Why I Walked Out of ‘Year One’ Crying

by Victoria Jackson

I had a date with Judd Apatow.  It was around 1991 and I was between husbands: the out-of-work-Jewish-Gypsy-fire-eater-musician, and the high-school-sweetheart-Baptist-helicopter-police-pilot.  I needed a date to a premiere.  I knew the rules of engagement for a Hollywood career, and I tried to follow them.  It’s difficult to do this when you carry the burden of ethics around with you, but I tried to do it and stay within the bounds of morality.

1) Go to the right places.  I went to the Playboy Mansion to find an agent, and I did.  I was 21 and a Baptist virgin, and I found Betty from the William Morris commercial department there.  Check.

2) Wear something provocative to a Hollywood premiere so you can get free publicity.  I did that.  When I was an SNL castmember trying to increase my movie roles, I attended some Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan premiere (go figure – it was a flop!) in a see-through black shirt with a flowered bra underneath.  I felt ashamed, but I did get my picture in a few magazines.  All press is good press, and press leads to opportunity.

3) Date famous men or up-and-coming smart Jewish comedy writers.  I went on a date with Arthur Godfrey right before he died, and ten years later, when I was 30, I asked Judd Apatow to escort me to some Century City event.  I was pretty much invisible to him the whole night, but we did get our picture in People Magazine. 

That is about it in my list of cliché things I have done to help my career move along.

Well, today I walked out of a Judd Apatow movie crying.  It was the scene where the obese homosexual is fortune-telling by looking at the bowels of a sheep that has been sodomized by a person.  The movie was “Year One.”  I tried to be open-minded as I watched the first 20 minutes of masturbation, fornication, circumcision jokes, continual penis references, bestiality, violence, and Biblical blasphemy.  I told myself this was a PG-13 movie and the writers were “lost” so they didn’t know how vulgar they were being. I looked at the ten-year-old and his father sitting next to me.  I must be old-fashioned or something.  But, then I noticed no one was laughing.  No one was walking out either.  I was hoping that the crude jokes were flying over the heads of the poor children who were sitting there wide-eyed and innocent.  My daughter is 15 and she loves Jack Black and the guy from “Juno,” so I thought we could have a Mom/teenager date.  I asked myself, “Vicki, is this movie making you feel good?”  Myself replied, “This movie is making me angry, very sad, hopeless, and dirty-feeling.”  As the onscreen obese gay man poked at the bloody intestines and told the fifth anal sex joke, I looked at my daughter, and we got up and walked out.  I started crying in the parking lot as we walked to our car.  I am not from this world.  I am an alien.  No wonder me and Apatow never hit it off.