Patton Oswalt on Marvel Movies and Martin Scorcese

I see myself dying like George Carlin in a hotel room in Vegas somewhere in between shows. I don't think I'm gonna quit. It's too much fun. And I miss it. I miss it so much. He stuck with it. That guy had crazy highs and crazy lows. He had all the highs of like, you know, occupation fool and class clown. Then I saw him in the 80s at the Warner Theater and he was kind of flailing a little bit. Like, yeah, off his way. And then he, he was trying out these new concepts. Some worked, some didn't. He ended with the seven dirty words because, you know, I got to end my show. Then he came roaring back with that. Um, the one about the earth, uh, the earth is not dying. We are, we're just, you know, cause I think he thought maybe I'm done. Like maybe I'm a relic and no, he stuck with it. And then he came roaring back and you can always do that. I got a chance to see him in at, uh, Hampton beach casino in, uh, New Hampshire. Yeah. When I was, I mean, I think I was 20, something like that 20 or 21. And, uh, I took my roommates to see him and he bombed. Yeah. It was a weird time for his career. It was one of those weird moments where he had this, uh, routine that he was working on where he would basically say, fuck everything. He would say, fuck Israel and fuck comedy clubs. He'd like, he had this list of things that he was saying fuck to, but it did, I think it was just going through a lot of weird stuff in his life. Then there was some substance issues that he had had money problems with the IRS, owing too much money to the IRS. There was a lot of shit that was going on in his life at those times. And also I think that he was a little bit freaked out by, you know, he had opened the door him and prior, especially in terms of language and subject matter. And now here's people like Sam Kinison and anodized clay coming along and, and Chris Rock that are pushing it even further in both good and bad ways. And he's like, do I even fucking like, why do they need me? Like, like I think there was a couple of years where he felt like, am I John Wayne at the end of the searchers? I've rescued everyone and I've helped progress the world, but I don't belong in the world. And then I'm just going to walk away into the desert. There's always that moment of like, sometimes your bravery helps bring about a world that ironically, you don't belong in anymore. And it's such a weird, I mean, I feel like that's what happened to Joan Rivers at the end of her career. She broke so many goddamn barriers for women and for talking about certain subject matter. And then at the end of her career, she suddenly saw all of her stuff get parsed by this new generation. That's like this, this generation that's attacking her and parsing her stuff, you're enjoying the freedoms you're enjoying partially because of the shit that she did. She laid down barbed wire. So you could run across it and then pointed her for not using the correct language. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Not just not the correct language, but deciding what she can and can't joke about. And I love the fact that to her dying day, she didn't give a fuck. She was like, I'm not apologizing for shit. This is what I do. I make fun of things and I'm going to make fun of you. And I make fun of me and I make fun of my family. Fuck. You and she, she held onto her guns forever, man, forever. She never, never let it go. Never let it go. Never shifted. Fearless. That will happen. That'll happen to all of us. At some point there will be another wave of podcasters that won't understand the stuff that you and Marin and people like that did podcasting wise and will do it and look back at you guys. Like, what are you even talking about? It's like the reason you're doing what you're doing is because of the shit that we laid down. Like, and it'll happen to me as a comedian. It's happened to filmmakers, everyone's shitting on Martin Scorsese. You've been going, not a fan of the Marvel films. He wasn't, he never said, don't go see them. He's like, they're not for me. Like you motherfuckers, you wouldn't have your Marvel film if Scorsese hadn't done his movies. Yes. All those movies are what made the guys who direct your movies. You like go, I want to do that. Right. Like you, he gets to be, he gets to have any fucking opinion he wants. Well, and also what's wrong with not liking certain things? Like I have very good friends who like things that I think are terrible. I still like them. Like you're allowed that if you don't like, I have friends who hate Marvel comic movies. I fucking love them. I love comic book movies and I have friends like, I'm not watching that stupid shit. That guy's definitely going to live. You know, nothing's going to happen. He's the hero. I'm like, listen, man, I get it. I understand how you feel a certain way, but the other thing about film to think about a guy like Scorsese, where he needs to be put in much, a much better perspective is that when you think about some of the stuff that he did in like the seventies, what movies had only been around for like real movies for like 40 years. Like King Kong, like the thirties. And then here you go 40 years later, you're talking about some of those Scorsese movies or the Copa movies like Apocalypse Now. Like think about how crazy that movie is when you really stop and think about when it was actually created and how, what a short time films had even been made like that. Yeah. And, and how crazy the execution of it is. It's like, well, when I hosted the independent spirit awards, the year I hosted it in 2014, it was the 50th anniversary of John Waters first film, which he made when he was a teenager in Baltimore. It's called hag in a black leather jacket and it's about an interracial wedding being zided over by a Klansman. It's a Klansman marrying an interracial couple. That was his, he shot it on his parent's roof in Baltimore in the sixties. And I would told the audience like, this is the 50th anniversary of John Waters first film. Any of you guys are like, are we pushing too far? Are we going too far? He's already done all that work for you. Fucking go for it. He was an openly gay teenager in 1960s Baltimore shooting an interracial wedding on his parents' roof with a Klansman doing the ceremony. So just do whatever the fuck you want. It's okay. That's so perfect. It's so beautiful. Yeah. Yeah.