Podbit · The Tim Dillon Show
Noah Baumbach used his Vassar commencement speech to rehash a bad review he got for a college play 30 years ago — then revealed the reviewer was dead and he'd hoped to invite him to the Oscars. Tim Dillon calls it petulant, childish, and gross.
Where this was said
At 39:50 · chapter starts 39:40
Tim introduces the Noah Baumbach segment after mentioning Elon Musk's trillion-dollar net worth, lamenting that Baumbach got a Vassar standing ovation while Tim can't even get a community college booking. The episode plays clips of the actual speech, in which Baumbach recounts receiving a stinging rejection letter for a college play he wrote at age 20, then re-reading it at age 45, still wounded. [1] — Tim Dillon "Noah Baumbach used his Vassar commencement speech to rehash a bad review he got for a college play 30 years ago — then revealed the reviewe…" 39:50 Tim is baffled by the crowd's rapturous reaction. The speech's most remarkable moment — Baumbach revealing he'd looked the critic up and discovered he'd died, 'putting to rest hopes of inviting him to the Oscars' — sends Tim into genuine disgust. [2] — Tim Dillon "How petulant, childish, and gross that you're using your commencement speech at Vassar to settle a score with a dead guy that didn't like a…" 44:25 Petulant, childish, and gross, he declares. He's careful to say Baumbach is genuinely talented, but he's furious that this is what passes for wisdom at elite institutions: a famous director settling a score with a corpse in front of a crowd of 22-year-olds. The commencement speech genre itself comes under fire — it's either masturbatory clichés like Baumbach's, Tim argues, or someone menacing you into AI adoption. He prefers the latter for its honesty.
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