Kramer apparently does not respond well to heckling.
The full video is available at the above linked page. There’s more.
How long before Kramer announces that he’s an alcoholic and checks himself into rehab?
I would have thought that a professional comic would know how to handle heckling better than to stoop to 1963-style Klansmanish ugliness. Michael Richards, best known as Kramer from Seinfield, was recently caught on tape pulling a Mel Gibson. Except at least in Mel’s case, he could blame it on the alchohol.
Here’s a link to the video: http://us.video.aol.com/video.index.adp?mo...&pmmsid=1772645. And here’s the youtube clip of CNN’s report on this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=tEcz9T3MuL4
WTF? The sad thing is that his comments had a contagious effect in that room. Audience members started returning his hateful spewings with hateful spewings of their own. It was like something out of Do the Right Thing. Oy. Makes me head hurt.
Three threads now? Who’s starting the MPSIMS one?
Damn you, Dio. You beat me to the punch.
I did a thorough search before I made this thread, I swear.
I watched the video. He surely didn’t seem drunk… he seemed angry at the heckling, and went for the cheapest, ugliest, most hateful shot he could go for. When he realized what he had done, he tried to spin it like he was doing some sort of social experiment… “You see, there are still these words, these words.” What I found the most saddening was that the voice of the man he insulted seemed more bewildered and hurt than furiously angry. :mad:
All I know of Richards is his stuff from Seinfeld and the movie UHF. Is he normally a shock style comedian?
Richards has always sort of come off as a putz. Aside from his now-infamous meltdown with Andy Kaufman, I also remember an interview with him during the height of his Seinfeld powers. The interviewer made some reference to Richards as a comedian. Richards bristled, stopped the interviewer, and said that he wasn’t a comedian, but an actor who happens to do comedy. :rolleyes:
Somebody should sue Kramerica Corporation.
The two threads on this topic have been merged.
Is it possible that this was part of his act, in that he was going for the “Andy Kaufmann”, or Borat effect?
Wait a minute…he had a meltdown with Andy Kaufman? What was that all about?
I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that this happened. He was my favorite Seinfeld character. This has ruined the reruns forevah.
Richards was just trying out his new George Allen impression.
The only thing that comes to mind is during a sketch in a restaurant set on an episode of Friday, Kaufman went off script, throwing all the members of the cast into confusion. Richards went off stage, came back with a copy of the script and tossed it on the table in front of Kaufman. If that’s the incident being referenced, I don’t see that as an indication that Richards has a tendency to lose his cool.
That’s the one I had in mind. However, I misstated myself. I was thinking of Kaufman when I used the term “meltdown.” For me, though, it was clear that Richards was being kind of a pecker and seemed to be taking himself awfully seriously. I just watched archival footage of the event and my old impression was reconfirmed.
What’s even more depressing is that a good portion of the comments on the TMZ are defending Richards, with the usual “how come they get to call us honky” lines. :rolleyes:
According to the Wikipedia entry for Fridays, Richards was in on Kaufman’s little joke.
You ain’t lying. I’m sure Chris Rock is pleased to know that people out there believe he could have pulled this shit and not faced any criticism.
Apparently Richard’s defenders have a hard time telling the difference between a comedy routine and fighting words. Jokes are one thing. Insults are another. As far as I know, Chris Rock has never intentionally insulted someone in the audience using hate speech.
The first link and you with the face’s first link keep crashing my browser (Firefox 2.0) after I get an “illegal function” error message. The youtube link works, but it only has a report, not the video itself. Anyone else having this problem or have another source for the actual video? Or should I shudder use IE?
FYI, here’s a handy firefox extension: IE TAB https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1419/ - view a page in Firefox, but rendered with the IE engine.