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Bill Hader Is Responsible for Bringing Blow-Job Guy, Pete Davidson, to 'SNL'

By Dustin Rowles | Saturday Night Live | September 29, 2014 |

By Dustin Rowles | Saturday Night Live | September 29, 2014 |


The response to this weekend’s premiere of Saturday Night Live was mostly positive, and though I went to sleep Saturday night giddy and slightly high over what I thought was an unusually good premiere, I couldn’t help but to wonder what we think-piece writers would pick apart and decry as offensive come Monday. I don’t always immediately pick up on what others deem so egregiously offensive, but usually after three or four think pieces, I get the hint.

That think piece this week came from Flavorwire in a piece titled, “Pete Davidson’s Blowjob Monologue: A Funny, Frustrating Introduction From ‘SNL’s’ Only New Cast Member. The author, Moze Halperin, makes a lot of great points, as the folks over on Flavorwire often do, but it also feels like its reaching, as even Halperin admits his take was influenced by a piece he read before he watched the Davidson clip about a man who was attacked and shot for dressing as a woman.

You see, if I hadn’t read the first article - the hate-crime article - and if I weren’t in Internet-scanning hawk mode, perhaps I’d have chuckled. The little man’s got good, swaying comic timing, even if what he’s saying is unfunny, or — dare I be a killjoy? — a little offensive. But the juxtaposition struck me. This joke won’t make me more homophobic; I know where I stand re: dick and re: liking it. But from one charismatic, “not gay, even though being gay is OK” 20-year-old down to some other hetero 17-year-old SNL watcher, how will the joke land? How will it not turn so many peoples’ expressions of sexuality - whether it’s a blowjob as an expression of something as substantial as love or a blowjob as something as insubstantial as a desperate attempt to put a fast, wet end to a bad Tinder date - into an othering joke?

OK, well, I didn’t get any of that at all. I just thought, “Hey! That’s a very funny two-minute dick joke!” and as dick jokes go, I was impressed. But sometimes, I don’t think things through as much as I maybe should.

Halperin continued:

I like giving blowjobs - and not feeling like there’s humor that’s somehow equating my sacred blowjobs to inane delinquency, and not feeling like those comparisons somehow contribute to a perpetuation of latent American homophobia - more.

Damnit! Now I feel guilty, and worse, my Wednesday night bar plans to muse with my pals over how much money it would take to blow a guy have been scuttled. Alas, even Salon has piled on, transforming a “funny” bit on Saturday into a “controversial” bit today.

Bill Hader, however, liked the Davidson, a 20-year-old Staten Island guy who lost his father in the World Trade Center attacks. In fact, Hader is the one who suggested him to Lorne Michaels in the first place, as he tells EW.

“Pete Davidson—he’s in the movie Trainwreck,” Hader said, referring to the upcoming Judd Apatow-directed, Amy Schumer-starring comedy. “He has a small part in it. I told Lorne Michaels about him, said he was really funny. And then they auditioned him for a piece, and Lorne called me to say Pete got the show. I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s wonderful! … And then he said, ‘Uh, also, do you want to host?’ It was a total afterthought!” Hader says with a laugh. “The phone call was about Pete, that’s what we were talking about. And then he goes, ‘By the way, do you want to host October 11th?’ I was like wha-wha-wha? I was just in my car!”

And so, Hader will get hang out with Davidson again in less than two weeks, and I hope that he calls him “Blow Job guy” around the office, because that’s the kind of name I would’ve found funny five minutes ago, before the Internet made me feel like crap about laughing at a blow job bit.

Source: EW