Stone: Woke Rats Abandoning Cancel-Culture Ship

Yesterday HE’s own Sasha Stone was the star of a Newsweek article titled “Johnny Depp, Amber Heard and the Dangers of Cancel Culture,” posted by Carly Mayberry:

The subject was the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial, but Stone offered “a broader perspective on cancel culture’s complexity and far-reaching effects.”

Mayberry: “‘We’re living through a big cultural backlash…you can feel it happening,’ Stone said.

“The political left, which in Stone’s view has long controlled so much of our culture, is sticking to a playbook that no longer works, she said.

“‘Where the pendulum couldn’t have swung more left [between 2017 and mid-to-late ’21], it’s now starting to swing right,’ Stone said. ‘Basically, people are starting to [stand] up to the power elite and tell them what they — the little people, the renters, the common texting serfs of our society — are interested in listening to and watching by their own calculations instead of being told what they have to listen to and watch.”

HE admission about previous paragraph: I have posted an HE-modified version of Stone’s original Mayberry quote. Stone’s original was differently worded but I’m saying it better, trust me. The meaning is exactly the same.

Back to Mayberry: “Stone, who doesn’t consider herself liberal or conservative, said that with people like Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and podcaster Joe Rogan, the tide has turned. Musk, who purchased Twitter last week for $44 billion, has criticized the platform’s lack of political neutrality and its censorship and said he plans to change that.

“Rogan, who has long been a target of cancel culture for allegedly spreading COVID-19 misinformation and using racial slurs during his popular podcast, said he has seen an increase of 2 million Spotify subscribers amid his controversial statements and averages 11 million per podcast, according to Poynter.

“‘What mattered with cancel culture was that people lost their livelihood,’ Stone said. [Note: Stone is partly referring to woke Robespierres and other scurrying rodents having made things financially difficult for Hollywood Elsewhere in terms of award-season ads.] ‘They [the establishment] need to be able to be confident enough that they don’t need to fire Johnny Depp or to drop Joe Rogan, and that’s happening.’

“Stone added, ‘I really do think, partly due to Musk, just being enough of a presence to cause people to rethink has changed things. Will people still try to cancel people? Yes, but the worst is over.'”

HE comment: It is my sincere hope and belief that the worst has only just begun as far as the film industry’s woke terrorists are concerned. HE won’t rest until cancel culture fanatics are on the run and hiding in shadowy places and insisting, in the manner of Jean-Louis Trintignant‘s protagonist during the finale of The Conformist, that while CRT and #MeToo and LGBTQ agendas represent a necessary and glorious cultural awakening, they were never for murdering people’s careers while accusing others of same.”

“Maverick” Gaga Factor

Who suspected until last week’s big Cinemacon screening that Top Gun: Maverick would turn out to be a heart movie? That it may (according to The Ankler’s Jeff Sneider) leave Joe and Jane Popcorn on the verge of choking up? Who had an inkling?

Straight from Lady Gaga: “When I wrote this song for Top Gun: Maverick, I didn’t even realize the multiple layers it spanned across the film’s heart, my own psyche, and the nature of the world we’ve been living in.”

First HE reaction to song title: “Wouldn’t holding someone’s hand get in the way if you’re doing loop-dee-loops from inside the cockpit of an F-18?”

https://open.spotify.com/embed?uri=spotify%3Atrack%3A0oWraSo5ASJ0h1BEagTyEw

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Keep Your Distance, Ya Bum Ya

One glance and I said to myself “please, please make a feature out of this….better yet a 10-episode Hulu series. I’m serious — I would watch anything about teens taunting poor hapless winos with cruel sexual exhibitionism…I would watch it in a New York minute. Powerful metaphor. The brand is Fuxley.

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Luscious Horror Satire

The new trailer for Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling (Warner Bros., 9.23) suggests a sexy, high-style period creep-out about middle-class conformity and submission to Big Corporate Brother.

Seemingly set in the ‘50s or early ‘60s. A mood similar to that of Martin Ritt‘s No Down Payment (‘57), and clearly a metaphorical kin to Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (‘56).

And right away they blow the mood by playing Brenton Wood’s “The Oogum Boogum Song,” which came out in ‘67 — an era in which fretting about cookie-cutter conformity had been left behind and people were into a whole ‘nother doobie-toke realm.

So right away you know that Wilde’s film is…uhm, playing by its own rules.

Apology & Explanation

Roughly 26 and 1/2 years ago I sent the attached to Los Angeles magazine publisher Joan McGraw.

Party chatter between myself and a certain fellow about then-editor Robert Sam Anson (who passed on 11.6.20) was shared with McGraw, and word got back that she didn’t care for my candor about a then-delicate subject.

The bad guy, of course, wasn’t me but the person who passed along loose talk to the boss. If you’re cool you never tattle-tale about what a colleague said while sipping Pinot Grigio.

I’m sharing this because it’s an honest, specific, well-written apology letter that doesn’t really apologize. It says “I’m technically sorry but…”

From Anson’s N.Y. Times obit, dated 11.6.20:

Burr Is Enraged

I like Bill Burr‘s general fuck-this attitude, but sometimes he can sound overly guy-ish. (Close to flirting with sexism.) But he voices an idea in this clip that has merit. It basically says “due process before Twitter.” Guys who’ve been accused of this or that deserve anonymity until the accusations have been thoroughly vetted. If the accused turns out to be guilty, tar-and-feather him, Burr says. But what if the facts are not so clear cut? (Taken from last Monday’s “Bill’s Monday Morning Podcast.”)

High-Heeled Sandals

Please note a similarity between the platform-heeled, ankle-strap sandals worn by Kirk Douglas in this Spartacus publicity still and a pair worn earlier today by Tatiana Antropova. Okay, her heels are higher but still.