Patton Oswalt Will Never Be a Rom-Com’s “Gay Best Friend”
If you don’t have Showtime or haven’t watched Patton Oswalt‘s latest stand-up special, Patton Oswalt’s Finest Hour, you missed him ripping apart both standard-issue gay friend characters in romantic comedies and idiot Christians who are against gay marriage.
There’s no video up yet, but here’s a sampling:
“I got offered to go audition for a romantic comedy and they wanted me to audition for the part of the gaaaaay best friend! It’s 2011—I may as well put on blackface and tap dance. That is how old that cliche is now. I read the script and every scene was like, I walk in and she’s crying and I go, “Microwave popcorn and red wine, stat!“
After describing his disastrous audition at length, Oswalt moves on to the subject of gay marriage:
“These lunatics always go, ‘Well, it says in the Bible…’ Okay, stop. Hang on. I’m glad you like a book. I really am. At this point I’m glad anybody’s reading anything. But just because you like something in a book doesn’t mean you get to have the thing you like in the book happen in real life. That’s what crazy people want! I can’t go to the White House with a bunch of Green Lantern comics and go, ‘I want a Green Lantern ring! I saw it in a book I like! Make the thing I want in the book I like be here now!’
Showtime subscribers, you still have a chance, since the special is being repeated often. Non-premium-cable people, go mooch off your richer friends.
Image via AnimeNut
It would have been interesting to see Oswalt play a gay character, since Hollywood keeps shoving pretty, thin white boys down America’s throat as representative of what gay men look like. Would have been nice to see a “normal” looking man in that role.
However, I applaud him for turning down the queer Step ‘n’ Fetchit character that so many other straight men have no problem playing.
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Oswalt is maybe the most consistently funny stand-up comedian of the last decade IMO. Everything I’ve ever seen him do on a stage has had me roaring in laughter. I think I will have to mooch off of my richer friends, don’t want to miss this one!
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love him since he played Spence Ulchin on King of Queens.