This morning Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone posted a sum-up piece that addresses the militant oversteps of the totalitarian Twitter mob over the last three years, give or take.
The piece is called “Best Picture and the Green Book Effect.” I’ve highlighted a few portions, but before I post them never forget an essential HE legend, which is that Green Book‘s Best Picture triumph, which happened a little more than two years ago, was an absolutely glorious pushback against the p.c. Twitter jackals.
Yes, I’ve said this two or three times before but it feels so good to repeat it.
Sasha excerpt #1: “I have never believed Green Book deserved the [ugly] treatment it got [from the wokesters], certainly not how the filmmakers’ past was rifled through and exposed. To me, it was redirected anger at Trump that caused a lot of the anger. [And yet Academy] voters didn’t seem to care and still picked the film to win Best Picture. Although now most people in the film coverage industry believe Green Book got what it deserved and that the Academy, which had picked Moonlight just two years before, was racist for voting for Green Book.”
Sasha excerpt #2: “The balloon of hysteria that arose on Twitter in reaction to Green Book’s success [was tumultuous]. They mostly left the film alone until it started winning the top prizes. The critics had thrown their lot 100% behind Roma and fully expected the Academy would make history with the first ‘foreign language’ film to win Best Picture.
“The Academy finally did that the following year [with Parasite], probably because of what happened with Green Book and Roma.
“But Roma was never going to win. If you gave voters only those two choices there is very little chance they were going to pick Roma. It was a beautiful film but it was not a general audience crowd-pleaser like Green Book is.
“In almost every case, a Best Picture winner is that one movie you can sit anyone down in front of and they will at least get it if not love it. They have to get it. Many could not and did not get why Roma was receiving so much praise.”
HE side riff: Roma lost support because of two things: (a) the opening 15 minutes, in which Yalitza Aparicio‘s Cleo” is shown cleaning up a spacious two-story Mexico City home and making beds and whatnot for what feels like forever, and (b) there were too many dog loads in the driveway, a problem made worse by the fact that Cleo made no real attempt to regularly clean them up.
Sasha excerpt #3: “Film Twitter tends to dictate the narrative and the journalists pick up on that narrative. If they say a movie is racist, journalists sometimes go along with it. If they say sexism is why a person did not get a Best Director nomination, journalists go along with it.
“But even if people who cover the race objected to the treatment of Green Book, they weren’t going to say anything. It was way too risky.
“If they did say anything it would be in support of the attempts to bring the film down. That’s really the way you build clout online in the insular world of film criticism or bloggers or fans online. You go along or else face being ignored or being attacked.”
Sorry, Spike, but every time I watch this clip I can’t help smiling:
