The Thin Black Duke

Oops. Woody Allen’s latest movie is the Hiroshima of box office bombs:

Woody Allen has posted the lowest box office opening weekend of his career with his 49th film, “Rifkin’s Festival,” grossing just $24,000 on Friday and Saturday from 26 theaters, according to box office sources.

Most of the theaters screening the film are owned by Landmark Theaters, whose flagship Los Angeles location posted the highest single theater total for the film with $2,300. Other theaters outside of Landmark’s circuit screening the film include the Quad Theatre in New York City, where the film grossed $1,600 over two days.

By comparison, Allen’s previous film “Wonder Wheel” earned approximately $125,000 from five screens on its 3-day opening weekend in 2017, when the rise of the #MeToo movement brought long-standing allegations by actress Dylan Farrow against Allen — her adoptive father — returned to the public eye. Farrow, whose brother Ronan helped expose Harvey Weinstein’s decades of sexual assaults in The New Yorker, has accused Allen of molesting her as a child in several interviews as well as in the HBO docuseries “Allen v. Farrow.” He has never been charged or prosecuted and has denied the claims.

There are specific tropes in movies that don’t age particularly well and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

Movies are mirrors fixed in a specific time and place and seeing what’s reflected in them with new eyes in a different era can inform us whether we’ve evolved or regressed as a society. As an example, think about the vast ideological chasm seperating Birth of a Nation from Twelve Years a Slave. Although D.W. Griffith’s racist glorification of the KKK would never be tolerated today, back in the day it was a vision of America that Griffith and the majority of white people in movie theaters across the country were emotionally invested in. It was where white Americans wanted to live.

Sometimes, in spite of what the plot of the movie is supposed to be about, a movie can also be a peepshow inside the filmmaker’s head that accidentally reveals way more than what they originally intended and what’s brought out into the open can get pretty ugly. There are Monsters of the Id that should never be seen but they’re here and they are hiding in plain sight.

Another example of a tiresome, offensive and misogynistic conceit in Hollywood that just won’t go away are the infinite number of “romantic” movies glorifying May-December relationships. Maybe it’s me, but I don’t think it’s heartwarming seeing a senior citizen dating a young woman who probably wasn’t even born yet when he bought his first VCR. Ick.

But remember, these movies are the reflections of what some men in this culture fantasize about every day. The movie is a mirror, and the mirror is only the messenger. The mirror is just reflecting what’s already there.

What makes Malcolm & Marie, Lost in Translation, Silver Linings Playbook, Autumn In New York and other movies of this genre problematic is how they gloss over the inherent power imbalance in these type of relationships. No matter how intelligent and perceptive some young women might be, there are hard lessons that can only be learned by experience. A young woman usually won’t see the big red flags that an older woman would recognize right away.

What comes to mind is a scene from Ron Howard’s Parenthood where Julie (Martha Plimpton) is telling her mother (Dianne Wiest) about being betrayed by her dirtbag boyfriend and Julie doesn’t understand why he lied to her.

Julie: He said that he loved me.
Helen: Men say that. They all say that. Then they cum.

There are predatory men with power who will definitely try to take advantage of a naive and vulnerable young woman because that’s what they do. That’s what Woody Allen tried to do to Mariel Hemingway.

In Woody Allen’s 1979 comedy Manhattan, the filmmaker, then 44, dated a 17-year-old character played by Mariel Hemingway. The part earned Hemingway an Oscar nomination, and, according to the actress in a forthcoming memoir, also the unwanted romantic attention of Allen.

In Out Came the Sun, which will be released on April 7, Hemingway claims that Allen attempted to lure her to Paris once she turned 18—two years after she had filmed Manhattan. “Our relationship was platonic, but I started to see that he had a kind of crush on me, though I dismissed it as the kind of thing that seemed to happen any time middle-aged men got around young women,” writes Hemingway. The actress suggests that Allen attempted to act upon the crush by flying to her parents’ home in Idaho and inviting the teen to Europe.

According to an excerpt obtained by Fox News, the actress cautioned her parents “that I didn’t know what the [sleeping] arrangement was going to be [in Paris], that I wasn’t sure if I was even going to have my own room. Woody hadn’t said that. He hadn’t even hinted it. But I wanted them to put their foot down. They didn’t. They kept lightly encouraging me.”

Hemingway says that she woke up at night with the realization that “[n]o one was going to get their own room. His plan, such as it was, involved being with me.” She says that she went into his guest room and woke him up asking, “I’m not going to get my own room, am I? I can’t go to Paris with you.”

The actress says that Allen left Idaho the next morning.

The moment Woody stepped inside the house, Hemingway’s home suddenly became a place where she wasn’t safe anymore. Hemingway was caught inside Woody’s fantasy where he was the landlord and she was expected to pay the rent. Worse, Hemingway’s parents ignored what was going on. They should have had their daughter’s back but instead her mother and father decided to turn their backs. People are often mesmerized by celebrities and Woody knew that.

But incredibly, in spite of being outnumbered and surrounded, an 18-year-old Mariel Hemingway still found the strength to say “No”. But although Hemingway was able to protect herself back then, it’s still absolutely disgraceful she was painted into a corner at home in the first place.

Even though Woody didn’t get Hemingway into his bed, he probably said to himself, Better luck next time, because I’m damned sure this wasn’t the first time he tried a stunt like this because that’s what men like him did.

But all bad things must come to an end. Years later, Mariel Hemingway finally got the last word:

Now, on the podcast Better Together with Anne & Heather, Hemingway spoke at length with hosts Anne Heche and Heather Duffy about Allen’s Manhattan and the current controversy surrounding Allen v. Farrow. Hemingway says the film “100% couldn’t come out” today due to the now-infamous underage relationship at the heart of the film, according to Variety. “I’m not condoning any behavior, but that movie probably couldn’t come out today,” she added.

The world has moved on but Woody didn’t, so he got left behind. Nowadays the public thinks of Woody Allen as that creepy old guy who married his ex-wife’s adopted stepdaughter.

Annie Hall, the crown jewel of Woody’s filmography, happened a lifetime ago. Instead, moviegoers have Rifkin’s Festival, an odd, stupefying cinematic misfire where the only people laughing in the multiplex are Mike Nelson, Crow and Tom Servo.

Sadly, what’s reflected in Woody Allen’s tedious, pretentious and unfunny movies of late is the frozen mindset of a man who reads the same books, listens to the same music and sees the same movies over and over again. “Cancel Culture” didn’t kill Woody’s movies; it was a self-inflicted wound.

Woody Allen’s movies are mirrors, and the mirrors are only the messenger. The mirror is just reflecting what’s already there.

Or not.

 

Woody Allen’s Creepy Behavior Finally Caught Up With HimPost + Comments (148)

As a Grumpy Old Black Guy living in White America, I’m constantly reminded of the vast chasm that separates “The Law” from “Justice”, and I’m exhausted.

In Arbery death case, possible jurors question hate crimes

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — Several potential jurors in the hate crimes trial of three white men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery said in court Tuesday that they believe problems with racism in America are exaggerated and questioned whether there should be special charges or punishments for crimes motivated by race.

One jury pool member was asked by the judge and attorneys why she wrote on her juror questionnaire that “hate crimes are damaging to society as a whole.”

“I just think it doesn’t matter what the race is,” said the woman, identified in court as juror №156, whom the judge ultimately deemed qualified to remain in the jury pool. “If it’s wrong, it’s wrong.”

Father and son Greg and Travis McMichael armed themselves and chased Arbery in a pickup truck on Feb. 23, 2020, after spotting him running in their Georgia neighborhood. A neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, joined the pursuit and recorded cellphone video of Travis McMichael blasting Arbery with a shotgun.

Allegations that the killing was motivated by racism are at the heart of the federal case in U.S. District Court, where the McMichaels and Bryan are charged with violating 25-year-old Arbery’s civil rights and targeting him because he was Black.

I’m so damned tired of the white people who go on and on about how they “don’t see race”, because more often than not they’re the same clueless white people who never see “racism” either, in spite of the evidence staring them directly in the face.

“The very serious function of racism is distraction,” the poet Toni Morrison said. “It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.” The white people who “don’t see race” engage in these useless and ridiculous debates that never get to the point because it makes them uncomfortable and it’s easier to dismiss the brutal reality of racism when you refuse to take ownership of the truth. It’s impossible to pick the lock of a closed mind because it only opens from the inside.

Robin DiAngelo, a writer and affiliate associate professor of education at the University of Washington, hits the bull’s-eye when she explains the internal struggle of white people in the United States whenever they encounter racial problems:

“Racism is a white problem. It was constructed and created by white people and the ultimate responsibility lies with white people. For too long we’ve looked at it as if it were someone else’s problem, as if it was created in a vacuum.”

I’ve run out of patience for the dishonest white people who play these stupid Jedi Mind Tricks on me. It’s not just absurd; it’s offensive. And whenever they spew nonsense like the murder of Ahmaud Arbery had “nothing at all to do with race”, it immediately pisses me off because not only are they lying to me, they’re lying to themselves.

I think what’s going on is that all these white people who “don’t see race” just want “those people” who happen to be of another race to go away. Forever. I bet they’re the same white people who lose their shit about Colin Kaepernick, rap music, CRT, Michelle Obama and dreadlocks.

By the way, do you believe there are fanboys out there who are outraged by the new “Lord of the Rings” TV series because they’re committing the heinous crime of including niggers characters of color in Middle-Earth?

But not everyone is set on the casting of the elves. When the studio originally released a photo of its multicultural cast, Amazon was immediately met with vitriolic online trolling, as fans took to social media to slam certain roles.

“Obviously there was going to be push and backlash,” Tolkien scholar Mariana Rios Maldonado told Vanity Fair, “but the question is, from whom? Who are these people that feel so threatened or disgusted by the idea that an elf is Black or Latino or Asian?”

And when these racists asswipes get called out for their bullshit, they’ll get upset and talk about the imaginary black “friends” they have. Sigh. Hopefully they won’t be jurors the next time a hate crime happens.

Bottom line, the white people who “don’t see race” want the “White Only” signs to go back up, and they’ll gratefully vote for the other white people who will do it for them.

The White People ‘Who Don’t See Race’ Are RacistPost + Comments (228)

Although it really shouldn’t have been a big surprise (hey, 94 trips around the Sun ain’t bad), Sidney Poitier’s last goodbye still hit me harder than I thought it would:

(CNN) Sidney Poitier, whose elegant bearing and principled onscreen characters made him Hollywood’s first Black movie star and the first Black man to win the best actor Oscar, has died. He was 94.

Clint Watson, press secretary for the Prime Minister of the Bahamas, confirmed to CNN that Poitier died Thursday evening.

Poitier overcame an impoverished background in the Bahamas and softened his thick island accent to rise to the top of his profession at a time when prominent roles for Black actors were rare. He won the Oscar for 1963’s “Lilies of the Field,” in which he played an itinerant laborer who helps a group of White nuns build a chapel.

Many of his best-known films explored racial tensions as Americans were grappling with social changes wrought by the civil rights movement. In 1967 alone, he appeared as a Philadelphia detective fighting bigotry in small-town Mississippi in “In the Heat of the Night” and a doctor who wins over his White fiancée’s skeptical parents in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.”

Even with 20/20 hindsight, it’s almost impossible to overestimate the impact of Sidney Poitier in White America’s Hollywood. In The Heat of The Night, the 1968 Oscar-winning film directed by Norman Jewison, has a scene that powerfully illustrated why that was.

Years ago, before Times Square was assimilated by The Borg Walt Disney Corporation, I used to skip my classes in high school, take the subway to 42nd Street and spend the day watching movies. On this particular afternoon, the movie that I saw was In The Heat of the Night, and I can still clearly remember feeling a collective gasp ripple throughout the entire theater when Poitier slapped Mr. Endicott in the face.

There are pivotal moments in movies when the screen becomes a portal that the audience willingly steps through and they completely immerse themselves into the story being told. Remember when Peter Finch and Murray Head shared a passionate kiss in Sunday Bloody Sunday? Alien revealed the horror of seeing the thing bursting out of John Hurt’s chest. The apes of 2001 gathering around the monolith. There’s Jaws, where a drunken Robert Shaw quietly explains to a horrified Scheider and Dreyfuss why he’ll never wear a life jacket again.

And Sidney Poitier was Virgil Tibbs, a black police detective from Philadelphia who is investigating a murder in goddamned Sparta, Mississippi, a small town in the deep South where black lives never mattered. But in spite of knowing how dangerous it was, Tibbs didn’t hesitate to slap that arrogant white plantation owner who stupidly assaulted him. They call me Mr. Tibbs. Even now, this scene is extraordinary and powerful.

It was the slap seen in movie theaters ’round the world.

But wait, it gets better.

In the textbook Civil Rights and Race Relations in the USA, Poitier states: “I said, ‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll make this movie for you if you give me your absolute guarantee when he slaps me I slap him right back and you guarantee that it will play in every version of this movie. I try not to do things that are against nature.”

And Poitier wasn’t a fraudulent Hollywood tough guy who only demonstrated his bravery by beating up on stuntmen onscreen. During the filming of In The Heat of the Night, the cast and crew were harassed by loudmouth redneck assholes. Poitier didn’t ask to leave; he slept with a gun under his pillow instead. As my favorite Aunt used to say, Don’t start none, won’t be none.

Not every movie that Poitier starred in was a classic, of course. However, throughout his distinguished career in Hollywood, Poitier never allowed himself to become the punchline of dumb racist jokes. I try not to do things that are against nature, Poitier said. And he kept that promise. Poitier was an ebony mirror that reflected black people’s strength, dignity and elegance. Shuckin’ and jivin’ was never in Poitier’s toolbox.

Poitier just ignored the “White Only” signs and went where he needed to go and the world made room for him because Poitier wouldn’t be ignored. And yeah, the brother made it look cool af, too.

(Because I’m a sf nerd, sometimes I like to imagine there’s an alternate universe where Poitier is sitting in the Captain’s chair on the Enterprise. That’d be so easy to sell.)

At the Academy Awards on March 24, 2002, a grateful Denzel Washington acknowledged the importance of Sidney Poitier’s legacy, because Washington understood that “next” will never happen if someone doesn’t do it “first”.

“Before Sidney, African American actors had to take supporting roles in major studio films that were easy to cut out in certain parts of the country,” Washington, then 47, told the audience before bringing Poitier to the stage. “But you couldn’t cut Sidney Poitier out of a Sidney Poitier picture. He was the reason a movie got made: the first solo, above-the-title African American movie star. He was unique.”

Thank you, Mr. Poitier. A blessing to your memory.

Sidney Poitier Made A Place For Himself In White America’s HollywoodPost + Comments (85)