This is how comedians should feel about awards
How Jerry Seinfeld, Ricky Gervais, Larry David, and other comedians approach awards shows.
Awards shows are circlejerks masquerading as displays of appreciation. Thus, they’re the perfect opportunity for comedians to do their whole emperor has no clothes shtick.
The best acceptance speech by a comedian is Jerry Seinfeld’s “All award shows are stupid.” (Given after he won the HBO Comedian Award, whatever that was, in 2007.)
Your whole career as a comedian is about making fun of pretentious, high minded, self-congratulatory B.S. events like this one. The whole feeling in this room of reverence and honoring is the exact opposite of everything I have wanted my life to be about. I – I – I really don’t want to be up here. I want to be in the back over there – somewhere over there saying something funny to somebody about what a crook this whole thing is.
Ahead: More awardsing from Jerry, Morgan Murphy, Ricky Gervais, Larry David, Amy Poehler, and Tina Fey.
He then goes on to explain why awards are meaningless:
It’s just that awards are stupid. Every real estate office has some framed, five-diamond president’s award thing by the desk, every hotel check-in has some gold circle service thing; every car salesman is a platinum jubilee winner. It’s all a big jerk off. It is, the hotel sucks, the real estate person is stupid, and the only thing the car salesman is good at is ripping you off.
And why? Because awards don’t mean a goddamn thing. It’s stupid, they’re all stupid. All of the award shows on TV. Honestly, it’s beyond me that we feel the need to set aside a night to give out these jaggoff bowling trophies six times a year, so all these people can pat each other on the back about how much money they’re making; boring the piss out of half the world. And if I hadn’t already won all these awards, I would not be talking like this.
I once saw Morgan Murphy win the award for Best Female Comic at the ECNY awards in NYC. When she accepted her award, she made a crack about the crowd of performers. It went something like this:
There are seven comedians in this room that I know. And the rest of you are the 150 reasons why I quit theater class in college.
Here’s Ricky Gervais going after Apple (in front of Tim Cook) and the hypocrisy of Hollywood at the Golden Globes…
“Apple roared into the TV game with The Morning Show, a superb show,” Gervais said. “A superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing, made by a company that runs sweatshops in China.”
‘You say you’re woke, but the companies you work for are unbelievable. Apple, Amazon, Disney…,’ he said.
‘If ISIS started a streaming service you’d call your agent wouldn’t you?,’ he spat. ‘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,’ he stated. ‘You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.’
Love this line from Larry David's WGA Awards acceptance speech:
One night I went to The Improv and saw a bunch of comedians and I thought, "Jesus these people seem just like me." They're complete losers who get up and do nothing but talk about how miserable they are. Are you kidding? I can do that.
Amy Poehler and Tina Fey have also done a great job hosting the Golden Globe Awards…