Well, there definitely was no scarcity of nationwide information for the host to dig into Friday on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher tonight. Writers possible needed to scramble to replace the monologue after phrase surfaced that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had wrapped his probe of Russian meddling the 2016 U.S. election and submitted his report back to Attorney General William Barr.
That mentioned, Maher opened his stand-up by noting that for liberals, the Mueller report being turned in “is like Christmas – if it was based on real events.” He then roasted cable information’ breathless non-analysis — “I just saw a graphic on MSNBC – ‘breaking speculation’” — and famous that, “Individual 1 is in deep number two.”
But the star of the present was midshow visitor Larry Charles, whose many credit embrace Bruno, Borat, working as a workers author on Seinfeld and directing Maher’s 2008 movie Religulous. He reunited with the Real Time host to advertise Larry Charles’ Dangerous World of Comedy. The four-part Netflix collection sees Charles inspecting comedy around the globe — from Russia, China and India to Iran, Nigeria, Somalia and extra.
“We have taken our freedoms for granted,” Charles mentioned of Americans. “I traveled to places like Somalia and Iraq that are in the midst of horrible wars … and those people are ready to fight and die for their freedom. And the comedians there have much higher stakes. It’s like here, you have a career path — you do a stand-up special, you do a sitcom, you get a show. In these countries, there’s no career path. It’s like, prison, torture or death.”
He added: “These people do [comedy] as a calling. They use laughter as a healing tool, and I learned that laughter is as crucial as breathing and eating and sleeping. Without laughter, the society would collapse on itself.”
Charles additionally famous the universality of the Show About Nothing. Charles instructed a narrative of getting to cross forwards and backwards between Israel and Palestine whereas filming his Netflix present. “Very difficult to do,” he mentioned. “We obtained stopped continuously. I used to be pulled out of the automotive. I used to be instructed I needed to drink my Diet Coke in entrance of them to ensure it wasn’t an explosive system. And then anyone whispered to the troopers that I used to be with Seinfeld, and so they have been like, ‘Come on through!’ … Anywhere I went, they simply dropped Seinfeld, and I obtained to go wherever I needed to go.”
But Maher and Charles made positive to notice that it’s not all smiles and grin on the subject of comedy in lots of components of the world. “There’s been a number of assassinations among the comedians,” Charles mentioned. Maher reiterated solemnly, “You can get assassinated for comedy.”
The host later obtained in a reasonably good dig at Tinseltown. During “New Rules,” Maher introduced up the 8-year-old homeless refugee from Nigeria who simply gained his class on the New York State Chess Championships. “Hollywood must give the movie that’s going to be made about this kid the Oscar right now.” After laughs, he added, “But first give Christian Bale the chance to get down to 45 pounds.”
