Whoops! Did Uma Thurman have any idea what she was in for when she agreed to sit on the dais next to Quentin Tarantino at his Friars Club Roast?
The Oscar nominated beauty wound up getting just about as roasted as her favorite director yesterday at the annual extremely bawdy and coarse luncheon fest.
The audience: 2200 guests at the New York Hilton who paid to contribute to the Friars’ myriad charities. Among them: Howard Stern and his wife Beth, Tarantino producer Lawrence Bender, actress LaTanya Richardson (aka Mrs. Samuel L. Jackson) and dozens of New York notables.
On the dais with Quentin and Uma: emcee Samuel L. Jackson, plus special guest Jerry Lewis, Harvey Weinstein, comic Jeffrey Ross, Brett Ratner, Michael Madsen, Patricia Arquette, Danny Aiello, Robert Wuhl, Richard Belzer, Steve Buscemi, Rob Schneider, Sarah Silverman, Harvey Keitel, Whitney Cummings, Rosario Dawson, Kathy Griffin, Dick Cavett, Joe Pantoliano, Mark Simone, and Eli Roth.
Plus there were the Friars comic legends, like Freddie Roman, Stewie Stone, and the “closer,” the amazing Pat Cooper. Cooper came on at the end of nearly three hours and exclaimed, loudly, to Tarantino: “I don’t know you, I’ve never seen your movies, and who the f— cares?” He’s 82, nearly deaf, and absolutely hilarious.
One of the best lines– Stewie Stone, commenting on Cher‘s faux retirements: “When the world comes to an end, all we’ll have is cockroaches and Cher.”
Remember, Eli Roth, who told us the night before that his speech would be a “career-ender”? Almost! Roth was brutal as the kickoff speaker, but everyone who followed went right into the gutter with him. It’s a beautiful thing, the Friars Roast: dirty, politically incorrect, racist, misogynist, ugly, unprintable.
Tarantino star John Travolta, absent, was the butt of many extremely unprintable gay jokes.
Thurman endured her ribbing with incredible grace. At the end of her own speech, which was very funny, she took off her designer shoes, poured wine into them, and she and Tarantino drank from them. But she had to listen to many zetzes about her marriage to Ethan Hawke, her current billionaire boyfriend Arky Busson, and an unfavorable dissection of the movies she’s starred in.
Tarantino had to sit through long tirades about his less successful films like “Grindhouse’ and “Four Rooms.”
May I say: Jerry Lewis, 85 years young, still gives as good as he gets, was completely abashed by his two standing ovations, rose up from his seat after almost three hours and managed speak eloquently and was still hilarious.
