Will Smith Slaps Chris Rock At Oscars

I don't watch the Oscars. This morning when I heard that Will Smith had slapped Chris Rock at the recent Oscars ceremony I thought that it must have been a skit or some insider joke. 

When I found that it was real I thought that Smith must have taken offense to a Rock joke about Smith's apparent open marriage with his wife Jada Pinkett Smith. Jada Pinkett Smith has done the do with at least one man not named Will Smith while still being married to Will Smith. 

But that wasn't was set Will Smith off last night, although the actress Regina Hall made a joke cracking on the Smith couple for precisely that reason. 

No what evidently made Smith so angry that he assaulted Chris Rock was that Chris Rock made a joke claiming that Jada Pinkett Smith was getting ready for a sequel to GI Jane, a film in which the lead actress, Demi Moore, famously shaved her head. Jada Pinkett Smith suffers from alopecia and has apparently decided to keep a buzzcut.

Mother of Mercy is this the end of Harvey Weinstein?

Over the last year, year and half or so we have seen many (mostly) women and men make accusations of rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment and  generally inappropriate behavior against (mostly) men in primarily the media, arts and entertainment industries. With the possible exception of Bill Cosby, no man was more closely associated with such alleged bad behavior than Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. 

Weinstein allegedly harassed, assaulted, or raped dozens of actual or would be Hollywood starlets. Weinstein had enough power and friends in the industry and out of it that he could allegedly harm the careers of women who didn't want to play ball with him. Weinstein allegedly hired Israeli private intelligence firms made up of former or current IDF and Mossad personnel to dig up dirt on accusers, handle hostile media and generally raise the cost incurred (legal or otherwise) to anyone inclined to mumble a bad word about his extra-curricular activities. Well nothing lasts forever. Weinstein was just formally arrested by the NYPD. 

Harvey Weinstein turned himself in to New York City detectives and was arrested on Friday on charges that he raped one woman and forced another to perform oral sex, a watershed in a months long sex crimes investigation and in the #MeToo movement. Around 7:30 a.m., Mr. Weinstein walked into a police station house in Lower Manhattan, flanked by several sex crimes detectives. Toting three large books under his right arm, he looked up without saying a word as a crush of reporters and onlookers yelled, “Harvey!” 

Harvey Weinstein Accusations

Harvey Weinstein is a famed award winning Hollywood film and television producer and distributor. He has produced and/or distributed such movies as Pulp Fiction, Shakespeare in Love, Good Will Hunting, Clerks, The Crying Game, Shaolin Soccer, Silver Linings Playbook, and Sex, Lies and Videotape among others. He is the executive producer of Project Runway. He also has a book publishing company. Weinstein provided an internship to Malia Obama, President Obama's daughter. Although Weinstein's recent films have not been as critically acclaimed or as profitable as they have been in the past, Weinstein has over the years built a well deserved reputation as one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. He's worth hundreds of millions.

Like several men who fit that description, Weinstein has had business relationships with some of the world's most beautiful or successful actresses and models, including such women as Heidi Klum, Jennifer Lawrence, Gwyneth Paltrow, Meryl Streep, Ashley Judd, and Uma Thurman. Weinstein has allegedly used his power within the entertainment industry to make women put out or get out in the classic casting couch/sexual harassment sense. I was aware of a few isolated past accounts of settlements and accusations concerning Weinstein. But the New York Times recently ran an expose detailing numerous settlements going back decades. The story included women who were willing to go on record about their experiences with the satyric Mr. Weinstein. 

Update: The Weinstein Company’s board has fired Harvey Weinstein after reports of sexual harassment complaints against him. Two decades ago, the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein invited Ashley Judd to the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel for what the young actress expected to be a business breakfast meeting. Instead, he had her sent up to his room, where he appeared in a bathrobe and asked if he could give her a massage or she could watch him shower, she recalled in an interview. “How do I get out of the room as fast as possible without alienating Harvey Weinstein?” Ms. Judd said she remembers thinking.

The Interview: North Korea Punks Sony and Hollywood

I don't like confrontations. However there are situations where some people or organizations will provoke a conflict to take something from you or yours. Maybe it's your lunch money or a job promotion. Maybe it's your self-respect. Maybe someone has insulted your little sister. When these things happen the only thing you can do is fight. Someone wants to throw down? You give them all they expect and more. You need to punch the bully in the mouth. You won't always win. You may get a beatdown, figuratively or even literally. But by fighting back you raise the cost of the clash. Bullies, like other predators, seek easy weak prey. If they have trouble taking things from you then even if they win the resulting fight this time, the next time they may leave you alone.  When you fight back you might win. You show the bully and other observers that the bully made a mistake. By refusing to cave to extortion you reveal that it's the bully, not you, who is the weak cringing coward. Sometimes just standing up to a bully may end the situation. It's hard to say for sure. But it's certain that allowing yourself to be bullied, to be insulted, to be humiliated, will bring more of the same. Once you get on your knees for someone it's pretty difficult to stand up straight again. Unfortunately Sony executives, other Hollywood magnates, film distributors and theater owners never seemed to learn this critical life lesson. Hackers connected to the North Korean government broke into Sony's databases to steal sensitive, private and confidential information. They warned Sony not to release The Interview, a Seth Rogen satirical comedy about the assassination of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un. 

The hackers threatened to publicize other private information or to engage in unspecified 9-11 type actions. They also threatened Sony's vendors and business partners. Sony and US film distributors crumpled like a wet paper bag. Major theater chains declined to show the film. Sony pulled the film from release. 

Fearing that the exact precedent about bullies which I described above was being set, other theaters planned to feature the older movie Team America: World Police, which made fun of Kim Jong-Un's equally oddball late father Kim Jong-Il, but Paramount Studios pulled that film as well. And just in case anyone who was super special stupid might have missed the point of what was going on here, the severely English language challenged hackers sent an email to Sony that congratulated Sony for the speed and intensity of its kowtow to their demands. The email also stated that if Sony knew what was good for it, it would ensure that that The Interview was never released in any format, theatrical, video on demand, web based or otherwise. 

"Very wise to cancel 'the interview' it will be very useful for you," read the message. "We ensure the purity of your data and as long as you make no more trouble." "Now we want you never let the movie released, distributed or leaked in any form of, for instance, DVD or piracy," wrote the hackers.
LINK

So let's review. The US claims to have a belief in freedom of speech. The important concept in freedom of speech is not that a work can't be criticized or mocked or even boycotted but rather that our government can't put in prior restraint to tell the artist what he or she can create. And obviously the government can't allow private actors to employ threats of violence or actual violent acts to prevent an artist from creating or sharing his work. North Korea has no First Amendment or concept of free speech. The only rule in North Korea is don't upset Fearless Leader. That may work for North Korea but US Sony and the theater chains made a big mistake in allowing North Korea to export its censorship into the US market. If a bovine butterball like Kim Jong-Un can get Sony to wet its Depends, what might other dictators or for that matter interest groups seek to do? The implied power of hackers just went to an entirely different level, one light years beyond where they were previously. Make no mistake, Sony will not be the only corporation or organization impacted by this surrender. Other groups and other governments will seek to target US based media companies for censorship. Other studios are already "rethinking" films that are set in North Korea or make any sort of reference to North Korea. This was a test. Sony and Hollywood failed it. They talk a good game about freedom of speech and standing up for artists but when it comes down to it they're just cowards. I should point out that I'm not the biggest Rogen or Franco fan. The Interview could very well be an unfunny movie full of jokes about body functions, obesity and gay sex, all of which seem to fascinate Rogen greatly.

Being cynical I wonder if distributors were really just worried that this movie would be a financial turkey and therefore jumped at the opportunity to drop it. That could be. But that's not the point. We wouldn't permit the US government to tell us we couldn't make or watch a movie. So why are we letting the North Korean government tell us what to watch? If globalization means letting Pacific Rim communist dictatorships influence or censor American media,  then we need to reset some things. Hollywood once made movies and shorts satirizing Nazis. It made movies about evil communists during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But today's studio heads have no guts. More's the pity. It should be a reminder to us that media corporations  have no real interest in First Amendment rights. Kim Jong-Un just made Sony cringe and roll on its back. American business leaders have gotten soft. Sony has stated that it still intends to release The Interview but we'll see.

Zoe Saldana, Nina Simone, Race, Skin Tone and Hollywood

What do you think about supposed plans to have Zoe Saldana play Nina Simone in a movie?

“One of the first things that you think about when you think of someone for these projects, is you’re going to try to make it believable in terms of appearance,” Simone Kelly, daughter of the late singer/songwriter, tells The Daily Beast. The married mother of two—an accomplished singer/actress in her own right—is in the midst of a furor over last week’s news that Saldana will play Nina.

The controversy hit a high note, with many crying foul over what some consider a dubious casting choice for the film. There’s even an online petition demanding that Saldana, who has yet to comment, be replaced by an actress “who actually looks like Nina Simone.”

With writing and directing duties going to Will & Grace producer and rumored Jodie Foster gal pal Cynthia Mort, the film, which was first announced in 2005 with Blige attached, is based on the life rights of Cliff Henderson, the openly gay personal assistant to Nina Simone in her final years.

Casting aside, Kelly is strong in her convictions. Since Nina Simone did compose much of her most pivotal music, the estate maintains control over its usage. Mort, who Kelly says she only communicated with once, may have difficulty getting rights and clearances for the songs.

“As long as this script is based on a lie, anything that comes through me will not be approved,” Kelly promises. “I cannot condone a lie. I don’t live my life as a lie. And the truth is stranger than fiction.” 

Usually I don't care about "controversies" like this but Nina Simone happens to have been a favorite singer of mine. I had a viscerally negative reaction to the idea of Saldana playing Simone. With any movie there has to be some sort of ability to suspend belief. Most movies are not documentaries. People who don't necessarily look exactly like the role can nonetheless turn in pretty good performances. But there are limits to this.

• If I am casting for Queen Elizabeth chances are I don't want a man of any color.
• If I am casting for Shaka Zulu I probably don't want a white man or a woman of any color.
• If I am casting for Admiral Yamamoto at the very least I will likely be looking for a man of East Asian, preferably Japanese descent.

Now there are exceptions. Sometimes a particular actor is just so skilled that the director or producer might ignore their race or even gender and rewrite the part or even more brazenly leave the part as written and have the actor play a gender and race that is obviously not their own. That's all up to the creative impulse and whether the creators feel that the change can be sold to an audience. Money is the name of the game and you want someone who works for the story AND who can put bottoms in theater seats.

I really don't think that Zoe Saldana looks anything like Nina Simone or can be made to look like her. Nina Simone was a Black American from the South who had what can be described as distinctive looks with very strong West African features. There was nothing that was remotely biracial looking about Nina Simone. She was not mixed, biracial, multiracial, omniracial or anything like that. She was BLACK. Just in case people didn't realize that she wrote more than a few songs about it. To Be Young, Gifted and Black, Four Women, and Mississippi God*** among others let you know who she was and where she was coming from.

Zoe Saldana is an Afro-Latina with more aquiline features and a totally different look and skin tone. My understanding is that she does indeed identify as Black. It is very sensitive to write about skin tone. I don't think that there should be a paper bag test of blackness. I believe in Pan-Africanism and ultimately that all men and women are brothers and sisters. But I don't think it's correct to take a woman who looked like she had unmixed descent from West Africa and have her depicted by a woman who looks like Saldana. If someone were to do a movie depicting the lives of Lena Horne or Dorothy Dandridge I would not be happy if Mo'Nique or Whoopi Goldberg were playing the lead. All black people do not look alike. There are limits to believability and Saldana playing Simone crosses those limits for me. 

The elephant in the room of course is the issue that Saldana is a popular actress and it may be easier to sell a Nina Simone biopic to a white mainstream audience because of Saldana's looks, popularity and skin tone. Also given the dearth of lead roles for dark skin African American actresses it seems more than a bit unfair that a role that seems tailor made for a Viola Davis or a Rutina Wesley should be given to a Saldana.

Of course this is all subjective. If this film is made Saldana may do a bang-up job. Maybe I am full of it.

What's your take? 

Much ado about nothing?

Would a black director/writer have made the same call?

Does/should skin tone or race matter in casting?