Day: December 15, 2023

On 12.8 Ava DuVernay‘s Origin, an instructional drama about a writer exploring the racial caste system in this country, opened theatrically.

I had instinctively decided against seeing it because I regard DuVernay first and foremost as an agenda filmmaker — she has racial scores to settle and is not open to cosmic light and happenstance, at least by my understanding of the term.

On 12.13 Variety‘s Clayton Davis lamented the apparent fact that Origin is getting the cold shoulder from award-season handicappers.

Last night The Hot Mike‘s John Rocha and Jeff Sneider discussed Origin and Clayton’s column. The discussion happens between the 70-minute and 82-minute mark.

HE opinion: Ava DuVernay was seriously damaged after A Wrinkle in Time and has never recovered. She’s made her own reputational bed, and people are pretty much persuaded that she’s an agenda-driven filmmaker who isn’t fully honest (which Selma wasn’t, and one can at least question When They See Us in terms of characterizing the Central Park Five as utterly blameless victims), and who basically makes Black-favoring instructionals which stack the deck or otherwise put her thumb on the scale against historical and present-day racism.

DuVernay is basically a professional-grade woke Black female filmmaker and a symbol of fighting the power. And if you don’t like her films then YOU’RE a racist. People know who she is, and that, I believe, is why they’re not giving Origin the time of day.

Ava is about valiantly fighting the wrongs and the psychological plagues of racism perpetrated by white shitheads, the only problem being that she’s into anti-white portraiture more than honesty. And the industry can smell another Ava harangue in Origin.

Friendo: “I think it’s significant that the REVERSE example — that is, one line uttered by a sympathetic WHITE character that maligned the integrity of blacks (eg., ‘Don’t trust anyone, especially black people’) — would NEVER be excused or brushed aside by the likes of Glen Runciter. Not in a million years.

“We have different rules of behavior for people based on skin tone. And the fact that more of us don’t see how culturally destructive this is…this is absolutely mind-boggling.

“I mean, where do the Glen Runciters of the world see this going eventually? Anyplace good?”

pic.twitter.com/WxyIYmzGOH— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 11, 2023

Immediately after Matthew Perry‘s passing a friendly narrative began circulating — Perry was no longer using, and was clean and on the mend. Well, not so much.

Back in the days of reserved–seat roadshow engagements of big-budget, prestige-level films during the ‘40s, 50s and 60s, theatres would sell glossy, cardboard-fortified booklets that had lots of high-end images and smelled of fresh publisher’s ink.

This is the Spartacus program they sold at the DeMille theatere (B’way at 47th) when it opened on 10.6.60 — a month before JFK’s election.

They charged at least 75 cents if not a buck for these souvenir programs -— in 2023 terms they were charging $7.50 to $10 a pop.

What an absolute bummer life was in late 2020 — a feeling of dull suffocating horror enshrouding the country in every corner…masks, masks, masks. In December we threw caution to the winds by flying to NYC for four or five days. It helped a littie bit.