A couple of days ago the below copy appeared within Abid Rahman’s 6.9 Hollywood Reporter story about HBO Max [temporarily] removing Gone With The Wind from the streaming service. The erroneous info was quickly deleted.
Mistakes happen, but this was a whopper. The first half of Gone With The Wind takes place before and during the Civil War, of course, and the second half in the war’s aftermath. And who ever heard of a plantation “in” Atlanta?
Against my better judgment and despite my disappointment with the Jaws 4K Bluray, I’ve ordered the 4K Spartacus (Universal Home Video, 7.21).
Because a 4K disc of a large-format film (Spartacus was shot in the VistaVision-like Technirama process) that’s been drawn from a 6K harvest promises to look extra rich and detailed, and because restoration guru Robert Harris, who oversaw the original 1991 restoration as well as the 2015 4K digital restoration (which again was harvested from the 6K scan), supervised the finessing of the 4K disc.
If the 4K Spartacus Bluray doesn’t deliver an unmistakable bump, there’s gonna be trouble. That’s all I’m saying. I won’t take well to being burned twice.
The exact 99th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre happened just under two weeks ago — 5.31 and 6.1. It’s nonetheless astounding that in the wake of the nationwide George Floyd marches, Donald Trump has slated a political rally in Tulsa, of all places, and of all dates on 6.19 or “Juneteenth“, an African American holiday that celebrates the end of slavery.
The symbolism couldn’t be plainer. Trump is more or less announcing the following: “To honor the 99th anniversary of the mob murder of dozens of black citizens in 1921 Tulsa, I will stage my first post-COVID shutdown rally in this very same city, thus ensuring that my racist bumblefuck supporters will attend in droves…you know what we’re saying and why we’re gathering in Tulsa…long live the greatness of redhat America!”
President Trump is holding his next hate rally on Juneteenth … in Tulsa, the site of the 1921 race massacre.
The worst single incident of racial violence in US history occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma. pic.twitter.com/76SoqDmIZx
— Rula Jebreal (@rulajebreal) June 11, 2020
Four days ago Blocked & Reported‘s Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal posted a podcast titled “Bari Weiss Is Right.” Which is a good and welcome thing because Bari Weiss is right about the behavior of N.Y. Times fanatics during the Tom Cotton / James Bennet debacle.
The theme is the “complete collapse of institutional authority” along with a “major cultural crack-up” in media-journalist circles.
Herzog/Singal: “Bari Weiss did some tweets about how there is a generational divide at The New York Times that is, in her view, hampering the paper’s ability to publish quality commentary and journalism. In response, a sizable cohort of her colleagues LITERALLY devoured her (metaphorically, on Twitter). In their most frustrated episode yet, Katie and Jesse explain why Bari was fundamentally right. The fact that so many journalists think Bari is making this up is pretty insane given the rampant evidence for it.”
Herzog has been an HE favorite over the last couple of years. I especially enjoyed “Call-Out Culture Is a Toxic Garbage Dumpster Fire of Trash,” posted on 1.23.18.
Insignificant Quibble: Herzog and Singal are so sharp and fleet-minded and ultra-knowledgeable that it’s almost difficult to listen to them. Especially because they speak in “vocal slur fry”, and I hate that shit as a rule. But they’re otherwise cool.
“Vocal Slur Fry Classes,” originally posted on 9.10.14.
And don’t overlook Damon Linker‘s “The woke revolution in American journalism has begun“…some of the same observations. And Steven A. Holmes‘ cnn.com piece, “I love The New York Times, but what they did was wrong.”
…for being Celeb Virtue Signallers. Especially Tennisballhead.
Is there any social ill that celebrities can’t fix, or at least point the way toward fixing?
Seriously: When I was young there were times when I tolerated or winked at racist words, jokes, stereotypes, etc. I’m very sorry for having looked the other way when this happened (and I’m talking maybe four or five times), but I will never allow that shit in my presence again.
Speaking as a daily columnist who is genuinely terrified of SJW wokester cancel-culture types, I take total responsibility for the content of Hollywood Elsewhere over the past 16 years, although I am greviously sorry and do humbly apologize for…oh, six or seven columns that I didn’t express or sculpt in quite the right way. And anything else that landed with a thud.
I’m imperfect. Sometimes it comes out wrong. And I hate using more words than necessary. but I’m mostly an X-factor, hard-working, cut-through-the-daily-bullshit samurai truth-teller, and I truly believe in decency and compassion for all. Except for cats who pee on my pillow.
Speaking as a life-long cat lover, I can say with authority that some cats are on the dumb or weird side. One out of several hundred, I mean.
If none-too-bright cats are unhappy or freaked about some kind of confining situation, for example, they’ll sometimes do anything they can to escape, even at their own peril. Or they’ll take revenge upon the person they think is responsible.
Here are four feline incidents that I personally experienced, and one that happened to a friend:
(1) A woman I knew was driving with an anguished male cat on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The weather was cold, a mild snowstorm was blowing, and her car was surrounded by a fair amount of traffic. She was going the usual highway speed. For some reason she leaned over and rolled down the driver-side window, and the cat immediately leapt out.
(2) My ex-wife Maggie and I had a calico cat who was accustomed to outdoor access, and who became extremely upset when we moved into an 8th floor high-rise apartment. The first night we moved in the cat climbed onto a waist-high balcony wall that overlooked the eight-story drop. I put him inside the apartment as this obviously seemed risky. Later that night he got out and jumped. We’d loved him, petted him, fed him, etc. Go figure.
(3) In the late 90s I was driving down Franklin Avenue with a cat who couldn’t handle being in moving cars. Jett and Dylan were with me. The cat was howling and freaking, and at one point jumped onto my shoulders and took a serious milkshake dump all over my neck and onto my blue workshirt. I remember the smell filling the car and the kids screaming with laughter.
(4) My sister and I knew that our excitable cat hated water, so we decided to take him with us on a short rowboat trip to the middle of a pond. As a training exercise. We waited until we were 30 or 40 feet out and then let him go. He looked around, assessed the situation, jumped into the pond and swam ashore.
(5) A girlfriend and I were sharing an apartment on Boston’s Park Drive. Her male cat, Tom, was bunking with us. I love cats but Tom was extremely hostile to me — the only cat I’ve run into who was this negative. One night we came back from a restaurant and found that Tom had peed on my sleeping pillow on our conjugal bed. That was it. Over the next day or two we found someone who was willing to take him.
Everyone understands that Gone With The Wind will return to HBO Max, but with a warning about the antiquated notions and racist content that were unfortunately par for the course when the film was made in ’38 and ’39. Over the last 24 hours a lot of people have bought Bluray, streaming and DVD versions, just in case it disappears altogether from HBO Max, Amazon, Netflix and other streaming services.
I for one prefer to believe that Brad Pitt is palling around with Alia Shawkat rather than, you know, getting down. If it’s the latter, fine, although I’m probably not the only person to express surprise. With Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston in his wake, I guess I never expected that Pitt of all people would join the club of fetching movie-star types whose girlfriends or significant others are…well, a bit outside the mold. Other members of this fraternity include Pierce Brosnan, Hugh Jackman, Clive Owen and Keanu Reeves.
Spike Lee‘s Da 5 Bloods (Netflix, 6.12) is a ghost-ridden Vietnam adventure flick. It’s set in the present but tethered to the past, and is basically a tangle of echoes, memories and associations that are kicking around in Spike’s head. Some of it connects and some of it doesn’t, but it’s always pushing and poking, always jabbing with a stick.
As you might expect in the current climate, reviews have been highly favorable. Everyone loves Spike and nobody wants a pickle. Me included for the most part. I was moderately okay with this effort when it ended. It didn’t leave me in an itchy or irritated place. I got it.
The script is about four black dudes in their late 60s (Clarke Peters, Delroy Lindo, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and Norm Lewis) trekking to Vietnam to accomplish two disparate goals. One, find the remains of a beloved squad leader (Chadwick Boseman) who died in a skirmish with the enemy. And two, find a cache of buried gold bars.
Why these guys have waited a half-century to do this instead of, say, 20 or 30 years ago is anyone’s guess. Peters to the other three in the early ’90s: “Hey, guys, I could use some extra dough. What about returning to Vietnam to collect all that loot?” Three comrades to Peters: “Naah, we’re too young for that shit. Let’s wait until we’re pushing 70.”
My three visits to Vietnam (’12, ’13 and ’16) were peaceful and nourishing. The vibes from the natives couldn’t have been gentler. All the young guys wanted to talk about were iPhones and iPads. Suffice that things are a lot more turbulent for Spike’s crew. Their treasure-hunt (or memory hunt) turns out to be a blending of Treasure of Sierra Madre and Who’ll Stop The Rain, and you know what that means. Bullets fly, mines explode, greed ignites, bad guys come out of the woodwork.
It would be one thing if the “bloods” were just trying to find Boseman’s remains, but the gold is a problem. A peaceful mission is not in the cards. The opposite, in fact. All the bad stuff they left behind in the ’60s comes surging right back. But at the very end it chills out. Tensions ease, sins are forgiven, etc.
I can’t honestly say that Da 5 Bloods comes alive the way BlacKkKlansman did when Spike threw in an epilogue that condemned Trump and the Charlottesville neo-Nazis, but it’s always trying for that kind of thing. All the then-and-now currents (including Black Lives Matter) crash into each other and kick up dust.
Lindo’s character. a short-tempered Trump supporter, is the most histrionic and bothered of the four. Peters (The Wire) is the deepest, wisest and coolest. Lindo’s son David (played by Jonathan Majors) also tags along, probably because someone decided that the ensemble needed some fresh blood.
The dialogue struck me as a little too on-the-nose, but there’s no mistaking where everyone is coming from.
Portions were shot in Ho Chi Minh City but otherwise in rural Thailand.
Any film, play, book, short story, poem or song that uses the phrase “unite the world” goes right into the HE dumpster. Seriously, dude…this looks terrible.
Directed by Dean Parisot, who peaked with Galaxy Quest. Produced by Scott Kroopf and (not a typo) Steven Soderbergh. Written by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon.
Gone With The Wind has been shunned once again, this time by HBO Max, and HE is still saying “yes but hold on.” For despite its deeply offensive depictions of the antebellum South and a culture that was founded upon the ruthless exploitation of African-American slaves, the second half of the first act of Gone With The Wind is nonetheless great cinema.
Because, as I wrote five years ago, GWTW is not actually about this odious history and these conditions. Not really, not deep down. For it is fundamentally a film about how life separates the survivors from the victims when the chips are down, and about the necessity of scrappy, hand-to-mouth survival under the cruelest and most miserable of conditions. It basically says “only the strongest and the most determined survive.”
In June 2015 former N.Y. Post film critic Lou Lumenick called for a shunning of Gone With The Wind because of “undeniably racist” attitudes embedded in its story and characters. A little more than two years later (late August of ’17) the board of Memphis’ Orpheum Theatre announced it would no longer show Gone With The Wind as part of the Orpheum Movie Series due to complaints. The board deemed the 1939 film “insensitive” after receiving “numerous comments” that stemmed from a screening on Friday, 8.11.17.
And now another shoe has dropped upon David O. Selznick and Victor Fleming‘s Oscar winner with the announcement that HBO Max will no longer stream it.
The move came partly in response to “media companies reappraising content in light of nationwide protests over police brutality and systemic racism after the death of George Floyd,” according to a 6.9.20 Hollywood Reporter piece by Abid Rahman.
Another nudge was felt from a Los Angeles Times op-ed by 12 Years A Slave screenwriter John Ridley, published Tuesday (6.9). The headline read “Hey, HBO, Gone With the Wind romanticizes the horrors of slavery. Take it off your platform for now.”
GWTW “glorifies the antebellum south,” Ridley wrote. “It is a film that, when it is not ignoring the horrors of slavery, pauses only to perpetuate some of the most painful stereotypes of people of color.”
Ridley is, of course, correct. There’s never been any question that Selznick’s epic ignores and sugarcoats the realities of 19th Century slavery, and that its Technicolor depiction of the Old South as a fair land of cavaliers and cotton fields makes it in some ways a dark and odious fantasy piece — the anti-12 Years A Slave. Consciousness does evolve and for all its polish and grandeur, Gone With The Wind has become more and more of an unsavory antique in some respects. No argument there.
“But I feel misgivings,” I wrote on 6.26.15. “I don’t believe it’s right to throw Gone With The Wind under the bus just like that. Yes, it’s an icky and offensive film at times. The moment when Vivien Leigh‘s Scarlett O’Hara slaps Butterly McQueen‘s Prissy for being irresponsible in the handling of Melanie giving birth is ugly, to say the least. And the depiction of Everett Brown‘s Big Sam as a loyal and eternal defender of Scarlett in the face of thieves and would-be rapists is another head-scratcher.
“But every time I’ve watched GWTW I’ve always put that stuff in a box in order to focus on the real order of business.
