Sophia Michaels
Ricky Gervais opened the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards by, as usual, lashing out at the industry everyone’s there to celebrate — cracking jokes about the death of traditional cinema, the Martin Scorsese/Marvel controversy and the terrible reviews for the new film adaptation of Cats.
He opened on a darkly comic note, reminding the audience that everyone in attendance will “die soon, and there’s no sequel.”
“You’ll be pleased to know this is the last time I’m hosting these awards,” he said. “I don’t care anymore. I’m joking. I never did … Kevin Hart was fired from the Oscars because of some offensive tweets. Hello? Lucky for me, the Hollywood Foreign Press can barely speak English. And they’ve no idea what Twitter is, so I got offered this gig by fax.”
He cracked other jokes about Hollywood itself, noting, “Many talented people of color were snubbed in major categories. Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about that — the Hollywood Foreign Press are all very, very racist.”
He continued, “We were gonna do an ‘In Memoriam’ this year, but when I saw the list of people that had died, it wasn’t diverse enough. It was mostly white people. And I thought, ‘Nah. Not on my watch.’”
Surveying the crowd, the comedian pointed out the stars of Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman. “Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Baby Yoda — oh, that’s Joe Pesci,” he joked. “Sorry. I love you, man — don’t have me whacked.”
He then moved on to Scorsese’s controversial comments about superhero movies, particularly his criticism that the Marvel films are like “theme parks.” “I agree,” he said. “Although I don’t know what he’s doing hanging around theme parks. He’s not big enough to go on the rides. He’s tiny!”
Featured via: Rollingstone
