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Looking for some quality comedy entertainment to check out?
Who better to turn to for under-the-radar comedy recommendations than comedians?
He reveres the film so much that he refers to it as the MuslimBlazing Saddles.
What do you like aboutFour Lions?It feels like a movie that shouldnt work, but it does.
It skewers Islamophobes and extremists and religion and religiousness, and its a really fucking funny movie.
This was Riz Ahmed before he was a householdStar Warsname.
Hes fantastic, as is Kayvan Novak and Nigel Lindsay and Benedict Cumberbatch in his tiny role!
Why do you think it was overlooked?I dont know why its not regularly mentioned.
To me its always been considered an underrated favorite.
And it was a challenge to get it made, apparently.
They crowdfunded part of it; they really scratched it all together.
But its got this tiny intense fan club of folks.
I would kill you, and describing the graphic ways theyd do it.
And also Waj keeps insisting that the chickens are fucked-up rabbits.
And Omar says, Theyre chickens.
If theyre rabbits, where are their ears?
And Waj responds with, Thats what Im saying.
Its funny and different, and its heartbreaking.
If my car doesnt work, I say, Its the spark plugs theyre Jewish.
That line was one of my favorites from Barry (Lindsay).
Jews invented spark plugs to control global traffic.
He calls himself Azzam Al-Britani.He keeps pitching that they blow up the mosque as a false flag.
Hes a truly brilliant character.
Morris uses him for a million small jokes.
But Im here, and I dont know what to do.
Your heart breaks for that character in that moment.
And hes literally got a suicide belt on.
The two go hand in hand, and sometimes theyre blended so gorgeously.
Omar convinces him his brain and heart are actually swapped, and Waj believes him.
Doing that is wonderful and intriguing and raises a lot of really compelling questions.
Theres a scene between Omar and his brother.
His brother wont speak to a woman if theyre alone together.
Omar is seemingly more moderate, but hes the jihadi?
It messes with your expectations a little bit.
That topic the tension between the modern world and the religious one is identifiable to me.
My show is about that.
My life is very much focused on traditional Judaism in the modern world.
I live that tension every day of my life.
You grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family.
I was more religious and then less religious, and now Im a little more again.
To me, observance and religiousness arent the same thing.
I have found myself in times when Ive been less observant but the same amount of religious.
I keep a level of kosher, but that has nothing to do with my relationship to religiousness.
I find myself saying this every day now: The specific is universal.
In my comedy, Im very wary of totems.
I never talk about things that are traditional totems of Judaism.
I love bagels but hate that theyve come to sort of represent Judaism to people.
Our thing needs to ring as something thats not superficial.
And someone wondered if it was too inside for people.
I was like, Fuck it then its too inside for them.
I think people treat their audiences sometimes like theyre stupid, so they consciously avoid certain things.
I wish more shows and movies asked for that level of engagement from their viewers.
Your show centers around a white-supremacist meeting you attended.
And my dad likes to quote this Einstein quote that I cant confirm is from Einstein.
And in all extremism, I think theres a ton of ignorance.
You cant be extremely well informed and an extremist and a good person.
But I also think that the vast majority of people are ill informed.
