Sean Penn is still dodging the ruffled feathers flying over his joke at the Oscars last month. When Sean Penn presented the Oscar for Best Picture to Alejandro Irritu for Birdman, he announced the winner with a question:
“Who gave this son of a bitch his green card?”
People were quick to decry the comment. Huffington Post ran the headline: Sean Penn’s ‘Green Card’ Comment May Have Ruined The Entire Oscars
The logic was that the whole ceremony had seemed to celebrate civil rights, with music from and recognition for Selma, particularly. For Sean Penn, who is otherwise known for championing causes of disenfranchised and voiceless minorities, to joke about a “green card” was just beyond the pale.
That "Green Card" quip was microcosmic of everything everyone hates about privileged folk who adopt the struggles of underprivileged folk.
— Jermaine Spradley (@MrSpradley) February 23, 2015
There was even the assumption that Penn may have been trying to make a point about racism and xenophobia, which some felt was not his place to do at the time.
But Penn gotta be the hero, the savior. He gotta be the one to make the point. It's 100% white-savior-syndrome cloaked in snark.
— Jermaine Spradley (@MrSpradley) February 23, 2015
But no, it was just a joke. And Irritu didn’t mind at all.
“I found it hilarious,” Irritu said after the Oscars. “Sean and I have that kind of brutal (relationship) where only true friendship can survive.”
Alejandro Irritu directed Sean Penn in 21 Grams back in 2003. Irritu insists that they are friends and that Sean Penn takes as much and as well as he dishes out.
“I make on him a lot of very tough jokes that I will not tell you,” Irritu said.
Sean Penn insists that his “green card” remark that Irritu would have gotten right away, even before his name was announced as winner.
“There’s a little inside humor with he and I … (I knew) that he would be the first person in that room to know that his film won,” Sean Penn said.
“I’m always surprised by flagrant stupidity. I keep having more hope,” Sean Penn said about those who took offense over his remarks. “I have absolutely no apologies. In fact, I have a big ‘fuck you’ for anybody who is so stupid not to have gotten the irony when you’ve got a country that is so xenophobic … if they had their way, you wouldn’t have great filmmakers like Alejandro working in this country. Thank God we do.”