The last time Variety apologized for a movie review was in 1992. The film was Philip Noyce and Mace Neufeld‘s Patriot Games, the critic was Joseph McBride, and the National Society of Film Critics stood up for McBride, just like they did today for the critic with tire tracks across his back, Promising Young Woman reviewer Dennis Harvey.
I’ve read Peter Biskind‘s “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” twice, but I somehow never got around to seeing Kenneth Bowser‘s 2003 documentary version, which runs just shy of two hours. A half-hour ago I happened upon an HD YouTube version, and it plays pretty well. Narrated by William H. Macy, it was screened out of competition at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. (I was there but missed it.) Rated 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
12 and 1/2 months after the 1.26.20 Kobe Bryant helicopter crash, which killed nine people including Bryant, his daughter and the pilot, the National Transportation Safety Board has rocked the world by coming to the same conclusions that any half-informed person would’ve arrived at a day or two after the tragedy.
Once again for emphasis — (a) way too foggy for flying above the Calabassas hills that day, (b) pilot Ara Zobayan was swallowed by spatial disorientation, (c) any competent, half-prudent pilot would have gotten the hell out of there but Bryant, a Type-A personality, was almost certainly generating intense “get there” vibes and so Zobayan pushed into the fog…hard left and a rapid decent at a speed of 160 knots…wham. A reckless journey.
No one is allowed to say that the crash was half Bryant’s fault and half Zobayan’s fault, but when you factor in the “get there” pressure how can you say it was all on Zobayan? Two-thirds pilot, one-third Bryant? 60-40?
In a Variety video chat between Oliver Stone and Da 5 Bloods helmer Spike Lee, Stone mentions that his four-hour JFK assassination doc has (a) been invited to play at the Cannes Film Festival in July, and that (b) he can’t find a U.S. distributor, apparently because of a concern about questionable readings and allegations.
Stone’s description of the situation is a bit vague, but he says that both Netflix and National Geographic have declined to distribute. Here’s part of the convo:
Spike Lee: You’re doing your doc series, right?
Oliver Stone: [I’m] doing documentaries because they’re direct and I can go right to the audience and say this and this. [But even in that realm], I’m having problems. I’m doing one on energy and one on JFK. Four hours [and] very powerful. It’s based on the facts that came out of the [1991] movie. The movie kicked off the assassination records review board for five years. They were not empowered to investigate, but they were empowered to clarify. And they did the best they could with these limitations. The facts that they presented, we go into. It makes the case harder, tighter. It’s about real facts that are shocking to people.
Lee: So you can’t you can’t find a home for this doc?
Stone: Not yet. Not for the American side. Cannes invited us for July of this year. That’s a big step for us because, at least, if it can’t be recognized in America as a document, it will be [internationally].
Lee: I can’t wait to see this four-hour JFK [doc].
Stone: In Europe.
Lee: Netflix said no?
Stone: Yeah. [And] today I just got the word that National Geographic has also said no.
Lee: What was the reason?
Stone: They said they did their fact check. Yeah. Where are you going to find this information except in this film? If they do a fact check, according to conventional sources, of course it’ll come out like this is not true. How can you go and prove that it’s true? It’s very, it’s very tough. You have to have some imagination here.
Lee: I have to see it in Cannes, where I’ll be president of the jury. Let’s have a drink, sir.
While Variety editors debate and dither over the trade paper’s response (if any) to the National Society of Film Critics’ condemnation of its recent behavior in the Carey Mulligan-Dennis Harvey-Promising Young Woman brouhaha, Hollywood Elsewhere is submitting the following for Variety‘s consideration, should they wish to explain themselves more fully:
“Variety acknowledges, understands and respects the position of the National Society of Film Critics in its just-posted (2.9) criticism of Variety‘s 11-months-later apology for a certain paragraph in Dennis Harvey‘s 1.26.20 review of Promising Young Woman.
“If we were NSFC-allied critics instead of Variety editors, we might well agree with and support this morning’s statement wholeheartedly.
“However, Variety respectfully suggests that the NSFC has missed the point in this matter. Because what the NSFC has condemned us for — disrespecting a top-ranked stringer and needlessly bruising his sterling reputation, plus showing a lack of editorial ethics and backbone — happened for what we believe to be a good and noble reason.
“Simply put, we did what we did because we believe that #MeToo solidarity counts more than editorial integrity.
“We are living through a revolutionary era in Hollywood history, one in which women, people of various ethnicities and LGBTQs are righteously claiming a larger share of power and pressure — power that the white-male heirarchy has singlehandedly wielded for decades. Women in particular are standing up, pushing back and challenging sexist norms.
“And so when Carey Mulligan complained a few weeks ago to N.Y. Times columnist Kyle Buchanan about what she (and, frankly, we) judged as a viewpoint with a certain sexist or misogynist undercurrent, our hearts were stirred.
“And so it seemed necessary, important and perhaps even vital to us that Variety should stand alongside Mulligan, offer an unprecedented editorial apology and say “classic editorial journalistic ethics are well and good and we’re certainly not abandoning most of them, but women need to stick together in this, an era of #MeToo solidarity and change…we’re with you all the way, Carey. And don’t worry about Harvey and his fuddy-duddy defenders…they’ll get over this little speed bump and we can all go back to business as usual.
“In other words, when we decided to apologize to Mulligan and Focus Features for the tone and phrasing in a single, allegedly inflammatory paragraph in Harvey’s review, our thinking was fundamentally driven by political rather than ethical or critical considerations.
The fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger felt compelled to post a drive-by vaccine video is, of course, a tacit acknowledgement that there are tens of millions of morons out there who don’t want to take the stab, and so maybe it couldn’t hurt to remind them that the “good” Terminator knows what’s safe and what’s best, etc.
It’s been roughly six and a half weeks since Variety editors threw longtime critic Dennis Harvey under the bus by posting an apology for his 1.26.20 review of Promising Young Woman, which had been edited by Variety‘s Peter Debruge and had sat on the Variety website for 11 months without anyone saying boo.
Variety grovelled because Carey Mulligan had complained about a certain paragraph in the review to N.Y. Times columnist Kyle Buchanan on 12.23.20.
“I read the Variety review because I’m a weak person,” Mulligan told Buchanan. “And I took issue with it. It felt like it was basically saying that I wasn’t hot enough to pull off this kind of ruse.” And so Variety rushed right in, apologized to Mulligan (and by inference to Focus Features) and posted the following above Harvey’s review:
Variety‘s apology, tacked on to Dennis Harvey’s 1.26.20 review after Carey Mulligan’s complaint to N.Y Times profiler Kyle Buchanan in a 12.23 article
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A few of us (myself, The Ankler‘s Richard Rushfield, Collider‘s Jeff Sneider, author and former Variety critic Joseph McBride, The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw, World of Reel’s Jordan Ruimy, “Across the Movie Aisle” podcasters Sonny Bunch, Alyssa Rosenberg and Peter Suderman) have tweeted, written and podcasted about Variety‘s appalling behavior over the last few weeks, but today — today! — the National Society of Film Critics finally stepped up and did the gutsy thing.
Okay, so they could’ve done it sooner. Okay, so they needed to think about about the ramifications and consider all the angles and dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s for the last five or six weeks. But at least they grew a pair and manned up. HE salutes their courage, and so does Pike Bishop in heaven. Here’s their statement:
FROM THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF FILM CRITICS REGARDING VARIETY’S APOLOGY FOR ITS PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN REVIEW (dated 2.9.21)
“We, the members of the National Society of Film Critics, wish to register our alarm at Variety’s shabby treatment of our colleague Dennis Harvey.
“On Jan. 26, 2020, Variety published Harvey’s review of the movie Promising Young Woman from the Sundance Film Festival. (Full disclosure: The review was edited by Peter Debruge, Variety’s chief film critic and a member of the NSFC.) While praising the film, Harvey wrote that Carey Mulligan, “a fine actress, seems a bit of an odd choice” as the movie’s “many-layered apparent femme fatale” protagonist, noting distancing aspects of the character’s costuming, hairstyling and vocal delivery. He went on to praise Mulligan’s performance as “skillful, entertaining and challenging, even when the eccentric method obscures the precise message.”
“On Dec. 24, 2020, almost a year later and in the thick of awards season, Mulligan noted her objections to Harvey’s review in a New York Times profile: ‘It felt like it was basically saying that I wasn’t hot enough to pull off this kind of ruse.’
“Mulligan, like any artist, is within her rights to respond to criticism of her work, just as we are within our rights to assert that nothing in Harvey’s review — which focuses on the actor’s stylized presentation, not her attractiveness — supports her claim. But differences of opinion in the evaluation of a film or a performance are not at issue here.
“What concerns us is Variety’s subsequent decision to place an editor’s note at the top of the review: “Variety sincerely apologizes to Carey Mulligan and regrets the insensitive language and insinuation in our review of Promising Young Woman that minimized her daring performance.”
“If Variety felt the language in Harvey’s review was insensitive and insinuating, it had the option of working with him to fix that in the editing process before it ran. There are also ways Variety could have acknowledged and responded to Mulligan’s criticism, rather than simply capitulating to it and undermining its own critic in the process. The imposition of a subjective value judgment (‘her daring performance’) as a flat editorial perspective, as if it were a matter of inarguable fact rather than opinion, is particularly inappropriate.
“We believe the editor’s note should be removed.
“Like any journalism, film criticism often displeases those being written about. And, like any journalists, film critics must have the support of their publications when that displeasure, usually coming from people far more powerful than any journalist, is made known — especially when that publication claims to report on the industry those powerful people inhabit. It is appalling that, in this instance, Variety chose to side with that power rather than supporting its writer.”
The current NSFC chair is L.A. Times critic Justin Chang. The executive Director is Liz Weis.