logo
George Clooney ‘Forced' Jack Black to Break Up Tenacious D After Trump Assassination Comment, Journalist Claims

George Clooney ‘Forced' Jack Black to Break Up Tenacious D After Trump Assassination Comment, Journalist Claims

Yahoo2 days ago
In a long interview with former President Joe Biden's son Hunter, reporter Andrew Callaghan alleges that George Clooney ordered Jack Black to break up Tenacious D after the duo's guitarist Kyle Gass asked that Thomas Matthew Crooks, who allegedly attempted to assassinate Donald Trump in 2024, 'aim a little higher next time.'
Reps for Clooney and Jack Black did not immediately respond to Variety's requests for comment.
More from Variety
Shaunagh Connaire, Former Communications Director for George and Amal Clooney's Justice Foundation, Sets Directorial Debut 'Brown Bread' (EXCLUSIVE)
CNN's Live 'Good Night, and Good Luck' Telecast Spurs Special Coverage
CNN to Exclusively Air George Clooney's Record-Breaking Broadway Hit 'Good Night, and Good Luck' Live for Free
Two and a half hours into the video, following a claim that George Clooney's wife Amal was responsible for a full-page advertisement requesting an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Callaghan says, 'My only really famous Hollywood friend is actor Jack Black, we used to be neighbors in [Los Angeles], and Tenancious D did a concert in Sydney Australia, and, this is the day after they tried to assassinate Trump, and I guess Jack Black's guitarist or whatever jumps up on stage, and he yells something into the effect of 'Hey, next time you try to shoot Trump, aim a little bit closer.'' (That is not a verbatim recounting of the quote.)
He continues, 'George Clooney is blowing his phone up, being like, 'If you don't kick your bandmember out of the band and, like, publicly denounce this guy — like I don't know what the consequences were, but it was kind of like, 'You're out!' Out of what, we don't know. And so his hand was basically forced to be like, 'Oh, sorry, my bandmember has serious mental-health problems. We're breaking up the band for now. The tour is canceled.'' (That also is not an entirely accurate recounting of events.)
'And so,' he continues, ' mean, it is cool to see Hollywood actors voice more progressive opinions, but…'
'Fuck him!' Biden shouts. 'Fuck him and everybody around him!' He then launches into a long tirade about Clooney.
'I don't have to be fucking nice! Number one. I agree with Quentin Tarantino. Fucking George Clooney is not a fucking actor. He is a fucking, like, I don't know what he is. He's a brand.'
Biden then abruptly changes tack to say nice things about Clooney.
'And by the way and God bless him, you know what? He supposedly treats his friends really well, he buys them things and he's got a really great place in Lake Como and he's great friends with Barack Obama. Fuck you! What do you have to do with fucking anything? Why do I have to fucking listen to you?' He then continues his tirade about Clooney's alleged efforts to tear down former President Biden.
See the full video below.
On July 14, 2024, Tenacious D was performing at the ICC Sydney Theatre on, the day after the Trump rally shooting in Butler, Pa., where the current president was apparently grazed in the ear by a bullet allegedly fired by Crooks. At the show, Black presented a cake to Gass on stage to celebrate the latter's 64th birthday. When Black asked Gass to make a wish, Gass responded: 'Don't miss Trump next time.'
'I was blindsided by what was said at the show on Sunday,' Black said in a statement at the time. 'I would never condone hate speech or encourage political violence in any form.'
He continued, 'After much reflection, I no longer feel it is appropriate to continue the Tenacious D tour, and all future creative plans are on hold. I am grateful to the fans for their support and understanding.'
Best of Variety
New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week
'Harry Potter' TV Show Cast Guide: Who's Who in Hogwarts?
Final Emmy Predictions: Talk Series and Scripted Variety - New Blood Looks to Tackle Late Night Staples
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Elon Musk used to be a movie hero. Now he's the villain
Elon Musk used to be a movie hero. Now he's the villain

Fast Company

timea minute ago

  • Fast Company

Elon Musk used to be a movie hero. Now he's the villain

I recently saw James Gunn's new Superman movie, and as I sat there in the dark theater, I couldn't help but think that Nicholas Hoult based his Lex Luthor on Elon Musk. Something about that smirk he kept flashing throughout the movie reminded me so much of the Tesla CEO's. But Hoult's mannerisms weren't the only thing. His Luthor had several other characteristics that I, and many others, see in Musk, most notably a savior complex and a need to be adored. That's in addition to the fact that in this film, Luthor is a tech billionaire with significant contracts with, and influence over, the government. The thing is, during a lie detector test conducted somewhat in jest by Vanity Fair, Hoult told Superman star David Corenswet that he did not base his Lex Luthor portrayal on Elon Musk. Corenswet noted that Hoult had previously said he wanted to make his Luthor 'as alpha as possible,' and asked whether there were any alpha male podcasts Hoult listened to to prep for the role. Hoult replied that he hadn't listened to any podcasts, but he did listen 'to the audiobook of Elon Musk's book, even though I didn't base the character on Elon at all. But I just thought it'd be interesting.' [Note: Hoult did not clarify if he was talking about Musk's official biography, written by Walter Isaacson in 2023, or Ashlee Vance's unofficial Musk biography, from 2015.] Still, it's hard not to spot the similarities between the controversial Musk and Superman's greatest foe. And Superman isn't the first movie with such similarities, intended or not. In recent years, Musk and other tech billionaires have seemed to have served as direct inspiration for movie villains. Yet things haven't always been this way. [Photo: Marvel Studios] Elon Musk inspired the most iconic superhero of the 21st century Before Robert Downey Jr. starred as Tony Stark in 2008's Iron Man, few people outside of the comic book world could tell you who Iron Man was. Yet, thanks largely to Downey Jr.'s portrayal, Iron Man became a household name—and kick-started the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has allowed now-owner Disney to rake in tens of billions of dollars in box office receipts over the past 17 years. In the script, Downey Jr.'s Stark was charming, intelligent, and slightly arrogant. He leveraged his extreme wealth and technological prowess to make the world a better place. This take on the character—who had existed in comic book form since 1963—was heavily based on Elon Musk. In a 2022 interview with New York Magazine, Iron Man screenwriter Mark Fergus made it clear that the Tesla billionaire was an inspiration for Stark. Fergus said that Stark had historically been a Howard Hughes-style figure, but 2008's Iron Man needed a more contemporary inspiration. Fergus and his colleagues decided that the contemporary Stark was somewhat of a trinity figure, a mixture of three people. The first two were Donald Trump and 'maybe a little Steve Jobs.' But it was Elon Musk who was 'the guy who grabbed the torch [from Howard Hughes]'—an industrialist who also would appear in the gossip pages. 'Trump was fun before he became president—he was actually kind of a goofy celebrity. Steve Jobs was always serious and angry; he never quite had that gift of the bullshit . . .' Fergus explained. 'Musk took the brilliance of Jobs with the showmanship of Trump. He was the only one who had the fun factor and the celebrity vibe and actual business substance.' Marvel didn't shy away from this comparison, either. After the first film became a smash hit in 2008, the studio quickly greenlit a sequel, Iron Man 2, which came out in 2010. In that film, Downey Jr.'s Stark actually meets the real Elon Musk at a party in Monaco and compliments the real-world billionaire on SpaceX's Merlin engines. Yet, the late 2000s are a long time ago now, especially in terms of politics, culture, and Musk's public persona. advertisement Musk and tech billionaires are now movie villains I've previously opined about how the world will likely never have another Steve Jobs—a tech leader beloved by the general public. There are many reasons for this. The primary one is that Big Tech companies were generally seen as wondrous institutions improving our lives on a nearly monthly basis in the early 2000s. Since then, their integration with our lives and influence over it have dramatically expanded—and not for the better. Tech companies are now largely viewed as self-interested entities that prioritize their profits over the greater good. E-commerce giants destroy small businesses, social media companies' engagement algorithms reward bad behavior and poison public discourse, and artificial intelligence firms are so entwined with government and power that one can't help but be concerned about where it will all lead. And because of this shift in public sentiment towards tech companies, a shift has also occurred in the public's perception of the billionaire CEOs who lead them. This is perhaps nowhere more true than with Musk, who has publicly involved himself in governmental affairs of nations like no other CEO before him. All these changes have led, rightfully, to more distrust of the tech industry and those who lead the companies that power it. Suddenly, those same leaders have become the role models for fictional movie villains. It's hard to watch the 2017 film The Circle and not see parallels between Tom Hanks's evil social media CEO and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. And two films in 2022—Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and Jurassic World Dominion seem to have patterned their villains after Musk and Apple's Tim Cook, respectively. The thing is, no director or actor in these movies has confirmed that any real-life tech CEO is the direct inspiration for these characters. In Glass Onion's case, director Rian Johnson denied that the antagonist, Miles Bron, played by Edward Norton, was based on Musk, despite many observers seeing similarities between the two. 'That's just sort of a horrible, horrible accident,' Johnson told Wired. But he also noted that 'There's a lot of general stuff about that sort of species of tech billionaire that went directly into [the movie],' adding, 'But obviously, it has almost a weird relevance in exactly the current moment.' That 'weird relevance' has lasted years now. And, as Superman shows, it's easier than ever for audiences to accept tech CEOs as modern-day villains, whether or not that villain is directly inspired by any singular individual. Society's ongoing tendency to now view tech leaders as the bad guys likely means that we can expect more in the future. At least until they own all the movie studios.

What if Everything We Know About Sacagawea Is Wrong?
What if Everything We Know About Sacagawea Is Wrong?

New York Times

time2 minutes ago

  • New York Times

What if Everything We Know About Sacagawea Is Wrong?

In a conference room in the middle of the Great Plains, 50 people gathered to correct what they saw as a grave error in the historical record. It was July 16, 2015, on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, not too far upstream from the camp on the Missouri River where Meriwether Lewis and William Clark first met Sacagawea, the teenage girl who would accompany them to the Pacific Ocean and back. The story of that journey has been told many times: in the journals that Lewis and Clark kept; in more than a century of academic histories; and in countless more fanciful works that have turned the expedition, and Sacagawea's supposed role as guide to the Americans, into one of the country's foundational myths. The people in the conference room, members of three closely related tribes, the Mandans, the Hidatsas and the Arikaras, thought basically all of it was nonsense. Jerome Dancing Bull, a Hidatsa elder, took the microphone first. The day was warm enough that someone had propped the door open to the outside; the sun was blindingly bright, the prairie a labrador's scruff in the distance. 'They got it all wrong!' he told the people in the room, referring to the bare-bones, truncated life sketched out for Sacagawea by Lewis and Clark and the historians who followed them. In that telling, Sacagawea was born a member of the Shoshone tribe in present-day Idaho, was kidnapped by the Hidatsa as a child, spent most of 1805 and 1806 with the expedition and died in 1812, while she was still in her 20s. The Hidatsas insist that she was a member of their tribe all along and died more than 50 years later, in 1869. And not of old age, either: She was shot to death. History has always been a process; it has also long attracted partisans who insist that its judgments should be frozen in time. In March, the Trump administration released an executive order with the title 'Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,' which condemned the 'widespread effort to rewrite history' and called for 'solemn and uplifting public monuments.' It was a timeworn complaint turned into a wanton threat: Mess with our national symbols, and we'll pull your funding. Sacagawea long ago left the realm of the apolitical dead. Over the years, she has been pressed into service as an avatar of patient humility or assertive feminism, of American expansionism or Indigenous rights, of Jeffersonian derring-do or native wisdom. Her face is on U.S. currency, her name has been affixed to a caldera on Venus and there are statues of her spread throughout the nation, each incarnation seeming to pull her further out of context. The Trump administration has said it wants to include a sculpture of her in a planned National Garden of American Heroes, effectively claiming her as an honorary citizen — though to the federal government at the time, she was closer to being an alien enemy. 'The Hidatsas' portrait of Sacagawea is both richer and more ambiguous than the one found in standard histories.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

I Hate, Therefore I Am
I Hate, Therefore I Am

New York Times

time2 minutes ago

  • New York Times

I Hate, Therefore I Am

I said a good word about Elon Musk not long ago. It was at a party. I'd had some punch. (Two cups. Maybe two and a half?) I think it was something about Starlink. I'm not sure. I'd just read Walter Isaacson's affable Musk biography. My interlocutor, a genial fellow professor, looked at me as if I'd kicked his dog. Why? Because we (good people, Whole Foods shoppers, composting mavens, pronouns respecters) don't like Elon. In fact, we hate him. Truly, we do. We once aspired to drive a Tesla, but no more. Everything about him is bad. I find hate to be virtually omnipresent in the current culture. Libs hate conservatives, and conservatives hate 'em right back. People hate politicians, the elite, MAGA hats (and their wearers), social media (though they cannot stay away from it). Some hate the rich. Some despise immigrants. People hate the media. They hate corporations. They hate capitalism. They hate woke and cancel culture. They hate globalism and globalists. They hate this president. There is love out there to be sure — for Beyoncé, for Pedro Pascal and, yes, even for this president, but hate trumps love by a mile now, or so it seems to me. Why should this be true? Descartes had a famous dictum about the constitutive powers of the thinking self: I think therefore I am. Could it be that, today, I hate, therefore I am? What if who and what we hate is who we are now? Why might hate be constructive — crucially constructive — of identity at this particular point in time? And why should possessing identity matter so much to us? The traditional sources of stable selfhood have been significantly depleted over time. We live in an age of skepticism, often corrosive skepticism, about our institutions and their good intentions. Perhaps we are not wrong to do so. To speak personally, the revelations about priestly child molesting sent me to a level of antipathy to the Catholic Church (in which I grew up) that stays with me still. Many others have had similar experiences — about bank bailouts or Covid school closures or President Joe Biden's reported mental acuity. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store