Ron Howard Vows To Keep Unfunny, Gay-Baiting Joke In The Dilemma

Oh, Opie, say it ain't so. His ginger back against the wall, director Ron Howard has sworn to keep the controversial "electric cars are gay" line in his movie, The Dilemma, even though pressure from outside groups led to its removal from the trailer. So why is the brother of beloved character actor Clint Howard digging his heels in on such a crap joke?

Fonzie's second banana wrote a long, preachy manifesto (seriously, someone teach him the meaning of tl;dr) to the Los Angeles Times, that said (among many, many other things):

Will comedy be neutered if everyone gets to complain about every potentially offensive joke in every comedy that's made? Anybody can complain about anything in our country. It's what I love about this place. I defend the right for some people to express offense at a joke as strongly as I do the right for that joke to be in a film. But if storytellers, comedians, actors and artists are strong armed into making creative changes, it will endanger comedy as both entertainment and a provoker of thought.

So, in a nutshell: if you're complaining about gays being made a butt of dumb joke, you hate freedom, and independence and creativity.

Honestly, what bothers me most about the whole thing is that the joke is not funny. Seriously, Academy Award-winning (for some reason) Ron Howard, you are going to bat for a stupid, lazy, unfunny joke.

But then again, if we insisted on stripping out every single unfunny joke from a Vince Vaughn movie, all we'd be left with is the opening credits, the closing credits and maybe an establishing shot of a bar.

· Ron Howard on 'The Dilemma's' gay joke: It stays in the movie [LAT]