Scorsese's Il Maestro, Noam Chomsky & Patrice O'Neal: Truth vs Industry

“Euckh” it's a sound you would instantly recognize if heard out loud. The phoneme is a sound of pure disgust, it echoes the mucus lodged in the back of your throat scraping the uvula into a cave-like uproar of hatred. It feels primitive and ancient, it's cross-cultural, as soon as you hear it, you know what it means. This person is clearly disgusted by something, it’s an involuntary and rare sound that people make only a few times in their lifetimes, and it’s a sound that is synonymous with Patrice O’Neal.

When I was in middle school I would spend hours afterschool watching anything 'stand up comedy' related that I could get my hands on, interviews, old Carlin and Pryor specials, Redd Foxx specials, Chappelle’s Show, Talking Funny, Opie & Anthony, and Tough Crowd. That’s when I stumbled across Patrice O’Neal. Patrice, like many great artists, was a purist. He lived and breathed his craft. This guy was one of the most honest people in the world, almost psychopathically. Patrice was a master at describing precisely what was going on, and if he wanted to, he would do it in the most vindictive way possible, it was hilarious, but that sound mirrored his view on life. Patrice was disgusted by everyone, and everything, all the time. He was ruthlessly judgmental of everyone and everything around him, he hated anything he deemed phony, which was great for his craft, but terrible, in his own words, for his personal life.

Listening to those podcasts while growing up truly made me move differently in my life. The world is constantly trying to make us conform to it, there’s a certain way you are around your friends or family, and then a certain way you are in professional settings. Jim Norton had the perfect description of Patrice, he said “Patrice lived his life like there would be a movie about his life that would be played to his buddies after he died” That was put so beautifully, and perfectly encapsulates why I love Patrice, and the impact his abrasive honesty had on me, but also how it was the biggest detriment to his professional career as a person in the entertainment industry.

As an aspiring artist, in a world where that is categorized as part of the “entertainment industry” Patrice echoed my sentiments. Patrice said he hated being called an entertainer because his goal was not to entertain, it was to “get it off.” Patrice O'Neal was a comedy nerd, he loved the craft, he loved the greatest practitioners, and he thought that "hacky" comedians were doing a disservice to a culture he loves, Patrice was a purist. Patrice was compelled to use the medium of stand up comedy to convey his emotions, and he wanted to master the art form because he saw it as a medium for truth. Truth, not propaganda, like a true artist, you would see him work out his point of view on stage, and his goal was to be great at stand up, like the people he loved, which he felt required "half the audience to be horrified." He wanted to provoke you, and challenge your worldview with his truth. He didn’t want to do anything phony, he even had “hack court” which is where he would put different comedians bits on trial to tear them apart and let them know why it was corny, various comedians like Kevin Hart & Joe Rogan claim it was an honour for Patrice to even laugh at their jokes, because he wouldn’t fake a laugh. His discernment and constant criticism made his work amazing, but it also stagnated his career.

What Patrice had is what Martin Scorsese is talking about with film recently, which he expounded on in the essay he recently published titled “Il Maestro.” Scorsese talks about maintaining the integrity of film and treating the great cultural landmarks of film as something more than just “content” and "property." Scorsese is talking about something much more than just wealth and blockbusters, he’s talking about the heritage of a medium that has affected lives around the world, including his own, and the culture surrounding it, that is being degraded & commodified by industries. That is the same fight Patrice O’Neal was having. Patrice wanted to maintain the purity and truth in a genre and culture that changed his life.

Scorsese and Patrice have many parallels. Scorsese originally made low budget films, he wasn't necessarily a blockbuster name until decades into his career as a director. His films were grittier, honest, and reflective of a certain culture in New York at that time. Films like 'Kings of Comedy' that are now critically acclaimed were only in theatres for less than a week. Scorsese, like Patrice, was a film buff and a purist, dedicated to the furtherance of the culture and the craft. Scorsese worshipped great directors like Federico Fellini, Georges Méliès & F. W. Murnau, in the same way Patrice worshipped comics like George Carlin & Richard Pryor.

Martin Scorsese has caught flack recently for saying he doesn't deem movies like the Avengers to be 'cinema' and there was an uproar of Marvel fans on the internet. We need respected practitioners like Patrice and Scorsese to defend the integrity and quality of a culture that people love, that is their role. You can enjoy franchises like the Avengers, Jumanji, and every Disney remake, but there needs to be someone great, that reminds us there's a difference. Its not elitism, its quality control, its an expression of love. Scorsese’s passion for preserving the art of film and the language around it is important. It goes beyond whether marvel or dc is considered cinema. It’s about restoration, survival, and knowledge of the medium. There's a difference between George Carlin and Jo Koy, there's a difference between Homers Odyssey and 50 Shades of Grey, there's a difference between Kendrick Lamar and Lil Pump, and that's what Patrice O'Neal and Scorsese are trying to emphasize, in their respective genres.

Patrice’s abrasive non conformity was the biggest detriment to his career. Since its inception, the entertainment industry has had gatekeepers. It was a concentrated and controlled industry, you couldn’t get something on television or in movie theatres unless you were a studio. Everyone's information intake was, and still widely is, controlled by a few corporations. Noam Chomsky, an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist, said in his book titled ‘Manufacturing Consent’ “The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda.”

Private interests monopolized the industry and had almost every aspiring artist lining up at their door to sell their talent, and because of the influx of talent, the talent became less valuable and the gatekeeper positions gained sole power. The gatekeeper now had full autonomy over people’s livelihood, if this person likes you, they could give you an opportunity and if they hated you, then your career is finished. That’s what lead to power dynamics like Harvey Weinstein buying sex with a movie role. He controlled the industry, you couldn’t go anywhere else. So a lot of people did things they weren’t proud of in order to “make it.”

Patrice, like Scorsese, was an artist, he didn’t need to make it, he definitely would have loved to be rich, but that’s not what he was in it for, to the point where he ruined his shot of having a consistent appearance on The Office, one of the biggest shows of all time, because an intern was too excited at 6 am. He felt like she shouldn’t have been so giddy at 6 in the morning, so he told her, and he was deemed difficult to work with. He would tell writers if their scripts were unfunny, he would openly complain if he was in a bad scene. Patrice is our internal monologue at work when your annoying coworker is too excited a little too early, but most of us are polite people. Most of us won't tell her to "shut the fuck up and reflect about what she has to be so giddy about." But that’s how he felt, and he said it, because it was true. He lived his whole life as a stand up comedian, which to him meant a truth that most people couldn’t imagine, which is great for artistry, but terrible for career progression.

Patrice could have played the game, got ahead and become as successful as his peers Kevin Hart, Louis C.K. Dave Chappelle, Joe Rogan & Bill Burr, he was just as talented, but he didn't have it in him. Patrice was pre-Netflix, and his personality wasn’t going to be at networking events trying to get buddy-buddy with superiors to try and get ahead, even though he probably should have. He wasn't going to tone down his rhet