Russell Crowe Tells Feeble Phone Joke At Awards Ceremony

Russell Crowe has gone through a number of mental phases since he threw a phone at a hotel worker in the summer - anger, shame, resignation, attributing the deed to others - but now he’s moved on.

Now that the whole phone saga is over for Russell Crowe, he feels like he can make jokes about the incident. Like going to the Australian Film Industry Awards with a phone and threatening to bop people over the head with it.

It’s been a few months since Russell Crowe (DVDs), angry that he couldn’t
telephone his wife, threw a hotel phone into the face of Nestor Estrada
and got arrested for assault. But the whole case has been tied up now;
Estrada has been paid off and Russell is in the clear, provided that he
doesn’t lose his temper and cause a rumpus in the next 12 months. Crowe tried to talk about the incident last week, but just ended up
slagging off the media instead.

At the weekend, however, Russell Crowe hosted the Australian Film
Industry Awards in Melbourne. And it meant that, finally, he could use
that spiffy phone joke he’d been sitting on for so long. At the start
of the evening he walked onstage carrying an old fashioned Bakelite
telephone, and said:

"If there are any problems and you do get up here and go on too long then ‘hello’ to my little friend."

It’s
all a bit like Tom Cruise going to an awards ceremony with a sonogram
machine and threatening to look at everyone’s unborn babies. Or Gary
Glitter going onstage and waving an 11-year-old girl around. Or
something.

As far as we can tell, that was roughly the only interesting thing
that happened at the Australian Film Industry Awards. Cate Blanchett
praised the "wry existentialism" of Australian film crews, which seems
a little implausible, but that was about it.

Read more:

Russell Crowe Laughs Off Phone Controversy - ABC

[story by Stuart Heritage]