Wavy Hair and Coleman Ranahan

We’ve all been offended by jokes at some point. It made us grab our mouth, awkwardly look away, or just shake our heads because our friends were being idiots. But we were able to move past those and continue on with our day.

Just yesterday while drowning myself in boredom due to a recent car accident (go ahead, have at it) I was perusing Facebook/Twitter and noticed David Chen from /Film had posted an article to the Hollywood Reporter about Brett Ratner apologizing for an epilepsy joke that was in his latest film Tower Heist. Now normally, with Brett Ratner (who I am not a huge fan of), I sigh, I look awkwardly away, and shake my head, but this time it was different. Rage took over.

“Again?” I thought. After the same thing happened with the movie The Dilemma which I did not see. But I only didn’t see that because it didn’t look all that good.

It was all thanks in part to Greg Grunberg (who normally I like in his roles) and his Twitter account. He issued this statement. “TERRIBLY OFFENSIVE TRAILER for #TowerHeist - Making fun @ people w/ seizures is NOT FUNNY & WRONG! “Seizure Boy!” REALLY? #Boycott RT”

Ratner and his team caved to a Twitter barrage and issued an apology and removed the joke from the trailer. The proper response should have been, “I’m sorry Greg that the joke offended you, I understand why it would offend you, but we’re not editing the trailer because of that.”

Grunberg issued this via his Twitter page after the apology. “THANKS @BrettRatner for ur SINCERE APOLOGY to the Epilepsy Community! I’m lifting my personal boycott of ur hilarious film #TowerHeist RT”
So apparently if you want to have offensive jokes in your movie you must take them out of your trailers, and suddenly the film becomes hilarious and watchable. Beyond ridiculous is the only way I can describe that situation. No word yet on whether or not the joke will remain in the movie.


I am understanding in the fact that epilepsy can be a nightmare for parents, and understandably for Mr. Grunberg he would be extra sensitive, but at the end of the day comedy is subjective. It’s incredibly easy to misdirect your anger from Twitter account, especially with your phone almost always by your side. You can fire off multiple hits at once, and start a firestorm that can grow out of control.


I might have gotten a little sidetracked with that specific situation but the one fact remains true, if filmmakers keep giving in to the public’s demand because they were offended by a little joke or a scene from a movie, movie trailers and movies will become the most boring mundane thing on the planet. This is a dangerous trend. I like my movies and I like my movie trailers (except the marketing team that puts the whole damn movie in there). I probably won’t go see Tower Heist anyway because it looks boring but I don’t want to live in an Equilibrium like world because people are offended by jokes.

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Coleman offends his Twitter followers on a daily basis by still posting tweets.