#Ava DuVernay Is Also A Weinstein Supporter

[msclaritea]

Jay-Z Joins Stars LaKeith Stanfield, David Oyelowo & More at ‘The Book of Clarence’ Premiere | Anna Diop, Babs Olusanmokun, Caleb McLaughlin, David Oyelowo, Eric Kofi-Abrefa, James McAvoy, Jay Z, Lakeith Stanfield, Micheal Ward, Movies, Nicholas Pinnock, Omar Sy, Teyana Taylor

Tons of celebrities are coming together to celebrate the premiere of The Book of Clarence!

The event took place on Friday (January 5) at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.

Jay-Z, who served as a producer for the project, was one of the biggest stars to arrive!

Among the film's cast members in attendance were: LaKeith Stanfield, David Oyelowo, Omar Sy, James McAvoy, Teyana Taylor, Caleb McLaughlin, Anna Diop, Babs Olusanmokun, Micheal Ward, Nicholas Pinnock, and Eric Kofi-Abrefa.

The Book of Clarence is directed by Jeymes Samuel.

Here's the official synopsis: The Book of Clarence is a bold new take on the timeless Hollywood era Biblical epic. Streetwise but struggling, Clarence (Stanfield) is trying to find a better life for himself and his family, make himself worthy to the woman he loves, and prove that he’s not a nobody. Captivated by the power and glory of the rising Messiah and His apostles, he risks everything to carve his own path to a divine life, a journey through which he finds redemption and faith, power and knowledge."

I keep forgetting that Jay Z produced that pile of shit, The Book of Clarence. So, it's official then. Jay Z is nothing more than another backstabbing bro ON THE DOWN LOW (likely every person in the film are) a member of the Cult of Scientology, which crosses over into Freemasons. Besides the fact that evidence is increasing that Beyonce is not a free agent under Jay Z and is in fact a prisoner, he's been openly involved with Satanic practices, the NFL for some reason, only trusted Jay Z to do business with, and there's also the fact that he got black folks to jump up and down, to his tune dedicated to the Cray Brothers. Yeah, they were British thugs, who regularly abused young boys. David Oyelowo turns up everywhere suspicious, is attached at the HIP to Oprah, a known abuse enabler, and has a direct tie to Sophie Hunter. The truly disgusting part of all of this was their misuse and mistreatment of A lister' Benedict Cumberbatch in their films and I have little doubts, on the set. He was specifically instructed to use the Happy Days character, Fonzie, as a humorous template. The CIA MKULTRA program embedded many pieces of pop culture into the system. I found out recently that Fonzie is one of those pieces. Now, we know why Henry Winkler's cheesy old self keeps being embedded into current pop culture.

"..In 'Dandy in the Underworld', Sebastian wrote: “A lifetime of neglect had left me seething with a lust for revenge.” It was our grandfather who introduced my brother to the Glaswegian ex-gangster Jimmy Boyle. Alec had arranged for some of Boyle's sculptures to be exhibited in Hull. With his staunch liberal values about reform, he was impressed by Boyle, a celebrity after his book A Sense of Freedom was turned into a BBC film. Boyle was first imprisoned for murder in 1967, and was released in 1982. In his heyday, he was an enforcer and debt collector for the Glasgow mafia, known as “Scotland's most violent man.” Despite this, his sentence was reduced, and it seems reasonable to suppose my grandfather's support had something to do with it. In 1983, Boyle and his wife Sarah Trevelyan teamed up with my brother and his partner and started the Gateway Exchange, a reform center for drug addicts, sex offenders, and ex-convicts in which my brother professed to be “well-camouflaged.” In his memoir, he writes how Boyle “allowed [him] to express forbidden impulses, secret wishes and fantasies” (S. Horsley, 2007, p. 119).1 My brother's fascination for criminality was something he shared with Alec and that included writing letters to the Kray twins and the notorious Moors murderer, Myra Hindley. A 1999 Guardian article about Jimmy Boyle mentions how, in 1967 (just before he was arrested), Boyle “was on the run in London and under the protection of the Krays”. According to my brother, Boyle worked with the Krays during the Sixties and possibly earlier. Jimmy Savile was connected to the Krays, and Savile was from Yorkshire, where my brother and I grew up and where Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper (whom Savile also knew), allegedly stalked his victims during my teen years. (During that period, Savile was questioned by police about the murders and briefly considered to be a suspect.) As described in Seen and Not Seen, Savile's early days as a dance-club manager meant rubbing shoulders with gangsters, maybe even as a teenager. He and the Krays worked and played together in the Sixties, and were likely involved with the sex trafficking of children to members of the British elite, including via care homes where children were allegedly tortured, even killed (see Chapter 14). Myra Hindley and Ian Brady frequented the same dance halls where Savile DJ-ed, in Manchester in the 1960s, and Savile talked about being friends with Ian Brady. Brady (who grew up in Glasgow before moving to Manchester), bragged about his associations with the Glasgow mafia and the Kray twins. Glasgow was also where the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) was founded, in 1975. It was affiliated with the National Council for Civil Liberties, a cause my family would almost certainly have actively supported. PIE's aim was to lower the age of consent to four, or to abolish it altogether. It wasn't until I was writing Seen and Not Seen that I began to try to put all of these pieces together. It was like a first flyover of the scorched earth of my childhood. Since then I have touched down and begun to explore it more directly. The present work is like the first draft of a charred map.

“It is a tragic paradox that the very qualities that lead to a man's extraordinary capacity for success are also those most likely to destroy him.” —Sebastian Horsley, private correspondence with the author

Harriet Harman has described Margaret Hodge as her best friend in Parliament. Hodge's late husband, Henry Hodge, was also an Islington Labour councilor, and a former chairman of the National Council for Civil Liberties. In 1985, Margaret Hodge “announced that Islington Council would positively discriminate in favour of gay staff. It exempted self-declared gay men from background checks, and paedophiles pretending to be decent gay men cynically exploited this.” Rightonmeanwhile had founded a training course for residential workers. Pedophilia, he declared in one essay, was “no more bizarre than a penchant for redheads” (ibid.). The article quotes a “whistleblower” called Dr. Davies: “I think there could be more than one home with Savile connections. Children from Islington's home at 114 Grosvenor Avenue were taken to Jersey by Rabet, and Savile visited Jersey's Haut de la Garenne home. Survivors of abuse there have described being taken to an Islington children's home” (ibid.). Haut de la Garenne was visited by the Kray twins and Lord Boothby. The crimes that allegedly occurred there were considerably more severe than “mere” pedophilia, involving as they did the violent rape, torture, and murder of children. In February 2015, the independent journalism site Exaro alleged that Righton was involved in the sadistic murder of a boy at Lord Henniker's estate (Wood, 2015; unfortunately, Exaro no longer exists and the site has been taken down). Although much of this seems almost unthinkable when written down in black and white, all of these crimes appear to be sourced in roughly—or exactly—the same social circles and value set as those of my own family.

How many of the individuals (men and women, but mostly men) who can be identified as “players” at varying levels within the grand game of social engineering either betray a tendency for child molestation or have been victims of it—or both? If we can believe the accounts at all, it's a truly alarming number. Can we hypothesize from this that “situational” child molestation (taken to sometimes unimaginable extremes) is the unconscious (and in some cases conscious) drive behind the many, myriad master plans of the elite? Perhaps not, but it's at least consistent with what we know about human individuals, which is that the sex drive is one of the strongest motivating factors there is for human beings. It's also consistent with the way the sexual element of criminal and conspiratorial networks, such as the Krays or Jimmy Savile, while well-concealed, eventually turns out to be the most remarkable thing about them. My suspicion is that there's a narrowing of sexual (and therefore all other) interests as an individual ascends the social hierarchy and has his or her sexual neuroses inflamed and indulged, into a fine diamond point of pathology. To know what a man or woman is made of, look into his or her sexual drives; it is the drives that are the most carefully hidden that run the deepest. This is my own particular bias, and the evidence I have cited for it is that sexual deviancy and social status seem to be inextricably intertwined in our present society, and to increase in tandem..."

Speaking of Down Low, I AM DONE watching Oprah Winfrey lackey, David Oyelowo, a British, Gay man, linked w/every shady fucker in Hollywood of getting cast to play historical black figures. @ParamountMovies is shit for pulling this with Bass Reeves. This is because of Redstone.

[noxstellacaelum]

Filtering Female Characters Through the Male Gaze

Female characters filtered through the male gaze:  A (way) too long post about why we need a more diverse and inclusive approach to staffing showrunners, writers, directors, crew – heck, all roles -- in TV and movies.  

Yes, I know I am not the first person here on this.  

And note that while I have included a few tags b/c I talk about my frustration with Shadowhunters, Veronica Mars, the Irishman, Richard Jewell, and a few other recent shows/movies, I don’t get to this stuff until the very end,  I appreciate that fans may not want to wade through the entire essay, which (again), is a bit of personal catharsis.

I recently had a random one-off exchange with a TV writer on twitter.  The writer said that she had enjoyed the movie Bombshell much more than its Rotten Tomatoes rating would have suggested.  She wondered if the disconnect between her experience/perception of the movie and that of mainstream reviewers might have been shaped by gender: Specifically, she observed that Bombshell is a movie about women, but most reviewers are male.  

I have complicated feelings about Bombshell.  On one hand, yes, there was and is a toxic culture at Fox News.  Yes, Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly were victims of that toxic culture.  But no, these women were not mere bystanders:  They traded in the racism, misogyny, and xenophobia (for starters) that still characterize Fox News today.  Why should these wealthy, privileged white women – both of whom spent many years as willing foot soldiers in the Fox News army -- get a glossy, Hollywood-approved redemption/vindication arc?  On the other hand, I am glad that the movie makers made a film about sexual harassment, and that the movie presented Kelly, in particular, as an at least somewhat complicated character.  This would not be the first time that a movie about women – especially complicated, and not always likeable women – has proven to be polarizing.

My ambivalence about Bombshell notwithstanding, the writer with whom I exchanged tweets is (not surprisingly, since she is in the industry and I am not) on to something when it comes to gender, character development and critical reception. It’s not just that Bombshell was about women, but reviewed largely by men; it’s that stories about female characters (real or fictional) often are filtered through the male gaze in Hollywood:  On many projects – even those focused on female characters – creators/ head writers are male, directors are male, showrunners are male, and producers are male.  This matters, because preferencing the male gaze impacts what stories about women get told, who gets to tell them, and how these stories are received inside and outside Hollywood.  

First, though, the caveats. I do not mean to suggest that men can never tell great stories about women.  Of course they can.   I also don’t mean to suggest that being female exempts creators, writers, directors, showrunners, etc. from sexism or misogyny (or any other forms of bigotry, as my discussion of Bombshell suggests).   There are plenty of women who prop up the patriarchy.  Rebecca Traister’s work speaks to this issue, as does the work of Cornell philosopher Kate Manne.  There is an important literature on the concept of misogynoir (misogyny directed at black women, involving both gender and race), a term coined by black queer feminist Moya Bailey, as well.  Intersectionality matters in understanding what stories are told, who gets to speak, and how stories are received in and outside Hollywood.  I also don’t mean to suggest that there are no powerful women in Hollywood.   Shonda Rhimes; Ava DuVernay, Reese Witherspoon (increasingly, given her role as a producer of projects like Big Little Lies), Greta Gerwig’s work in Lady Bird and Little Women, and others come to mind.  As I am not in the entertainment industry, I am sure others could put together a far more complete and accurate list of female Hollywood power brokers.  And, finally, I appreciate that Hollywood is a business, and people fund and make movies that they think their target audiences want to see.  So long as young, male viewers are a coveted demographic, we are going to see projects with women who appeal to this demographic onscreen.

Given these caveats, why do I think that the filtering of female characters through the male gaze is an issue? For me, it has to do with a project’s “center of gravity” -- that place, at the core of the project’s storytelling, where the characters’ agency and autonomy comes from.  It’s where I look to understand the characters’ choices and their narrative arcs.  When a character’s center of gravity is missing or unstable or unreliable, the character’s choices don’t make sense, and their narrative arc lacks emotional logic. Center of gravity is not about whether a character is likeable.  It’s about whether a character – and the project’s overall storytelling and narrative voice – make sense.  

When female characters are filtered through a male gaze, a project’s center of gravity can shift, even if unintentionally, away from the characters’ agency and point of view:  So, instead of charting her own course through a story, a female character starts to become defined by her proximity to other characters and stories.  She becomes half of a “ship” . . . or a driver of other characters’ growth (often through victimization, suffering, or self-sacrifice) . . . or mostly an object of sexual desire (whether requited or not).   Eventually, she can lose her voice entirely.  When that happens, instead of a “living, breathing” (yes, fictional, I know) character, we are left with a mirror/ mouthpiece who advances the plot, and the stories, of everyone else.

What are some recent examples of this? The two that I have mentioned recently here are Shadowhunters and Veronica Mars S4.  

- With SHTV, I will always wonder what might have been if the show – which is based on books written by a woman, intentionally as a “girl power” story – had female showrunners. Would an empowered female showrunner have left Clary, THE PROTAGONIST OF A 6 BOOK SERIES – alone on an NYC street in a skimpy party dress, in November, with no money, no ID, no mother, no father figure and no love of her life, stripped of her memories, her magic, and chosen vocation, as punishment, after she saved the world?  Would a female showrunner have sidelined Clary’s love Jace, and left him grieving and suicidal, while his family lived their best lives and told him to move on?  Would a female showrunner have said, in press coverage of the series finale, that the future of the Clary and Jace characters was a matter for fan fiction?  After spending precious time in the series finale wrapping up narrative arcs for non-canon and/or ancillary characters.  And to my twitter correspondent’s point, I guess I am not surprised that mainstream entertainment media outlets didn’t call out the showrunners’ mistreatment of Clary, and by extension, Jace, and the obliteration of their narrative arcs -- and yes, I am looking at you, Andy Swift of TV line (who called the above-mentioned memory wipe “actually perfect”).

- Likewise, with Veronica Mars, would a more diverse and inclusive writers room have made S4 Veronica less insightful and less competent than her high school self, or quite so riven with self-loathing, or quite so careless and cruel with the people in her life who love her?  Would a more inclusive creative team have made S4 Veronica less aware of the class and race dynamics of Neptune, yet more casually racist, in her mid-30s, than she was in high school?

- There are so many other examples from 2019.  Clint Eastwood falsely suggesting that a female reporter (who is now deceased and thus unable to defend herself) traded sex for tips from an FBI agent in Richard Jewell. Game of Thrones treatment/resolution of the Ceresi and Daenerys characters – where to even start.  Martin Scorsese’s decision to give Oscar winner Anna Paquin’s character a total of 7 lines in the 3-plus hour movie the Irishman.

- And, in real life, I wonder whether a Hollywood that empowered and supported female creators would make sure that people like Mira Sorvino and Annabella Sciorra got a bunch of work while also making sure that Harvey Weinstein never again is in a position of power or influence.   Same with female comics targeted by Louis C.K. Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose … the list is long, and Kate Manne’s work on what she calls “himpathy” is useful here.

To be clear, I am not saying that stories involving “ships” of whatever flavor, stories of suffering and self-sacrifice, and stories of finding (or losing) intimate relationships are “bad” or “wrong” or inherently exploitive of female characters.  I don’t think that at all.  I also don’t think that female characters have to be perfectly well-adjusted, virtuous, or free from bias, or that they should never be make bad choices or mistakes.  I want female characters who are flawed, nuanced.  I don’t mind lives that are messy, or romantic entanglements that are complicated.  Finally, I don’t think that that faulty, reductive, or unfair portrayals of female characters is a new thing.  Mary Magdalene was almost certainly not a prostitute, after all.  And classicist Emily Wilson – the first woman to translate the Odyssey into English – has brought a hugely important perspective (including an awareness of how gender matters in translation) and voice to the translation and study of canonical characters and works.

At the end of the day, I just want female characters to be able to speak with their own voices, from their perspectives.  I want them to have their own, chosen, narrative arcs.  I want them to speak, act, see, and feel as autonomous individuals, with agency, and not just in reference to others.  And, I think that more a more diverse and inclusive approach to staffing writers rooms and in choosing show runners, directors, and key positions in storytelling would help.  

[96thdayofrage]

That’s a bold statement right? Oprah Winfrey is what most people consider to be the epitome of black excellence. She is a rags to riches story and a story of overcoming childhood sexual trauma and poverty to gain extreme wealth which she uses to “empower women” and “give representation to black women in media”. And in a lot of ways that is true. Oprah’s face every weekday on ABC was definitely something that made way for black women in the entertainment industry and journalism. She supports black directors like Ava Duvernay and Tyler Perry. She “gives back to the community”. What’s not to like about Oprah, right? PLENTY. Plenty is not to like about Oprah and her thirty year long career has PLENTY of anti-blackness, misogynoir, and dirtiness; which should honestly be expected. No one gets that rich without playing the game.

Reasons I don’t fuck with Oprah: The semi-comprehensive rant.

Oprah caters to the white feminist gaze. If you need context on what I mean by this please check out my article: ““Aint I a Woman?”- Feminism, the Illusion of Inclusion, and Historic Betrayal of White Women”. The demographic that Oprah has targeted for viewership of her talk show, and for her magazine are white women. Any episode of her show will feature a mostly white woman audience. This is possible because white women have more economic mobility to be stay at home mothers than black women. And in knowing this, Oprah’s show catered to it’s demographic. Being a registered and loud democrat her show was also HIGHLY liberal in its topics.

She was known for asking the hard questions- which in this context means “willing to gaslight and use dog whistle tactics on her black guests”- especially her black women guests.

One instance of this is when she interviewed Toni Braxton after Braxton filed for bankruptcy in 1998. Toni was embarrassed from having found herself in this situation. She was in an abusive record contract with La Face where she was only making $0.35 per album.

For context, La Face also famously fucked over TLC and in 1995 they had to file bankruptcy as well. Toni had FIVE Grammys and had sold over $170 million in records.

With TLC going bankrupt, the conversation on black women artists in the industry and specifically the record label in question fucking black women artists over was a part of public consciousness… for the black community. But for her white feminist, neo-liberal audience, Oprah wasn’t asking questions about why this continued to happen to black women. The specific abuses of this record company were COMPLETELY glazed over. She chose instead to GASLIGHT THE FUCK out of Toni- essentially victim blaming her for being taken advantage of by her record company. She also asked Toni very pointed questions about why the then five time Grammy winner felt like she had the right to spend the money she should have been earning. Toni is noticeably hurt, embarrassed, and confused by the questions and has been vocal about her feelings in that moment. Oprah is trash as fuck for this shit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftLjr4CQcrQ

In another instance of shitting on a black woman, Mo’Nique has also been vocal about her dislike of Oprah. Mo’Nique worked with Oprah for Precious. Oprah asked permission for herself to interview Mo’Nique’s brother who molested her as a child. Mo’Nique approved, but declined her own attendance, then confided in Oprah PRIVATELY about issues with her mother. It was clear that there was no love between Mo’Nique and her mother. Oprah responded by inviting Mo’Nique’s mother and father on the show and interviewing them as well. She also allowed Gerald to “give his side” and talk about how he was hurt by talking about her abuse at this hand and paint himself as a victim, while her mother and father tell how they’re upset that she talked about this and should’ve been discussed within the family (but they all agreed to come to the show).

Oprah allowed Mo’Nique’s family, and her abuser to gaslight her on national TV. And in the interview, Oprah also acknowledged that she was aware of the beef between Mo’Nique and her mother at the time.

Mo’Nique explains her side of the story here: https://youtu.be/Jb6N7aw61z8

Mo’Nique confronted Oprah about going behind her back and Oprah said she would “check into it” and never called back. Mo’Nique then confronted Oprah the next time they saw each other in person and Oprah issued a half assed apology. Oprah, Tyler Perry, and Lee Daniels then engaged in a smear campaign labeling Mo’Nique as difficult to work with because she was not okay with Oprah exploiting her trauma in ways she didn’t approve. Mo’Nique’s career suffered as a result. Mo’Nique is still fighting the effect this has had on her career and even recently has called out Oprah again about her silence on her Netflix boycott and black women not being paid what they’re worth in Hollywood.

Oprah has been loudly silent recently as well, claiming she’s not going to “meet negative energy where it is”… but she was willing to meet Mo’Nique’s abusers (in more ways than one) and exploit her trauma. TRASH.

Oprah has several problematic business relationships and personal relationships. Her most notable one is with Donald Trump himself. They were so close that Donald Trump once remarked in 1999 that he considered her as a running mate. He even echoed the sentiment in 2015 when he was running. Oprah and Trump have an over 30 year relationship and he has been on her show several times, with the most recent being in 2011. The first known (at least to the indication of my research) appearance of his on her talk show was in 1988. We are now real aware of the kind of vile, racist, sexually abusive, and all around terrible human being he is- but how is Oprah guilty by association if his political views weren’t publicly known until his 2016 presidential run? Answer: Donald Trump has been a racist as long as he’s been a public figure.

Examples of Donald Trump’s historical racism include: being found to discriminate against black renters in the 1970’s, racist treatment of black employees at his hotels and casinos, calling for the death penalty of the Central Park 5 in 1989 (and maintaining that they were guilt in 2016 which is ten years after they were exonerated), stating in 1989 that “well educated blacks have privilege”, blatant racism on Obama’s birth, and this is all before he ever started his political campaign in 2015 with more blatant racism. And this is the man that Oprah gave a platform on her show several times and never inquired about the lawsuits, the sexual assault accusations, nor his political views. And seeing as though he was close enough to her to see her as a potential running mate- I understand why those questions never came up.

Toni Braxton’s Gucci silverware was much, much more important.

Oprah’s Harpo studios have done a lot of work with the Weinstein company. Weinstein is the man behind the co-opting of the #MeToo movement by white feminists. The #MeToo movement was started by Tarana Burke, a black woman who has all been erased from the #MeToo narrative in favor of pretty, white actresses. According to the actresses who have accused Weinstein of assault and harassment, his behavior was no secret. Oprah, as an insider to the business had to have been aware of who this man was and still chose to work with him. Weinstein also used his relationship with and proximity to Oprah to lure in women.

This, of course, is not her fault, but is also easily avoidable by not having a close relationship with a serial sexual abuser.

I don’t kiss on folks I don’t know that well- personally.

Proponents of Oprah often times cite her humanitarian efforts as a means to justify her as a “Black leader” or black excellence, but many are not aware that most celebrities only donate what they would have had to pay in taxes, and Oprah, as an incredibly wealthy woman would have to pay A LOT in taxes. Some of her tales of generosity have amounted to serious harm for its recipients. For example- the recipients of the famous car giveaway found that after being forced to pay taxes on the car, it was much more trouble than it was worth and most couldn’t afford to keep it. At her famous, glamorous school in south Africa, tales of her covering up knowledge and inaction of sexual assault being committed there is ripe. It is also notable that on the list of official charities that she has been known to contribute to- none of them are black women specific with the exception of the Girl’s school. As someone who caters to white liberals, I don’t exactly expect them to.

I grew up in Chicago and went to Harper High School for one year before transferring to a private Catholic school on a scholarship. Oprah featured the school on her show in 2006, then followed up in 2010 (the year after I transferred out). Oprah offered no financial aid to the students of Harper High School who she used for trauma porn. The student exchange program started by the show did continue, however, for a few years after she came and left.

Arne Duncan attempted to “turnaround” the school and gave it some funds, but due to the actual socioeconomic issues that were affecting student enrollment, attendance, and motivation never being addressed, mental health services never being addressed or offered, the violence in the outside community never being addressed, and the actual infrastructure of the school continuing to fall into dilapidation- the turnaround failed.

Arne Duncan never saw the turnatound through- he left Chicago to be Secretary of Education for Obama in 2008, the year I arrived at Harper as a student.

As someone who was an actual student of Harper, but came from a private education the year prior and the years after- it feels like a prison.

It is a place that sucks the motivation from even the brightest students. The work was not challenging to me. The services for students who were gifted and motivated like me were limited and I found myself coasting through because the workload wasn’t challenging. I can understand how students with hard home lives, with different educational ability levels, and with different levels of motivation could walk into that prison and never see or want anything more from their education. Having witnessed this first hand and walked away without offering aid is disgusting of Oprah.

Oprah answered questions about the opening of her South African school in 2007 with the logic ”If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don’t ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school.” Her inaction is loud. She met with Harper students who were literally asking for the same standards of education as white suburban children, opened a school elsewhere without providing any resources, then went on her show and said “I believe, just as I know all of you watching believe, that every American child deserves the best school” and encouraged people to go to Standup.com for aid instead. She has no problems with broadcasting the trauma of black children so her white viewers can feel like they helped. She has no problems walking away from the same black children she just exploited without providing them resources, then further going to the media and claiming that the black children in the city she claims as home doesn’t want or deserve them. Fuck Oprah.

And yes- this one IS personal.

In the years since Oprah has ignored the cries for help from inner city Chicago kids for better education- CPS (Chicago Public Schools) has gone on a full scale assault on those same children, closing and targeting schools of children in poor black and latino neighborhoods for closure and forcing them to travel longer distances, into unfamiliar and unsafe territories. This is marked by the CPS “ Safe Passage” program where CPS now pays adults to stand on corners on the new routes to these schools and protect children who are in unfamiliar neighborhoods on their way to school. CPS has announced the closure of ALL FOUR high schools in the Englewood area, Harper will close at the end of this year. This means ALL Englewood high school students will have no high school in their neighborhood.

Oprah had a chance to make a real difference here ten years ago and decided these kids weren’t worth it. It is honestly disgusting. But let Oprah tell it- these kids don’t want or deserve more.

Oprah’s Golden Globes Speech this year was when I had officially had enough of her white feminist, neo-liberal nonsense, and pandering to white sensibilities at the cost of erasing the pain of black women and children. In this speech, Oprah compared the historical sexual and racial abuse experienced by black women and girls (like the assaults she covered up at her school) to this pretty little white elite #MeToo movement (the one that calls out her buddies Trump and Weinstein, and has erased black women like Tarana Burke). Erasure and exploitation of black women and children and our trauma for white feminists to feel some sick sense of Munchausen’s by proxy is honestly repulsive.

Their struggle has never been ours.

Oprah has been recently more on the producing side, giving opportunities to black women in film like Ava DuVernay. Most of Oprah’s credit in the black community come from her acting and producing career on the grounds that she provides representation for black people in media. I have a counter for that as well. How many films has Oprah produced that she did not also star in, thus making them self serving? Of those few- how many were actually targeted to African American demographics? Queen Sugar and Greenleaf have found a home on her network- as has Iyanla: Fix My Life- but with those exceptions- Oprah’s body of work is just more neo-liberal white feminist stories about fighting for white approval and acceptance and furthering the idea that proximity to whiteness is an accomplishment. This is an idea that’s just as damaging to black audiences as lack of representation at all.

Her stories also seem to either be black women trauma porn (on theme) or integrationalist. This is most interesting to me, as her projects that are not geared towards black audiences like The Hundred Foot Journey, don’t have these same themes.

The family of one of her films The Great Debaters is currently suing her- claiming she never paid for the rights to their patriarch’s story. She used her promotional tour for Selma to down talk the young, black, grassroots protesters against police brutality in Ferguson. This is a very stark contrast, considering that she is now offering thousands of dollars to support protesters of school shootings in Florida, whom are also grassroots, but also not mostly black and are also in line with the neo-liberal political agenda.

Between Oprah’s dicey connections in the industry, her respectability politics, her exploitation of black pain, her gas lighting of black women in crisis, and her erasure of black women’s SPECIFIC intersectionality for white women’s gaze and coin- I find no qualms with making the following statement:

FUCK OPRAH.

[bigyack-com]

Harvey Weinstein Is Gone, but Hollywood Is Still a Man’s World

LOS ANGELES — In Hollywood, director jobs are no longer automatically filled by white men. Television writers’ room have made diversity and inclusion top priorities. Human resources departments at major media corporations are more responsive when complaints are filed. Intimacy coordinators, who introduce physical consent considerations into the artistic process, are now normal on productions featuring sexual content.It has been nearly two and a half years since the sexual misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein burst into public view, and much is different in Hollywood.But the entertainment industry has been doing things a certain way for decades, and not every aspect of it has been quick to change. Even as Mr. Weinstein was found guilty on Monday of two felony sex crimes, Hollywood largely remains a man’s world.Take the Oscars, moviedom’s ultimate show of power and prestige. For the ninth time in 10 years, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences did not nominate a woman for best director in 2020. Only one of the 20 acting nominations went to a person of color. And with the exception of “Parasite” and “Little Women,” the majority of the films honored by the Academy — “The Irishman,” “Ford v Ferrari,” “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” and “Joker” — were portraits of white men directed by prominent white auteurs.“I hear people saying a lot of things they hadn’t said before: that inclusion matters, that they understand the need for representation, that they believe in diverse people and perspectives being centered,” the writer and director Ava DuVernay said. “But saying it and doing it aren’t parallel tracks.”One group of high-powered women in town maintains a running list of the white men who keep rising up the executive ladder while the women stay at least one step below. Jennifer Salke, for instance, became the head of Amazon Studios in 2018 after her predecessor, Roy Price, was accused of sexual harassment. But the former Sony executive Mike Hopkins was brought in last month to oversee Amazon’s video entertainment business. Ms. Salke reports to him and he reports to Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder.It is unlikely that accused harassers like Brett Ratner, James Toback, Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer will return to the public eye anytime soon. (Those men, and Mr. Weinstein, have denied any allegations of nonconsensual sex.)But many in town remain frustrated by those who were accused of improprieties — or who worked closely with those who were — and have been allowed to return to work. Case in point: John Lasseter, who was removed from his position as the creative chief of Pixar after acknowledging misbehavior in 2018, landed a top job at Skydance Animation last year. The former Weinstein Company partners David Glasser and Bob Weinstein, Harvey’s brother, have each formed new production companies. Mr. Glasser raised some $300 million in financing from partners such as Ron Burkle, and has become a fixture on the festival circuit.“No matter how much things are shifting in the right direction, when you get to the top of these media companies, you will usually find a white dude,” said Nina Jacobson, a veteran producer and the former president of Disney’s Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group. “The power behind the power is still white and male, and in terms of truly passing the torch in corporate life, the torch has not yet been passed.”On the whole, Hollywood has become a more inclusive place. It has been helped by the rise of streaming services, which have a seemingly insatiable need for more content that appeals to new and diverse audiences. Women and people of color have been finding their voices through organizations like Time’s Up and ReFrame, which have transformed the issues of gender and racial equality from tired buzzwords into vital, concrete paths to addressing the imbalanced power structures that some blame for allowing abusers like Mr. Weinstein to flourish.“I think that the very small group of people that are waiting for things to even out and go back to the status quo need to realize that’s never going to happen,” said Nina Shaw, an entertainment lawyer and a co-founder of Time’s Up. “But we also need to figure out a way forward.”Last summer, as the showrunner Melissa Rosenberg began developing a pilot for HBO Max based on the prequel to the 1998 film “Practical Magic,” she noticed stark changes in corporate attitudes.“There were very specific intentions from the studio and the network to have diverse voices in the room,” said Ms. Rosenberg, who created the Netflix show “Jessica Jones” and was an executive producer for “Dexter.” She added that she had been told, “You will not have a room without people of color and diversity of gender and sexual orientation.”“That was a big change,” Ms. Rosenberg said. “When I was coming up it would be sufficient to have one woman in the room — to represent the female voice — and she was often the lowest-paid writer, too.”Today’s issue in television is one of supply. Rarely are episodic series staffed with an all-male director slate, unless the show’s creator opts to direct each episode. More frequently, women are landing directing gigs.With so many shows being produced, there aren’t enough women to fill the demand. “The problem now is a pipeline problem,” Ms. Shaw said.Mark Gill, who was president of Miramax Los Angeles when Harvey Weinstein ran the company, was the only man to speak out in the New York Times article in 2017 that first chronicled Mr. Weinstein’s abuse. He said then that the company “was a mess” but that Mr. Weinstein’s treatment of women “was the biggest mess of all,” a quote that drew the ire of his male colleagues when it was published.“I got a ton of blowback,” Mr. Gill said in a recent interview. “It was sort of a violation of the code. Several people actually said to me, ‘You’ve just blown your career.’”Mr. Gill has since started a production company with $400 million in financing and a staff that is divided equally between genders. “Of course, it turned out to be the exact opposite,” he said of the warnings he received. “It turned out to be a recruiting advantage.”Hollywood has marked its intention to adapt with the formation of support organizations. These include Time’s Up, the celebrity-fueled group that in addition to condemning sexual harassment has formed a legal-defense fund to help connect women of various industries to lawyers, and ReFrame, an organization run by Women in Film and the Sundance Institute with the goal of achieving gender parity in the entertainment industry. Women in Film also started an independent help line for anyone who has been harassed or abused to call to be connected with pro bono lawyers or therapists.“Women have less trepidation about helping each other, networking with each other, being vulnerable with each other,” said the producer Amy Baer, the board president of Women in Film. “I think this is a direct result of #MeToo and women realizing that there’s strength in numbers and in having each other’s backs, much the way the boys’ network has worked for decades.”The SAG-AFTRA actors’ union has turned the job of intimacy coordinator, a profession that began on theater stages, into a cottage industry inside Hollywood. And it has developed a set of guidelines and protocols for how the coordinators are integrated into sets.“It’s been an interesting process,” said the actress Gabrielle Carteris, who is president of the union. She worked closely with actors, directors, writers and the coordinators over the past two years to determine the protocol that was released in January.“When you think about the Harvey period from a few years ago, people felt like they had no control,” Ms. Carteris said. “There was no structure. Now people are saying: ‘I can do this work. This is amazing.’ I think this moment is a step towards cultural change.”Still, systemic transformation is slow. According to a 2019 study from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, only 17 percent of executive positions in major media companies were held by women, with only four of the women coming from underrepresented groups. Producing stats are equally dismal, with just 18 percent of producers on films between 2016 and 2018 being women. (Only 11 percent of all producers came from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups.) While “Captain Marvel,” “Harley Quinn,” “Wonder Woman” and other female-centered blockbusters have come to the screen with female directors at the helm, most theatrical blockbusters based on well-worn intellectual property — the bread and butter of today’s movie business — still belong to the men.“Inside, deep inside, I’m not seeing wheels turn beyond surface statements,” Ms. DuVernay said. “I think Time’s Up is effective and still pushing hard. But without a real threat or adverse impact, systems don’t change overnight. As I’m experiencing it now, I’d say it’s at 4 on a scale of 1 to 10. Which is significant, seeing it was at a negative 20 before.” Read the full article

[technteacher]

Women of Color of Time’s Up asks the music industry to cut ties with R. Kelly

For the first time since advocating for the prosecution of Harvey Weinstein, the Time’s Up collective has singled out an alleged abuser: R&B star Robert Kelly. Women of Color of Time’s Up, a subcommittee of the larger group specifically organizing around issues that affect women and girls of color, released a statement this morning announcing their support of #MuteRKelly, an online campaign asking Live Nation and Sony Music to cancel R. Kelly’s tour dates and drop his recording contract. Women of Color of Time’s Up, which includes Ava DuVernay, Shonda Rimes, and Jurnee Smollett-Bell, are also asking other “corporations and venues,” including Kelly’s record label RCA Records, to cut ties with the singer.

Over the course of nearly two...

Continue reading…

from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2vYbRrD from Blogger https://ift.tt/2HCqma1

[mastcomm]

Pressured by Simmons Over Film, Oprah Winfrey Was Caught in a Bind

For months, the filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering had a pair of dream partners: Oprah Winfrey and Apple, who had committed to back their documentary about women who have accused the hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons of sexual misconduct. Booked for the Sundance Film Festival and Apple’s new streaming platform, the film was primed to be the next high-profile media moment of the #MeToo era.

Then the film’s future was abruptly cast into doubt last week after Ms. Winfrey withdrew as executive producer and pulled it from Apple, citing creative differences with the directors and suggesting that the picture was being rushed to Sundance “before I believe it is complete.”

But what preceded Ms. Winfrey’s announcement was more than just a dispute over filmmaking. It involved an intense campaign by Mr. Simmons and his supporters to get Ms. Winfrey to pull the plug. That campaign also targeted some of the women in the film on social media and, in at least one case, through direct contact with a family member, in what the women viewed as attempts to threaten and intimidate them ahead of the film’s premiere at Sundance, still scheduled for Jan. 25.

Ms. Winfrey acknowledged to The New York Times that Mr. Simmons had tried to get her to abandon the project. “He did reach out multiple times and attempted to pressure me,” Ms. Winfrey said.

She said he told her that the woman at the center of the film, Drew Dixon, was lying about their interactions. In addition, Ms. Winfrey said, she received phone calls from other people, whom she would not identify, who also questioned Ms. Dixon’s credibility.

Ms. Winfrey said that she still believed Ms. Dixon, though she also thought there were inconsistencies in her account that the film had not adequately addressed, in addition to other issues she had with the film.

She said it was those reasons, and not Mr. Simmons’s protestations, that led her to pull support.

“I told him directly in a phone call that I will not be pressured either into, or out of, backing this film,” she said. “I am only going to do what I believe to be the right thing.”

But it was clear that Ms. Winfrey, according to people involved in internal conversations around the film, was struggling over what to do, especially since she had appeared supportive of the movie before Mr. Simmons began pushing back against it. She was aware of the message she might send by backing out, given her reputation as a role model for African-American women and as one of America’s most trusted voices of moral authority. Ms. Winfrey has spoken openly over the years of being a sexual abuse survivor herself.

Her enormous following had made her appealing to Apple as it competed with other streaming services in attracting big names to deliver original content; Netflix had already enlisted the new production company started by Barack and Michelle Obama, as well as a series of accomplished producers. The film about Mr. Simmons’s accusers, titled “On the Record,” was to be Ms. Winfrey’s debut project with Apple.

When Ms. Winfrey announced her departure from the project on Jan. 10, she took pains to say that she believed and supported the women in the film. Just hours after her announcement, the Time’s Up campaign — of which Ms. Winfrey was an inaugural member — affirmed its own support of the women in a similarly worded statement.

But that has not prevented shock waves from reaching the circle of Mr. Simmons’s accusers. Ms. Dixon, who has accused Mr. Simmons of raping her when she was a young executive at his record label, Def Jam, in 1995, said she felt abandoned.

“I feel like I’m experiencing a second crime,” Ms. Dixon said. “I am being silenced. The broader community is being intimidated. The most powerful black woman in the world is being intimidated.”

Thomasina Perkins-Washington, a representative for Mr. Simmons, said in a statement to The Times that Mr. Simmons did not do anything unjustified in trying to counter the film. Mr. Simmons has denied all accusations of nonconsensual sex and has not been charged with a crime.

“If defending himself against terrible accusations is considered intimidation then there would be no justice,” Ms. Perkins-Washington said. She added that “written accounts and sworn testimony” showed that Mr. Simmons was “incapable” of being violent toward women, but when asked for that material did not provide it.

Disagreements and Double Binds

Until Ms. Winfrey pulled out, the dispute over the film had pitted two titans of media and entertainment against each other. Mr. Simmons helped establish the big business of hip-hop, and branched out early into film and fashion. The two had a decades-long relationship, before a split when more than a dozen women began to come forward to accuse him of misconduct including rape and assault.

Their clash also highlighted the fissures among African-Americans over their place in the #MeToo movement. In the film, Ms. Dixon and other women say that when the floodgates opened after the accusations against Harvey Weinstein in 2017, they still were unsure whether American society at large would listen to the testimonies of black women.

When documentaries about R. Kelly and Michael Jackson last year led to re-examinations of the accusations against them — and, in Mr. Kelly’s case, criminal charges — an angry debate roiled on Twitter about whether those men were being singled out for attention because of their race.

One result, according to Dream Hampton, the activist and filmmaker behind “Surviving R. Kelly,” is that black women remain afraid to speak up.

“This is a way of shutting down black women,” Ms. Hampton said, “that the victimhood of black men in the criminal justice system supersedes all other harm.”

As Ms. Dixon put it: “This is the ultimate double bind that black women face, where there is nowhere for us to go. There is no one to protect us. There is no one to help us. And our own community turns against us when you dare to speak out.”

Ms. Winfrey said she also began to have concerns that the film needed to say more about the broader cultural context, in particular the “debauchery” of the music business at the time. Women throughout the industry were contending with misogyny and worse.

Ms. Winfrey sent the documentary to a friend, the filmmaker Ava DuVernay, seeking advice. She asked Ms. DuVernay to watch it with an eye toward how well the two filmmakers, who are white, captured the nuances of hip-hop culture and the struggles of black women.

Ms. DuVernay, who directed “Selma” and the Netflix series “When They See Us,” about the so-called Central Park Five who were wrongly imprisoned for rape, gave a harsh critique, which was later echoed in a letter Ms. Winfrey sent to the filmmakers informing them of her withdrawal.

In an interview, Ms. DuVernay said that Ms. Winfrey faced public fallout no matter what she did.

“She’s got Simmons on one side pressuring her, and then she’s got a film on the other side that she doesn’t agree with,” Ms. DuVernay said. “So if she walks away from the film she seems like she’s caving to Simmons, and if she stays with the film then she’s putting her name on something that she feels doesn’t quite hit the mark.”

The filmmakers described Ms. Winfrey’s change of heart as “sudden” and say they “were completely caught off guard” by her decision to exit the film.

“We had a really great working relationship with Ms. Winfrey, Harpo, and Apple throughout the many stages of crafting the film,” they said in a statement. “We feel we more than delivered a finished film that is in keeping with the qualities of excellence, integrity and veracity that we hold dear.”

A Partnership Fractures

The film’s primary character is Ms. Dixon, whose account details a wrenching accusation of how Mr. Simmons violently raped her after luring Ms. Dixon — then a young executive at his label — into his apartment one night under the pretext of hearing a CD.

Ms. Dixon first told her story publicly to The Times in 2017, and the film, which tracks her over two years, recounts her struggle over whether to go on the record with the paper. Some scenes capture parts of her phone calls with Times reporters during that period.

Dan Cogan, the financier behind the Oscar-winning documentaries “Icarus” and “The Cove,” introduced Ms. Winfrey to Mr. Dick and Ms. Ziering, whose work over the last decade has centered on sexual abuse, first in the military with “The Invisible War” and then on college campuses with “The Hunting Ground.”

According to Mr. Cogan, a partnership was formed in February between Ms. Winfrey and the filmmakers to create a series of projects about sexual assault and harassment in the workplace. Ms. Dixon’s story was set to be the inaugural piece that would lead into a series focused on different industries. All were eager for Ms. Winfrey’s involvement, both because of her access to the new streaming service and her ability to infuse the films with her unique point of view. “For a very long time, she was an extraordinary partner,” said Mr. Cogan.

In the filmmakers’ retelling, the two teams worked closely on the production, sharing notes and viewing each cut of the film. In October, with Ms. Winfrey’s approval, Apple submitted the movie for inclusion in the Sundance Film Festival, the country’s premiere exhibition for independent films.

A month later executives at Harpo responded to the final cut of the film with an email that read in part: “We absolutely loved watching the latest cut — it’s incredible.”

After learning that the film had been accepted to Sundance, Apple and Harpo touted the collaboration in a joint news release on Dec. 3, and called the film “a profound examination of race, gender, class and intersectionality, and the toll assaults take on their victims and society at large.” (That release has since been removed from Apple’s website.)

Trouble began the next day, once Sundance officially announced its lineup. It was the first time any public mention of the film had made clear that Mr. Simmons was the accused person at the center of it.

Ms. Winfrey, while in South Africa, received a call from someone she said she knew and trusted who cast doubts on Ms. Dixon’s story. Those doubts, Ms. Winfrey said, “gave me pause.” Later on, Ms. Winfrey said, Mr. Simmons called her directly.

Ms. Winfrey said that over various calls and text messages to her, Mr. Simmons seemed “frightened.” She said she often did not respond.

Once, she said, he implored her, “Look what you’re doing to my daughters.”

“I said, ‘I take deep offense to you thinking I’m doing anything to your daughters,’” Ms. Winfrey recalled.

Ms. Winfrey’s team immediately asked the filmmakers to provide detailed timelines of the accusations against Mr. Simmons and what the filmmakers had done to corroborate the accounts. The filmmakers provided the information the next day.

Within days, Mr. Simmons took to Instagram to mount a public defense, and the rapper 50 Cent accused Ms. Winfrey of “only going after her own” — alleging that by supporting accusers of Mr. Simmons and Michael Jackson, she was turning her back on the black community.

In an online video, Mr. Simmons discussed how to challenge the credibility of women by asking “how many times they went to jail, to a mental institution, have they accused five or more people, what does their father say.”

He added: “Questions that were not asked before may now be asked, and our sister may be embarrassed.”

Sil Lai Abrams, who accused Mr. Simmons of raping her in 1994, said she immediately felt that the “mental institution” line referred to her; the day after the alleged attack, she said, she attempted suicide. “He is using very dark tactics to intimidate and terrorize me and the others,” she said in an interview.

Ms. Dixon felt targeted by the line about fathers. A few weeks ago, she said, her father was approached by an old acquaintance, Yolanda Caraway, who asked him whether Ms. Dixon had ever falsely accused any man of sexual misconduct. The meeting rattled Ms. Dixon, who said she immediately suspected that Mr. Simmons was behind it.

“He is trying to muzzle our voices again,” she said.

Ms. Caraway, a longtime political operative in Washington, acknowledged that she had met with Ms. Dixon’s father, Arrington Dixon, a former City Council member. She added: “The conversation I had with anybody is none of your business.” Ms. Dixon’s representative at the time, Ann Walker Marchant, said that she called Ms. Caraway to ask whether she was working for Mr. Simmons, and that Ms. Caraway responded: “He’s my friend.”

A Demand for Changes

Ms. Winfrey said she took her concerns to the filmmakers with an ultimatum.

“We need to pull from Sundance until we can give ourselves a chance to retool this film,” Ms. Winfrey said she told them, “or I am going to have to take my name off.”

The filmmakers reassured Ms. Winfrey that they could address the issues she raised, and she remained on board.

“We know from working in the sexual assault field that changing any distribution plan after there has been an announcement is not a good idea,” said Ms. Ziering. “If we were to say we are not going to Sundance, people will infer that there is an issue with the credibility of the women in the film.”

On Dec. 18, the day after Ms. DuVernay viewed the film, Harpo sent the filmmakers a new set of requests.

According to people familiar with the chain of events, the two filmmakers addressed Ms. Winfrey’s concerns by conducting additional interviews with experts to contextualize the issue of misogyny in hip-hop. They also included a three-minute montage that introduced five more Simmons accusers with a technique that featured one woman’s line bleeding into the next woman’s story. The effect leaves viewers with a sense that Mr. Simmons is a serial predator who used specific, repetitive behaviors to lure women.

The new cut of the movie was delivered to Harpo on Jan. 8. Two days later, Ms. Winfrey sent the filmmakers a letter explaining her dissatisfaction and telling them she was withdrawing. The letter says in part: “I think it is a disservice to the women and this film to have their gut-wrenching disclosures reduced to a montage of sound bites and not give them the stature of elevating their stories.”

The film is still scheduled to show at Sundance, and the filmmakers have hired United Talent Agency to serve as its sales agents. It’s unclear whether the high-profile fallout between Ms. Winfrey and the filmmakers will harm its commercial prospects or make it an intriguing purchase for an eager distributor.

Ms. Dixon said she still looked up to Ms. Winfrey “as a business woman, as a fearless creative professional, and as a fellow survivor.”

But, she added, “Oprah Winfrey shouldn’t get to decide for any of the silence breakers in the film whether or not this movie is worth seeing and Oprah Winfrey shouldn’t get to decide for the whole rest of the world.”

“So all I hope,” she added, “is that somebody else will champion this film.”

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/pressured-by-simmons-over-film-oprah-winfrey-was-caught-in-a-bind/

[mrmichaelchadler]

Dear Roger: I Can't Believe Our Film Festival is Twenty Years Old!

Dear Roger,

I find it hard to believe that our film festival is 20 years old! In the beginning there was Cyberfest and the birthday party for Hal 9000, the computer from Stanley Kubrick’s movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” And then Dean Kim Rotzoll and Nancy Casey in the College of Media at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign asked you to hold a film festival for one year that would reflect what you would find satisfying. You brought in gems of independent movies, and all manner of genres from silent black-and-white films to 70 mm masterpieces. Of course once you had done it for one year, you considered it a tradition, and so there we were planning for the next year on our ride back home. And here we are twenty years later. 

When you took your "Leave of Presence" on April 4th, 2013, I had a very difficult decision to make about whether to continue the festival. Actually, the decision the first year wasn't too difficult because by then we had the festival organized and we were making plans for you to attend. But once we learned you wouldn't be there with us, Nate and I took a look at the somewhat unusual line-up you insisted upon, with a choir of singers onstage for Orson Welles' "Chimes at Midnight" followed by a melancholy short video by Grace Wang about a woman mourning her dead lover, and then segueing into "The Ballad of Narayama" about the villagers who took its old people up the mountain to meet the gods when they were 70 years old (you were 70 years old). We had Paul Cox's elegiac "The Life and Death of Vincent Van Gogh" and your beloved Tilda Swinton with "Julia." And with each screening, we realized that you knew you wouldn't be there. It was so sad that it left us all in tears, including me and Tilda sobbing in each others' arms, as she had recently lost her mother. We concocted a plan to cheer things up and Tilda, Goddess that she is, led the whole auditorium into a dance-a-thon. We pranced and swirled and clapped our hands and danced around so joyfully that it changed the mood to one of a celebration in a great Temple of Cinema. 

This film festival production definitely takes a village. I am so grateful to Nate Kohn, the festival director who has been with us from the beginning, and for the unwavering support from your alma mater, the University of Illinois, including Interim dean Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko, President Timothy Killeen and his wife Dr. Roberta M. Johnson, and Chancellor Robert J. Jones. Huge thanks to the beautiful movie palace, the Virginia Theater and the Champaign County Park District. We have some amazing supportive donors and sponsors both old and new including Betsy Hendrick of Hendrick House, the Robeson Family, Marsha Woodbury, Champaign County Alliance for Inclusion and Respect, Shatterglass Studios, Lynda Weinman and Bruce Heavin, The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Brand Fortner, Steak N' Shake, the African-American Film Critics Association, Carlton Bruett, Roger and Joanne Plummer, Glenn Poor's Audio Video, Laurel Leone and Steve Bellamy, LA Gourmet Catering, SAG-Indie, Fandor, The Welch Family Foundation, Brenda Robinson and Greenberg Glusker, Busey Bank, Jeanene & Rick Stephens, Fandor, Chipman Design Architecture, the Daily Illini and the News-Gazette and many more too numerous to name here. We couldn't have existed for twenty years without our loyal audience and of course our special guests of filmmakers and film critics and scholars who all have contributed to making this one of the most satisfying of film festivals. And last, but certainly not least, eternal gratitude to our illustrious Volunteer-troop. I am so proud of this festival. 

We collaborated and experimented with various types of films and guests, and stage cues, and indeed we have had to change some things over the years, but the goal has remained the same, to bring together a community of film lovers to celebrate cinema under some of the best conditions possible, in the hope that we would emerge from the theater slightly better than when we entered it. The enthusiasm of festivalgoers each year—both return customers and new faces—has exceeded our wildest expectations.  And I daresay you would be thrilled at this year’s line-up. 

But before I tell you about the films, I want to honor four people who passed away recently who were important to us at the festival. First, Mary Frances Fagan, whom you dubbed our “Guardian Angel,” because as a spokeswoman for American Airlines, she helped to bring in guests from all over the world at a crucial time in the festival’s development. She passed away in February surrounded by many friends and family who loved her. Her Memorial Service took place April 14th in Chicago at the Museum of Broadcast Communications. We are also saddened at the deaths of Leonard Doyle and Sharen (Sherry) Slade who greeted us so cheerfully over the years. They were among some of the best and most devoted Volunteers at the Virginia Theater, and were both pillars of the community. We will bestow prizes in their names at the festival this year to keep them close in our memories.

And just this past Friday, one of your oldest and dearest friends from the University of Illinois, the revered sports writer William (Bill) Nack, left us. You were close pals during your time at the Daily Illini when you were editor and you remained life-long buddies. Bill was one of the finest writers around, not just about sports, but about everything. He loved quoting the last chapter of The Great Gatsby, in fact he did so at our wedding. And he did it on the stage of the Virginia Theater in your honor after you left us. He loved Ebertfest and he will be missed.

Roger, a seismic change has taken place in Hollywood starting with the reckoning over sexual misconduct by powerful men like studio head Harvey Weinstein. It evolved into the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, which we hope will contribute to the dignity of human interaction, and will also lead to more transformative and equal opportunities for women and people of color. In a nod to those movements, we are spotlighting the work of extraordinary female directors and performers this year. Six out of twelve of our movie selections were directed by women.

We are proud to present a trio of filmmakers I’ve dubbed the Three Queens of Cinema: Ava DuVernay, Julie Dash and Amma Asante. They will be joined at Ebertfest by three more exceptional female directors: Martha Coolidge, Shari Springer Berman and Catherine Bainbridge. For the full line-up of our scheduled guests, make sure to check out our two-part list (click here for Part One and here for Part Two). We will also be highlighting great performances from women such as Laura Dern, Diane Ladd, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Haley Lu Richardson and the 25th anniversary of Jennifer Lopez’s star-making role as “Selena,” not to mention an avant garde actress in a silent classic. I’ll tell you a bit more about each of those later…

Opening our festival this year is one of the greatest cinematic love letters to the city of Chicago ever crafted, Andrew Davis’ 1993 edge-of-your-seat thriller, “The Fugitive.” Adapting the hit 1960s series for the big screen, Davis cast Harrison Ford as Dr. Richard Kimble, a man wrongly accused of his wife’s murder who must prove his innocence, all the while being pursued by the dogged Deputy Gerard (played by Tommy Lee Jones in an Oscar-winning performance). In your four-star review, you praised Davis for transcending genre and showing “an ability to marry action and artistry that deserves comparison with Hitchcock, yes, and also with David Lean and Carol Reed.”

We are welcoming back director Gregory Nava to Ebertfest with his film, “Selena,” the biopic of the Texas-born Tejano singer who rose to the top of the Latin music charts before being murdered by the president of her fan club at age 23. This is the film that made Jennifer Lopez a star, and her riveting portrayal never ceases to move and inspire audiences. You wrote in your three-and-a-half star review, “‘Selena’ succeeds, through Lopez’s performance, in evoking the magic of a sweet and talented young woman. And, like Nava's ‘My Family,’ it's insightful in portraying Mexican-American culture as a rich resource with its own flavor and character.”

Roger, you would be happy to know that Jeff Dowd, who inspired the iconic character of Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski, played by Jeff Bridges in the Coen Brothers’ cult sensation, “The Big Lebowski,” will be with us. You once wrote of him, “I have long known Jeff Dowd. I can easily see how he might have inspired the Dude. He is as tall, as shaggy and sometimes as mood-altered as Jeff Lebowski, although much more motivated. He remembers names better than a politician, is crafty in his strategies, and burns with a fiery zeal on behalf of those films he consents to represent.” 

Once again, the Alloy Orchestra, our friends Terry Donahue, Roger Miller and Ken Winokur, are planning to wow us with a rarely seen silent landmark, this time from Japan. Teinosuke Kinugasa’s 1926 picture, “A Page of Madness” is a drama with a surrealistic dash of horror, following a man’s attempts to free his suicidal wife from an asylum. Kinugasa was part of an avant grade group of Japanese artists dubbed the “Shinkankakuha” (a.k.a. “School of the New Perceptions”), and the original story was credited to future Nobel Prize-winner, Yasunari Kawabata. Lost for 45 years, it was rediscovered by the director in a storehouse, and will be presented at the Virginia Theatre in a pristine print with an all-new live score courtesy of the Alloy Orchestra. (Click here to read Jasper Sharp's article about the film at Midnight Eye.)

One of the most thrilling big screen events at this year’s Ebertfest promises to be the 70 mm print of Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-winning 2014 epic, “Interstellar.” Matthew McConaughey plays an astronaut who volunteers to travel through a wormhole to ensure the survival of his family—and humanity itself. To me, this film illustrates not only empathy for other human beings but empathy for the planet. In fact, the Ebert Center will present an inaugural symposium on Empathy and the Universe in October of 2018, at the University of Illinois. 

Nominated for three major prizes at this year’s Film Independent Spirit Awards, including Best First Feature, writer/director Kogonada’s “Columbus” charts the budding relationship between Jin (John Cho), the Korean-born son of an architect, and Casey (Haley Lu Richardson), a young woman resolved to being a caregiver for her mother. RogerEbert.com critic Sheila O’Malley marveled at how Kogonada and cinematographer Elisha Christian “blend the background into the foreground and vice versa, so that you see things through the eyes of the two architecture-obsessed main characters. Watching the film is almost like feeling the muscles in your eyes shift, as you look up from reading a book to stare out at the ocean. From the very first shot, it's clear that the buildings will be essential. They are a part of the lives unfolding in their shadows. Sometimes it almost seems like they are listening.” 

The first of our six women directors, Ava DuVernay, first met you outside of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion during rehearsals for the Academy Awards when she was 8 years old. Currently, she has become the first African-American female filmmaker to direct a $100,000,000 movie, “A Wrinkle in Time,” which is a love letter to girls everywhere.

In 2011, she released her first feature, the documentary “I Will Follow,” which you praised as “an invitation to empathy.” Two years after the success of her 2014 Best Picture nominee, “Selma,” DuVernay returned to the nonfiction realm with “13th”, a scathing exploration of injustice in the U.S. justice system. Awarding the film four stars, our critic, Odie Henderson, wrote, “Director Ava DuVernay takes an unflinching, well-informed and thoroughly researched look at the American system of incarceration, specifically how the prison industrial complex affects people of color. Her analysis could not be more timely nor more infuriating. The film builds its case piece by shattering piece, inspiring levels of shock and outrage that stun the viewer, leaving one shaken and disturbed before closing out on a visual note of hope designed to keep us on the hook as advocates for change.” 

Julie Dash’s 1991 classic, “Daughters of the Dust,” is a work of pure cinematic artistry that explores how African mores flourished on the sea islands off the coat of South Carolina and Georgia, where the Gullah culture remained preserved in the 20th century. Since its release, the film has gained a reputation for being one of the greatest independent films ever made, and also loosely inspired Beyoncé’s “Lemonade.” Julie Dash led the way for other woman directors. 

When Amma Asante’s “Belle” premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, it was clear that a star had been born both in front of and behind the lens. This was only the second directorial effort of Asante’s career and it affirmed her status as a major talent, while providing a stellar showcase for its leading lady, Gugu Mbatha-Raw. She plays the illegitimate mixed race daughter of a Royal Navy Admiral in 18th century England who is raised by her aristocratic great uncle (Tom Wilkinson). Though her social standing is high, her skin color prevents her from being fully accepted. As she fights to end the scourge of slavery, she falls for an idealistic young man (Sam Reid) who just might be her match. Bilge Ebiri of The Playlist wrote that the film is as much about “being a woman as it is about being black.” Amma Asante did what no one thought was possible, bringing a Jane Austen sensibility to topics of race and slavery. 

Hail Martha Coolidge and her 1991 film, “Rambling Rose”, which succeeds in making history with Diane Ladd and Laura Dern becoming the first mother-daughter duo to earn Academy Award nominations for the same film. You hailed their performances as two of the year’s best, saying, “Laura Dern finds all of the right notes in a performance that could have been filled with wrong ones. Diane Ladd is able to suggest an eccentric yet reasonable Southern belle who knows what is really important.” You also noted that the film likely benefited from being directed by a woman. “Men, I think, are sometimes too single-minded about sex,” you wrote. “Bring up the subject, and it's all they can think about. Coolidge takes this essentially lurid story and frames it with humor and compassion, putting sexuality in context, understanding who Rose really is, and what stuff the family is really made of.”

The so-strange-it-must-be-true life of file clerk Harvey Pekar served as fodder for his comic book alter ego in “American Splendor,” a rigorously unsentimental self-portrait. The 2003 film adaptation of the same name, directed by Shari Springer Berman and her husband, Robert Pulcini, made the inspired choice of juxtaposing the real Pekar with an actor portraying him. That actor turned out to be Paul Giamatti, and the role proved to cement the actor’s status as one of American cinema’s most cherished performers. In your four-star review, you wrote that this “magnificently audacious movie” allows “fact and fiction to coexist in the same frame.” 

Continuing our musical Sundays at Ebertfest, we are happy to present Catherine Bainbridge and Alfonso Maiorana's documentary, “Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World”, which earned major prizes at festivals such as Sundance and Hot Docs. It’s an exploration of the crucial and under-appreciated role Native American artists have played in the music industry. Our critic Glenn Kenny writes, “the music of the Shawnee, the Choctaw, the Mohawk, the Apache, and so many other tribes, is in a very real sense the first American music. Race-mixing between African-Americans and Indians resulted in a cultural consciousness that enabled a melding of African music and Indian.” He also believed Link Wray's 1957 guitar instrumental, “Rumble,” is “to modern rock music what the monolith was to those primates in the ‘Dawn of Man’ section of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’”

In your honor, for the twentieth anniversary, we are hosting a panel on the future of film criticism and inviting a critical mass of your fellow film critics such as Claudia Puig, the first Latina film critic to head the Los Angeles Film Critics Association; your partner, Richard Roeper, Leonard Maltin, Michael Phillips, Carrie Rickey, Rebecca Theodore-Vachon, Monica Castillo, Matt Zoller Seitz, Brian Tallerico, Matt Fagerholm, Nick Allen, Peter Sobczynski, Sheila O’Malley, Susan Wloszczyna, Nell Minow, Angelica Jade Bastién, Scott Mantz, Sam Fragoso, and Chuck Koplinski. 

In addition to the Critics Panel, we will present other stimulating academic panels such as the one about destigmatizing mental illness through the arts led by Professor Eric Pierson and the Alliance for the Promotion of Acceptance, Inclusion and Respect; and Leveling the Playing Field in the Age of #MeToo, and Dr. Richard Neupert’s Cinema History. You would have no doubt been eager to participate in each of these. 

And finally, on your behalf, Roger, I want to thank Donna and Scott Anderson, and the artist Rick Harney, for the magnificent sculpture of you outside the Virginia Theatre. I thank them and the festival-goers for honoring your memory and keeping your legacy alive. In your spirit of inclusiveness, I encourage everyone to gather around the sculpture to greet each other Friday night when we have the big Street Party with a band and cake and ice cream on the plaza to celebrate this auspicious anniversary. I know, somehow, that you will be there. 

Love,

Chaz

from All Content https://ift.tt/2Hu4CMw

[njawaidofficial]

Why It’s Crucial For Time’s Up To Keep Intersectionality At The Forefront

https://styleveryday.com/2018/03/29/why-its-crucial-for-times-up-to-keep-intersectionality-at-the-forefront/

Why It’s Crucial For Time’s Up To Keep Intersectionality At The Forefront

Clockwise from left: Susan Kelechi Watson, Yvette Nicole Brown, Lupita Nyong’o, Honoree Lena Waithe, Honoree Tessa Thompson, Sonequa Martin-Green, Edwina Findley Dickerson, and Honoree Danai Gurira attend the 2018 Essence Black Women in Hollywood Oscars Luncheon in Beverly Hills.

Leon Bennett / Getty Images

When the sexual assault reckoning hit Hollywood after the tremendous fall of Harvey Weinstein, it was clear the industry was on the precipice of a moment. What wasn’t clear was how long that moment would last — or how intersectional (or not) it would be. Concerns were raised after the first set of black actors to speak out about being sexually harassed did not get the same reception or justice some of the white actors received. But as the Time’s Up initiative announced itself at the top of 2018, with a diverse group of powerful women in Hollywood leading the charge, the possibility of a truly intersectional and effective movement appeared on the horizon. The question now is how to make sure the progress made by this feminist crusade actually benefits everyone.

Emmy winner Lena Waithe believes it’s key that black women of color have had a fair seat at the Time’s Up table so they’ve been able to speak up about the unique obstacles they face and play a role in determining strategy. “We’re actually talking about these issues,” she told BuzzFeed News. “I think that’s the difference.” At the same time, Waithe knows there needs to be real results. “We’ve got to fix it. It’s not enough just to talk about it. I don’t want to just wax poetic on panels or red carpets. It’s like, what are we doing to change things?”

Attendees at the 19th Annual InStyle and Warner Bros. Pictures Golden Globe afterparty on Jan. 7. Top, from left: activist Tarana Burke, actors Michelle Williams, America Ferrera, Jessica Chastain, Amy Poehler, Meryl Streep, and Kerry Washington. Bottom, from left: actor Natalie Portman and activists Ai-jen Poo and Saru Jayaraman.

Tara Ziemba / AFP / Getty Images

The women involved with Time’s Up spent much of this past awards season getting the word out about the initiative on red carpets. These appearances have shown just how inclusive the group is, with black women like Waithe, Kerry Washington, Shonda Rhimes, Tessa Thompson, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Rashida Jones at the forefront when the initiative made its first big splash at the Golden Globes. That night, nearly all women in attendance wore black in solidarity with the mission. Several women walked the red carpet with activists of color as their guests — giving them a media platform they often don’t have access to — while others used their moments onstage to highlight the issues they were fighting to change. It was a monumental show of unity from actors to not only end sexual assault and harassment but to call for pay equity and job fairness as well. These issues impact all women heavily, but are always more devastating for women of color.

But now that they’ve made their inclusive mission clear, what can be done to make sure those most impacted by unequal systems get the help they need? The legal defense fund created by Time’s Up to support women dealing with sexual harassment, which is now in the millions, was a strong first show of action. So is the role the initiative is playing in holding Weinstein and his alleged enablers accountable, though it’s worth noting that most of his victims were white women. Perhaps additionally getting behind a mainstream case that involves more black victims, like Jerhonda Pace — who accused R. Kelly of abusing her when she was a minor and has publicly stated his victims feel left out of the #MeToo movement — would be an effective next step. Mainstream Hollywood cases aside, the defense fund also intends to help those from other industries who are taking legal action against their sexual abusers. And while the group is committed to making sure women in need get access to that fund regardless of their race, it could prove beneficial to prioritize some cases involving black women each year to make up the economic difference that exists among women of different races.

Publicizing outreach toward black women would go a long way toward building trust again, because historically black women have been left out of these efforts. Amanda Seales, an actor on HBO’s Insecure, told BuzzFeed News, “Intersectionality has really never been at the center of mainstream feminist movements in a real way. So I would like [Time’s Up] to keep in mind that it’s time to put that at the center.”

Phillip Faraone / Getty Images

Dear White People star Ashley Blaine Featherson echoed Seales’ thoughts, noting that the concerns of black actors need to be heard and acknowledged. “I think that sometimes we feel that we’re not being seen, and I think that we just have to talk about it and be open and transparent,” she said. “And more of us also need to tell our stories and demand to be heard.”

When Oscar winner Octavia Spencer confided in her costar Jessica Chastain about her pay history in Hollywood, she ended up getting offered five times her salary for their upcoming film. During a panel at Sundance in January, Spencer said, “I told her my story and we talked numbers and [Chastain] was quiet, and she had no idea that that’s what it was like for women of color.” Chastain didn’t only listen to Spencer, but believed her, and then used her status, thanks in part to her white privilege, to help Spencer.

Chastain tweeted about the situation, saying, “[Spencer] had been underpaid for so long. When I discovered that, I realized that I could tie her deal to mine to bring up her quote. Men should start doing this with their female costars.”

Chastain took a risk when she demanded the studio pay Spencer as much as they paid her, and luckily it worked out for them. It’s the kind of action more men in Hollywood should be initiating, said the Molly’s Game lead. And it’s not a wild request since some men are already doing it. Emma Stone, who was the highest-paid female actor in 2016, has shared that she requests her male costars take pay cuts so their salaries would be more equal. “That’s something they do for me because they feel it’s what’s right and fair,” said Stone in an interview with Out magazine. “That’s something that’s also not discussed, necessarily — that our getting equal pay is going to require people to selflessly say, ‘That’s what’s fair.’”

Octavia Spencer and Jessica Chastain attend the 75th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

Frazer Harrison / Getty Images

Thompson cited Spencer’s and Chastain’s actions when describing the kind of work that needs to continue to keep the Time’s Up initiative intersectional. “That was collaboration,” she said. “It’s important because as women so often we are siloed off, and kept separate, that when we enter these spaces together, we hold each other accountable and we really hold each other.”

During her Oscars acceptance speech for Best Actress earlier this month, Frances McDormand talked about accountability in the form of inclusion riders, a contract that requires a certain level of diversity on set. It’s something Ava DuVernay has been doing for years with her Oprah Winfrey Network drama Queen Sugar, for which she purposefully only hires women directors. It’s something that Black Panther star Michael B. Jordan also vowed to do on all projects produced by his company, Outlier Society, shortly after McDormand’s call. Increasing the number of production companies committed to honoring inclusion riders should be on any intersectional agenda in the industry.

What it really comes down to is this: More Hollywood juggernauts need to be willing to stand up for their fellow actors to a much greater extent than they have in the past. For example, when Passengers actor Aurora Perrineau filed a police report against Girls writer Murray Miller for sexual assault, the series’ showrunners, Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner, released a joint statement defending Miller, essentially calling Perrineau a liar. Dunham apologized after Miller’s lawyers admitted they were not honest about Perrineau trying to extort Miller. There are also the numerous actors who didn’t acknowledge Rose McGowan’s initial Weinstein claims years ago, or who still continue to work with Woody Allen despite Dylan Farrow’s accusation that he sexually abused her as a child.

Actor Yvette Nicole Brown attends the 49th NAACP Image Awards.

Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images

Yvette Nicole Brown, who most recently starred on the short-lived ABC sitcom The Mayor, told BuzzFeed News that everyone involved with Time’s Up must be willing to take risks for the greater good if the initiative wants to succeed: “If you’re speaking up for what’s right, you’ll end up on the right side of history. And sometimes you need to take a hit. Look at Colin Kaepernick. He’s taken a hit, but he’s getting the word out. So sometimes the cause needs to be greater than your personal gain. So that’s how you do it. You stand up and you go: This isn’t right.”

The leaders of the Time’s Up campaign have made it clear that inclusive justice is the goal. In a recent panel on the matter at the Makers Conference, Jones said, “I think everybody here and everybody in the movement kind of acknowledges that there is no change unless you bring every single person along who has spent time being marginalized, harassed, assaulted. … Intersectionality is the hub, it is the absolute centerpiece of everything that we do.” It’s now up to them to create results that support that mission. Whether that’s by demanding equal pay for their costars of color, or refusing to work with those who have sexual assault or harassment allegations against them (until they have been exonerated) regardless of the race of the accuser, or using a majority of the defense fund for minority groups — it’s time to move things forward.

LINK: A Look Into The Awards Season Black Hollywood Has Created For Itself

LINK: Women In Hollywood Say Frances McDormand’s Oscar Speech Is A Complicated Call To Action

[fashiontrendin-blog]

Oscars Recap: 6 Things Everyone Should Be Talking About

http://fashion-trendin.com/oscars-recap-6-things-everyone-should-be-talking-about/

Oscars Recap: 6 Things Everyone Should Be Talking About

Last night’s Academy Awards, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, proved what every other award show continues to prove: things aren’t really that different, but some slow progress is being made. Hollywood has a long way to go before women and people of color (and people of other) are nominated for as many awards as cis white men. In order for that to happen, they need to be given the same opportunities in the first place. It seems people are finally starting to recognize that, no doubt as a result of our current political moment, which has people calling out the truth and speaking up when the world is watching.

With that in mind, here are the six best things that happened at the Oscars last night.

Coco winning Best Animated Feature Film (it also won Best Song) gave way to one of the most important speeches and moments of the night. Director Lee Unkrich called it “a love letter to Mexico,” and said that after Trump was elected, he and the other creators of the film felt a sense of urgency to “get a positive message about the beauty of Mexico (and) the Mexican people.”

In Unkrich’s acceptance speech he called for inclusion. “With Coco, we tried to take a step forward toward a world where children can grow up seeing characters in movies that look and talk and live the way they do. Marginalized people deserve to feel like they belong. Representation matters.”

In Jordan Peele’s acceptance speech for Best Screenplay for his debut film Get Out, he said he stopped writing the film about 20 times because he thought it was impossible and not going to work. Well, thank you to Jordan Peele for pushing through. Not only did he create a film that uniquely explores race and trauma through the lens of horror, but he also became the first Black person to win this award (there were four previously nominated). That’s a lesson in following your gut.

He also gave a shout out to my favorite type of movie person (I am one of them): “And to everybody who went and saw this movie. Everybody who bought a ticket, who told somebody to buy a ticket, thank you. I love you for shouting out at the theater, for shouting out at the screen.”

Here’s a free idea: Tiffany Haddish and Maya Rudolph should host every award show together. Here’s another free idea: Tiffany Haddish and Maya Rudolph should remake Thelma and Louise. The two comedians stepped on stage with their stilettos in hand to talk about the agony of wearing heels for long periods of time (same!) and to reassure the audience not to worry because there were still tons of white people backstage (hilariously riffing on #OscarsSoWhite). There was a funny bit about not trusting white people with clipboards (same, again!) and another bit where Haddish and Rudolph each complimented their stellar roles and releasing of bodily fluids in Girls Trip and Bridesmaids, respectively.

Again, somebody get them a movie (and also a TV show?). Give them all of it.

Confession: there were definitely other people in this category I hoped would go home with the award, but Frances McDormand’s call-to-action speech made it all worth it. After thanking her loved ones, she asked all the other female nominees to stand (asking Meryl Streep to lead the pack, because duh). The standing wasn’t to congratulate them for being there or to tell them she’s proud of them, but to let everyone in the room know that these women probably have projects they want to put out, so put your money where your mouth is and finance them.

She left saying: “I have two words for you: inclusion rider.” An inclusion rider is a clause that actors put in their contract that guarantees there will be racial and gender inclusivity on set and behind the scenes. In a backstage interview, she said: “We should support this for a billion reasons, but if you can’t find a reason to, here’s one: It will make movies better.”

The Time’s Up messaging wasn’t featured as heavily at the Oscars as the Globes, but there was a lengthy video segment introduced by Annabella Sciorra, Ashley Judd and Salma Hayek, who have all spoken out about Harvey Weinstein, dedicated to the Time’s Up and #MeToo movements. Though the video, which featured various actors and directors who have broken barriers in Hollywood like Barry Jenkins, Ava DuVernay and Kumail Nanjiani, was more of a call for representation than a call-out about sexual harassment and systemic misogyny in the industry. It was a digestible video for the Oscars crowd rather than a radical reckoning, but that’s not to say there weren’t some great moments.

Nanjiani had the best line: “Some of my favorite movies are movies by straight white dudes, about straight white dudes. Now straight white dudes can watch movies starring me and you relate to that. It’s not that hard. I’ve done it my whole life.”

I do think Phantom Thread was robbed last night, but Shape of Water, which took home four awards last night including Best Director for Guillermo del Toro, was a wonderful love story too. It was a moment to celebrate friendship goals: del Toro and Mexican directors Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu are a close-knit group, often referred to as The Three Amigos, and now each of them have won Best Director — Cuarón in 2014, Iñárritu in 2015 and 2017, and del Toro last night.

But it was also an opportunity for del Toro, as an immigrant, to speak out about the importance of filmmaking as a way to bring people together and blur the lines of who belongs where: “In the last 25 years I’ve been living in a country all of our own. Part of it is here, part of it is in Europe, part of it is everywhere. Because I think that the greatest thing our art does and our industry does is to erase the lines in the sand. We should continue doing that when the world tells us to make them deeper.”

Feature photos by Matt Sayles/A.M.P.A.S and Kevin Winter via Getty Images.

http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

[movietvtechgeeks]

Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/times-showing-2018-oscars-harvey-weinstein-casting-couch/

Time's Up showing up for 2018 Oscars with Harvey Weinstein 'Casting Couch'

Awards season has seen the Time's Up movement showing up, and the 2018 Academy Awards will be no different. Rather than becoming just "an awards show protest group," according to "Wrinkle in Time" director Ava DuVernay," they will be given 'a moment' during the Oscars telecast. The organizers of Time’s Up say the movement to eradicate discrimination in the workplace will have a presence at Sunday’s Oscar show, but there are no plans for a red-carpet dress code. Shonda Rhimes, Ava DuVernay, actresses Laura Dern and Tessa Thompson, producer Katie McGrath and attorney Nina Shaw talked about the movement’s progress and next steps with news reporters Thursday. They stressed that while Time’s Up made a splashy appearance at the Golden Globes earlier this year, with most women wearing black and several actresses walking the red carpet with activists, the movement is bigger and broader than awards shows. “We’re trying to build something that’s sustainable, lasting and serious,” DuVernay said Thursday at the meeting at the Sunshine Sachs publicity firm’s offices in West Hollywood, California. Time’s Up was “launched on the red carpet, but was never intended to live there,” Rhimes said. Besides the black dresses at the Globes, Time’s Up supporters wore white roses at the Grammy Awards. No such uniformity is planned for the Oscars. Formed after the Harvey Weinstein scandal revealed widespread sexual harassment in Hollywood, Time’s Up has grown into an international, multifaceted and multipronged approach to fighting workplace discrimination, organizers said. They outlined the various avenues of the effort at Thursday’s news conference. A key element is the legal defense fund, which has amassed $21 million and scores of attorneys to date. In partnership with the National Women’s Law Center, the fund connects victims of harassment or discrimination with attorneys, who are either volunteering their services or having their fees underwritten by donations. Since Time’s Up was founded about two months ago, it has received some 1,700 requests for legal assistance, said attorney Tina Tchen, a lawyer and former director of the White House Council on Women and Girls. More than 1,200 of those cases have already been referred to attorneys, she said. The movement may have started in Hollywood, but it’s become global, Rhimes said, with participation in Kenya, South Korea, Pakistan, and Kuwait. From the tech sector to farm workers, women are coming together to demand fair treatment, she said. “The intention really is that a large portion of our leadership will come from other industries,” Rhimes said. Representatives for farm, domestic and restaurant workers have been actively involved in the expanding movement, she said. On Friday, Time’s Up is announcing its new StoryCorps initiative. StoryCorps is a storytelling collective that invites ordinary people to share tales from their lives, which are eventually uploaded into a Library of Congress collection aimed at fostering greater human understanding. The Time’s Up partnership invites women and men to share stories about their lives at work. It’s not just about sexual harassment, organizers said, but about illuminating what it takes to create fair and equitable workplaces where people of all races, genders, and ethnicities are recognized and valued. It’s about seizing on the momentum generated by the outrage over Weinstein and those like him and channeling it toward change. Branches of the Time’s Up movement have been meeting regularly since the beginning of the year. Various sectors of the initiative are dealing with men, people of color and people overseas, organizers said. Hollywood men have held their own Time’s Up meetings, organizers said, and international outreach continues to grow. No invitation is needed to participate, either, they said. Like all grass-roots movements, it grows with personal interest. “There’s actual work being done,” DuVernay said. “It’s not just a press opportunity... It’s not just an awards-show protest movement.” A golden statue of a bathrobe-clad Harvey Weinstein, seated regally atop a couch with an Oscar in hand, took up temporary sidewalk residence close to the site of Sunday’s Academy Awards. “Casting Couch” is a collaborative work between a Los Angeles street artist known as Plastic Jesus and Joshua “Ginger” Monroe, designer of 2016′s nude Donald Trump statues placed in major U.S. cities. The life-sized Weinstein sculpture, displayed Thursday on Hollywood Boulevard, aims to spotlight the entertainment industry’s sexual misconduct crisis and the disgraced studio mogul’s role in it, Plastic Jesus said. “There’s so much about Hollywood that’s great and celebrated in the Oscars, but there’s also this underbelly of darkness within the industry that we often sweep under the carpet or ignore,” said Plastic Jesus, formerly a London-based photographer. The phrase “casting couch,” used to describe the demand of sexual favors for work, may seem a relic of a bygone era but is “still very much a part of the Hollywood culture,” he said. Plastic Jesus said he and Monroe first considered a standing Weinstein statue but quickly decided to incorporate a chaise lounge. The project, made of fiberglass and acrylic resin, was in the works for two months. It will be on display this weekend, weather permitting. Visitors to the sculpture were sitting next to the faux Weinstein and taking selfies, turning it into an interactive installment, Plastic Jesus said. It also expands the symbolism, he said. “For many, many people, aspiring actors and actresses, that would have been their dream to be close to Harvey,” but that reality has proven a nightmare for some, the artist said. Weinstein has been accused by dozens of women of sexual harassment or sexual assault, including rape. He’s denied all allegations of non-consensual sex, but apologized for “the way I’ve behaved with colleagues in the past.” Plastic Jesus has created a series of Oscar-timed statues, including one last year of Kanye West in a crucified pose and titled “False Idol.”

Movie TV Tech Geeks News

[redcarpetview]

A Golden Night, in Black and White – the 75th Golden Globes: It Was a Night of Black Gold

Oprah Winfrey accepts the Cecil B. DeMille Award for her “outstanding contribution to the entertainment field” at the 75th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, CA on January 7, 2018. Photo courtesy of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA).

          By Naomi Richard

     One week after the historical celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the Golden Globes we look back at what was indeed a night to remember.

      The 75th Golden Globes Awards were a sea of black. The powerful women of Hollywood wore black dresses to support Time's Up, the campaign that aims to end sexual harassment and gender disparity across the country. Red carpet arrivals included Tracee Ellis Ross, Ava DuVernay, Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige, Naomi Campbell, Kerry Washington, Laurence Fishburne, Sterling K. Brown, Common, Denzel Washington, Pauletta Washington, Viola Davis and Julius Tennon -- to name a few.

Mariah Carey arrives at the 75th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, CA on Sunday, January 7, 2018. Photo courtesy of HFPA.

        The evening hit a peak when Oprah Winfrey made her acceptance speech for the Cecil B. deMille Lifetime Achievement Award. Her rousing speech -- "A new day is on the horizon and their time is up" -- brought the house down. It was a pretty serious night.  It was all because of Harvey Weinstein.

     Oprah Winfrey's acceptance speech was one for the ages. Recipient of the Cecil B. deMille award in recognition of her career and leadership, Oprah galvanized the audience in the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton and beyond, giving a personal, passionate and comprehensive view of the pressing issues of our times. Here's the complete transcript of Oprah's speech:

       In 1964, I was a little girl sitting on the linoleum floor of my mother's house in Milwaukee watching Anne Bancroft present the Oscar for best actor at the 36th Academy Awards. She opened the envelope and said five words that literally made history: "The winner is Sidney Poitier." Up to the stage came the most elegant man I had ever seen. I remember his tie was white, and of course his skin was black, and I had never seen a black man being celebrated like that. I tried many, many times to explain what a moment like that means to a little girl, a kid watching from the cheap seats as my mom came through the door bone tired from cleaning other people's houses. But all I can do is quote and say that the explanation in Sidney's performance in "Lilies of the Field": "Amen, amen, amen, amen."

     In 1982, Sidney received the Cecil B. DeMille award right here at the Golden Globes and it is not lost on me that at this moment, there are some little girls watching as I become the first black woman to be given this same award. It is an honor -- it is an honor and it is a privilege to share the evening with all of them and also with the incredible men and women who have inspired me, who challenged me, who sustained me and made my journey to this stage possible. Dennis Swanson who took a chance on me for "A.M. Chicago." Quincy Jones who saw me on that show and said to Steven Spielberg, "Yes, she is Sophia in 'The Color Purple.'" Gayle who has been the definition of what a friend is, and Stedman who has been my rock -- just a few to name.

     I want to thank the Hollywood Foreign Press Association because we all know the press is under siege these days. We also know it's the insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth that keeps us from turning a blind eye to corruption and to injustice. To -- to tyrants and victims, and secrets and lies. I want to say that I value the press more than ever before as we try to navigate these complicated times, which brings me to this: what I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have. And I'm especially proud and inspired by all the women who have felt strong enough and empowered enough to speak up and share their personal stories. Each of us in this room are celebrated because of the stories that we tell, and this year we became the story.

     But it's not just a story affecting the entertainment industry. It's one that transcends any culture, geography, race, religion, politics, or workplace. So I want tonight to express gratitude to all the women who have endured years of abuse and assault because they, like my mother, had children to feed and bills to pay and dreams to pursue. They're the women whose names we'll never know. They are domestic workers and farm workers. They are working in factories and they work in restaurants and they're in academia, engineering, medicine, and science. They're part of the world of tech and politics and business. They're our athletes in the Olympics and they're our soldiers in the military.

     And there's someone else, Recy Taylor, a name I know and I think you should know, too. In 1944, Recy Taylor was a young wife and mother walking home from a church service she'd attended in Abbeville, Alabama, when she was abducted by six armed white men, raped, and left blindfolded by the side of the road coming home from church. They threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone, but her story was reported to the NAACP where a young worker by the name of Rosa Parks became the lead investigator on her case and together they sought justice. But justice wasn't an option in the era of Jim Crow. The men who tried to destroy her were never persecuted. Recy Taylor died ten days ago, just shy of her 98th birthday. She lived as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men. For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up.

     Their time is up. And I just hope -- I just hope that Recy Taylor died knowing that her truth, like the truth of so many other women who were tormented in those years, and even now tormented, goes marching on. It was somewhere in Rosa Parks' heart almost 11 years later, when she made the decision to stay seated on that bus in Montgomery, and it's here with every woman who chooses to say, "Me too." And every man -- every man who chooses to listen.

     In my career, what I've always tried my best to do, whether on television or through film, is to say something about how men and women really behave. To say how we experience shame, how we love and how we rage, how we fail, how we retreat, persevere and how we overcome. I've interviewed and portrayed people who've withstood some of the ugliest things life can throw at you, but the one quality all of them seem to share is an ability to maintain hope for a brighter morning, even during our darkest nights. So I want all the girls watching here, now, to know that a new day is on the horizon! And when that new day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women, many of whom are right here in this room tonight, and some pretty phenomenal men, fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say "Me too" again.

      Actor Meryl Streep and Ai-jen Poo, the head of the National Domestic Workers Alliance attend the 75th Annual Golden Globes Awards at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, CA on Sunday, January 7, 2018. Photo courtesy of HFPA.

     For a complete list of Golden Globes Award winners visit www.glodenglobes.com.

                                                                                                                    # # #

[i-am-very-very-tired]

Over 300 actresses, writers, producers, directors, agents, and other influential women in Hollywood have banded together to launch an initiative aiming to combat sexual harassment, both in the entertainment industry and in other workplaces across the country. The New York Times reports that Reese Witherspoon, Eva Longoria, Shonda Rhimes, Ashley Judd, Rashida Jones, Kerry Washington, Ava DuVernay, and Meryl Streep are among the dozens of Hollywood women who published an open letter on Monday pledging support to Time’s Up, a volunteer-run group that formed recently after a slew of women came forward to accuse mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment and abuse. The #MeToo movement that followed prompted women to share their own stories about suffering harassment and abuse at the hands of powerful men, in Hollywood and elsewhere. Time’s Up has thus far established a $13 million legal defense fund, housed by the National Women’s Law Center, to help working class women protect themselves from the fallout of reporting sexual harassment or abuse in their workplaces, and hopes to pursue legislation that would penalize companies that fail to take action against employees or employers repeatedly accused of harassment. The group is also pushing gender pay parity at movie and television studios, and is encouraging women in Hollywood to participate in the upcoming Golden Globes protest by wearing black to call attention to gender and racial inequality in the industry. “It’s very hard for us to speak righteously about the rest of anything if we haven’t cleaned our own house,” Rhimes told the NYT. “If this group of women can’t fight for a model for other women who don’t have as much power and privilege, then who can?” She added, “We’re a bunch of women used to getting stuff done. And we’re getting stuff done.”

[kansascityhappenings]

Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep and hundreds more women in entertainment form anti-harassment group

NEW YORK — A group of more than 1,000 women in entertainment have detailed a comprehensive plan to combat sexual harassment across industries.

Time’s Up was officially unveiled Monday in a story by The New York Times, though the group was formed not long after the first round of allegations against former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein came to light in October.

Director Ava DuVernay, producer Kathleen Kennedy and dozens of actors, including America Ferrera, Emma Stone and Constance Wu, laid out the mission of Time’s Up in an open letter.

The women said they were encouraged to find ways to battle harassment in all industries after receiving a letter of support from Alianza Nacional de Campesinas (The National Farmworker Women’s Alliance) in November.

In that letter, the alliance acknowledged the outpouring of stories about gender-based violence and discrimination in entertainment, but wrote, “sadly, we’re not surprised because it’s a reality we know far too well.”

“Countless farmworker women across our country suffer in silence because of the widespread sexual harassment and assault that they face at work,” the alliance’s letter read.

Time’s Up intends to use the platform given to women in entertainment to fight for equality on behalf of women in all fields, it said.

“We want all survivors of sexual harassment, everywhere, to be heard, to be believed, and to know that accountability is possible.”

Time’s Up has already put together a $13 million fund to subsidize legal support for “women and men who have experienced sexual harassment, assault, or abuse in the workplace,” according to its GoFundMe page.

Major donors to the fund include Reese Witherspoon, Shonda Rhimes, Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Aniston, Meryl Streep, Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw, according to the fundraiser page.

Hollywood agencies ICM Partners, William Morris Endeavor, United Talent Agency and Creative Artists Agency have each donated $1 million or more.

The National Women’s Law Center will house the fund and distribute resources, including lawyers and public relations professionals that will work with the Center’s Legal Network for Gender Equity “to provide assistance to those ready to stand up,” the fundraiser page said.

Time’s Up, which the Times reports does not have a singular leader and is instead made up of several teams tackling different efforts, will push for legislation aimed at curtailing harassment. The organization is also advocating for gender parity at movie and television studios and other entertainment companies.

“We just reached this conclusion in our heads that, damn it, everything is possible,” Rhimes told the Times. “Why shouldn’t it be?”

Time’s Up is encouraging women to wear black at the Golden Globe Awards on Sunday to demonstrate against gender and racial inequality and raise awareness for their initiative.

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports http://fox4kc.com/2018/01/01/reese-witherspoon-meryl-streep-and-hundreds-more-women-in-entertainment-form-anti-harassment-group/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2018/01/02/reese-witherspoon-meryl-streep-and-hundreds-more-women-in-entertainment-form-anti-harassment-group/

[anglenews]

Trump, other A-list politicians missing from Time 100 gala

April 25, 2017 | 10:30pm | Updated April 26, 2017 | 12:29am Modal Trigger John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds attended the 2017 Time 100 Gala at Lincoln Center on April 25. Getty Images A-list of politicians was notably absent from the Time 100 black tie gala Tuesday night — but politics was still very much front and center on a night that saw entertainment by John Legend and Demi Lovato. Then-candidate Donald J. Trump was among the guests last year — but perhaps his new day job kept him away this year. The dinner did, however, draw Robert Mercer, the reclusive hedge fund titan and co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies and one of the biggest behind-the-scenes Trump supporters. Despite his bona fides, Mercer was seated in the third tier at Table 12 with daughter Rebekah — an honoree and a director of the Mercer Family Foundation. The Mercers still scored better than Preet Bharara, the high-profile, former Manhattan US Attorney recently fired by Trump. He was banished to Siberia at Table 21, talking legalese with Guatemala’s Attorney General Thelma Aldana. So far as could be learned, the Mercers never bumped into Robert Ferguson, the attorney general of Washington state, who successfully took on Trump’s travel ban — making him one of Time’s 100 Most influential People in the World at Table 15. There was lots of firepower around Table 3, which featured Trump antagonist Megyn Kelly, “Saturday Night Live” comedian Leslie Jones and the drag queen RuPaul Andre Charles. Kelly confirmed the Page Six scoop on April 24 that she will start her Sunday show on NBC in early June — opposite a little show on CBS called, “60 Minutes.” “We don’t think we’re going to dethrone ‘60 Minutes’ at least right away,” Kelly said. “But it will be spicy.” With equal gravitas, Bob Bland, one of the organizers of the Women’s March on Washington, and Yahoo’s Global Anchor Katie Couric sat comfortably at Table 1 in the Rose Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center venue. Table 5 also hosted a women’s march organizer, Tamika Mallory, who broke bread with Essence Editor-in-Chief Vanessa De Luca. “Get Out” Producer Jason Blum, the toast of Hollywood, came east after making the Time list and was seated with old pal Harvey Weinstein, a longtime Democratic supporter, supermodel Ashley Graham and NBC News President Noah Oppenheim at Table 4. Politics was in the air at Table 7 as well. Samantha Bee of TBS’s “Full Frontal” — and the host of the Not the White House Correspondents Dinner this coming weekend in Washington, was sharing time with Raed Saleh, the medical humanitarian behind Syria’s White Helmets, and Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Table 8, where Time’s Chief Content Officer Alan Murray could be found with Time CEO Rich Battista, is normally among the more cerebral tables — and did not disappoint this year with Margot Robbie, star of the “Wolf of Wall Street” and “Suicide Squad,” dining with “Selma” director Ava DuVernay. But shining just as brightly right next to them at Table 9 was Time Editor-in-Chief Nancy Gibbs with Academy Award-winning actress Viola Davis, Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya, and “Deadpool” star Ryan Reynolds, who was named Sexiest Dad Alive by People last year. Gibbs, in her opening remarks, spoke passionately about a free press. “To demonize the press, to treat it as an enemy of democracy is to lay the groundwork for repression.” Share this: Source http://www.anglenews.com/2017/04/26/trump-other-a-list-politicians-missing-from-time-100-gala/

[njawaidofficial]

'Awards Chatter' Podcast — Common ('13th')

http://styleveryday.com/2017/08/27/awards-chatter-podcast-common-13th/

'Awards Chatter' Podcast — Common ('13th')

“The biggest blessing is the platform that it creates,” the rapper and activist Common says of the widespread awards recognition that his music has received over the past few years, as we sit down at the offices of The Hollywood Reporter to record an episode of THR‘s ‘Awards Chatter’ podcast. The 45-year-old, whose first album was released 25 years ago, continues, “To win an Academy Award [for writing, with John Legend, the song “Glory” for the 2014 movie Selma]]? To get an Emmy nomination for “Letter to the Free” in 13th? The things that we get to talk about, the people that we get to reach, the lives that we get to change — that’s the most important thing for me.”

(Click above to listen to this episode or here to access all of our 174 episodes via iTunes. Past guests include Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Lorne Michaels, Meryl Streep, Eddie Murphy, Lady Gaga, Robert De Niro, Emma Stone, Will Smith, Jennifer Lopez, Louis C.K., Reese Witherspoon, Harvey Weinstein, Natalie Portman, Jerry Seinfeld, Jane Fonda, Ryan Reynolds, Nicole Kidman, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Taraji P. Henson, Justin Timberlake, Elisabeth Moss, Michael Moore, Kristen Stewart, J.J. Abrams, Helen Mirren, Denzel Washington, Brie Larson, Aziz Ansari, Stephen Colbert, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Warren Beatty, Jessica Chastain, Samuel L. Jackson, Kate Winslet, Sting, Tyler Perry, Amy Schumer, Jay Leno, Mandy Moore, Ricky Gervais, Kris Jenner & Jimmy Kimmel.

Common was born Lonnie Rashid Lynn and raised on the South Side of Chicago. He found his calling when hip-hop blew up in the eighties and he saw people around him rapping and break-dancing. “I related to it so much,” he remembers, noting, “I initially got into music because I was a break-dancer.” As his voice matured, he began rapping, as well, and soon adopted the moniker “Common Sense,” something his mother always had urged him to use more of. At just 19, his first album, Can I Borrow a Dollar (1992), was released and put him on map with the underground hip-hop community, but not with the masses as he had hoped. He named his second album Resurrection (1994), feeling as if he needed to come back from the dead — and he did. On the back of the controversial single “I Used to Love H.E.R.,” which suggested that hip-hop was losing its purity, and which enraged Ice Cube and other West Coast rappers, it proved a hit.

Meanwhile, the rapper, who had been raised with a great “belief in God,” was “reading a lot” and beginning to realize that “music has an impact.” His already existing positive outlook and his growing social conscience combined to steer him in the direction of making “conscious music,” music that informs and enlightens those who hear it. One bump on the road was having to change his stage name, after a group from California that also called itself Common Sense sued him. He reluctantly dropped the “Sense” — “That was the period I lost my hair,” he says, noting he was “stressed out” that his music identity would be lost — and began going simply as Common. With the benefit of hindsight, he says he’s happy the change happened, since Common reinforces the way that he sees himself: as a man of the people.

Common’s fourth album, 2000’s Like Water for Chocolate, proved his biggest hit yet. On the back of the single “The Light,” it went gold, he won a Grammy for best rap solo performance and his public profile changed entirely. “It was a totally different level,” he explains. “It was going from an underground artist that other artists appreciated and getting some critical acclaim, to mainstream people knowing the song, at least.” Shortly thereafter, he and a younger, up-and-coming rapper from Chicago, Kanye West, began working together. In 2003, Common was featured on Kanye’s breakout album The College Dropout, and in 2005 Kanye was featured on Common’s album Be, which eventually became his second to go gold.

Also in 2003, Common began to get into acting, first with parts on TV (starting with Girlfriends in 2003) and then films (beginning with 2007’s Smokin’ Aces). “After the album Like Water for Chocolate,” he recalls, I hit kind of a creative ceiling musically, and I really felt that there was something more for me to do, creative in another way, to dig into the divine aspect of art and expressing myself, but I didn’t know what it was. I started working on trying to play instruments, and it just didn’t feel natural. But I went to my first acting class, and I felt like the heavens opened up. I was like, ‘Wow, I never knew that I could express myself in this way.'” He soon was appearing in roles and films of increasing significance, and winning strong notices for his contributions.

In 2012, having come through a period of being relentlessly slandered by Fox News, generally, and Bill O’Reilly, specifically, with suggestions that he had supported “cop killers” and therefore should not have been invited to read poetry at the White House, as he was in May 2011 (“That was obviously to bring down our president, Barack Obama, and our first lady, Michelle Obama,” he says now), he entered one of the most fruitful chapters of his career, which continues to this day. That January, he attended the Sundance Film Festival and met the fast-rising filmmaker Ava DuVernay, who was there with her film Middle of Nowhere. They hit it off and, not long after, she cast him in her next film, Selma, as James Bevel, a radical member of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s inner-circle.

DuVernay also welcomed a music contribution from Common for Selma‘s soundtrack. He reached out to John Legend about collaborating on a song called “Glory,” Legend sent back his proposed chords and chorus, and then Common, shortly after leaving his father’s memorial service, set to work adding rap lyrics. “I was in a real open-hearted space,” he says, and finished his work within a week-and-a-half, lyrically tying Selma to more recent race-related confrontations, specifically, Ferguson. “We made a period piece feel like now,” he says. “Glory” cracked the top 50 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was awarded Critics’ Choice, Golden Globe and Academy Awards. Common looks back on his Selma era as “life-changing” and “life-enhancing,” and adds, “There’s no other movie or song that I would want to receive my first Academy Award for than Selma and ‘Glory.’ It gave me more responsibility and work to do.”

Legend’s portion of the Oscar acceptance speech for “Glory,” in which he noted that “there are more black men under correctional control today than were under slavery in 1850,” had a profound impact on Common that is visible even in footage of the moment. “It shook me, it really shook me,” he acknowledges, “and from there I started to seek out more information,” including Michelle Alexander‘s 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. And when he later learned that DuVernay’s next film would be a documentary about mass incarceration, he reached out to her and pleaded for the change to contribute a song to it. “I just wanted to write something that was emotional, something that was spiritual, something that was moving… and gave information but also was hopeful,” he says. The result was “Letter to the Free,” a portion of which he first sang to DuVernay at a White House celebration to which they both were invited near the end of the Obama Administration. “She couldn’t deny it,” he says with a chuckle, adding, “She ended up changing the ending of the film because of the song ‘Letter to the Free.'”

Even with his music being recognized left and right, Common’s focus remains firmly on activism (he jetted off from our recording to a rally in Sacramento) and bettering himself, both as an artist and as a person. “I know I have to grow,” he says. “I’m gonna work and give 150 percent, 360 degrees of me, to grow to become a great actor — but I do believe I can be a great actor,” he says. “I love theater and I really would love to act on Broadway, and write for Broadway, and write music for Broadway and produce for Broadway.” And, he says, in response to a question about the Donald Trump era, he says, “No government is greater than the people, no government is greater than God,” adding, “What I’ve observed is it has awakened a lot of people to want to do more. The pain and the hatred that exists in America — as it’s surfaced, people who want to see good in America and want to see love have surfaced, too.” He closes, “Whatever your passion is that’s spreading love to yourself and other human beings, we have to pursue that with all that we got right now.”

Primetime Emmy Awards

#13Th #Awards #Chatter #Common #Podcast