‘A Hypocrisy’…
Warning: The above video contains strong language. Viewer discretion is advised.
“I think that there’s a hypocrisy to standup comedy,” Aries Spears mentions during his interview. “Because on one end, any comedian that’s being honest with you…any comedian that’s true to the game is going to tell you, ‘Always be you’.”
“When it comes to comedy, the worst thing you could do is not be honest…with yourself and with the audience…But in ‘always being you’, some of the comedy community will shun you. So, what is that? If the rule is to ‘always be you’, and we’re all brothers and sisters in arms (in the name of comedy), but then I say something or touch a subject that everyone’s afraid of right now or doesn’t want to go near or doesn’t flow with the ‘current’…all of a sudden, we’re not brothers in arms no more.”
He says there are just parts of the industry that aren’t true to what they’re supposed to be. “There’s no reason why Paul Mooney should not be as known, or as celebrated in his career, as a ‘Jerry Seinfield’,” Aries continues. “But Paul had a way of talking about things that rubbed the ‘Miracle Whip’ people wrong.”
When asked if he thought Mooney had been blackballed, he answers “of course!” That’s when he says the same about himself.
“I think I’m blackballed, to a degree. I don’t think the door is completely shut on me. But I think, when I knock, Hollywood crack it just enough to where I can see the eye through the light [in the door] like, ‘What’s up, n***a??’. In case they have to close it, it ain’t nothing but a tap. Yeah man, the ‘Miracle Whip’ people run this game. And Paul is almost like uncut, pure Bolivian cocaine.”
When the interviewer mentions and commends Spears sticking to his core principles, Aries says he’s about ready to toss some of those principles to the side. Jokingly [at least, we think], he states: “Hey, Devil. What’s the going rate on a soul??”
He elaborates that you want to believe in “righteousness” and hold that as your mantra. “You wanna believe that, somehow, ‘doing the right thing’ is gonna pay off.” But he notes that he’s slowly seeing that “it don’t matter.”
The full part of that segment is in the video above. Let us know your thoughts about his take on the industry. Do you agree or disagree?
