Betty White May Advance From Facebook God To Actual God

The Betty White freight train keep on rolling, people. After stealing “The Proposal” and becoming a Facebook hero and hosting SNL to record ratings and doing likewise with TV Land’s “Hot In Cleveland,” it seems White is on a career trajectory that right now resembles a kite string. Within the next year, she may become President, Pope, and Queen of England simultaneously. Don’t think it’s out of the question. After all, Hollywood is already considering making her God… in a remake of “Oh God.” From Deadline’s Mike Fleming:

Warner Bros and producer Jerry Weintraub have tried long and hard to mount a remake of the 1977 George Burns comedy Oh, God! I'm told Weintraub just pitched the studio a new version of the film, with Hollywood's hottest octogenarian--Betty White,--as the title character. Paul Rudd was pitched for the role of the hapless mortal played by John Denver in the Carl Reiner-directed original…

This incarnation is nascent--the studio doesn't have a script it loves, and I'm not sure White and Rudd have been contacted.

Well, just because they haven’t been contacted doesn’t mean I can’t work myself up into a lather over seeing White deified on screen. I grew up in the 80’s with the original “Oh God” movies, which starred George Burns. I don’t really remember the movies. I just remember thinking George Burns was funny because he was very old and looked like a monkey. I had no other knowledge of his history as a performer, as a professional comedian, as part of a comedy team with his late wife. I knew none of that. I was just, “Hey, look! An old person! That’s funny!”

And that, frankly, is what White is to a lot of the Facebook generation. They never saw “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Many of them probably didn’t know who Betty White even was until her SNL campaign began. And now, she has officially occupied that George Burns role of go-to funny old person. She’s most certainly earned it, that’s for sure.

No one would ever describe those “Oh God” movies as masterpieces. But that never stopped people from finding Burns adorable, and White has also earned that same kind of career immunity. Let’s face it: “Hot In Cleveland” isn’t all that hot, and that SNL episode had an awful lot of dead weight in it (like any SNL episode). But White is still great, and will always be regardless of how good of a God she turns out to be.

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