Time & Perspective Quote by Eugene Levy

There is a whole mini-movie inside Levy's brag: a mild-mannered comic icon claiming a survival-story after committing the kind of screen sin that would, in our collective imagination, get you vaporized by Samuel L. Jackson. The line works because it treats Jackson less like a colleague and more like a cultural force of nature, a walking consequence. Levy isn't flexing power; he's borrowing Jackson's and letting the audience feel the voltage.

The intent is playful self-mythmaking. Levy frames a probably silly on-set moment as if it were a dangerous expedition, and that exaggeration is the joke. "History of film" is deliberately ludicrous scale for something as juvenile as a slap on the butt. The specificity of "face and butt" sharpens the humor: it's not generic roughhousing, it's the exact kind of boundary-crossing physical comedy that can read either as harmless improv or as a HR nightmare, depending on the era and consent.

The subtext is about status and permission. Only certain performers get to do certain things to certain stars and have it land as comedy rather than disrespect. Levy signals that he was inside the circle where the rules loosen, likely in a farce or parody context where bodies are props and humiliation is currency. He also lets us in on a warmer truth: Jackson, the supposed threat, is implied to be game, human, and generous enough to let a Canadian dad-joke institution get away with it. The punchline isn't violence; it's rapport.