"Monty Python" star Terry Gilliam credited President Donald Trump with turning comedy "upside down," and said that people are less afraid to laugh now after woke activists did their best to try and ruin it.
Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, the 84-year-old comedian and British filmmaker was asked about his past comments on fearing the end of satire and said that since Trump became president again, all that's changed.
"I think Trump has changed things considerably," Gilliam explained. "He's turned the world upside down. I don't know if people are going to be laughing more, but they're probably less frightened to laugh."
"There have been woke activists with a very narrow, self-righteous point of view," he added. "That's frightened so many people, and so many people have been very timid about telling jokes, making fun of things because if you tell a joke, these people say you're punching down at somebody. No, you're finding humor in humanity!"
"So, irony, satire were basically dead," the comedian continued. "And humor, to me, is probably one of the most essential things in life. You've got six senses, and the seventh sense is humor, and if you don't have that, life is going to be miserable."
In fact, Gilliam admitted that because of this, Trump has actually "[...] up the latest film, ('The Carnival at the End of Days') I was working on."
"Because it was a satire about the last several years when things were going as they were," the star said. "He's turned it upside down. So he's killed my movie."
The movie is a satire about "Satan trying to stop God from wiping out humanity, which lampoons woke culture."
Gilliam said the subtitle for it was, "Great fun for all of those who enjoy taking offense. "
"With Carnival, the other day, I was thinking I was going to put a little preamble on it saying that what you're about to see takes place during the period historians refer to as the Trump lost years from 2020 to 2024," he added.
Even though the filmmaker suggested Trump most likely killed his movie, he later acknowledged it might still make it on the big screen. "I've got to rewrite a lot of it. I'm still trying to decide how to approach that."
The comments were similar to ones he told Deadline when he basically pointed out that they might have to "rework some of the story because parts of it was very specific about the wonderful world of woke before The Donald took over again. That very narrow way of thinking of life. We'll see where it goes."
Despite Gilliam's comments, he was previously not a fan of the president and even labeled him a "conman" in a 2018 interview.
As my RedState colleague Brandon Morse recently pointed out, comedy does appear to be making somewhat of a comeback, and he pointed to the upcoming remake of "The Naked Gun" as proof.
READ MORE: An Upcoming Movie Hints That Comedy Might Finally Be Making a Comeback
Morse wrote:
It's because of this, that when a reboot of the classic absurdist comedy "The Naked Gun" was announced, I actually groaned. It was another piece of American culture chewed up by modern studios and spit out to a modern audience that didn't exist... but then I learned that Seth MacFarlane was the one behind it.
MacFarlane is hardly a friend to the right, and there's been more than one occasion where he's found himself on the opposite side of conservatives, middle fingers akimbo. However, he's also one of the few on the left willing to call his own side out. In fact, he's even called Hollywood out for its inane leftism on Family Guy itself. But this is what a good comedian does; makes fun of both sides.
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