Taking flight: Jack Black in ‘Nacho Libre’, one of the films that made him an A-lister.
“My president needs me!” Jack Black proclaimed mid-June at a Joe Biden fundraiser in Los Angeles.
Early this week it’s possible Black got a call from President Biden saying: “Thanks for your support in the past, but as of now kindly stay off my side”.
As everyone knows, Jack Black’s high public standing has taken a massive – potentially fatal – blow.
At a packed Sydney concert on Sunday Kyle Gass, Black’s partner in the hugely popular mock-metal band Tenacious D, was asked by Black to make a birthday wish. Gass responded with the quip “don’t miss Trump next time”.
We all know this referred to the assassination attempt on presidential candidate Donald Trump, which had occurred the day before.
The gag flew in the face of Biden’s subsequent call to “turn down the temperature” on public discourse.
This made dismissing the line as an off-colour joke untenable. People, including fans, were enraged, taking the line as an endorsement of political violence.
The incident instantly plunged Jack Black’s career into crisis as a tsunami of resentment sent him into damage control.
He issued an apology saying how the comment had “blindsided” him, cancelled the rest of the tour and put all future creative plans “on hold”.
Gass also issued an apology for his “improvised” line, which he deemed “highly inappropriate, dangerous and a terrible mistake”.
It is telling they did not issue a joint statement.
This suggests a rift in a 40-year friendship that has likely ended.
So, too, Tenacious D, which the pair formed in 1994 before Jack Black’s career as a Hollywood actor took off.
The band’s touring roster no longer appears on its website, the series of “Rock D Vote” campus concerts leading up to the US election in November appear to have been cancelled. Gass has been dropped by his talent agency.
But right now it’s a fair bet Jack Black cares far less about Tenacious D or Kyle Gass than he does about his film career and whether it can survive.
The guy would be petrified – and with good reason.
He has three films coming out soon: the comedy Dear Santa; Borderlands with Cate Blanchett; and the big-budget adventure Minecraft with Jason Momoa.
Black’s casting is a no-brainer. Having proved himself with such films as High Fidelity, School of Rock, Jumanji, Nacho Libre and King Kong, Jack Black is one of the most likeable, and thus one of the most bankable, A-list Hollywood stars around.
Or he was until Sunday.
Many nasty, angry things have been said online, a common theme being how longtime fans vow never to listen to his music or watch his films ever again.
This is a nightmare for the producers of his upcoming films, who suddenly find themselves with expensive movies featuring a star who is on the nose with ticket buyers.
Every film carries insurance to safeguard against illness, death, unforeseen production delays and such like.
They do not tend to cover loss of prospective box office earnings over an actor whose huge positive public appeal has suddenly gone septic.
These producers would be equally petrified as their legal teams pore over the policy fine print.
Behind closed doors they might well be saying: “We’ve just spent tens of millions on a film starring an actor people don’t want to see. Have you seen his latest Q score?”
What will they do? Would forging ahead with a planned release pay off or lead to disaster? Is waiting a viable option? Will people forget about this mess? Or forgive?
And what shall become of his current projects? Will Universal revoice Kung Fu Panda? Will the very touchy Disney sack Black from The Mandalorian?
Central to Black’s salvage efforts is his attempt to distance himself from the incident. That’s a tough sell.
Though Black did not utter the line he is seen as being complicit. Videos of the moment show Black laughing and saying “thank you”.
Not a good look.
It arguably drains his public apology of sincerity for if he was “blindsided” why didn’t he immediately scold Gass on stage?
That he waited 48 hours before issuing his apology didn’t help, suggesting Black had waited to see what the reaction was before deciding if an apology was warranted. Fans respond poorly to such cynicism.
The claim from Gass that the line was improvised is also highly suspect, given the vision.
Maybe Gass came up with the line with Black’s reluctant consent, the understanding being that if the gag went south Gass would wear it. That it went so far south triggered the severity of Black’s reaction.
Black is seething because he knows he is forever stuck with this. Any notion that the controversy will somehow “go away” with time and that the whole thing will right itself is extremely naive.
Perhaps in the pre-digital age such a thing was conceivable. Now, not so much.
Today’s internet culture ensures that no transgression is allowed to fade, continually being refreshed and reconfigured by meme makers, online haters and those didn’t like Orange County.
The noble concept of forgiveness – of acknowledging a mistake, chalking it up to experience and moving on – also has no place in today’s merciless cultural firmament.
As has been demonstrated over and over, any perceived misdeed must be answered with the destruction of career and reputation, regardless of whether accusations of wrongdoing have any merit.
The cases of actor Kevin Spacey and writer Graham Linehan (Father Ted) are just two recent examples of this.
Thus it is that Jack Black now finds himself on the verge a well-established pattern of punishment, no matter the degree of his fault or the depth of his contrition.
No doubt keeping him up at night is the knowledge that the incident will now dog Black on every red carpet and every promotional interview on every movie press tour he does from here on.
Presuming, of course, that press tours and red carpets are still in his future.
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