by Doug Ellin environmentHe made a really silly mistake Thursday in response to a satirical reimagining of the highly troubled show that made scumbag characters like Ari Gold and Vincent Chase become household names after it premiered in 2004.
Open environmentplayful male characters often spent entire episodes trying to make love; this is a phenomenon the author Max Davidson points to in his humorous essay for McSweeney’s Apparently, Ellin mistakenly thought it was a genuine proposal from an HBO executive to remake the show to reflect contemporary sensibilities.
“Our first sensitivity reading will be a generation-defining classic from a bygone era. environment,” Davidson’s article reads. “We don’t want modern viewers to have to confront this potentially offensive content or wonder how this series, which is an ironic love letter to scumbags, was deemed worthy of airing on HBO.”
“Here’s what environment it will look like post-precision reading… Vince’s in lockers and locker rooms etc. Gone are the scenes where he randomly connects. As such, most episodes will have a run time of eleven minutes.
“Instead of having Vince playing the role of Pablo Escobar, he will decide that it would not be appropriate for him to play the role because he is not of Colombian descent, thus allowing a Latinx actor to portray the drug lord properly.”
And such.
So funny! But Ellin, it’s safe to say you didn’t get the joke 1000%.
“You’re largely a product of your time, you revisionist bastard,” he wrote on Twitter. quote-tweeting McSweeney piece. “No-talented people like you talk on Twitter and then your zombie friends reprint their trash in shitty papers that nobody reads anymore. Tell President Obama and the others how offensive we are. Those who try to rewrite history are offensive. And dangerous. And Spielberg is already telling ET.” “He regrets touching her. Anyway, fuck off. Oh we got a Peabody and a headband, you loser.”
Doug, I wrote this piece. This satire,” Davidson tweeted back. “Tenderness takes readings to the extremes of fiction programs from 15 years ago. The ET joke was pretty deliberate. I’ve always wondered what it was like for Ari Gold to say obscene words to me. I know now.
After Davidson and several others pointed out to him on Twitter that the piece was satirical, Ellin backed off—still insisting that he was right.
“I reviewed it. But meanwhile, I’ve read similar things that are true,” he said. tweeted On Friday morning, in response to someone who said the author was “cynical”, “I know that now!”