Comedians Offer Justifications for Fat Saudi Arabian Paychecks
There’s a dizzying array of comics lined up for the Riyadh Comedy Festival this month, an impressive roster that includes Dave Chappelle, Pete Davidson, Bill Burr, Kevin Hart, Sam Morril, Whitney Cummings, Louis C.K. and Tom Segura.
While the gig undoubtedly pays well, the optics are terrible. Critics point out that Saudi Arabia uses golf tournaments and entertainment festivals to draw attention away from human rights abuses. And comedians will likely be muzzled during their performances. “Saudi Arabia is known for limiting freedom of expression when it comes to the arts,” says Deadline, “typically dictating on the offer sheet, per multiple agents, what cannot be said on topics like religion, sex and the Saudi royal family.”
Marc Maron, for one, hates the idea of comics being offered “ridiculous amounts of the bloodiest money on the planet.” While Maron admits he wasn’t asked to attend, he likes to think he’d have turned it down. “Does history not matter at all? I mean, literally, it's like the Riyadh Comedy Festival from the guys who brought you 9/11.”
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With that kind of backlash, why take the job? Humorism recently did a round-up of podcast rationalizations that explain why comedians are taking the cash.
Jim Jefferies
“People have been going, ‘Oh, how dare you go over there after, oh, they killed a reporter.’ That was the big one. There’s been a reporter who they killed. You don’t think our governments fucking bump people? Oh, I think Jeffrey Epstein was fucking bumped off. You know what I mean?”
“You can be angry at how they treat their people, how they treat the reporter. You can be angry at the golfers, you can be angry at things. But what better than — basically we are freedom-of-speech machines being sent over there. They have not at one stage asked to see our material. They haven’t asked.” (That obviously contradicts Deadline’s reporting that comic contracts have strict guidelines about taboo subjects.)
Tim Dillon
“My agent called me, goes, ‘I don’t know if we should do this. I don’t know if we should — this is an endorsement of Saudi Arabia.’ I said, ‘Well, okay, but let’s just be frank. I’m living in a country right now that is endorsing another country’s behavior that I don’t agree with.’”
“Listen, I don’t agree with the Saudi Arabian stance on homosexuality or women’s rights or whatever, but I don’t agree with a lot of what’s going on.”
Chris Distefano
After Stavros (“Saudi Arabia is spooky to me”) Halkias insisted he could never do the festival, Distefano said he understood. “I didn’t want to do it either. I was contemplating. I was like, ‘Maybe not.’ And then Jasmin was like, ‘Well, we're getting married. We got the house. Who knows, we’ll probably sell it again.’ I was like, ‘I can’t do it.’ And then she was like, ‘You’re gonna take that fucking money.’”
Mark Normand
“I’m going in and out. Just to get that paycheck.”
