Day: January 14, 2018

It sounds as if Aziz Ansari is another guy who should’ve thought twice before wearing a Time’s Up pin. He allegedly acted like an overly hormonal, overbearing asshole on a date last year with a woman who has gone public with a complaint about said behavior, on babe.net.

I wasn’t there and therefore know nothing, but there’s probably a little something to this. I’ve seen this kind of ardent behavior in bars and clubs. Guys who are determined to have it off with a girl they’ve nuzzled up to and are convinced the girl is equally interested, etc. I’ve never been that guy but I’ve seen it, and I’ve always felt sorry for the woman in each instance. Do I know for a fact that Ansari behaved as the woman in question asserts? Nope.

Ansari hasn’t been nailed in a Louis C.K. sense, but he’s certainly been bruised in a James Franco way. He needs to abase himself, grovel, atone, go to a clinic, etc. If I were in Franco’s shoes right now (not that I would be!) I would be thinking about sending Anzari a case of champagne, some fruit and a “thank you” note.

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If I were Woody Allen I would re-dedicate myself to pushing on until I drop, if only to defy this Mark Harris prediction along with the Greta Gerwig/Rebecca Hall/Mira Sorvino chorus, which I’m sure is having its effect. I would (a) double down on my European financing options, (b) cast the best and bravest actors I can find, and (c) write a Crucible-like, On The Waterfront-ish allegory about a p.c. mob persecuting a woman who appears to be tainted on some level but isn’t in fact guilty of something she’s been accused of left and right. Allen needs to use this horror to propel his art, and (who knows?) go out on a bold note a la Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Yesterday’s “Oscar Bait Movie Is Over” piece, which arose from a discussion I had yesterday morning with Boston-based movie critic Jordan Ruimy, was easily one of the most revealing, finger-on-the-button sum-up pieces I’ve posted over the last year, if not the past two or three years.

Because while it began as a discussion of why The Post never got traction in the Oscar race, it wound up describing a major seismic shift in the way younger Oscar voters are seeing things now, as opposed to just five years ago when the old boomer-farty Oscar-worthy standards still applied.

Here are four comments, posted by Rosse Veneziano, filmklassik, Dr. New Jersey and Joe S. They re-articulate the basis thesis and sum it up nicely:

(1) RossoVeneziano: “There’s a new paradigm of Oscar baitness now, and The Post just doesn’t fit it. At all. Oscar-bait now means indie, socially relevant, ‘woke’ (or whatever new slang definition you wanna use for the same concept). Lady Bird and Get Out are 100% Oscar baits. No big-budget entertaining movie will ever win Best Picture again. Titanic today would never win. Never.

“Because Oscars are the new Spirits. Technical, artistic achievement means squat for the new-generation Academy. Best Director is the ceiling. For Best Picture they want politically charged messages and they wanna take a stand, and identity politics definitely drives their votes.”

HE insertion: Hence the head-scratchy Get Out fervor.

“The Post has the message but lacks a crucial element: identity. New members vote FIRST for the person — the movie itself is secondary. A vote for Lady Bird is mainly a vote for Gerwig, a vote for a woman to win it all. No one sees Spielberg as a revolutionary icon as he’s just another rich white guy. Uncool.”

(2) filmklassik: “A bit cheeky to say ‘never ever again’ (because who the hell knows), but yeah, in this particular cultural moment it is all about Tribal Identity. And what’s disturbing is, we have a whole generation now for whom Tribal representation is, to use one critic’s word, numinous. The under-40 crowd has invested Race, Gender and Sexuality with a kind of cosmic significance. It doesn’t mean a lot to them — it means everything to them. Indeed, much of their conversation and writing seems to always come back to it.”

(3) Dr. New Jersey: “A difference is I don’t think anyone making Get Out was thinking ‘Hey, this is Oscar material’ while everyone making The Post was thinking that very thing.”

(4) JoeS: “In a way, that actually reinforces RossoVeneziano’s post. Nobody was thinking Best Picture when Get Out came out last February. But then the whole indie vibe took over the landscape and it was cool to inflate this pretty good horror flick with social commentary into the awards discussion.”

Never forget that the real cancer of American culture is not Donald Trump, not really. The consequences of a grotesque, dementia-afflicted sociopath in the Oval Office have been terrible all around, obviously, but the fundamental ground-level evil lies in that sad mass of rural, low-information lowlifes who voted him in.

They’re in great pain, yes, but they’ve demonstrated time and again they’d rather slit their throats than vote for their own interests. Democratic process- and institution-wise they’re emotionally disturbed sociopaths. They don’t give a damn about anything but how miserable they feel and how much they hate the economic and social realities of the 21st Century, and the great tribal loyalty they feel for that swaggering, bloviating, golf-obsessed turd — a guy who almost certainly smirks or shrugs his shoulders at their plight in private, and is playing them like a violin.

What do you do when cancer has invaded your body? Do you say “well, I may not like what this cancer is doing but I have to at least respect it…we live in a Democratic system, after all, and cancer cells have as much right to live and thrive as I do”? Or do you get chemotherapy and radiation and surgically remove the damn tumor?