Jack Black Teases Tenacious D Return: That’s Reconciliation, Kyle!

By Mike Redmond | Celebrity | August 7, 2024 |

By Mike Redmond | Celebrity | August 7, 2024 |

In what feels like a thousand years ago, which will only buttress the point I’m about to make, Jack Black abruptly canceled the Tenacious D tour last month after Kyle Gass made a joke on stage about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Granted, Gass made the quip while Trump’s ear boo-boo was still hot, but let’s be real: There was absolutely no need for Black to freak out, cancel the tour, and seemingly break up the band by putting all “future creative plans on hold.”

In the immediate aftermath, Gass was dropped by his talent agency and then … the whole thing just went away. I’m talking the entire assassination story. To quote Don Draper, “It will shock you how much it never happened.” I’m going to talk out of school here and say that even behind the walls of Pajiba there was some brief doomerism that the image of Trump holding up his fist just won the election. Haha, no. C’mon, folks. We’re dealing with a guy where eight million batshit things happen to him every batshit second of every batshit day.

For once, his Teflon Don persona backfired because the shooting narrative just slid right off of him. He just plowed right into the next news cycle thanks to picking a couch-porking weirdo for his running mate followed closely by Joe Biden dropping out of the race. The shooting is a distant memory, and I guarantee a decent percentage of you reading this forgot all about it. It’s just another weird Trump thing on the Trump pile.

So with that in mind, it’s probably not a total surprise that Black is already walking back the freakout over Gass. While attending the Borderlands premiere on Tuesday night, he basically dialed the whole thing back to a break and reinforced his friendship with KG.

Via Variety:

“We need to take a break. Everybody needs a break sometime,” Black told Variety’s Marc Malkin at the “Borderlands” premiere on Tuesday night. “And we’ll be back.”

Asked if he’s talked to Gass since the tour’s cancellation, Black replied, “Yeah, we’re friends. That hasn’t changed. These things take time sometimes … And we’ll be back when it feels right.”

So what did we learn, JB? You gain nothing by feigning sympathy for Donald Trump. That’s right. Joe Biden has to call him because he’s the president, but you don’t have to throw Kage out of the band for making a saucy joke that pissed off a few Australians. That’s not the best song in the world. It’s not even a tribute.