Year: 2022

As the entertainment world continues to reel from the aftermath of Will Smith smacking Chris Rock in the face at the Oscars — heretofore known as “The Slap” — one of the biggest questions from the evening is why wasn’t Smith removed from the event. Granted, Rock declined to press charges for the assault, but the entire auditorium witnessed the event. Although, at the time, many still thought the exchange was part of a scripted bit because, honestly, who in a million years would think Will Smith, one of the nicest guys in Hollywood, would clock Chris Rock in the mouth during one of the biggest awards show on the planet.

According to sources at the ceremony, that moment of confusion was enough cover for Smith to remain at the event and ultimately take the stage to accept his award for Best Actor. On top of that, the Academy appears to, uh, not have a written rule for not striking fellow members during the ceremony. We’re not even joking. Via Variety:

The Academy is a nonprofit organization ruled by bylaws, and sources say there appear to be no provisions addressing open-hand smacking across the face on the live show.

Escorting Smith out of the ceremony was discussed, the source said, though by the time any substantive scenarios were imagined, he had already been called up to the podium to accept an Oscar for his turn in “King Richard.” The show ended shortly thereafter, as a joyous atmosphere turned sour.

Other sources also claimed that ABC producers were concerned about the “optics” of removing Smith from the building after he defended his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, from an offensive joke that was reportedly “off the cuff” and not scripted.

In the meantime, the Academy has issued a more sternly worded statement about the incident, and just as Whoopi Goldberg predicted, Smith is facing a potential disciplinary action.

“The Academy condemns the actions of Mr. Smith at last night’s show,” the Academy said in a new statement. “We have officially started a formal review around the incident and will explore further action and consequences in accordance with our Bylaws, Standards of Conduct and California law.”

Well, okay. That should settle everything once and for all. Or not. Probably not. In fact, let’s just go with “not at all,” to be safe.

(Via Variety)

Since the late 1980s, nearly every host of the Academy Awards has hosted multiple times. Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, Jimmy Kimmel, etc. But not David Letterman. His one and only stint hosting the Oscars in 1995 was poorly received, with the New York Times writing at the time, “As the stars glittered, Dave fizzled.” But the harshest criticisms came from Letterman himself, who said in 2020, “To this day, it is the single greatest professional embarrassment of my career, through nobody’s fault but my own.”

Letterman is willing to laugh about his experience as host, though, as he showed in a video uploaded to his YouTube channel on Monday about the incident during last night’s Oscars (you know the one).

“I want to talk a little bit about Will Smith and Chris Rock at the Academy Awards. People will say, ‘Well, Dave, what do you know about this?’ and I will just remind you that I actually hosted the Academy Awards. It was in the 1940s,” he joked. “All I can say, and say what you will, read what you will, think what you will about my performance the night I hosted the Academy Awards. But, and here’s my point, no one got hit. No one was hit that night that I hosted. That’s all I have to say. God bless America. God bless the Academy Awards.”

You can watch Dave’s video above.

Back in 2017, Jimmy Kimmel was hosting the Oscars during the wild moment when the wrong envelope was handed to Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, who then announced La La Land as Best Picture when really the winner was Moonlight. It was an extremely embarrassing fiasco for the Academy followed by intense scrutiny over the security procedures used to protect the winning envelopes. People couldn’t believe a mix-up like this could happen, and it was the craziest thing to happen in Oscars history — until Will Smith slapped Chris Rock.

During a scheduled appearance on Bill Simmons’ podcast following the Oscars broadcast, Kimmel and Simmons both assumed that maybe there’d maybe be a couple of wacky moments to discuss, nothing too crazy. But neither one of them was prepared for something as momentous as Smith assaulting Rock onstage. Right out of the gate, Simmons joked that Kimmel is now “off the hook” for the La La Land incident, which the late-night host was kinda bummed about.

“What fun is it to be involved in the second craziest Oscars moment?” Kimmel quipped before comparing the incident to the infamous fight where Mike Tyson bit two of Evander Holyfield’s ears. It was just something nobody would’ve ever predicted and will go down as one of the craziest moments ever, not just at the Oscars, due to Smith’s reputation as the “nicest guy” in Hollywood.

“This is like if, you know, Tom Hanks got up and smacks and cracks somebody across the face,” Kimmel said while laughing at the still-fresh (prince) incident. “It’s the only thing comparable!”

(Via Bill Simmons)

With so many people reacting to Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars, some of the takes in question were bound to be overwrought. The fact that all anyone can talk about is that one moment during the ceremony, rather than celebrating Questlove’s win for Best Documentary for his directorial debut, Summer Of Soul, is pretty much proof that all the backlash is pretty overblown. Fortunately, the agent of good chaos, Lil Nas X, had just the remedy for all the self-serious, tough-guy talk, and faux handwringing on Twitter, checking in to remind everyone just how silly all of this really is.

“y’all sitting here laughing,” he wrote. “but imagine if will smith was an average kid that no one understands mom and dad and vicky always giving him commands (bed, twerp) doom and gloom up in his room.” This is, of course, the opening of the theme song from The Fairly Oddparents, the Nickelodeon animated series in which 10-year-old Timmy Turner gets up to all sorts of magical shenanigans with his fairy godparents, Cosmo and Wanda. The non sequitur just throws light on how goofy it is for us all to still be talking about this 15 hours later.

Nas also took a swipe at one of the more obnoxious takes, which came from a user who somehow inserted Betty White into a hypothetical situation in which Smith smacked her or Bob Saget instead of Chris Rock. Needless to say, that account is on private now, but screenshots last forever. Lil Nas riffed on the hypothetical turning the late comedic actress into the abolitionist hero Harriet Tubman (since we’re resurrecting dead people to make doofy points now anyway). “Just a reminder that if Will Smith had built a time machine and went back in time and slapped harriet tubman as a baby for a joke she made (however insensitive), she easily could’ve fallen backward, cracked her skull and never freed slaves,” he joked. “Violence is NEVER okay.”

It’s important to remember here that not only is Chris Rock fine, he also declined to press charges and made up with Smith just hours later, according to no less a source than Sean “Diddy” Combs. The moment also may have saved the Oscars, so I’m sure even the Academy isn’t complaining too hard. Also, Harriet Tubman toted a shotgun (this is canon), so we’re sure she didn’t have any problem with violence at all.

After the slap hear ’round the world last night, many celebs are weighing in on what has turned out to be the most chaotic Oscars moment in recent history, perhaps topping the La La Land debacle of 2017. You’ve probably read all the takes, but here is the shortest explanation: Chris Rock made a joke about Will Smith’s wife Jada which cause Smith to slap him live on television in front of the richest people in the world. And now, the celebs are churning out the takes.

One celeb, in particular, is Jada Pinkett Smith’s Girls Trip co-star and friend Tiffany Haddish, who is impressed with the way the actor handled things. “When I saw a Black man stand up for his wife, that meant so much to me,” the comedian told People following the ceremony. “If [Jada] wouldn’t have been hurt, [Will] probably wouldn’t have said nothing,” said Haddish. “But you could see he was clearly… And they exploited it.”

She added, “As a woman, who has been unprotected, for someone to say, ‘Keep my wife’s name out your mouth, leave my wife alone,’ that’s what your husband is supposed to do, right? Protect you, and that meant the world to me.” She continued, “Maybe the world might not like how it went down, but for me, it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen because it made me believe that there are still men out there that love and care about their women, their wives.”

There are far too many takes about the situation, but Haddish’s perspective is definitely an interesting one. She then added, “To me, I went up to her and said, ‘You better suck his d*** from the back, girl!’” So…there’s that! Congrats on your win, Will.

Glass Animals’ hit single “Heat Waves” is their first song to ever appear on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and what a debut it’s been. After spending over a year on the chart, the song climbed to No. 1 for the first time a few weeks ago. “Heat Waves” has stayed on top ever since and that run continues today, as on the new chart dated April 2, the song is No. 1 for a fourth week.

“Heat Waves” is making its way up a historical list, as it is now tied for the ninth-longest No. 1 reign among songs by British groups, behind songs by The Beatles, The Police, Bee Gees, UB40, The Beatles again, Wings, The Beatles again, and The Beatles again.

Elsewhere on this week’s chart, Justin Bieber’s “Ghost” has risen to No. 5, making it his 20th top-5 single, which ties Bieber for the eighth-most of all time, with Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. That’s not even Bieber’s only song in the top 5 this year, as his and Kid Laroi’s “Stay” is holding strong at No. 2.

It was a big week for Doja Cat, too, as “Woman” has ascended to No. 9. This is the song’s first time in the top 10, making it her fifth top-10 hit after “Say So,” “34+35,” “Kiss Me More,” and “Need To Know.”

We’re living in the golden age of phallic shenanigans, and no one is happier than Matthew Mungle. “Hollywood’s number one penis-maker,” as the Guardian described him, has made prosthetic penises for projects ranging from Red Rocket to Shameless to Step Brothers, which required Michelangelo-level detailing.

“The testicles I made for Step Brothers were quite specific, because he pulled them out of his trousers and rubbed them on a drum kit,” he told the Guardian. “They had to move like free-floating testicles, rather than rigid miniature space hoppers. So I decided that we’d make actual testes that we put into a sack, which was very thin.”

Mungle also designed Chris Hemsworth’s fake “hammer” for 2015’s Vacation, which he’s been told the MCU star kept in a high-traffic spot in his house. “I made the penis for Chris Hemsworth in Vacation,” he said. “According to someone who worked on that movie, they put the, er, unit in an acrylic box and presented it to Chris at the end. Apparently, he was so proud of it, he had it on his mantle, right next to Thor’s hammer.”

It’s unknown where the penis (which is 10 inches long because Hemsworth made the “normal-size [eight inch] penis look small”) is now, but I like to think it’ll make a return in Thor 4. That’s the real love and thunder.

(Via the Guardian)

For a lot of people, Fortnite is a meme game. It has the reputation of being a game that is dominated by children who spend all day endlessly repeating the dances and emotes while wearing pinata llamas on their shirts. In reality, Fortnite is one of the most fun Battle Royale games out there.

Yes, children love it but so do teenagers, adults, and anyone that enjoys gaming. It controls extremely well, has good movement, and there is more to do than just drop into circles and shoot each other. Fortnite is huge because the developers over at Epic Games have endlessly supported it and tweaked the game. There is so much to the world of Fortnite that goes beyond the average battle royale and it’s an extremely impressive game. It’s also never been more fun to play than it is right now.

That may be a bit of a surprise for the average person, or someone that hasn’t played Fortnite for a couple of years because most games reach a peak and then eventually sputter out. It takes a truly rare experience for a five-year-old game to be more fun now than ever before. In the case of Fornite though, it really was thanks to one decision. The developers of the game decided to take a risk and remove building from the game. The entire basis of Fortnite, the thing that made it unique when it first entered early access in 2017, was that it gave player’s the ability to build in the middle of combat. Now, that feature has been removed and rumors are that it’s going to be a permanent option in the long run.

Before getting into why this is happening, it first needs to be recognized how extreme a decision this actually was by the developers. When Fortnite came out, the Battle Royale genre was still in its infancy. This was before Apex Legends or Warzone, and most games were trying to imitate and capitalize on the success of Public Battlegrounds. Fortnite’s main hook was not that it let players dance, or do funny emotes, but the building. Players could put up walls to protect themselves, create stairs to climb mountains, or utilize it in a fire fight to gain an edge. Being a builder was an essential part of the Fortnite experience, but unfortunately, this would end up being to the game’s detriment in the long run.

Fortnite is now the only game where someone can use Spider-Man to shoot Batman, while Naruto is off in the corner dancing to an Ariana Grande song. The universe that it has created is ridiculous and absurdly fun. There are side quests, NPCs, and endless things to do besides shoot each other. It attracts players of all kinds to it because of everything that has been crammed into this universe and for the first few hours, it’s really fun. Unfortunately, as players moved through the experience they all come across the same issue. Building is no longer just putting up some walls or a staircase. It is integral to winning a match and the players who are masters at it have created a skill gap that feels unreachable and honestly pushes away new players, or anyone that doesn’t have the time to learn it. There is nothing less fun in a Fornite match than catching an opposing squad off-guard and then watching them build a skyscraper in front of you in less than five seconds.

As players grew sick of the building, they moved instead to other options like Warzone or Apex Legends where the fun and skill comes from the game’s movement rather than if someone can memorize the button inputs to build faster than their opponent, or if they have more resources, or enough bullets to shoot through the walls they’ve built. So what if you took the fun movement abilities of those games, slapped them on Fortnite, and kept all the wacky stuff that makes the world so absurd? You get what Fornite is right now.

Alongside the removal of building, the player can now sprint, slide, and mount to make movement quicker. They can still destroy objects with mining, but this just gets objects out of the way and doesn’t lead to resources like it previously did. More importantly, the entire map has been reworked to assist the lack of building. Wide open fields aren’t as prevalent and there is a lot of natural terrain to use for cover and movement. Fights feel quick and since everything is destructible there is a constant need to keep moving. Firefights haven’t been this fun since the early stages of the game.

As a result of all these changes, Fortnite is now the best it has ever been. More importantly, it’s back to feeling like a game that anyone can get into. Everyone should be able to appreciate the absurd world that Epic Games has created here and the building felt like it was not letting players do that. Now, they can.

It’s finally time to resume the wonderful practice of music festivals, as necessary precautions due to the pandemic are thankfully abating. To that end, plenty of brand new concepts are getting announced, as music fans are itching to get back out there and hear live music from their favorite artists. And this year, country lovers in Los Angeles have quite a treat in store, with a brand new event from Goldenvoice called Palomino Festival.

Taking place on Saturday, July 9th at Brookside at the Rose Bowl, the stacked lineup includes all the modern country favorites, and some of the old guard, too. Indie country and folk legends like Jason Isbell, Nikki Lane, Paul Cauthen, and Jamie Wyatt will all be there, along with signature country music headliner, Kacey Musgraves, oh and the absolutely iconic Willie Nelson. With other great artists like Orville Peck and Valerie June rounding out the day, it’s basically a daydream for country music lovers. Check out the full lineup below and register for early access to passes right here.

Palomino Festival full lineup:

Kacey Musgraves
Willie Nelson & Family
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Turnpike Troubadours
Orville Peck
Old Crow Medicine Show
Valerie June
Charley Crockett
Paul Cauthen
Nikki Lane
Morgan Wade
Sierra Ferrell
Langhorne Slim
Amythyst Kiah
Sierra Hull
Low Cut Connie
Jamie Wyatt
Ian Noe
Logan Ledger
And very special guests The Compton Cowboys

Wow, what a night, huh? And to think, right up until “the event” happened, I had been all set to write about the Oscar telecast’s predictably disastrous attempts at populism. Before the slap, the wildest things that happened at the Academy Awards were a tribute to The Flash in Justice League and a 30-second clip from Army Of The Dead.

God bless Will Smith and Chris Rock for saving us all from that piece. Instead, Chris Rock made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith being in line to star in GI Jane 2 — “Jada, I love you, ‘G.I. Jane 2,’ can’t wait to see it” — about which Will Smith seemed to laugh at first. Jada Pinkett, meanwhile, very clearly made a “that wasn’t funny” face, after which Will Smith, sitting in the front row, stormed the stage and…

…wait, did he just smack Chris Rock?

The hit itself looked like a staged punch at first, or at least that was how I interpreted it. Until ABC dropped the sound — which we later found out consisted of Rock saying “Wow, Will Smith just slapped the shit out of me,” followed by Will Smith bellowing “keep my wife’s name out your f*cking mouth.”

Since then all available evidence showed it was indeed a real slap. That Will Smith took offense to what was apparently a joke about Jada Pinkett being bald (could’ve also been a joke about her looking buff or being in sub-par movies), which, given how public she has been with her struggles with alopecia could be considered a beyond-the-pale joke about a medical condition. (Is there anything the Smith family hasn’t been public with? Oh right, Scientology!)

And fair enough. It definitely wasn’t a great joke. One of the funnier parts of this whole situation to me was that I imagine Chris Rock probably had a whole list of meaner jokes about the Smith family that he wanted to say — about Will and Jada’s famously open marriage and her affairs, about their annoying kids and alleged Scientology — before taking what he probably imagined as the moral high road, settling on a “safe” one about her being bald instead.

Poor Chris Rock can’t catch a break at the Oscars! Let us not forget, this was the same guy who in 2005 made a joke about Jude Law being in a lot of movies, that Sean Penn apparently found so offensive that he took it upon himself to get up and say that Jude Law was a really good actor, actually.

This whole incident was all but guaranteed the following day to devolve into a deeply entrenched battle of “it’s never okay to joke about someone’s disability” vs “violence is never the answer.”

I’m here to say, it really doesn’t need to. This was a situation that worked itself out perfectly.

Chris Rock made a bad joke. I don’t imagine even he would claim that was the edgiest joke he’d ever done. It felt more like a compromise joke, hence part of his confusion (in the words of Phil Rosenthal, “make the show you want to make, they’re gonna cancel it anyway”). I think Chris Rock would acknowledge, and most comedians realize on some level, that making jokes about people involves some risk of getting smacked. It’s part of the danger, but also part of the allure and the fun.

The way Rock then handled the slap, narrating it as it happened, staying on stage, and finishing presenting the award he was there for, made him look like an absolute pro, regardless of what one thought of the joke. Part of the reason I had a hard time believing it wasn’t staged at first was that Rock never cowered or put his hands up in a defensive posture the way one naturally does during a beating. He didn’t seem like he ever thought he was ever in legitimate danger. And after the briefest acknowledgement of what happened, he riffed right on through it and carried right on with what he was doing. The man got smacked onstage at the Oscars and finished reading the teleprompter!

It felt like Chris Rock crossed the line, Will Smith checked him for it, and Rock responded, in essence, “touché.” Neither man left humiliated, and everyone carried on. Will Smith defended his wife’s honor, and Rock cemented his reputation as a pro and a fearless comedian.

The problem with the “violence is never the answer” fundamentalists is that it assumes that what happened here involved “violence.” Chris Rock didn’t react like he was ever genuinely in fear for his safety and it didn’t seem to me like Smith intended for him to be. It seemed more like Smith just wanted to let Rock know that he crossed the line, and Rock got the message. Both men left with their dignity, Jada Pinkett seemed to get what she wanted (I guess?), and everyone got something better to talk about the next day than a clip of Johnny Depp in Minimata somehow making it to the telecast. This was the rare moment of society working the way it should! It should be celebrated as such.

As for the joke, it wasn’t great. And yeah you shouldn’t joke about peoples’ disabilities (or, given that Chris Rock maybe possibly didn’t know about the disability, a Black woman’s hair). I imagine even Chris Rock would probably admit that. It’s still possible to commiserate. The Smiths are one of those families that seem to want simultaneously to overshare their personal lives while declaring their personal lives off-limits to scrutiny. This was a family that went public about their open marriage (or whatever they have going on) on a talk show that Jada hosts with her mother and daughter. So to say “aw, the poor Smiths were just minding their business and some jerk got personal with them!” is a little disingenuous, even if the joke itself could fairly be deemed out of bounds.

There exists a certain category of celebrity, the details of whose personal life you’re constantly bombarded with despite never having sought out, that you can’t help but feel an oddly personal aggrievement towards. At this point, every time I see, say, a Kardashian’s name in a news story I never wanted to read in the first place, my knee-jerk reaction is to wish that they’d get hit by a bus. I don’t literally wish that, and I know it’s not a thing you should wish on people, but I feel like I’m forced to hear so much about these people so often, all completely unsolicited, that I can’t help but mentally lash out, in violent and personal ways. What other ways even are there at this point? Leave me alone about the f*cking Kardashians! I’ve tried pointing out that I don’t care politely but no one seems to be getting the message! It seems like maybe Chris Rock wanted to take a swipe at the Smith family’s overexposure in this way, but tried to dial it back a little, and ended up doing it poorly.

So then Will Smith got to get up, bellow “LEAVE MY WIFE OUT OF THIS!” and in that rare moment be justified in doing so.

This was not only perfect for the Smiths, but perfect for the telecast. Just when it felt like the hubbub over the incident had finally died down (pity Questlove, and all the winners whose big moments were immediately, inexorably, helplessly overshadowed) it started to dawn on me: Wait, Will Smith was here because he was nominated for an Oscar. Which he’s heavily favored to win. Meaning… this guy might have to go back on stage!

Suddenly I was positively thrilled for Will Smith to win an Oscar for a movie I didn’t like in which I thought he did a hammy job. Has an Oscars telecast ever felt so electric?

Almost as soon as I had the thought, Will Smith was being announced as the winner. He got back up on stage and gave a speech that felt like a surreal combination of defining moment, public breakdown, and audition for a leadership position in some future cult.

If anything made the slapping incident seem like it was possibly staged in some way, it was the way it seemed to dovetail all too perfectly with the theme of Will Smith’s acceptance speech. (Did he plan that, or is Will Smith just that good at riffing?)

Richard Williams was a fierce defender of his family. In this time in my life, in this moment, I am overwhelmed by what God is calling on me to do and be in this world. Making this film I got to protect Aunjanue Ellis, who is one of the most strongest, most delicate people I ever met. I got to protect Saniyya and Demi, the two actresses that played Venus and Serena. I’m being called on in my life to love people and to protect people and to be a river to my people.

King Richard was a weird image management exercise produced by the same family it depicts, about a controlling father who succeeded at turning his children into… well, champions if you’re being charitable, meal tickets if you’re not… and suddenly Will Smith had given himself full justification to turn the man into even more of a saint.

Richard Williams was not just a great sports dad but a “defender of his family.” Just like Will Smith, who had been anointed by God Himself to smack Chris Rock in the mouth over an unfair bald joke. (I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that Will Smith thinks a borderline sociopathically single-minded guy who was desperate to make his kids famous is some kind of saint).

This was one of the other reasons the incident seemed like it might’ve been staged at first: Will Smith sort of always acts like he’s playing Will Smith in a play about Will Smith. (We’ll leave the patronizing language towards his actresses aside for now). He went on:

Art imitates life. I look like the crazy father, just like they said. I look like the crazy father just like they said about Richard Williams. But love will make you do crazy things.

Can I just say: smacking a guy over insulting his wife isn’t why Will Smith looks crazy, just like “loving his family too much” isn’t why people said Richard Williams was crazy. It probably more because Smith is the kind of person who uses an incident like this to call himself “a vessel of love” and “a river to my people.”

Smith went on to ask forgiveness from The Academy (for what? being God’s anointed family protector, Lawrence of Arabia and Richard Williams rolled into one?), and from his fellow nominees, and ended the speech saying “I’m hoping the Academy invites me back.”

Me too! The Academy should do more than forgive Will Smith, they should celebrate him. Actors making preposterously self-aggrandizing speeches about dubious art is exactly why many of us watch this show. All of the best actors tend towards being bizarrely comfortable having an emotional moment in front of thousands of people and a kind of pathological grandiosity.

That Will Smith, with a big assist from Chris Rock, managed to give himself plausible justification for this kind of talk was arguably one of the greatest things that has ever happened at the Academy Awards. I don’t know if Will Smith is God’s chosen vessel for love, or the chosen protector of home and hearth, but it seems fairly clear that the Fresh Prince has become King of Celebrities. Say what you will about the man, he gave us a show, which, after all, is his job. All hail King Will, the greatest celebrity who ever lived.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. More reviews here.