On Monday’s episode of “The Michael Knowles Show,” Knowles talks about how Ricky Gervais exposed the gap between Hollywood and the American people for all to see. Video and partial transcript below:
Far more cold-blooded, far more brutal than the killing of Soleimani were Ricky Gervais’ attacks on Hollywood last night at the Golden Globes. The Golden Globes — opening up awards season here in Hollywood — awards season is so irrelevant these days that I didn’t even know it was happening. I forgot.
I have worked professionally in show business, I live in Hollywood, I am right here at the center of it, and I forgot that it was going on. I didn’t know until yesterday when someone said, “You know, the Golden Globes is on.” Oh, really? Okay, who cares? That is how out of touch these people are.
They decided to become relevant this year that the Golden Globes is going to go vegan. So they served dinner at this particular awards show, and it was going to go completely vegan to help the environment because that’s that’s the way that they’re going to finally turn their failing ratings around and relate to the American people. No, probably not.
Ricky Gervais gets up there, he’s hosted this a number of times in the past, he said this would be his last time hosting, and Ricky Gervais didn’t care. He went for the necks of Hollywood and he — wow, I just realized the pun there because he opened up the night with an Epstein joke, so the pun was not intended. But all of Ricky Gervais’ attacks were intended. He said, I don’t care. I’m leaving nothing on the table.
I think his monologue was pretty much the only shot that the award season has to relate in any way to the American people. It was great, and it was great at the expense of the audience in the room. The Hollywood stars, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, he open[ed] the night with a joke about Jeffrey Epstein.
GERVAIS: Spoiler alert, Season 2 is on the way, so in the end, he obviously didn’t kill himself — just like Jeffrey Epstein. Shut up. I know he’s your friend, but I don’t care. You had to make your own way here in your own plane, didn’t ya?
Oh my gosh, what a great one-two. He opens up with the Jeffrey Epstein joke, right? That would have been enough, but Hollywood can’t laugh about Jeffrey Epstein. They didn’t laugh, they kind of stayed a little quiet. They kind of groaned, which set up Gervais for the actual punchline of his joke, which is, “Oh, shut up, I know you’re all friends with the guy” — because they are! They are all friends with the guy and they’re all friends with all the MeToo perpetrators and they’re friends with all of these sex criminals.
They pretend that they’re not, they clutch their pearls and they pretend to be so nice and wonderful and high and mighty. He says, “Yeah, you had to take your own plane here tonight, didn’t you?” That one finally got the lights so awkward. It was so brutal and the attacks only got harsher. From there, he went after every single person in that room for hypocrisy, and at many points, you could pretty much hear a pin drop.
GERVAIS: A superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing, made by a company that runs sweatshops in China. So when you say you’re woke but the companies you work for — I mean, unbelievable. Apple, Amazon, Disney — if ISIS started a streaming service, you’d call your agent, wouldn’t you? So, if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world.Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. So if you win, alright, come up accept your little award, thank your agent, and your god, and [expletive] off.
That little bit that we had to bleep out there at the end is where, Ricky Gervais told people where they could go after they had received their award. It was a wonderful spectacle. It was great, Ricky Gervais is an international treasure.
Why? Because he showed the gap between Hollywood and the American people. He showed the gap between the Hollywood foreign press, the international press — the big makers of culture and the consumers of culture. And you can’t deny that gap, because these awards shows have been tanking in the ratings for years now, every single year. Hollywood cannot even laugh at an Epstein joke — a joke about an international sex trafficking, criminal, pedophile — everything. They can’t laugh at it because they know him — because they were friends with him. They don’t understand.
The more interesting level of analysis here is whether or not Ricky Gervais was brave to do this set. The conventional wisdom is it was so brave of Gervais to do this set in front of Hollywood. Now, in many ways, it was because this will hurt his employment prospects in Hollywood. He was telling these people that they’re degenerates to their face, right? It was absolutely hilarious. In that way, it was courageous to do it.
But in another sense, it wasn’t brave at all … [Gervais] knew that the audience would love this, that they would lap this up, that they would say, “Finally, Rickey Gervais, this guy is so good. This guy gets us.”
He deserves credit because it really will irritate his employers, but this will make him so much more popular among the audience. The only reason that any person is talking about the Golden Globes today is because Ricky Gervais had this great, killer set. Looking ahead on the political scene to 2020, it shows you how absolutely worthless celebrity endorsements are that the Left, they’re always shocked. They say, “Oh, Hillary Clinton got all the endorsements of Hollywood, all these big-time movie stars and TV stars. How did she lose? John Kerry got all the big endorsements. Bruce Springsteen. Puff Daddy, all these guys. How did they lose?” Because none of us like Hollywood, we don’t like these people.
Listen to full episodes of “The Michael Knowles Show” on iTunes.
Watch “The Michael Knowles Show” on-demand!