4.7 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 2022
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
She's a Democrat. He's a Republican. They're speechwriters on warring campaigns... But can they fall in love??? That's the premise of the Michael Keaton/Geena Davis romcom SPEECHLESS (1994), which drew inspiration from the real-life romance between Clinton strategist James Carville and Bush advisor Mary Matalin. We discuss a movie that could only have been made in the '90s.
"John Cleese Had Thoughts on Slavery at SXSW and It Was Super Cringey" by James Hibberd - https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/john-cleese-sxsw-panel-1235109668/
"Bedfellows Make Strange Politics" by Gore Vidal - https://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/18/books/bedfellows-make-strange-politics.html
Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
0:00.0 | Music |
0:12.0 | Welcome to Michael and us. I'm Will Sloan. Here is always with Luke Savage. Welcome back everyone. |
0:17.0 | There's a particular genre of old guy entertainer who like all they have to do now their career has just been reduced to |
0:26.0 | accepting lifetime achievement awards going to events where a good reception is lined up for them as if on a tea ball stand and all they have to do is just swing the |
0:38.0 | bat a little bit and hit it out of the park but all they can do is say problematic things anymore. And this is an instinct that is constantly working at cross purposes with an entire industry that's just been set up to |
0:49.0 | recognize them. Will by the way is is talking about us as as aging podcasters. The guy who used to be the absolute king of it was Jerry Lewis used to go to these like comedy events or like an evening with the master and he'd be like, I don't think women are funny. |
1:05.0 | Yeah, I was just just to destroy his legacy in a night. And there'd be people on the panels like younger communities they'd be like, oh, but surely you think Lucille Ball was funny. And he'd be like, ah, not, no, I don't think so. |
1:20.0 | Never did care for it. Yeah. He's passed on, of course. And so now the mantel's been taken up by John Cleese. I was reading an article this morning in the Hollywood reporter called John Cleese had thoughts on slavery at South by Southwest. |
1:34.0 | Oh, super cringey. Oh, my God. Pretty highly ranked among inauspicious headlines that one. So because of the pandemic, the South by Southwest festival, this enormous multimedia festival, it's been away for three years. |
1:49.0 | And they decided to they decided to inaugurate its return by inviting John Cleese. I mean, it's incredible. They have any number of more cutting edge events that they're doing. |
2:01.0 | Who else did they invite is Lucille Ball going to be an attendance? I think I think Jerry Lewis's corpse, in fact, has been brought out to accept a trophy. But yes, this was the first event of the first day. |
2:15.0 | John Cleese in conversation. And it was a panel with him and three younger comedians, comedians of generations under him, Jim Gaffigan, a daily show comedian named Dolce Sloan, no relation, and Ricky Valaz. |
2:32.0 | And they're having this very cordial conversation until about an hour into it when Dolce Sloan makes a comment about colonization and Cleese starts going, you know, people forget the British Empire was the basic political unit of organization for six thousand years. The British didn't start colonizing history is a history of crime. |
2:57.0 | It's a history of people who are stronger beating up people who are weaker. It's always been like that. It's deeply distasteful, but to pretend that one lot will worsen another, you know, the British have been slaves twice, right? |
3:12.0 | So he goes off on a tangent about how like between the years zero to 400. |
3:17.0 | Like when when they were conquered by Julius Caesar, like, yes, exactly when they were conquered by Julius Caesar. |
3:25.0 | And so the panel's getting a little uncomfortable. So so then he starts going, I want reparations from Italy. And then the Normans came over in 1066. |
3:38.0 | Oh, man, John Cleese hasn't gotten over William the Conqueror. He wants reparations for the Battle of Hastings. |
3:45.0 | It's so funny because he's in his 80s and literally just John Cleese just getting incredibly triggered like every time he sees the biotapistry. |
3:54.0 | All you have to do at that point is just come out on stage, just accept your plotts, but you know, you got to hand it to the guy prickly to the end. |
4:03.0 | Oh, sorry. What is what was the nature of this conversation they're having? Like to me, the bigger scandal here is that like why is John Cleese appearing at South by Southwest? |
4:13.0 | And what was the in conversation with like what were they talking about? How did the conversation turn to John Cleese soliloquizing about the history of of Britain's being enslaved? |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Jacobin, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Jacobin and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.