Bill Burr is Catching Heat After Describing the "Mind Blowing" Experience He Had at the Riyadh Comedy Festival
The latest Thing We're All Supposed to Be Outraged About - at least for the next few days before the next thing comes along - is the comedy event the Saudis are throwing a mountain range of money at in order to clean up their reputation as a backwards, medieval, authoritarian theocracy.
As I mentioned the other day, 50 comics took the money. Others objected to them taking the money:
And at least one wanted the money but blew his chance when he made fun of the people willing to pay him the money:
Arguably the most high-profile comic to take the money just got back, and discussed it on his podcast. Which I've cued up to the part where he finally got around to talking about it after going on a 17-minute rant about stoppages of play ruining the NFL:
Here are some of the details.
Variety - “It was great to experience that part of the world and to be a part of the first comedy festival over there in Saudi Arabia,” Burr said on the Sept. 29 episode of his “Monday Morning Podcast.” “The royals loved the show. Everyone was happy. The people that were doing the festival were thrilled. …
You think everybody’s going to be screaming ‘Death to America’ and they’re going to have like fucking machetes and want to chop my head off,” Burr said. “Because this is what I’ve been fed about that part of the world. …
“Is that a Starbucks next to a Pizza Hut next to a Burger King next to a McDonald’s? They got a fucking Chili’s over here!”
He continued: “I had to stop a couple times during the show and say, ‘I’ll be honest with you guys, I cannot fucking believe any of you have any idea who I am,’” Burr said. “It was just this great exchange of energy. They know their reputation. So they were extra friendly.”
Fellow comedian Atsuko Okatsuka said she previously declined an invitation to perform, sharing excerpts from a contract that included bans on political, religious and LGBTQ+ content. Burr acknowledged those original restrictions but claims they were loosened after artists pushed back.
“The organizers were told, ‘If you want some good comedians, this isn’t going to work,’” Burr explained. “To their credit, they said, ‘All right, what do we got to do?’ And they negotiated it all the way down to just a couple things: don’t make fun of royals or religion.”
According to Burr, he was able to perform most of his regular act with only minor adjustments.
In one tense moment, he recalls beginning a joke about sex, only to see a couple get up and leave.
“I’m like, ‘Oh fuck. Am I in trouble?’” Burr recalled. “But they came back a few minutes later, and afterward, security told me, ‘You’re fine. All that stuff is allowed here.’" …
Despite the criticism, Burr remained unapologetic on the episode.
“People are cool. Governments are the problem,” Burr said. “Every time I travel, I learn the same thing. And the people I met there? They just wanted to laugh. And they fucking did.”
So essentially what Burr is describing makes The Riyadh Comedy Festival sound like Just for Laughs in Montreal. Except there, they expect you to work clean, and if you're someone who does too many sex jokes, they have you work a smaller, more "Blue" room. Apparently Les Habitants are good with having a 3:1 ratio of strip clubs to city blocks. But when it comes to the inherently hilarious topic of human sexuality, they're less comfortable with it than they are in the capital of Saudi Arabia. Duly noted.
But as you'd expect, Burr's version of events isn't going over well with everybody. And they're breaking out the receipts:
On a personal note, speaking as someone who was born in Boston and has lived inside Rte. 495 his entire life, this last X post isn't so much a slur of an entire region of people as it is just good advice. It's common sense, and you heed it.
I'll just say what I said when David Cross posted his scathing critique of all the comics who went to Riyadh. I respect the hell out of the moral stand he, Marc Maron and Shane Gillis took:
It's not easy turning down that kind of payday, refusing to put all that oil money where your mouth is. Good on them.
But I'm not going to rip Burr, Chapelle, Aziz Ansari, Whitney Cummings, Kevin Hart, Pete Davidson, Russell Peters, Gabriel Iglesias, Wayne Brady, Jeff Ross, Tom Segura, Hannibal Buress and all the others as hypocritical monsters for taking the gig. Cross, Maron and Gillis earned that right. But until you've turned down the money, you really don't have a moral leg to stand on.
I'll repeat what I said the other day: The world is a messy place filled with terrible people running awful governments, corporations and assorted other powerful interests. Unless you're part of that tribe on that island where they shoot outsiders with arrows to keep the outside world out, you're doing business with some of them.
The PGA of America invoked 9/11 in an attempt to shame the golfers who jumped to LIV, while conveniently leaving out all the business they've done with the Saudis.
Europe is mad at Russia (with good reason), but that doesn't stop them from filling their gas tanks at Putin's Circle K over on the east side of the continent.
The devices all of Bill Burr's critics - including David Cross - used to express their outrage with wasn't made by hand by Amish craftsmen. Hint: They were manufactured by the same oppressive, genocidal regime that has hosted both a Summer- and a Winter Olympics in the last 17 years. Outspoken justice warriors Lebron James and Steve Kerr refuse to criticize it because the NBA makes too much money there. And Disney was only too happy to reduce John Boyega's image on its Star Wars movie posters in order to do business in their markets.
The point I'm making is that when it comes to doing business in this wicked world, no one is pure as Caesar's wife. The Saudis probably loosened up their restrictions so guys like Burr would come back to their podcasts and talk about what a modern, open society they're running over there, filled with good folks who just want a few laughs. Because governments have been pulling some version of that public relations sort of bait-and-switch since the Sumerians moved into the Fertile Crescent. If you can honestly say you'd turn down half a million dollars or whatever he got to do one stand up set, you can talk. Otherwise spare us.
As Michael Corleone put it to Senator Geary, "We're all part of the same hypocrisy."