John Mulaney and Nick Kroll destroyed Trump in greatest awards show speech ever
The Oscars will steal pretty much all the awards show thunder this weekend. Whatever. Can Academy Awards host Jimmy Kimmel deliver an opening monologue as strange and wonderful as the bit performed by co-host comedians John Mulaney and Nick Kroll at the Saturday's Film Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday?
That remains to be seen — but the internet agrees, Mulaney and Kroll were very good.
After a cordial "oh hellooooo" to the audience, the duo touched on the "sad!" nature of the year's indie film hits, and the bizarre musings of indie film greats. They lamented what they deemed the unfair sexiness of Steve Bannon, who "looks like if Nick Offerman drowned," according to Kroll. They flipped the male gaze on Annette Benning's husband — the "very beautiful" Warren Beatty — asking him about his outfit and verbally patting him on the head for having an acting career, too.
Then they took on President Donald Trump. Transitioning from a joke about how using the Spirit Awards as a platform for political statements was about as effective, in terms of reach, as whispering one's thoughts aloud in the bathroom, Kroll said:
Speaking of bathrooms, President Trump rescinded rights for transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice this week. Yeah. Because transgender students in public schools have had it too good for too long.
"Hey, Trump," Mulaney followed with a camp schoolyard taunt. "You and Robert Durst are both rich sociopaths from New York real estate empires, yet somehow Robert Durst is more likable." Durst is the subject of HBO's The Jinx documentary — a man who stands accused of having murdered his friend, Susan Berman. Many allege that Durst also killed his wife, Kathie McCormack, as well as his former neighbor Morris Black.
Lest anyone accuse the comedic duo of undue bias, Kroll clarified that such an accusation would be pretty fair:
"Conservatives, we are not in a bubble, okay," he said. "We are in a tent filled with fringe artists on a California beach. If this room leaned any further to the left, we would literally topple into the Pacific Ocean."
Watch the full speech here (it's funnier when they do it):