Brett Ratner has apologized for including a joke in his trailer for the forthcoming “Tower Heist” in which Eddie Murphy makes light of epilepsy.
In the ad, Murphy says to co-star Ben Stiller, “You were the little seizure boy having seizures all the time! You would have seizures on a regular basis! All the kids would be cryin’, your eyes would be rollin’ back and the foam was coming out. It was very scary.”
The joke didn’t sit well with actor Greg Grunberg, whose son is epileptic. He called for a boycott of the movie. “Making fun @ people w/ seizures is NOT FUNNY & WRONG! ‘Seizure Boy!’ REALLY?, Grunberg tweeted.
Ratner responded to him directly, “I am so sorry you are offended. … I sincerely feel bad.”
Ratner said that he had asked Universal to remove the offending joke from the ad. However it will remain in the movie. That apparently was good enough for Grunberg, who wrote on his TalkAboutIt.org blog, “Just for them to reach out to the epilepsy community and say, ‘We mean no personal harm to anybody,’ which of course they don’t. They probably just don’t even realize the people they are offending and how this could possibly offend people.”
