Of course I'm not the first one to bring this up--but as I watch the video of Richards' outburst and read the transcript, it seems that he was trying to make something "comedic" happen that failed utterly miserably. I wonder if his first outburst was out of anger--he angrily slapped the hecklers' race at them, but tried to do it in the form of an outlandish lynching image--similar to what someone like Don Rickles would do, but without Rickles' obvious kidding and totaly inappropriate in its ugliness. Then, to try to make the joke more obvious, he shouts the "N" word over and over in what sounds like a southern accent, to make the parody of a southern lynch mob more obvious. He realizes that whatever comedic concept he is trying to turn his angry slip into is not working--the audience is gasping and angrily yelling back at him. So he tries a different tack--revealing that it is all about "those words" and "what lies below the surface." But he is utterly out of his depth in trying to make conceptual comedy out of this and his act is in an irretrievable meltdown. I wondering if this might be what happened? His initial angry reaction was about race--but the rest was his trying to make a bit out of it?
Could he have been trying to do a bit?
On 25 Nov 2006 11:09:19 -0800, [email] wrote:
Hey! He doesn't do bits. He's a prop comic.
On 25 Nov 2006 11:09:19 -0800, [email] wrote:
That was my first reaction upon seeing the tape, myself. It looks to me like the initial outburst is probably just anger getting the best of him, then he realizes what he's said and tries to "overuse" the word for, presumably, shock/comedic value, then segue back into some kind of bit with the "oooh, this shocks you." But the audience isn't having it, and this is about the same time someone yells "that was fuckin' uncalled for" and knocks Richards back off whatever track he was trying to get back on.
It'd be interesting to see what would have happened if nobody had yelled out again - just *maybe* he coulda saved it.
-lugnut