Patton Oswalt has announced We All Scream, his fourth Netflix comedy special and first serving as director. It premieres September 20th.
Oswalt’s first special since 2020’s I Love Everything takes material from the 2021-22 “Who’s Ready to Laugh?” tour and was filmed at the Paramount Theatre in Denver, Colorado. According to a statement, it covers “what happens to our bodies as we get older, who [Oswalt] could have been had he just followed the list he created during the lockdown, the Baby Boomer’s last temper tantrum, and much more.”
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he expanded on these themes “We all remember before the pandemic, going, ‘If I could just get a month to myself to get my life together,’” he explained. “And then the universe said, ‘Well, how about four? And how about 12?’ So, it’s really embracing the absurdity of that, the whole monkey’s paw aspect of the reality that we’re living in.”
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And while he doesn’t go deep into cancel culture in the special, his interview did allude to some controversies in comedy. Oswalt told THR, “I think that comedians deserve context in what they say. You shouldn’t just ‘cancel’ out of context, but I also think comedians have a responsibility to evolve and to try to push things forward.”
He added, “Pushing the envelope doesn’t mean digging your feet in while the envelope moves forward — you should be ahead of that envelope, that’s how you should be pushing it. And again, the whole battle over wokeness, it’s nothing new. This happened in the ’80s, it happened in the ’90s and it’ll happen again in another form. That’s what I was talking about [in the special]. I do a joke about in the future, what am I going to be canceled for? And you don’t know, but you want to at least try to keep progressing.”
This isn’t the first time Oswalt has tried to find nuance in these issues. After a January performance he defended his decision to platform Dave Chappelle but said, “We disagree about transgender rights.”
In December, Oswalt brought us to Jeffrey Epstein’s island in the special event Reno 911! The Hunt for QAnon, and last month he skewered out-of-touch celebrities in an episode of The Boys. On August 5th, he’ll appear in Netflix’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman.
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Tagged: Alternative Music, Comedy, music blog, Netflix, NEWS, Patton Oswalt