Vince Vaughn “Glad” About Decision to Keep “Gay” Joke in “The Dilemma”

Actor Vince Vaughn said he’s “glad” a controversial “gay” joke in his new comedy isn’t being scrapped.

"I'm glad to hear it's staying the movie," Vaughn said Wednesday, referring to the now notorious scene in “The Dilemma” where Vaughn’s character Ronny Valentine riffs on why “electric cars are gay.”

In the film, Valentine describes the car as lacking rock n' roll cool, in a  “my-parents-are-chaperoning-the-dance-gay” way.

Universal yanked the scene from “Dilemma” trailers last month in the wake of a rash of teen suicides and amid outcry from CNN’s Anderson Cooper and the gay-rights group GLAAD.

On “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” Cooper had cautioned against using the word “gay” as a punchline, and warned that “words do have power and they’re used like weapons.”

But “Dilemma” director Ron Howard argued last week that Valentine's offensive personality was central to his character and nixing the scene from the movie in the face of controversy would “endanger comedy as both entertainment and a provoker of thought.”

“I don't strip my films of everything that I might personally find inappropriate,” Howard told the Los Angeles Times. “Comedy or drama, I'm always trying to make choices that stir the audience in all kinds of ways."

Vaughn, who previously spoke out in support of the scene, applauded Howard’s move Wednesday on the Q100 Bert Radio Show.

Using the epithet “wasn’t a derogatory term,” he said, Usmagazine reported. “We clarified within the joke [that it was] not 'homosexual-gay' but, you know, your parents are chaperoning a dance."

He went on to ague that as a comedic actor “tensions” revealed by off-color conversations were “the point.”

“We're not trying to hurt anyone's feelings," he said, according to Us. "If there's tensions there, ultimately, it brings us together, it makes us more comfortable."

Selected Reading: Us, THR, Daily News

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