Daily Archives: February 6, 2017

Its been over 13 years since Ricky Gervais bade farewell to David Brent, the middling middle manager on the original U.K. version of The Office that launched his career. Since then, hes had other successful series (Extras,Derek), dabbled in movies (The Invention of Lying), and sold out venues with his standup tour. Yet the character who considered himself friend first, boss secondprobably entertainer third has never really gone away. There wasnt a day that went by where I wasnt managing the estate of David Brent, Gervais notes. There were remakes around the world, I would get requests every day to show clips, or something would could up with licensing.

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After short appearances on the American version of The Office or at Comic Relief, Gervais has brought Brent back in full force with the release of David Brent: Life on the Road. Written and directed by Gervais, the film hits American theaters and streaming platform Netflix on Feb. 10. It follows Brents attempts to extend his modicum of fame by launching a music career with typically uncomfortable results. As Gervais puts it, If you went on Facebook and found out the most boring man you went to college with was trying to be a rock star, youd have to watch.

We spoke with Gervais on the phone from England the morning of Donald Trumps inauguration, mere minutes after Trump was sworn in. The outspoken comedian noted some parallels between his fictional character and the new president.

Thank you for bringing David Brent back, I didnt realize how much I missed him.That was sort of the point, really, for people to catch up on an old friend. Its a fake documentary but I deal in realism. And I suppose theres parallels to real life where everyone wants to be famous. He had a bit of fame at the turn of the century, and we thought hed go away. But now fame is a different beast and people dont give up. And its easier to be famous because people are willing to do anything to be famous. Theres no difference now between fame and infamy. Weve just seen the host of The Apprentice become President of the United States.

Did you see some news reports are saying he lifted parts of his speech from Bane in The Dark Knight Rises?And Im not shocked. A year ago, I would have been horrified. But then again, the things he said running up to thisif any other politician or any other world leader had said it, he would have resigned. He confessed to abusing women and that wasnt enough. There is no greater role model in the western world arguably, so what happens when a guy is caught for attacking a woman and says, My president said it was all right? Its off the charts. I do sort of blame reality TV in a way because we are all made from our input. Hes a man who wants to be famous. Donald Trump has more in common with David Brent than he does with JFK or Lincoln or Roosevelt. Hes not even a smart man who had to work for it. Hes not particularly erudite or educated or caring. He wants to be famous, he wants to be loved. Im not saying that makes him a terrible president or its the end of the world, Im just saying he is different from other presidents and he is a product of the last 50 years of people wanting to be famous. Its like he wasnt satisfied with having $5 billion and running companies, he had to be on telly every possible moment.

When thinking of ideas for a David Brent movie, did you ever imagine a storyline where he or someone like him ran for president? It would seem too outrageous.Thats exactly right, nothing is fiction now. It seems like the way it first started was a little bit like one of those 80s movies where two old billionaires in a gentlemans club make a bet that they can make any idiot into the president of the United States. One says, Where are you going to find someone that stupid? And it cuts to Trump and the one says, Youre on sir! Its like Pygmalion in a bad, Hollywood 1980s genre movie. And it worked.

Do you still watch reality TV?Its been good to me. Ive watched it and found it enjoyable and laughed at some things and been angry at others but I have studied it, it has been my muse. I wrote The Office based on my experiences as a middle manager, I worked at an office for 10 years. I also watched a lot of those quaint docu-soaps in the 90s that followed someone at work and they sort of became a household name for 15 minutes. But now its different. Now you get on The Apprentice by saying, Ill destroy anything that stands in my way. They choose the people who are willing to do anything, and people get on by promising to behave badly. And theyre rewarded for it. Though I dont think it ever ends well.

You seem to be drawn to the subject of fame in a lot of your work.The Office was about a man who wanted to be famous. Extras was about a man literally on the first rung of being famous. The Golden Globes was a study in fame to me. I was shocked by how worried everyone was about what I would say. I just dont get it. It was a shock that people were that sensitive or that worried about what a little fat guy from Reading said about them. I always like to sort of play with that. I think its staple of British comedy, even more than American, we always try to bring down authority. Theres something were trying to undermine when people take themselves too seriously. It was reflected in the remake of the American Office. Its more hopeful. Americans are told you can grow up to be the next president of the United States. Brits are told to not even try, who do you think you are? Its funny because my sense of humor is British but my comedy is American. I embrace both things.

What do these characters or someone like David Brent hope to get out of fame?Ive always been fascinated with what people think leading a good life is. Good people do bad things, for many reasons. For money, for fame, because they think it will make them happy. They should just cut out the middle man and just be happy. So Im always on the side of the deluded, if theyve got a good heart. David Brent isnt an evil person. Now hes 55, not 39, hes not the boss. Hes not doing a job that anyone ever dreams of as a child. So he believes, like most people, that fame will sort their life out. Hes putting all his money on one number and cashing in his chips to buy fame. Hes looking for the wrong thing and hes certainly looking in the wrong place. We see sort of a more sympathetic side of him.

It would be easy to mock David Brent as a musician, but the music in the film actually isnt bad.Well, David Brent is paying for it so David Brent would get the best musicians he could. Hes hemorrhaging money because he wants a real band. But at least hes trying and it is his money, hes not stealing or conning anyone. Hes following a dream, no matter how deluded that may be and thats admirable. Thats the staple of comedy. Comedy at its essence is the normal guy trying to do something hes not equipped to do. And when were snickering at him, were only snickering at ourselves. When we laugh at David Brent were sort of going, Oh, Ive done that.

But the album actually charted internationally, it hit number three in Britain and number one in New Zealand.Yeah, but people are in on the jokethey know theyre not buying a cool album. Its David Brent, not me releasing my songs. When you see Ricky Gervais Sings the Blues, shoot me. Thats when its all over. The problem is in the narrative, David Brent isnt as successful as he is in real life. When we do gigs, we sell out huge venues. I have to keep the narrative piece not a huge success otherwise its a bit too far-fetched.

Wait, so you as David Brent is selling out concerts? Yeah, thats how it all started. I brought David Brent back for a Comic Relief sketch and he did a track called Equality Street. It went really well and I did a couple gigs and people went crazy. We had 110,000 ticket requests for these small venues. They called and said I could play Wembley Stadium. I said, This is mad. Why would David Brent play Wembley? Thats when it hit me; he paid top musicians, hes booking venues, and thats where the idea for the movie came.

The Office spawned a lot of comedies that used the fake documentary format or played up the comedy of discomfort. How does it feel to have been at the forefront of that?I dont think I started it, but I fused a few genres so it looked original. I wasnt the first to tap into that stupidity and those idiot characters, Laurel and Hardy did it. I wasnt the first to do a naturalistic fake documentary, you could point to This Is Spinal Tap. Awkwardness and discomfort were done in Seinfeld. What I did do was probably up everything a notch. Mine was slower, more uncomfortable, more desperate.

In addition to your performing, youre an outspoken animal rights activist and atheist. How does it feel to be almost as well-known for your causes as for your work? Its funny isnt it? Those things have always been my passion but you get a bigger platform. As your fame grows, those things about you grow as well. With the invention of social media, the more famous you get and the more access people get to you, the more youre loved but they more youre hated as well. But thats no reason to not still give your opinion and tell the truth. Its never worried me to have a popular or unpopular view. One of my favorite tweets Ive ever got said, Everyones entitled to believe what they want, so shut up about your atheism.

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Ricky Gervais on Atheism, Donald Trump, and the Return of David Brent - Variety

Ricky Gervais gave a defense of atheism on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. The British comedian and actor is an outspoken atheist, and Colbert is somewhat of a rarity in comedic circles: a devout Catholic. Unlike similar conversations with Bill Maher, this was far more gracious than it was testy.

Ricky Gervais has never been shy about sharing his beliefs. (Photo: Getty Images)

So this is atheism in a nutshell, said Gervais. You say, Theres a god. I say, You can prove that? You say, No. I say, I dont believe you then. So you believe in one god, I assume but there are 3,000 to choose from So basically, you believe in you deny one less god than I do. You dont believe in 2,999 gods. And I dont believe in just one more.

Colbert explained that his gratitude for existence needs to be expressed and winds up being directed toward God. Gervais explained his gratitude for existence is displayed in an appreciation for scientific discovery. We want to make sense of nature and science. It is too unfathomable everything in the universe was once crunched in some small atom, said Gervais. But you dont know that, Colbert interjected. Youre just believing Stephen Hawking, and thats a matter of faith in his abilities. You dont know it yourself. Youre accepting that because someone told you.

Stephen Colbert is a rarity in comedic circles for his deep Catholic faith. (Photo: Getty Images)

Gervais then explained why Colberts argument wasnt compelling to him, and did so in such a succinct manner that Colbert had to give him credit. You see, if we take something like any fiction and any holy book and any other fiction and destroyed it, in 1,000 years time, that wouldnt come back just as it was, Gervais pointed out. Whereas if we took every science book and every fact and destroyed them all, in 1,000 years theyd all be back, because all the same tests would be the same result. Thats good, Colbert acknowledged. Thats really good.

Previously on Colbert: Jon Stewart Reveals Trumps Next Executive Order:

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Ricky Gervais and Stephen Colbert Debate Atheism - Yahoo TV (blog)

My Great-Great-Aunt Kit might have been, in the parlance of her times, an infidel. In the 1890s, she loaded her scrapbook with the blasphemous speeches of the eras most famous agnostic, Robert Ingersoll, marking them up with apparent appreciation.

A student of American religious history, I was surprised to find such interest in unbelief among these ancestors because that side of my family is a long line of Ohio farmers. The instincts of my discipline recommend for them a quiet but dogged Methodism, maybe a flash of revivalism here and there. "Ignorance is the soil of the supernatural. The miraculous is false" wasnt the first thing I would have expected to find circled and starred in a family heirloom.

Village Atheists: How America's Unbelievers Made Their Way in a Godly Nation By Leigh Eric Schmidt

(Princeton University Press)

Schmidt wants to neutralize some of the polemicism surrounding the topic. The very words by which we name this strand of American religious history are negations, inherently adversarial: atheist, nonbeliever, irreligious. Even freethinker is a provocation, if one is just a thinker. Schmidt, though, discovers gray areas and blurred lines between belief and unbelief. "Certainly many freethinkers and evangelicals saw this as a war without a middle ground, but forbearance and mutual recognition nonetheless frequently emerged amid the Manichean opposition."

This is complicated, however, by Schmidts own title character, a composite "cultural figure" drawn from the lives of his four contrarians. Samuel Porter Putnam once published a pamphlet called "Religion a Curse, Religion a Disease, Religion a Lie" (1893). Charles B. Reynolds co-opted the methods of evangelicalism and traveled the country holding tent revivals, preaching a gospel of freethought. Elmina Drake Slenker defied obscenity laws to spread advice about sex and the body, taking particular pride in using "short, emphatic, and clear" words i.e., four-letter ones. Watson Heston drew cartoons demonstrating the absurdity of belief and the unfairness of religions hold on the nations institutions. A typical Heston cartoon mocked common Protestant imagery about "clinging to the cross" by labeling the suffering souls supposed life-saver "a piece of worthless theological driftwood." A "Freethought Life-Boat" offers rescue as the sharks of priestcraft close in.

Schmidt wants the lives of these characters to "capture the dilemmas of a quotidian secularism the tensions between combat and courtesy, candor and dissembling, irreverence and respectability that marked the everyday lives of Americas unbelievers." He succeeds to the extent that these public atheists wrote and spoke to audiences of everyday nonbelievers living amid the assumptions of belief. His four main subjects do not appear to have dissembled much, though, and most of the book is about court cases and public controversies, moments not easily thought of as part of their normal daily lives.

The fact is that much of the everyday 19th-century atheism Schmidt set out to chronicle might have been characterized by silence. Proclaiming oneself an atheist has been and still is in many circles simply considered rude. Schmidt chronicles a recurrent argument among freethinkers themselves about how impolite to be, but does not reflect on the constant violence of self-censorship that this implies. Self-censorship in the face of overwhelming cultural pressure is as much a part of the American atheist experience as irreverent provocation. Family members who knew her she lived to be 99 have no memory of Aunt Kit ever discussing religion.

Beyond the risk of social stigma, atheists have been subject to violence, imprisonment, and the denial of political rights. True, they are not exactly like other persecuted religious minorities in American history. For one thing, they have not been powerless. Contemporary surveys indicate that they tend toward the white, male, and educated, and that is not a new trend. Even in the 19th century, the self-consciously irreverent edge of so much atheist rhetoric came from a place of relative privilege. Compared with the violence wrought along lines of race, gender, and class, the challenges faced by atheists can seem minor, or quaint, or even funny. Schmidt recounts the story of a one-armed Kansan named Jacob B. Wise who was prosecuted in 1895, under the Comstock obscenity laws, for mailing a minister a postcard with a single line on it about eating and drinking human waste. The joke was that the line was from the Bible (Isaiah 36:12).

Schmidt is mostly mindful of this tension, punctuating stories of relative tolerance toward atheists with the real consequences of persecution. (Wise spent a month in jail and was fined $50, all for sending a postcard with a Bible verse on it.) Even as the religious right has wrapped itself in the rhetoric of victimhood, claiming to feel oppressed in a secular nation, surveys continue to suggest that it is atheists who might feel most compelled to hide their commitments of conscience. Americans feel coldest about atheists and Muslims, and admit that they are less likely to vote for members of these groups than any others. In 2005, Justice Antonin Scalia may the God he worshiped rest his soul argued in a dissent "that the Establishment Clause permits the disregard of devout atheists."

Nevertheless, the irreverent work of the village atheist goes on in a public arena radically changed by high-profile 20th-century Supreme Court cases. The Satanic Temple is easily the most entertaining avatar of the village atheists spirit today. They are atheists who claim Satan as a metaphor, not a deity, and they recently announced an "After School Satan" program as a counter to Christian programs permitted to evangelize in public schools. And the University of Miami will soon run a search for an endowed chair in "the study of atheism, humanism and secular ethics." It took the donor more than 15 years and $2.2 million to get the university to agree to use the word "atheism" in the title, but the term might soon be an everyday presence.

Seth Perry is an assistant professor of religion at Princeton University.

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Devout Atheists - Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription)