Comedians to the Rescue: Bill Burr’s New Movie Helps Hollywood Find Its Spine

“Old Dads” is hated by reviewers, loved by audiences

Fear and money. That’s what makes Hollywood go. 

Fear makes executives cautious—they don’t want to lose their jobs or face the rage of social media. And money makes them take risks. At least that’s how many people on the inside describe the dynamic to me.  

Recently, I’ve been interviewing industry professionals about the state of free expression in entertainment and media— it’s part of a larger project that I will reveal in due time.

From my vantage point as a filmmaker and consultant, the fear-money dichotomy looks a tad simplistic. But it definitely has a lot going for it. In fact, that dialectic seems to be nudging a timid culture in a different direction. 

It might have started with Dave Chappelle. 

His 2021 comedy special The Closer ignited some predictable outrage. Social media screamed, “Transphobia!” Netflix employees protested. Hollywood braced.

But the end of the world never came.

Then The New York Times stood its ground when confronted by GLAAD, and execs at HBO (now Max) ever-so-cautiously announced a partnership with the formerly untouchable J.K. Rowling. 

If cancel culture finally expires some day, its obituary should recognize these profiles in courage (or profit seeking—under normal conditions, it wouldn’t take courage to partner with the world’s most successful author). 

And now Netflix, the source of some of the most correct cultural offerings—from Moxie to Colin in Black and White—is engaged in another round of agitation. 

The streaming giant partnered with comedy titan Bill Burr to release the new Netflix original Old Dads. And here Netflix ratchets up the financial and reputational commitment because Old Dads isn’t merely another comedy special.

It’s a feature film and Burr’s directorial debut. 

In the film, three middle aged best friends juggle their new lives as dads and confront a new world filled with authoritarian preschool principals and hipster CEOs. Burr (who also co-wrote the script) takes aim at targets ranging from overprotective parents to white guilt and corporate posturing.

Here’s a taste: After the three dads sell the throwback jersey company they created, the new millennial CEO rebrands it as a “gender-neutral, carbon-neutral 21st Century lifestyle brand.”

So do critics like Old Dad’s? Of course not! But that’s kind of the point. 

The Rotten Tomato crowd is more likely to cut productions more slack if artists stick to the monoculture script. But, compared to reviewers and other activists, there’s an often-overlooked group that welcomes riskier fare—audiences. 

Rotten Tomato viewers gave Old Dads high marks and the film shot to the top of Netflix’s Top 10 movie list.

I agree with much of what my industry colleagues have to say about the role fear and money play in Hollywood. But I also think there’s more going on. 

My working hypothesis is that decision makers are letting fear overshadow greed. The C-suiters have been letting their inner Gordon Gekkos atrophy for too long. Why cower behind your desk when there’s money to be made by breaking free from the strictures of social media and activist groups? 

Colin Kaepernick may be all in on microaggression training, but that’s not true of black people in general. Despite what you may hear on NPR, Americans of all hues oppose racial preferences, cancel culture, and bastardized versions of equality like the still-fashionable equity. 

J.K Rowling might be controversial on social media, but she’s generally well-liked in the real world. And when it comes to trans issues, pressure groups don’t represent the typical American. They might not even represent the typical trans person. 

Source: Hidden Tribes by More in Common

I think the “bubble people” stereotype of studio execs is pretty accurate. As far as I can tell, they don’t expose themselves to a diverse array of people and ideas. But execs don’t have to endure the hassle (and traffic) of venturing outside of Santa Monica to talk to a representative sample of Americans. They can simply glance at some survey data. 

And recent developments might make the next problematic offerings easier to release. The Supreme Court shot down racial preferences, and that decision has reverberated through corporate America. 

Then came the implosion of the high priest of DEI, Ibram X. Kendi. And most recently, everyone from regular Americans to big-bucks donors have looked on in horror at universities’ response to the slaughter of innocents in Israel. 

Americans of all political persuasions have been losing confidence in higher ed, and recent developments might further hobble academia’s ability to remain a powerful incubator of bad ideas that often end up on screens. 

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1. Social media isn’t real life.

2. Activist groups don’t necessarily represent the groups they purport to represent. 

If execs read those two rules each morning, we’d all be better off.

Creators would get more artistic freedom, film and television fans would get better art, and execs would get even fatter paychecks.

I’m still not optimistic about how the battle between fear and money will end, but at least there’s hope that the profit motive will drag Hollywood toward a more freewheeling tomorrow. 

Ted Balaker is a filmmaker, and former network newser and think tanker. His recent work includes Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Can We Take a Joke? featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and a soon-to-be-released feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.