Why director Adam McKay believes we need humor to stave off disaster
When he started promoting the film, he got to wondering: Could humor actually galvanize some kind of response to the climate crisis? So his team did a test: They asked audience members whether they believed in climate change any more after watching the film, and whether they felt more likely to take action to stop it. They also shot a short video with the movie's star, Leonardo DiCaprio, in which the actor delivered his own personal message about the climate crisis. Their conclusion? They could be more persuasive and impactful if they produced more short-form videos. And so McKay—who launched his career as a writer for Saturday Night Live before directing hits like Anchorman and The Big Short—started a small production house, Yellow Dot Studios, aiming to channel all his comedic powers into provoking audiences to save the world. After all, even gallows humor can help process overwhelming events. And McKay's experience as a comic tells him that nothing bonds a crowd like a shared joke.
Yellow Dot has now had a couple of viral hits, including a fake Chevron ad that juxtaposes idyllic shots of nature with a voice-over explaining that the oil company is going to kill us all. There's also a Game of Thrones parody in which the zombielike White Walker is replaced by a climate scientist—a character, much like the beast in the original, who goes perilously ignored by the feuding royals.
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Atlantic
6 hours ago
- Atlantic
What We Gain When We Stop Caring
Sometime in the early aughts, the comedian Amy Poehler made a vulgar joke while sitting in the Saturday Night Live writers' room waiting for a midweek read-through to begin. As detailed in Tina Fey's 2011 memoir, Bossypants, Jimmy Fallon, who was also in the show's cast at the time, jokingly recoiled and told Poehler to stop it. 'It's not cute!' Fallon exclaimed. 'I don't like it.' 'Amy dropped what she was doing, went black in the eyes for a second, and wheeled around on him,' Fey writes. ''I don't fucking care if you like it.'' I was brought back to Fey's Poehler-Fallon anecdote when a friend shared the first of Melani Sanders's 'We Do Not Care' videos with me. Earlier this summer, Sanders, who identifies herself as a wife and mother, posted a short rant cum manifesto on Instagram, filmed in her car after a grocery run, in which she declared that she was not going to take it anymore. What's 'it'? Well, societal expectations about female comportment, for one thing. She does not care, she announces, that she doesn't have a 'real bra' on. Sanders did not— does not—care about a bunch of other things, as she made clear in subsequent videos. She does not care about shaving her legs, or grooming her chin hairs, or having edge control in her hair. She does not care about wearing matching clothes, or that her hair isn't combed. She does not care about pointless small talk, about that flashing light in her car, or that her house is a hot mess. Sanders's first post reminded me a bit of Jane O'Reilly's famous article, ' Click! The Housewife's Moment of Truth,' which ran in the first issue of Ms. Magazine, in 1972. In her story, O'Reilly examined her friends' and neighbors' feminist awakenings—'click!' moments—about patriarchal expectations regarding women's unpaid labor, writing: 'One little click turns on a thousand others.' In Sanders's case, her click turned on thousands of others; at least half a dozen women forwarded that first video to me, and I suspect this was how many others came to it. Each of Sanders's videos is accompanied by thousands of comments, most by apparently delighted women who feel liberated by Sanders's exhortations. (Sanders, who notes that she's speaking for perimenopausal and menopausal women, often invites viewers to chime in with the things that they no longer care about, and seems to incorporate them in subsequent posts.) Indeed, there is an element of call-and-response to the We Do Not Care Club, which Sanders herself has, consciously or not, encouraged. In that first post in May, Sanders used the first person. By the next day, she had switched over to the first-person plural. ('We don't care what's for dinner.') A day later, Sanders just came out and said it: 'We do not care about people-pleasing.' Here's the thing: When Sanders says she doesn't care about 'people-pleasing,' she's saying, in effect, that she doesn't care about pleasing men. This is, to my mind, the wonderfully subversive message that's gotten lost in the initial flurry of discussion about the We Do Not Care Club. That the majority of her audience is women makes perfect sense, given that the we in 'We Do Not Care' clearly refers to them. That, in turn, suggests that the implied 'you' in Sanders's statements is men, collectively. Sanders's digital rebellion speaks both to and for a silent majority of women who are tired of contorting themselves to appeal to, or appease, male expectations of who they should be, whether those men are romantic partners, strangers, or Jimmy Fallon himself. And though Sanders calls the We Do Not Care Club a 'movement' with 'members,' I think it's more accurate to say that it is a revolt against misogyny. Plenty of women seem to agree. Responses to her videos, I've noticed, frequently make Sanders's implicit critique of male expectations explicit. (A representative example: 'We do not care if you don't like what you see, just look the other way!') Commenting under a New York Times article about Sanders's club, one woman wrote, 'I do not care about the male gaze.' Another noted: 'In my early 40s, I started to gain weight and I noticed how it made me invisible to unwanted male attention, and I liked it.' Of course, plenty of the things that Sanders and her followers do not care about seem to relate to the female gaze. You could argue that whether or not a woman has a pedicure or gray hair is as much about pleasing, or not offending, other women as it is about men. (Tina Fey again: 'Women dress for other women in order to let them know what their deal is.') Women may be dressing for other women, but aren't we also dressing for men? After all, most women, whether or not we're always conscious of it, are subject to some form of male appraisal about how we look and behave, which can in turn affect the way we're able to move through the world. Even older women, who tend to go unseen by society and overlooked as vital, sexual beings, are reminded on a regular basis of the power of the male gaze—and how easily it can be revoked. There's a lot that is freeing about getting older, including not giving as much of a damn. And it's important that Sanders says that her messages are meant for perimenopausal and menopausal women. Menopause is having a moment, and the We Do Not Care Club feels like a natural extension of the growing visibility of discussions about crepey skin and hot flashes and vaginal dryness. (In late June, Sanders was tapped as a spokesperson for the vaginal moisturizer Replens.) This is why seeing the 40-something Sanders reclining sideways on her bed wearing three pairs of glasses and marking off a list of things 'we' do not care about that includes having chin hairs, unshaved legs, and cellulite that's visible in short shorts is so captivating. But the messages contained within the We Do Not Care videos are, in the end, applicable to women of all ages. They're not just eruptions from a cohort of women for whom a lifetime's worth of expectations have reached their expiration date, but permission slips with which women of younger generations can eagerly anticipate a more unencumbered future—and perhaps even freedom in the present. They need it. Photo filters and AI are changing how we present ourselves to the public, raising expectations about having the smoothest skin and the plumpest lips. An ascendant MAGA aesthetic that plays up what the fashion critic Vanessa Friedman has called 'a retrograde gendered paradigm' jostles with trad-wife and wellness influencers who project visions of polished (and predominantly white) womanhood. And younger generations (much too young, I'd argue) are adopting expensive skin-care routines in order to, as the journalist Elise Hu put it, 'optimize one's face' and address 'the added burden of worrying earlier about wrinkles.' These so-called Sephora tweens, inspired by online beauty influencers, appear to be succumbing to the opposite message that many of us with actual wrinkles are welcoming: embracing a more observable older femininity, replete with fine lines and emergent fat on our underarms—and, as Poehler would say, not fucking caring if others like it. A few years ago, I wrote a story for this magazine about the power of saying no, in which I called on women to reject the socialization that begins in childhood and that nudges us to always be accommodating. I argued that we need to allow ourselves to refuse the things that are demanded of us, to erect and defend boundaries. This, I think, is why I, and so many others, have been so taken with the We Do Not Care Club. (One of Sanders's recent posts has more than 50,000 comments.) Because if the first step is for women to give themselves permission to say no, the We Do Not Care Club is the no itself.
Buzz Feed
18 hours ago
- Buzz Feed
18 Rude Celebrity Encounters Other Famous People Had
Dealing with rude people is, unfortunately, part of life. Some people get a reputation for being unpleasant, but sometimes, one person's experience with a "rude" person may be totally different than others'. Here are 18 times famous people called out the worst or rudest celebrities they've met: On a 2015 episode of Watch What Happens Live!, Bill Hader and Jay Pharoah revealed that the worst Saturday Night Live host they worked with was Justin Bieber, who hosted the show in 2013. Here's the full clip: On a 2023 episode of her podcast Bitch Sesh, Casey Wilson said that her costar Tim Allen was "such a bitch" to work with on The Santa Clauses. She called it the "worst, truly single worst experience [she's] ever had with a costar ever." She said, "[In our scene] I'm supposed to throw things at him. He's coming down the chimney, obviously as Santa. And I am woken up thinking there's an intruder — basically like a home invasion scene...I basically hear him — he goes, 'You gotta tell her to stop stepping on my lines.' The producer turns to me with horror on his face and has to walk one foot to me, and he goes, 'Tim would ask that you stopped stepping on his lines.'"She also claimed he was "so fucking rude" to her post-filming and "never made eye contact, never said anything." In a 2022 TikTok, JoJo Siwa revealed that the "rudest celebrity" she's ever met is Candace Cameron Bure. In an Instagram video, Candace responded, "I immediately tried to reach out to her through mutual friends, and my publicist contacted her manager, and I DM'd her because I didn't know what happened — I didn't know! [JoJo] actually didn't want to tell me [what had happened] because she said it's so silly, she felt bad, and that's why it just wasn't a big deal to her. But then she said, 'I met you at the Fuller House premiere when I was 11 years old, and we were all on the red carpet. I had come up to you and said, "Can I have a picture with you?" and you said to me, "Not right now." And then proceeded to do what you were doing and take pictures with other people on the red carpet.'"She said that she apologized to JoJo, who purpotedly told her, "Yeah, you weren't even mean, and I get it now as an adult — when you're on the red carpet and everything's happening and you're being pulled in different directions. But at that time, I was 11."Candace said, "I told JoJo how much I've always appreciated her because she has been a good role model because of her positivity throughout her whole life and career. She said she still loves watching Full House and watches it to fall asleep, and it's a comfort show for her, so we had all the feels, and it was all good, and there's no drama."Then, JoJo told Page Six, "I had a rough experience when I was little. I was 11, and I was a big, big fan, and I wanted to take a picture with her, and it wasn't a good time for her. I will say because I had a bad experience, that doesn't mean that she is an awful human. I think it just was an inconvenient time for her, and little 11-year-old me was just so pumped up and so excited, but that doesn't mean she's the worst human ever." Appearing on The Big Narstie Show in 2022, Mel B called out a few "dickhead" celebrities she's met — James Corden, her Spice Girls bandmate Geri Halliwell, Jessie J, and herself. Here's the full clip, with this part starting at the 0:38 mark: In her 2016 book Kathy Griffin's Celebrity Run-Ins, Kathy Griffin wrote, "You'll never convince me to like Jon Hamm. The vibe I've always gotten from him is cold and somewhat disrespectful…toward me. I'm suggesting he's one of these hot guys who's mildly funny but actually thinks he's comedian-level funny." She described an encounter they had at a dinner party where she was trying to talk to Jack wrote, "So when Hammy showed up, too, inside I thought, oh great. He even said to me, 'What are you doing here?' I said, 'I earned my seat at the table. What are you doing here?'...Hammy picks that moment [I was talking to Jack] to start whispering boozy yammering into my ear. First it was, 'You know your Emmy isn't a real Emmy.' I let that one go, but then he whispered, 'You're so o-o-o-old.' Look, I've been told I'm old and not funny by a lot of guys — a lot of hot guys, too — but not when I'm in an intimate conversation space with frickin' Jack Nicholson, an opportunity I figured I'd never get again; that's the real reason I can't stand Hammy. The double whammy of cruel but not playful comments and the horrible timing. Again, he's not a comedian, folks. Hopefully done with the drink, but probably still Don Draper-y." In Kathy Griffin's Celebrity Run-Ins, Kathy Griffin also shared that Ashton Kutcher was rude to her when they co-hosted a charity event in 2005. She wrote, "At least three separate times, we were standing in the wings, waiting to go out and present, and I'd say something like, 'Hey, what if, when we go out, we do this…,' and suggest something, and he'd just ignore me. If he said five words to me the whole day, I'd be surprised. It was bizarre and rude and made me feel as if he thought I was beneath him, someone not worth talking to in the slightest." She also said that, in 2008, she told him hello at a local restaurant, but he didn't respond. She said, "If you won't say hi to me in the Mexican takeout joint, you're a d-bag."She also alleged he was rude to her at a party. She wrote, "Kutcher stepped directly in front of me and started talking to Diddy as if I wasn't even there. So that's three incidents. Do I loathe him? No. He's just someone who's made it perfectly clear to me that I have absolutely nothing to offer him during his precious time on earth." Playing a game of "Stir the Pot" on E! News in 2023, Sharon Osbourne shared that Ashton Kutcher is the rudest celebrity she's ever met. Back in 2018, Sharon told Larry King Now, "I didn't get on with him at all [on The Talk]...Bad attitude for me, for me, 'cause I got his name wrong. He was pissed! And he comes on with an attitude, and he goes, 'What have you done in this industry?' And I was like, 'Kid, don't start with me. 'Cause I'm gonna eat you up and shit you out.' I was just like, 'You don't know what you're dealing with, kid.'" Here's the full clip, with this part starting at the 1:14 mark: On a 2023 episode of Fifi, Fev & Nick for Breakfast, radio host/TV presenter Fifi Box said, "Sharon Osborne has come out and said Ashton Kutcher is one of the least likeable celebrities she's ever met. Now what's interesting about that is — and I have to say, everybody has bad days so when you get asked about the rudest celebrity you've got to acknowledge that somebody might have a bad day — but when I saw Ashton was in hot water, I didn't feel that much sympathy for him because I labelled him my worst celebrity I've ever met." She said, "I asked a very generic question about the movie, and he didn't even look me in the eye, and he said, 'Well, you'll have to ask Michael that. He's sitting next to me'. Well, I did just ask Michael a question, and now I'm coming to you as you're the lead actor."She also said that, after she asked Ashton about his diet, "He cut me off, blocked me, deferred to the director the whole interview. It was horrible, it was an awful experience." In a 2022 TikTok, Spencer Pratt named Lisa Kudrow as the rudest celebrity he's met. In a follow-up video, he explained, "The year was 2009. Heidi [Montag, my wife] and I were invited to our first real A-list party by the president of NBC. It was clear when we got there, no one wanted us there. It was almost like we were filming for Punk'd and a camera was going to pop up, but Heidi and I didn't care. There was delicious food, open bar, and beautiful views of the Malibu ocean. "As we were sitting there consuming a little caviar, Phoebe [Lisa Kudrow] approaches — which was a little shocking, as no one had spoken to us at all at the party. ...Right in front of me, she tells Heidi that she needs to get away from me as fast as possible because I'm going to murder Heidi, and that I have the eyes of a serial killer. Heidi waits to see if this is a joke — maybe this is a bit, maybe this is a hidden camera party. No laughs — she just walks away. And that right there is the rudest moment I've ever encountered with a human being." On a 2023 episode of Watch What Happens Live!, the Jersey Shore Family Vacation cast played a game of "Revenge of the Shady Duck Phone." Nicole "Snookie" Polizzi shared her rude encounter with Joy Behar. On the same episode of Watch What Happens Live!, Deena Cortese and Sammi 'Sweetheart' Giancola shared their unpleasant experience with Ryan Reynolds. Here's the full clip, with this part (and Snooki's) starting at the 1:45 mark: On a 2017 episode of The Late Late Show, host James Corden played "Spill Your Guts or Fill Your Guts" with guest Khloé Kardashian. Rather than drink bird saliva, he shared that he had a rude encounter with Pierce Brosnan. Here's the full video, with this part starting at the 2:20 mark: In 2023, Stephen Mangan told the Telegraph that his "worst celebrity encounter" was with Robert De Niro, who had a cold reaction to Stephen's attempt at making a joke. Stephen said, "One of my acting heroes is Robert De Niro, and I once found myself in the same room as him at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. I am not the kind of person who runs up to everyone I admire. I'm actually a little bit shy. But I thought, 'I cannot miss this opportunity to go and just say hello to him.' So, I made a start towards him, then I thought, 'No, I can't do it,' and stopped. Then I went to go and stopped again, then eventually I just strode straight up to him, and said, 'Hello, I'm Robert De Niro.' There was a pause, and then he said, with no hint of anything other than irritation, 'No, I'm Robert De Niro.' I then made some unintelligible noises, walked away, and that was the end of that. Our paths have never crossed since." At the 2018 Cheltenham Literature Festival, Graham Norton revealed that his worst The Graham Norton Show guest was Robert De Niro. Graham said, "He's not a storyteller, or very verbal. He's a benign presence." "Last time he started telling a story — he went on and on. We were all leaning in, willing it to be amazing... Then he finally went, 'Why am I telling this?' Nobody had an answer. We cut it," he said. Freddie Prinze Jr. had such a poor experience with costar Kiefer Sutherland that he almost quit acting. In 2014, Freddie told ABC News, "I did 24, it was terrible. I hated every moment of it. Kiefer was the most unprofessional dude in the world. That's not me talking trash, I'd say it to his face, I think everyone that's worked with him has said that. I just wanted to quit the business after that. So, I just sort of stopped." "I went and worked for Vince McMahon at the WWE, for Christ's sake, and it was a crazier job than working with Kiefer. But, at least he was cool and tall. I didn't have to take my shoes off to do scenes with him, which they made me do. Just put the guy on an apple box or don't hire me next time. You know I'm 6 feet and he's 5'4," he said. During a 2024 appearance on Watch What Happens Live!, Valerie Bertinelli shared a poor encounter she had with Christina Aguilera at a Van Halen concert (for context, Valerie was married to Eddie Van Halen from 1981-2007). Here's the full clip: In a 2018 Instagram post, comedian Em Rusciano said Gary Body, the lead singer of Snow Patrol, was the rudest celeb she's met because he allegedly spent an entire interview flipping her off. She said, "Wippa [Michael Wipfli] and I went to interview them when they were in Perth, and they had that one big song on Grey's Anatomy ('Chasing Cars'). We got told, 'Don't ask him about it because he gets angry,' but we did because that's all anyone cared about. And he sat for the rest of the interview [with his middle finger up]." And finally, during a 2012 fundraiser event, Jon Stewart reportedly said that Hugh Grant, who visited The Daily Show in 2009, was the worst guest he's had even though he's "had dictators on the show." Jon said, "He's giving everyone shit the whole time, and he's a big pain in the ass." He also said the actor complained about the "terrible" clip his publicist chose to promote Did You Hear About the Morgans?In response, Hugh tweeted, "Turns out my inner crab got the better of me with TV producer in 09. Unforgivable. J Stewart correct to give me kicking."
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Friendship Streaming Release Date Set for Paul Rudd & Tim Robinson Movie
A24 has announced the Friendship streaming release date for its newest black comedy movie led by Marvel star Paul Rudd and Saturday Night Live vet Tim Robinson. This comes after nearly a year since the film had its world premiere at at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival as part of the Midnight Madness lineup. When is the Friendship streaming release date? Friendship will be available for streaming starting on Friday, September 5, exclusively on HBO Max. This will then be followed by its broadcast debut on HBO on Saturday, September 6. It currently holds a Certified Fresh rating of 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 189 reviews. The 2024 movie was written and directed by Andrew DeYoung in his feature directorial debut. Besides Rudd and Robinson, the movie also stars Kate Mara, Jack Dylan Grazer, Josh Segarra, Billy Bryk, Meredith Garretson, Jason Veasey, Daniel London and more. In addition to leading the cast, Rudd was also an executive producer alongside Tracy Rosenblum, Alexis Garcia and DeYoung. Producers were Nick Weidenfeld, Raphael Margules, J.D. Lifshitz, and John Holland. 'When an errant delivery pulls suburban dad Craig Waterman (Robinson) into the orbit of his mysterious and charismatic new neighbour Austin Carmichael (Rudd), a sweet bromance seems to blossom over an innocent evening of urban exploration, punk rock, and a mutual appreciation for paleolithic antiquities,' reads the film's synopsis (via TIFF). 'But what should have been the start of a beautiful friendship is soon waylaid as Craig's obsessive personality begins to alienate his new pal, subsequently inducing a spiral that threatens to upend Craig's entire life.' The post Friendship Streaming Release Date Set for Paul Rudd & Tim Robinson Movie appeared first on - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More. Solve the daily Crossword
