all amazed they were making any money, because they didn't want to charge per stream but just a bulk rate to put it on the channel. They obviously figured out how to do it correctly, but they paid a ton at least in the early days of streaming.

No, you're wrong, it's not all of Hollywood that is like that.

BowSowy said:

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We watch a lot of the office when there isn't anything else on TV. Watching some of those older seasons, there are definitely some jokes that wouldn't fly today. But I also don't think there's much interest in a lower budget comedy serial like that. Which is a shame, because that show was great when it came out and is very rewatchable. I'm sure it's much more rewatchable to us because that came out when we were late teens/early 20s. But I can't think of anything in the last 10-15 years that was in that same lane.

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Plenty of solid shows have come out since Office- Barry, VEEP, Curb just to name a few.

I was born in the early 70s so I was a bit older than you for office but it remains a solid rewatch.

Each of those examples unfortunately is only available on upper tier service. They just don't get to enter the American lexicon in the same way a Seinfeld or Office or Cheers did. I'll go back to what I mentioned earlier, everyone is in their own entertainment silo nowadays. We pretty much have no more truly "shared experiences" outside of the Super Bowl halftime show, or some crappy Black Eyed peas song that gets played anywhere and everywhere for a year or longer (tonight's gonna be a good night continues to be one of the worst things ever created).

Heck, unfortunately not even Top Gun: Maverick is a truly shared experience, although it's pretty close. I know people who never saw it. Maybe that changes over time as these people catch it streaming or on cable. (Was just trying to think of the movie in recent years with the most social fanfare across the board).

And because these shows are on that service, they can cross the line that cable seems to have drawn for itself. But your average Joe on the street has never seen a minute of any of those shows.

bonfarr said:

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So we're not supposed to be comfortable laughing at Revenge of the Nerds and Sixteen Candles and are given movies like The Hunt instead. A group of liberals hunt down working class conservatives and murder them and we are supposed to find that amusing and entertaining. If you read interviews from the Director and believe what he says he didn't think that was controversial or anyone would have an issue with that and that is the problem with Hollywood today.

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It's really about the movie messaging.

For my stance, I have no issue with the Hunt. The bad guys were the ones doing bad things and in this instance they were taken down for it. They were clearly the bad guys. Oh and the movie was clearly not portraying real life (decent movie though). If it was the good guys doing it and the message of the movie was hunting poor people was ok - I would have issue with it.

In 16 Candles - a protagonist basically rapes another character who was blackout drunk and didn't even know who she was having sex with. The move is portrayed as a win for both parties in a light hearted way. Real life he would be arrested for that and deemed a sexual predator.

Anti heroes are a bit where my argument falters a bit. Walter White clearly was doing bad things, but was the protagonist and the story was about him justifying doing bad things until the consequences of those bad things catch up to him and he realizes what kind of monster he was. Scarface was the protagonist but a bad guy all around.

I have nothing to say about Oceans 11 and caper movies. I have no idea why that doesn't offend me as much with the good guys stealing money from a Casino and getting away with it.

Thoroughly enjoyed Vince Vaugh talk about motorboating boobies last night in Wedding Crashers.

SF2004 said:

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PeekingDuck said:

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One of the greatest lines in the history of cinema:

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A lot of words on this thread all trying to tip toe the elephant in the room.

This scene sums it up... you cannot say this in a movie now.

You have people dissecting old disney cartoons, 80s classics, etc. Trigger warnings before Looney Toons. Stealth editing of old films.

You think Blazing Saddles gets made today?

Revenge of the Nerds has a dude pretend to be another dude to sleep with a girl.

Porky's?

It is all a common theme and you all know why these movies do not get made any more.

Matt Damon is full of **** too... the revenue stream changed and you don't hear him say we have to cut actors salaries etc... it is "ho hum I can charge people $30 for a DVD".

"I don't want to be fired and canceled" /EOT

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You cant say this in public either

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/40829067/red-sox-jarren-duran-apologizes-using-anti-gay-slur-fan

As far as the joke in the movie, I find it funny because its such an extreme word to use and a clear over reaction by the cab driver. However, I know there are some that find it funny because "ha ha he said ******." To me the first kind of reaction to the joke can still happen with a different word that doesn't punch down at an entire community. The movie isn't getting made because you can't use certain words anymore. I think society is just shifted enough where jokes that use a certain demographic as the insult aren't as accepted. That doesn't mean funny movies can't be made. But I can see how a studio is going to want to ensure maximum returns on production and comb through the material with a fine-toothed comb assuming they even greenlight it in the first place.

Superbad was one of the funniest movies that I had ever seen.

They tried to do a similar movie in Good Boys a few years back and it was awful...because yeah it was little kids using bad language, but the way they had to walk some of it back and have the kids realize what they were saying is not acceptable nowadays was really cringe and the movie was not good.

First episode of Bad Monkey dropped on Apple.

Vince Vaughn (who looks like **** these days) was part of the problem.

He went from doing R-rated comedies like Old School and Wedding Crashers for a couple million bucks, to PG-13 rom coms like The Break Up and Four Christmases for like $13M.

There is still a market for $25M R-Rated comedies. That doesn't work if you've got a star getting $13M. That's what Vaughn sold out to do. Which is fine, I would too. But you don't get to then decry the genre you left behind.