Surely many of you have seen it on social networks or received it on your phones through a chat. This is a boy who claims to have bought a flight to the Philippines on these dates , where he says he can surf in the morning and party at night without any problem. He looks exultant and even thanks the coronavirus for how well the play has gone. Twice. At the end of the video he appears again, but in different circumstances : he has been forced to request the Spanish embassy to solve his return home as soon as possible, since the pandemic has also started to plague that country. The screen goes black, the closing tune for the Larry David Curb Your Enthusiasm series sounds and a legend that has become unmistakable appears on the screen: "Directed by Robert B. Weide".
For several months now, a large number of the memes consisting of a video clip inform us that they have been directed by Robert B. Weide. As if it were the credits of the meme itself . And they all have a series of elements in common: the scene we see is authentic, the situation borders on the absurd or even exceeds it, the behavior of the protagonist or protagonists causes a certain embarrassment and, consequently, the video clip could seem like a cartoon exaggerated from reality. But is not. It is always a real scene.
A good example is something that happened recently during a Donald Trump appearance about the Covid-19 crisis in which he decided it was the right time to joke around. His chascarrillo consisted of a risky pun: it united the concepts "deep state", which refers to the factual powers that supposedly control the United States in the shadows, and "state department", that is, the state department of that country . Something that must have made Dr. Anthony Fauci , one of those in charge of managing the fight against the coronavirus from the White House, feel ashamed , since he could not avoid looking down and putting his hand to his face. Within hours, the video with Robert B. Weide's credit titles had already spread over the internet.
In fact, one of those who shared it on his Twitter account was Robert B. Weide himself, with the text: "Another meme that I have not made, but I am Robert B. Weide and I approve of this message . " There may now be an abundance of Weide's falsely directed memes about the coronavirus, it's only natural, but since the end of 2019 we have witnessed an increase in videos on any topic that include his name at the end. It is a resource that has been used in the elaboration of memes since 2015, when Jason Richards shared on Twitter the end of a chapter of Saturday Night Live in which Donald Trump and Larry David participated, adding the closure of Curb Your Enthusiasm with the legend "Directed by Robert B. Weide". Richards wondered what would happen if the Larry David show continued to air today. Because that was so absurd that, in effect, it seemed like another chapter in the series.
But who is Robert B. Weide and why is he directing all those memes? Weide is a three-time Emmy Award-winning American screenwriter, producer, director, and documentary filmmaker nominated for an Oscar in 1996 for the documentary Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth .
He started his career at age 19, making a documentary about the Marx brothers on his own after being rejected several times by the University of California Film School. Four years later, in 1982, he managed to have his documentary aired on American pubic television, garnering enormous critical and public success.
Since then he has written and produced some interesting feature films, such as the film adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's novel Mother Night - about which he has directed a documentary, still pending release. He has also directed several documentaries, including the Oscar-nominated Lenny Bruce and the highly acclaimed documentary about Woody Allen that premiered in 2011. But above all, he is known for being the main director of Curb Your Enthusiasm , the Larry David series. .
And that is the reason why his name inevitably appears in all the memes that include the series' credits, following the formula that Jason Richards started in 2015. Basically, it is logical that this tune was chosen. Close in particular to highlight the exact moment in which an embarrassingly funny situation occurs. Because the spirit of that show is the same as that of all those videos that circulate on the internet: to build a satire of reality that at times is a caricature of itself . And that sometimes even seems straight out of an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm .
All this produces a certainly curious paradox. Despite his long and successful career, despite recognition and awards, Robert B. Weide is known today, above all, for being the world's most famous meme director . He himself was surprised on his Twitter account not long ago that if you Google the words "Directed by" and let the AutoComplete function act, the first result that appeared was Bobert B. Weide. Ahead of Quentin Tarantino or Clint Eastwood. There is a meme about Weide himself in which this idea is perfectly condensed: it consists of a false tweet of his that says: "2020 is being directed by me".
That's funny. One has been in the direction, production and script of movies, series and documentaries for more than forty years, his professional career is impeccable and very remarkable, he has managed to make a name for himself in the film industry, and yet he is known for credit titles of fashion memes. Surprisingly, Robert B. Weide's life has ended up being one of those memes directed by Robert B. Weide : a satire of reality that is at times a caricature of itself. When you retire, if you have any kind of party, someone should sound the Curb Your Enthusiasm tune at the end. Surely Larry David -and Weide himself- would think it most appropriate
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