Angus T. Jones has a curious way of demonstrating his deep Christian faith. Jones is shown in a new video denouncing the show “Two and a Half Men” as “filth” and a danger to Christian children and values. The problem is that Jones plays Jake Harper on the show and receives a reported $350,000 an episode. You may recall that Charlie Sheen was kicked off the show for making disparaging comments about the show and “dangerously self-destructive conduct.” While Sheen was not fired under a “morality clause,” such provisions are common in television contracts. Could denouncing the show as immoral violate the Morality Clause?
Jones’ comments came in a video for the Forerunner Christian Church. The 19-year-old actor told the faithful “I’m on ‘Two and a Half Men’ and I don’t want to be on it. If you watch ‘Two and a Half Men,’ please stop watching it and filling your head with filth. People say it’s just entertainment. Do some research on the effects of television and your brain, and I promise you you’ll have a decision to make when it comes to television, especially with what you watch.”
He then appears to struggle with the fact that he is producing the very “filth” that he is condemning: “If I am doing any harm, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be contributing to the enemy’s plan … You cannot be a true God-fearing person and be on a television show like that. I know I can’t. I’m not OK with what I’m learning, what the Bible says and being on that television show.”
His learning curve appears to include continuing to rack up almost $400,000 an episode for this “filth.”
Jones reportedly also warned against the onslaught on faith as an attendee of the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Los Angeles:
“I have always gone to a Christian school since I was in kindergarten, but my faith was basically non-existent… School started to take a back seat more and more through high school. Two or three years ago my parents started have marital issues and started to go through the process of getting a divorce. At the time I also started dating this girl and when I look back now I see that as a time when the enemy was trying to push me in that direction, but God knew he was going to pull me out at the last second.” He did proclaim however that he was able to remain a virgin because “right then this cleansing phenomenon and presence came into me… I felt like I had just accepted God.” That again led him to denounce his own show: “My television show has nothing to do with God and doesn’t want anything to do with God, so it is a strange position I am put in.” It is probably doubtful that Chuck Lorre would go for “Two and a Half Men and God” in the coming season.
Jones insists that he is required to continue to make unGodly filth: “I am under contract for another year so it is not too much of a decision on my part. I know God has me there for a reason for another year.” The reason appears to be a filth peddler.
It will be interesting to see how Lorre approaches these comments after the Sheen controversy. I have never seen the show and do not watch prime time television. I am perfectly willing to believe that it is a sleaze fest. Jones was attending religious schools (according to some interviews) when he signed the contract. It is not clear if he thought the show was a PBS production, but it clearly did not bother him at that time.
However, assuming that Jones found God after signing the contract, I would be interested if his lawyers have made an overture to the producers to seek an early departure from the contract. It would seem unimaginable for Jones to continue to accept the money for producing filth that destroys the souls of unwitting children. It would be reminiscent of the famous Churchillian story about “price.” According to legend, Winston Churchill once asked a socialite if she would sleep with him for 1 million pounds. When she admitted that she would, he offered one pound. “Winston! What sort of woman do you think I am?,” the woman objected. He responded, “We have already established what you are, now we are just haggling over price.”
The most interesting question is whether Lorre could fire Jones under a morality clause and other provision. The comments of Jones not only actively discourage viewers but could discourage advertisers in supporting what one of the actors calls unadulterated filth.
If he has the same contract as Sheen, the studio asserted a general basis for termination based on failure to perform his required duties and a provision that allows termination for an act “which constitutes a felony offense involving moral turpitude under federal, state, or local laws, or in indicted or convicted of any such offense.” That would not fit an act denouncing moral turpitude, presumably. Moreover, actors should be allowed to have and espouse faith. What makes this more interesting is that the espousal of faith was the act of denouncing the show as evil.
The specific grounds might not matter. Presumably, Jones would not contest a termination since he has said that he is miserable in his current role. If so, who would challenge? Of course, if they fired him for moral turpitude, it could lead to an interesting lawsuit where an actor who denounced the show as immoral would fight to continue to make the immoral show rather than be declared immoral.
This is why I watch football. It is easier to follow.
Source: Fox
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3jHasc6a3Y&feature=related
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3jHasc6a3Y&w=420&h=315%5D
@ Tony….
EXACTLY…. I felt that they were careful to NOT present all women as sluts…. and what you said is true… if anybody on the show was portrayed as a slut, it was Charlie Harper….
I thought that most of the women that Charlie dated, came off as quite intelligent….. and many of them as leaders… NOT whimpering dumb girls…. and most certainly not sluts….
and yes… his mother was portrayed as being quite sexually liberal…..
there were a few women that acted as the “Dumb Blonde”…
BUT, NOT all or even most of them…..
@justagurl: I think if anybody was a (fictional) slut, it was Charlie Harper! After all, the fiction was (in one of the episodes after a breakup) that Charlie could sleep with four or five different women every day for weeks on end; he was the pickup artist extraordinaire, literally the guy that could walk into a bar and walk out with two women in under a minute.
I haven’t seen every episode with Charlie Harper; but to my recollection the women were seldom portrayed as having many partners; and certainly not as many as Charlie. In fact the only one I recall being portrayed as promiscuous was Alan and Charlie’s mother; the female version of Charlie.
gurl – all the women in the show are sluts and/or manipulative while the men are users or losers who get led around by these women.
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Of the women that Charlie dated…..
one was a Dance instructor….
One was a Judge….
One was a Lawyer….
one was a teacher….
one was a Real-estate broker….
not to mention others who were NOT uneducated
as for the SLUTS remark….
why is it that in 2012 women who have sexual relations with a man are still looked at as sluts????
and if they were sluts, as YOU say….
What is wrong with women liking sex???
If a woman like sex and has sex with different men…. yet she does NOT hurt anyone or lie or cheat on anybody…. why is she looked at in such a derogatory manner?????
lastly…. as Tony said… I taught my daughter the difference between real and fiction….
That these were characters on a show…. they did NOT represent REAL life……
I never watched its show because the plot-line didn’t interest me. It’s a TV show though, obviously popular and certainly not the personification of evil. I believe the show could drop the kid for “conduct detrimental……..etc., which must be in the contract. The kid, however, is full of it when he says he can’t quit due to his contract. He can quit and the only effect would be that he couldn’t take other acting jobs until the end of his contract. I don’t believe that contractually you can force an artist to perform. As was put above in the “Churchillian” sense, we already know the kid has his price.
@Frankly: How I raise my kids is up to me, and I made sure my kid understood that sitcoms characters are purposely caricatures. I also made sure my kid understood that the process of writing fiction, in books and movies, lets writers play God, so the story can have the guy that shouldn’t win get lucky and win anyway. The scripts almost always write in a critical slip up for the bad guys so they can get caught, or a distraction so they miss the critical point, or the lucky break of a loose pipe or rotten board or an overlooked shard of glass or piece of wire that lets the good guy save himself just in the nick of time. Sitcoms are particularly guilty, the writers have 22 pages (double spaced, very wide margins; scripts are designed to present roughly one minute of screen time per page) to produce three acts; a setup, middle and conclusion. They are excellent fodder for analysis in storytelling, because writers strive to never waste a line, so nearly everything a character says or does is either laying pipe (setting up a joke for later) or a punchline. (I think that is entertaining even if you know what is going on as you watch it.)
I think a sitcom that gives a young kid a warped view of human relationships is a kid raised by an incompetent parent that has failed to teach their child a critical life lesson, the difference between reality and a fantasy that can be engineered to produce any outcome the writer may imagine. Particularly in sitcoms, where the comedy is produced by incongruity, windfalls, and other unlikely coincidences, convenient miscalculations, misunderstandings and oversights and oddball outcomes.
Chuck Lorre would be wise to forebear from pistol whipping the spoiled little dikhead and introduce bizare religious contentions between the dad and some girlfirend’s dad who is a preacher not a teacher. Put the kid in the middle and have his role to defend some anti Christ position. Have Pat Robertson come on the show and denigrate all those athiests who stole Xmas and make the kid take a Pagan position against him and accuse Pat and Pope Julius the First of moving Christ birthday (from July) into the Pagan holiday season in December. Make the spoiled little jerk squirm.
I love that video, the line in the hand fits the banana just right, isnt that an explanation for the evolution of the banana or the human hand?
I want to see Jenna Jamison do a similar video. 🙂
It’s totally bananas, man!
Jude…. EXACTLY right…..
The next Kirk Cameron!
In a few years, he can be making shitty internet videos about how evolution is wrong.
gurl – all the women in the show are sluts and/or manipulative while the men are users or losers who get led around by these women.
How you raise your kids is up to you but a lot of the discussion on the show was ‘mature’ and not in any sort of affirming way. It could certainly give a young kid a warped view of human relationships. YMMV.
As an adult I found the show entertaining but I also recognize that it is not real life. A 10 YO boy living inside that bubble might not. At 19 he gets to make his own choices, if he wants out he should get out. He should not condemn the show while pocketing something like 4-5 million dollars a year from it.
To me, Angus is just another victim of religion convincing somebody to act against their own best interest. As young as he started I do not think his acting career was really a choice made by him, so he is in fact like Charlie Harper; he fell into a pit of money, and at 19 he has an easy job that 99% of adults would love to have, entertaining people that watch entirely of their own free will and harming nobody. There isn’t even any REAL sinning or promiscuity involved, it is all an act, in PG-13.
But close-minded religionists have convinced him he doesn’t want the money, he doesn’t want to make people laugh, they have convinced him of the ridiculous premise that people watching a sitcom are going to take what the fictional characters do as an authoritative message on how to live their lives.
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What is MORE sad is that he is actually in a business where he is HELPING people by providing comic relief…..
he makes people laugh therefore providing them an outlet… a way to escape what is stressing and hurting them in their lives….
That is what comedy shows are for… for people to forget about what is ailing them……
Laughter is GREAT medicine….
It is just a shame that a church has convinced him otherwise…..
By the way…. Tony C…. YOU hit it OUT of the park again…..
VERY well said….. I agree 100%….
Two and a Half Men was a comedy about two brothers, Charlie and Alan Harper. Charlie was a hedonist, womanizer, drunk, gambler, and wealthy. In an iconic scene, a woman says, “Charlie, from one person I hear you are a brilliant song writer and musician. From another I hear you are a falling down drunk that landed in a pit of money. Which is it?” Charlie’s answer: “Both!”
Alan is a divorced chiropractor and has a son (Jake). Alan is a sad sack, constantly down on his luck. With no place to go after his wife kicks him out, Alan moves in with his wealthy brother Charlie, a large house on the Malibu beach, but Charlie refuses to change anything about his lifestyle to accommodate Alan and Jake. He is generous; he tips the pizza guy $50, but he is a perpetual adolescent and takes much pleasure in tweaking his perpetually unfortunate brother who is awkward with women and stingy with money.
Jake (who started as a young boy) in this scenario is a foil for expressing the dichotomy between the brothers. His father Alan follows the rules, works hard, and gets screwed, he is careful with money but never has any. Jake’s uncle Charlie breaks the rules, never really works, and is showered with money and a parade of beautiful women into his bedroom.
The kid is there (originally) as a dialogue device, the “tourist” that doesn’t understand the culture he has fallen into and needs things explained to him, so Charlie can give his funny reasons for why he does what he does, and Alan can explain why that is all wrong even if it works. Then maybe the writers can have something funny for Jake to say about his take on it.
The show (before Sheen’s meltdown) was not evil, nor was it monotone, Charlie occasionally got burned financially (only to subsequently recover it all in spades) or emotionally, Alan occasionally wins (if only to lose it all afterwards).
It is a PG show played for laughs, other than the occasional reference to or appearance of “professional” girls that Charlie knows, the characters are all harmless and law abiding.
To me, Angus is just another victim of religion convincing somebody to act against their own best interest. As young as he started I do not think his acting career was really a choice made by him, so he is in fact like Charlie Harper; he fell into a pit of money, and at 19 he has an easy job that 99% of adults would love to have, entertaining people that watch entirely of their own free will and harming nobody. There isn’t even any REAL sinning or promiscuity involved, it is all an act, in PG-13.
But close-minded religionists have convinced him he doesn’t want the money, he doesn’t want to make people laugh, they have convinced him of the ridiculous premise that people watching a sitcom are going to take what the fictional characters do as an authoritative message on how to live their lives.
That is just sad. Angus is stupid. If he truly feels that way, let him use this harmless entertainment to undo more evil than it ever caused: Keep $50,000 per year of that income, which is what the average person in America lives on, and donate the rest of those millions to some battered women’s shelters, to some free clinics and shelters for the homeless. Do not donate it to the church, we do not need another gold column or lavish cathedral. Do some good. Otherwise he is just another wealthy hypocrite.
Envioisty.
And here I thought I was going to make it all day without snorting my coffee.
But 9 years x 26 episodes / year x ~$300,000…. Hmmm His bank account should hold for a year or two.
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I smell……………………………ENVIOSITY!!!!!!!!!!
Anonymously Yours
1, November 27, 2012 at 9:13 am
Wootsy,
Who got him in the business?
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As a 10 year old, the onus would fall to his parents….as a human bean, I know all too well the conflict that the road to adulthood is paved with….throw a few million at me at the age of 10 and I would (well, in my next life I’d like to experiment with that equation….)who knows? But it is gutsy for this kid to stand on that particular world stage and do what he is doing. No, he should not give any of that EARNED money back….he operated in good faith even if he was surrounded by sewer brains. And I find his honesty refreshing, he is willing to honor a contract he made….if the studio wants to own his offstage words they can cancel his contract. My guess is that that is what will happen.
If he is going to act like this and spit in the face of this opportunity….
Then for him to NOT be a hypocrite… he should have to give back the money he has made…. OR at least give it to Charity…..
I would not want him to be wracked with guilt over keeping money he has made from this kind of “FILTH”……
If Angus believes what he says, he can quit today. There is no contract that can make him perform, esp if he risks hellfire. He simply would be prohibited from working elsewhere (in show bus) until his contract expires. But 9 years x 26 episodes / year x ~$300,000…. Hmmm His bank account should hold for a year or two.
I was particularly concerned about the kid in the show because of the dialog. Sheen once said that they taped a lot of the worse stuff while the kid was away but watching the show I’m not sure I buy that.
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Well then you would be shocked at the way my parents talked around me…..
and the way I talk around my daughter….. which has been much like the show…. I tend to have that kind of sense of humor…
My daughter and I watched 2 and Half Men when she was 10 years old….
I have NEVER felt the NEED to shelter my daughter from harmless jokes…..
and fact is…. if you met my 14 year old daughter, you would be SHOCKED at how level headed she is and how mature she is…..
at 14 she is not sneaking around….. she tells me EVERYTHING… we are REALLY close…. she does not drink or even want to drink….
I know that because I told her that if she did… I would not be upset…..
she is just not that kind of kid….
If a boy treats her in a disrespectful manner… she puts him in their place VERY quick…. and she has REALLY HIGH self esteem…..
I felt that sheltering her from stupid jokes is NOT going to help her become a good human being…..
Helping her to understand what is right and what is wrong, makes her a good and balances human being…
this is done by being open and honest… NOT be sheltering them from stupid jokes….