Actor and comedian Billy Crystal said the current cultural climate has turned the world of comedy into “a minefield.”
“I don’t like it,” he said during a recent interview with the New York Post. “I understand it. … I just keep doing what I’m doing, and that’s all you can do right now. It’s a totally different world [now], and it doesn’t mean you have to like it.”
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Crystal’s comments come the same week as the release of his latest movie, “Here Today,” which co-stars Tiffany Haddish. It’s the first film Crystal has directed in 20 years.
The film chronicles the unlikely friendship between an up-and-coming street singer (Haddish) and an aging comedy writer (Crystal), who is at the beginning stages of dementia. Crystal said he cowrote the script with Alan Zweibel after helping care for a relative facing cognitive decline.
While the movie certainly explores a serious topic, Crystal said it’s lighthearted and centers on the unique bond between his character and Haddish’s.
He argued the world needs more empathy in this moment.
“That’s something that we really need more of, the country, and that is empathy, and that’s what I think is the beautiful part of this friendship,” he told the Post. “She gives up a chance for her career to move forward to take care of him. And I think that’s a beautiful thing.”
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HBO host Bill Maher has also rebuked cancel culture.
“Is this really who we want to become?” he asked. “A society of phony, clenched [expletive] avatars walking on eggshells, always looking over your shoulder about getting ratted out for something that actually has nothing to do with your character or morals?”
“Think about everything you’ve ever texted, emailed, searched for, tweeted, blogged, or said in passing,” the oft-brash comedian continued. “Or now even just witnessed: ‘Someone had a Confederate flag in their dorm room in 1990, and you didn’t do anything?’ ‘You laughed at a Woody Allen movie?’”
In 2019, actor and comedian Jerry Seinfeld said political correctness has damaged sitcoms, which he said are now “so bad.”
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“It has gotten so much more difficult to chart the culture,” he told fellow comedian Amy Schumer. “When we did my show in the ’90s, it was so easy to make fun of things. You just knew what to do, you knew the angle you were going to take and you know it’s going to be fresh and it’s going to be funny. You know exactly where [the audience’s] head is at. We don’t know where anybody’s head is at now.”