Billy Crystal probably knew he’d ruffle a few feathers with his comments on TV sex from the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour, especially once people started to focus in on it just relating to gay sex on TV. This forced those in attendance to question his meaning and ask for some clarification, which Crystal provided in this statement to The Hollywood Reporter:
“What I meant was that whenever sex or graphic nudity of any kind (gay or straight) is gratuitous to the plot or story it becomes a little too much for my taste,”
It’s the sort of thing I’d expect to see on a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode, except with Crystal in for Larry David. He makes the statement, realizes how it might sound, and then hovers around to find his chance to clear it up and throw all TV sex under the bus.
That must mean that Crystal hasn’t seen this fine scene from Girls or this classic from True Detective, right? I would argue they are central to the plot, dammit. That’s disappointing in general.
To clarify further, THR reprinted the transcript of Crystal’s statement. There’s a lot more Josh Gad for you Gadflies out there, but here is the relevant bit for the rest of you:
So, yeah, it was awkward, and then over the years, you’d see other different characters and so on and so forth. And I’ve seen some stuff recently on TV in different kinds of shows where the language or the explicit sex is really you know, sometimes I get it, and sometimes I just feel like, “Ah, that’s too much for me.”
You know, these kinds of questions lead me into sounding like some former baseball player bemoaning the fact of “I only get paid $25,000 my entire career.” But sometimes it’s just pushed a little too far for my tastes, and I’m not going to get into which ones they are. I love that if we were, it was I have to say we, because Susan Harris wrote him, and Paul Witt and Tony Thomas and Jay Sandrich and an amazing cast of that show supported me and let me play those scenes, helped me play those scenes with some sort of courage, in front of a live audience.
So that’s all done, right? Let’s get back to focusing on the things that really matter with Billy Crystal: his next appearance at Yankees’ spring training. He might make the team this year (couldn’t hurt the bums).
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)
