My Booky Wook 2 (22 page)
Best articulation of a blindingly obvious pun:Winner – Russell Brand, while hosting the Brit Awards 2008.The joke: “Amy Winehouse – her surname’s beginning to sound like a description of her liver.”Best use of an insect analogy whilst referring to the monarchy:Winner – Russell Brand, again while hosting the Brit Awards 2008.The joke: “Now for the best male category. If we were ants the best male would have to have sex with the Queen. We are not ants, but is that any reason to ignore their time-honoured traditions? And before you turn away and are sick into your own handbag, can any of you here honestly say that if I gave you an envelope and told you that inside was a photograph of the Queen’s vagina, you wouldn’t have a look? And here with that envelope is Joss Stone.”
And finally:
Best misunderstanding of America’s relationship with their head of state:Winner – Russell Brand, at the MTV VMA Awards 2009.The joke: “America! I urge you to elect Barack Obama! On behalf of the world! Some people, I think they’re called racists, say America is not ready for a black president. But I know America to be a freethinking, forward-thinking nation; after all, you let that retarded cowboy fella be president for eight years. We all thought it was very liberal of you to let him have a go. Because in England he wouldn’t be trusted with a pair of scissors.”
This was the joke I opened the show with. I thought it was funny. Matt thought it was funny, the MTV executives, before it was broadcast, thought it was funny, but not everybody thought it was funny. The script for the VMAs was the last thing me and Matt wrote together, the inglorious climax of our years as collaborators.
We prepared well for the show. Nik, in fact, who is a keen student of military strategy, led the preparations like a Macedonian king. Jack and Gareth were flown over, Nicola and Sharon were drilled to groom me every few seconds even as I slept, and our Sunset View mansion was constantly awash with therapists of every description, stabbing me with pins and covering me with oil.
Our representatives at LA super-agency Endeavor were confident that hosting the awards well would launch me into a new firmament. We’d also received the incredible news that Nick Stoller, the Sarah Marshall director, and Judd Apatow had met with Universal and they wanted to make a movie with me reprising my role as Aldous Snow – Get Him to the Greek, in which I’d star with Jonah Hill. This was a real breakthrough. It meant that my performance in the first movie had been judged a great success. Jonah is one of the hottest young comics in the world – putting the two of us together could be spectacular. We were confident. Stoller and Rodney Rothman cast an eye over the script for the VMAs that Matt and I had written; they said it was great and suggested a few more gags. One of their suggestions led to this joke, which narrowly missed out on a hosting award in the “best misunderstanding of American politics” category (fortunately, to another one I’d written). Here it is: “I am obliged by broadcasting law to show some balance in this situation, which means, uh, the Republicans might be alright. Sarah Palin for example. She’s a VILF! A vice-president I’d like to … fumble, fondle, I dunno. I do feel a little bit sorry for her daughter, getting pregnant, poor kid, I wonder what she’ll have? Is it a boy? Is it a girl? It’s a PR stunt – come on, be honest. I feel sorry for that poor teenage father, one minute he’s just a normal lad in Alaska having joyful, unprotected sex. And the next minute, he’s hauled up before the Republican convention to make a point. I think that is the best safe-sex message of all time. ‘Use a condom or become a Republican pin-up!’ That boy will spend the rest of his life masturbating. While wearing a condom.”
In exchange for their assistance with jokes such as that, Nik got MTV to allow the crew for The Greek to do some preliminary filming on the Paramount lot where the VMAs were being held on the day of dress rehearsals and to secure interviews with me and some of the talent that would be participating. This meant that there would be footage of fictional rock star Aldous Snow cavorting with real-life pop singers, which would be used to authenticate the character in the movie. Nik said I had to be sure that filming these sketches wouldn’t distract me from our primary purpose of doing a great show the next day, and I said he could rest assured.
The calibre of the artists that agreed to participate in the Greek filming was high; we shot with Christina Aguilera, Pink and Katy Perry. They were all jolly good fun, these women. Christina Aguilera was like a living sex mannequin, so well presented and scented and big-busted that you would need the mind of a maharishi to avoid thoughts of fucking her. Pink is cool. The first time I met her in London years before when interviewing her on my MTV show she was a right laugh, joining in with daft jokes and flirting, and she was brilliant that day too. We shot a scene in which paparazzi pursued us from a bar as we kissed, then I broke away from the kiss and vomited in the street. I know it sounds disgusting but it’s in the film and it’s funny.
I was intrigued to meet Katy Perry, as I thought the sentiments expressed in her hit song “I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It” could be well employed in my private life. I estimate that eighty per cent of women are up for threesomes if you handle the negotiation carefully. For those of you interested I’d suggest these steps:
Seduce one woman – you have to start somewhere, you can’t get to a threesome if you can’t secure a onesome.Make that woman feel beautiful and empowered and give her a lovely old-fashioned orgasm.Ask if she’s ever kissed a girl before and, indeed, if she liked it. If the answer is no, which it seldom is, you’re best to abate unless she seems curious. If it’s yes, then with confidence and glee announce that you’d like to immediately commence with a sexual adventure that might very well solve the problem of all mortal fear.Call a woman with whom you’ve already undertaken this process; unless your partner already has a girl that she’d like to involve. In the unlikely and frankly horrific event of them suggesting a man be brought into the proceedings, make a dramatic U-turn and claim to be a deeply religious chap who respects the sanctity of carnal pairing. If that doesn’t work – leg it! Jump out the window if you have to because nobody wants a sweaty, grunting, vascular bloke in the room when you’re at the business of sexual sorcery.
We’d already shot with Pink and Christina Aguilera before we boarded the golf buggy to take us to the pretend street on the Paramount lot where we’d be filming with Katy Perry. A few of the Sarah Marshall team were there, the First Assistant Director Gary Marcus, the Director Nick Stoller and the brilliantly named Dick Vane, who even with that surname insists that he never be called Richard, which makes me love him.
There she stood, Katy Perry, on a fictional street surrounded by people grooming and protecting her, as I sliced the air around her like Serengeti grass. A good-looking young woman, I observed, with mischief in her eyes that met mine, unblinking. She emerged from the huddle as Nick talked us through the scene. We were to go behind one of the façades on the street, one that resembled an Italian guesthouse, ascend to the first floor then come out on to the balcony and kiss and carouse for the benefit of the pretend paparazzi and fans below. Doubtless, I said some funny things to score our short journey across the Pseudo Street and into the bogus building. Within we climbed together the counterfeit staircase and once behind the make-believe balcony doors, I suggested we rehearse the kiss. “Right,” I said, taking a breath. She really was rather pretty. “Well, we’ll go out there,” I indicated the fabricated world outside. “Then I’ll move towards you, like this.” I moved towards her, she smiled, a lazily magical smile. “Then I suppose we’ll hold each other like this.” I took her waist gently. “And then …” by now our lips are almost touching, “we’ll kiss,” then we kissed. And there was nothing unreal about it. This was not a fictional kiss, our mouths met and there on the Hollywood set I was lost with her in a swirl, a vacuum, the phantoms without melted away and this vast, immaculate world created for telling tales had witnessed the start to my favourite story.
We also broadcast a Radio 2 show that day, which in retrospect may not have been wise with all the filming and rehearsal for the huge event to follow. We used a Paramount studio and the building was abuzz with dancers preparing for the big ceremony the following day. All my friends were around me and there was a great vibe on the show. My mum was there, proud and beaming, and Sharon and Nicola. Jack and Gareth were producing the show, and Slash came in as a guest. We made light of the next day’s proceedings. “I’m not prepared,” I joked. Noel Gallagher came on the phone and gave his on-air consent for us to use “Rock and Roll Star” as my entrance music with the aforementioned killer line “Then they’ll have someone they’ve never seen before coming on to a track they’ve never heard of.” Me and Matt recorded what fans had called a “viddy-cast”, an online visual podcast to accompany the show. In this one we recorded a dance to our mate Joby’s daft song “Chugga Chugga”, which was a right laugh, we fell about. “This marriage is over!” yelled Matt as we crashed into the end of the song. It was the last moment we ever performed together.
Radio show at the VMAs 08. Joby, Matt, me mum, Nik, Iraqi Matt and ol’ Russ.
The next day, the VMA day, I awoke with that peculiar dawn murmur you have on birthdays or the day after the loss of a loved one. A moment where you grope for your place in the world, aware that there’s something you must do, some change, some obligation. Then it alights soft on your brow like a butterfly or lands in your belly like a kettle-bell of bad memories. “Today I must do that show.”
We did another dress rehearsal, which was risible since you can’t get the acts to participate because they’re all too rich. Lil Wayne is not a punctual man. If he cannot be coerced into obeying firearm laws by the American government how on earth are we supposed to make him turn up on time for an award show run-through? I like him, though; he’s got the peculiar crackling presence I imagine an alien might have. He touched my legs when we crossed on stage as if checking my tight black trousers were made of fabric and not paint.
The MTV crew and production team were meticulously professional and fastidious until about five minutes before the show went live, at which point the operation toppled over like a wedding cake. Suddenly people that had before been conducting themselves like secret service agents were screaming into walkie-talkies and vertically tumbling through corridors like the Keystone Cops.
The sound-stage the show was broadcast from was a vast and unforgiving space. High ceilings, hard light. Only a thousand people in the audience in a room that could’ve held ten times that, and all of them industry executives and talent. The kind of people who will not sit in polite rapture while a performance takes place elsewhere on the lot, as many did that night to utilise Paramount’s many impressive sets. Nor will they indulge the controversial jokes of an unknown Englishman with hair like a rookery and a mouth like a carnival at the end of the world. But I didn’t know that yet. I was boothed up with Matt in the paddock made of black curtains that we always had for such events. Where we can watch events unfold on a monitor and plot pertinent responses. I can also use it as a place to wee in a bottle, which Matt obviously hates.
As I was brought on stage for the opener by the frantic and tattered floor manager, the signs did not augur well. Most of the audience were still shuffling into their seats as I began my opening link, which as you know was a comment on the American presidency. This was six months before Barack Obama was elected, but I was pretty sure that a showbiz audience would be liberal in their leanings and that this would be just the sort of thing to get them onside. What I know now, a little too late, is that American mainstream culture is powerfully homogenised, because any potent opinion has the potential to reduce sales. Why risk even a single unit by expressing disdain for one political creed when you can instead just benignly smile? Hindsight. I delivered my opener to silence, but corporate gigs are always tough and ultimately that’s what these events are, so I didn’t take it too seriously. When I got out of the limelight and back to the paddock Matt didn’t seem that perturbed, so I ploughed on with the material we’d written.
The next link was about the Jonas Brothers, a trinity of Christian siblings who were performing that night and who were marketed heavily on the basis of their clean-cut morality and, interestingly, their virginity. It is worth noting I think that the band are owned by Disney, for whom I was in mid-production on the Adam Sandler movie, for which he personally had cast me, since Disney at that time didn’t know who I was. That was about to change. We had written some pretty obvious stuff about their purity rings, for instance that I’d take their chastity rings more seriously if they wore them on their cocks. Then over the course of the night I’d re-emerge menacingly bearing a new ring as if I’d deflowered another boy. The joke I wanted to do was drawn from the analysis of French philosopher Michel Foucault, who observed that in Victorian society the puritanical celebration of chastity was a way of bringing sex to the forefront of consciousness. I thought these ideas were being cynically deployed in the marketing of the boys; by constantly drawing attention to their status as virgins they are simply focusing on sex by the back-door, as it were. The Jonas Brothers are not having SEX. They don’t have SEX. Imagine the SEX they don’t have with their beautiful, unsullied cocks and their cute pink arses. You cannot envisage a negative; your attention is drawn to the inversion. It is difficult to convey that point on MTV in a thirty-second link, so I went with the cock-ring gag.
Even that joke, though, appeared to be a bit ripe for the audience, so my breaks between links in the paddock with Matt became emergency summits where material was hacked from the script. After the second link we had the terrifying realisation that we’d written a show that was un-broadcastable. Which left me in the unenviable position of having to improvise an entire award show – WHICH IS FUCKING DIFFICULT! On MTV. For a mainstream audience and conservative commercial sponsors there are so many obligations both legal and moral. In my autobiography, however, things are a little more relaxed. Here are some of the jokes we cut: