Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Michael Richards

He's apologizing on Letterman in a truly awkward moment. As you may have heard, he attacked some hecklers at the Laugh Factory with racial slurs a few nights ago. Now he's on satellite stumbling through an unplanned speech. The audience is laughing in the pauses and Jerry Seinfeld (who was supposed to be pluggingthe season 7 dvd) is admonishing them.

But I think they have a point. Richards is known as an experimental comic and even Kaufmanesque at times. It really looked as if he was going to turn it around into something hilarious. That didn't happen.

Comedians are supposed to fearless and inappropriate and a comedy club is their home turf. But instead of trying to win the room back, he's on national television cowering for it. The audience is laughing not because they're supposed to but because they should be.

Here's Richards in a truly spontaneous and shocking moment; with Andy Kaufman on "Fridays". I wish I could find Andy's apology on youtube because that's where I thought Richards would go tonight.

3 comments:

Brian Kunath said...

Kramer went crazy, and not in a Kaufmanesque way. He lost control and offended lots of people, including the always offended Paul Rodriguez, who went so far as to sputter on about the limits of free speech.

My point? Paul Rodriguez is a deeply unfunny man.

Anonymous said...

I agree, Paul Rodriguez really needed this. He's a star again.

Cromely said...

I'm sure that whole apology had something to do with Jerry Seinfeld calling him up earlier that day and saying something like, "You'd better come on Letterman tonight and apologize because I will NOT have you screwing up the release of the 7th season of Seinfeld on DVD this week."