#they’re the best barrel ever dude you’ll never compete

[alphamalereviewsfanfics]

HANDS UP AGAINST THE WALL WHERE I CAN SEE THEM by deleted user ):

SUMMARY: “literally the gayest cops you can imagine have sex against the wall of amenity number nine”

PREGAME: my partner played officer barrel in a production of urinetown and I saw the closing show yesterday and they are the best barrel of all time!!!!! better than everyone else!!!!! fuck all of you my partner just brings some nice gravitas to the character your stupid ass could never understand!!!!!! i want them to take me to urinetown!!! And so a few days before the show they sent me this fic and told me to read it and of course I would! I read it twice before the show and then twice after so I could gauge how the fanfic was to someone who hadn’t known the characters in full detail and then read it so I could compare the vibe of it to the performance I saw. I am a reviewer who only wants the best for his audience baby and I always deliver except when my friend sends me like a 12 part 500k word story about the amphibia characters disemboweling people I don’t think I can get through that series for him but maybe I will one day who knows. But anyways I was awoken in the middle of the night and that caused me to get inspired to reread the fanfic and write this review so enjoy my fellow alphas

REVIEW: When I opened this shit up and read the tags, I was slapped across the face with a SECOND PERSON POINT OF VIEW. Who the fuck write a fanfiction about two characters in SECOND PERSON??? I am here to read officer barrel get fucked by officer lockstock, “You” doesn’t even fucking exist in this world it takes me out of the immersion baby like what the fuck???? BUT!!! That was just my first impression because oh baby what if I told YOU that this was second person POV being used EFFECTIVELY?? Like what the fuck I didn’t expect it to be actually pretty solidly written so I kinda respected the second person POV as a quirk of the writer and let go of it and the immersion was never really lost it was weird. I’ve read only one other fanfic that did that correctly and that was because it was this one that was in the style of the disco Elysium game and so it enhanced the reading experience very well, I need to review it one day. But the point is that this is like kinda good. Before reading it, my partner and I looked through the comments and we noticed three things: 1) basically everyone reading it was in a production of urinetown and one person who commented actually had lockstock and barrel kiss which was cool I guess AND 2) people who weren’t a big fan of second person POV were into it, AND 3) an account called JDFangirl3.14 commented, “I’m doing this play right now, and we all love how beautifully and grammatically correct this is written! 👨❤️👨”. This comment may seem innocuous and normal but I was shitting my pants when I read that it said that it was grammatically correct. I am the type of guy who can’t really get off to reading fanfic shit, and like especially if there’s a grammatical error it just takes me out of the immersion. But once I read the fic I realized that this dude was almost right. Basic grammar laws were abided most of the time but there was one typo with wall being wal and one mistake where the author didn’t put a space in between two words. But that was easily passed over because man I was already engrossed in this body of work which alluded me because I had to reread it three times to realize that those were there but maybe I’m stupid.

This author (I wish they had not deleted their account so I could thank them) somehow blended in together some elements of shit I didn’t like (second person pov, italics for internal and external dialogue, cops) and somehow brought it together into something pretty solid and immersive to me. And like character wise it’s kinda in character like maybe the production I watched played it different than theirs because I couldn’t really imagine officer lockstock being too intimidating and I had to like separate the characters appearances and voices in my head from the actors in the production because it would be weird and kinda cuck-y to imagine your partner and the dude that played lockstock getting at it at amenity number nine so take my interpretation of the characters with a grain of salt. Like the dialogue isn’t the best sometimes and it feels like I’ve read a few fanfics that have said the same shit before but I don’t know maybe I’m riding a high on something that’s not making me as critical as I usually am. Yeah so if you like a nice combination of second person pov and you wish you could watch urinetown cops fuck on stage then hey this fanfic is for you.

BEST LINE: I’m too tired to find a line sorry I’m just gonna post this and then go back to sleep

RATING: 3.7/8 bunnies (gamma status I think??)

[inspired-by-the-music]

Chapter 9: Insight

Ae-Young’s POV

“I don’t understand why you won’t let Dad throw you a birthday party,” Heechul said for the thousandth time as he waited for me outside of the dressing room. You may not believe it, but I liked him in situations where he didn’t have to compete for attention. 

Without fail, I had answered that I was spending my birthday with Kyuhyun, so I finally snapped. “Dude, what did I tell you? You’re here to offer fashion advice— not to interest me in conversation.”

“But I’m bored.” The dressing room shook as he slammed his back against the wall and slid until he hit the floor. “If you wanted a fashion guru, you should have called Key—”

Just to get a reaction out of Heechul, I lied, “I did call Key. He was busy.”

He gasped and stuck his head under the door. “I was your last resort?”

Squealing, I ran into the corner where he couldn’t see as I finished adjusting my dress. “Get out, Heechul!” And once he obeyed, I answered, “No, by the way; Dad would have been my last resort. You were my second resort.”

“I didn’t come here to be insulted, Ae-Young!” He pounded against the door. “Appreciate my presence!”

Half-hoping that an employee would kick him out of the store for disruptive behavior, I asked, “If you didn’t come to be helpful, and you didn’t come to be insulted—”

“ — I came because I thought you’d buy lunch.”

I scoffed. “You have a lot of nerve, expecting your baby sister to treat you on her birth-week!”

Without warning, Heechul tired of our conversation. “Seriously, come out in that last dress in the next thirty seconds, or I’m going to the food court alone, and then I’ll leave you here.”

That kind of attitude was why Dad didn’t trust him to pick me up after school when I was a kid. Childishly pouting and avoiding my reflection because the dress made me look like a stranger, I retorted, “Then leave! I’ll call Kyuhyun, and he’ll come get me!” 

“You’d interrupt your hard-working lawyer fiancé’s day with such silliness?” He tsked. “It’s as romantic as it is impossible, baby sister. You left your phone out here. So hurry up, or I’ll take it and leave.”

Catching a glimpse of myself again, I whined, “Heechul, I can’t come out. I look awful.”

“At least you know it,” he deadpanned. “Self-awareness can’t be taught.”

I pounded against the door and swore, “I’m serious, Heechul. I look terrible— I can’t wear this to the engagement party—”

He barked, “Quit being such a crybaby drama queen! Get out here and show me, and I’ll tell you if you look bad.”

My hand lingered on the door as I asked for his word that he wouldn’t just say I looked good to convince me to leave. “Promise?”

“When have I ever failed to tell you when you look like a wreck?”

It was true. If for nothing else, I could count on Heechul to tell me when I didn’t look my best. He was the kind of brother who would drive me to the doctor and point at my face, saying, “You look sick,” in the waiting room. 

So finally, I pushed the door open and stood before him, awkwardly linking my hands as I awaited his disapproval. It didn’t come, though. He only crossed his arms and mumbled something that sounded like, “You look beautiful.”

Unsure, I stepped closer and asked, “What did you say?” But he wouldn’t repeat it. 

Heechul belted, “You heard me! Don’t fish for compliments because I won’t say it again!”

“Yeesh,” I rolled my eyes, “you’re such a maniac.” Still, I smiled as I twirled back into the dressing room. Maybe looking like a stranger isn’t so bad. “So you think I should buy this for the engagement party?”

“Don’t you have girl friends you could drag to things like this?”

“No—” My stomach growled, so I tried to get an answer out of Heechul the only way I knew how: through flattery. “Your opinion is everything to me; so should I get the dress or not?”

Plainly, as if it hadn't been so difficult to reply all along, he said, “Yeah.” And just as I unlocked the door, before I could open it, he asked, “You liked that blue dress too, right?”

The blue sundress was too casual for the extravagant engagement party Dad was planning. I only decided to try it on after remarking under my breath that it would be perfect for my birthday date with Kyuhyun. 

Reddening at the realization that Heechul must have overheard, I answered, “Yeah, it’s a pretty dress.” But after checking the price tag, I pouted. “It’s a little out of my price range today, though.”

“So what?” Heechul probably shrugged on the other side of the door. “Grab it anyway.”

Frowning at his fiscal irresponsibility, I repeated, I can’t afford—”

Eyes bulging in annoyance, he burst through the door and said, “I’m telling you that I’ll buy the damn dress. Now come on. I’m hungry.”

Swallowing my laughter at the chance to bug him further, I feigned cluelessness and sang, “Well, why didn’t you just say so? Let’s go!”

Heechul decided that we had to get lunch from the corndog stand because “That’s the cheapest thing here. I had to dig into my savings to get that dress.” 

Like I told you, I wasn’t picky, so I smiled at my meal as I climbed into one of those tall food court chairs. “I told you it was expensive! You don’t listen!”

Waving a hand, he dismissed the information just as he had in the dressing room. “I thought you were just milking me for a birthday gift.”

He was playing, as usual, so I shouldn’t have been offended. Irrationally, my brow furrowed, demanding, “When have I ever done something like that?”

His mouth fell open, but no reply ever came. Realizing that I had never asked him for anything in my life, he adopted a different attitude while shoving a corndog into his mouth. “I don’t mind spoiling you— everyone seems to love doing that.” And before I could argue, pouting, that I wasn’t spoiled, he continued, “It’s not your fault that you’re so spoiled. Everyone just likes you so much, they want to give you everything.”

“I don’t think—”

But Heechul never wanted to hear what I thought. He barreled into another topic, eyebrows wiggling. “I just hope Kyuhyun likes the dress.”

Heechul wouldn’t want to hear that Kyuhyun wasn’t especially fixated on appearances, so I bit my tongue. I hope he likes it too. Even if he doesn’t say anything, I hope he thinks that nobody has ever looked so lovely. 

“It’s disgusting.” Heechul’s entire body cringed as he pushed his plate closer to me. 

Stirred from my daydream, I looked at his empty plate and observed, “It certainly doesn’t look like you thought it was disgusting.”

“What?” He took a long sip from his straw. “No, I’m talking about how you’re in love with Kyuhyun.” He must not have noticed the color draining from my face— but how could he miss it? His eyes were fixed intently on my expression as if in search of the slightest tremor. Mercilessly, he proceeded, “It’s one thing to see you all lovestruck when he’s sitting with you at family dinners, probably holding your hand under the table or some shit. But he’s not even here. All I did was say his name, and you got little hearts in your eyes.”

My response was delayed. I unsteadily stood in my chair and swiped at him. “I did not!”

He dodged my swipes and smiled at having struck a nerve. “Hey, don’t get crazy! I bet he gets heart eyes when you’re brought up, too. Hell— he might even get them just from thinking about you since he likes you more—”

“Don’t say stuff like that,” I warned before he could finish the thought, “especially when it isn’t true.”

Not only were Kyuhyun’s feelings— well, I didn’t know what they were, but they weren’t whatever Heechul was talking about. And whatever Kyuhyun felt, there was no way he felt it more deeply than I did; there was no way he felt it as long as I had. Just considering Heechul’s scenario where Kyuhyun liked me more forced my lips into a tight frown. 

Heechul swooned, “Everyone always thinks they’re the one deeper in love, but someone’s always wrong. I’ve seen you two— the way he looks at you— the way he never looks away— and how you don’t even notice.”

“Stop playing about this, Heechul.” I glared at him. “It’s not funny.”

“I’m not playing,” Heechul replied hotly as he always did when nobody took his attempts at sincerity seriously. Leaning across the table to stare at me more closely, he challenged, “How long do you plan to dance around your feelings? It’s disgusting to watch— truly disgusting— so just admit it.”

I looked directly into his blazing eyes. Aware that he could see through me— aware that there was no point in lying— I delayed. “Admit what?”

He screamed in my face, “That you’re in love!” And if I hadn’t already known, that moment alone of my brother hollering it in the middle of the heavily populated food court would have made it impossible to ignore. 

“I will admit no such thing!” I pushed his face away from mine and added, “And stop studying me and Kyuhyun. It’s weird!”

“It’s true love!” He sat back in his seat. “And as Dad says, I’m not likely to ever experience it myself, so I have to live vicariously through you!”

You’ll find love, I wanted to tell him. She’ll have to be patient— the most patient person on earth, probably— but she’ll love the way you make laughter out of nothing at all. She’ll love your unexpected bits of wisdom sprinkled into stupid jokes. She’ll love your passion for music and your devotion to honesty, even at the expense of others’ feelings. She’ll come to you, and you won’t even have to look. 

I wanted to tell him because I didn’t think he knew, but he wouldn’t listen to me, so I mumbled, “You’re such an idiot.” And then my curiosity burned bright as it often did. “Could I get your opinion on something?”

“Woah, woah—” He held his hands up and offered the disclaimer, “I am not the guy to come to for advice about love. I can recognize it, but I don’t know how—”

“It’s not about love!” I thought. And once he shut up, I asked, “So say a guy keeps a bunch of gifts a girl sent him years ago in his desk drawer at work—”

“Is the guy dating the girl?” Heechul asked. 

I was surprised that he took the scenario seriously enough to ask anything. “Y— no. No, they’re not really dating.”

“Well, was he dating someone else when he got the gifts?”

“Yeah.”

Having gone too long without being an imbecile, he broke into a goofy grin. “Was the girl named Ae-Young and the guy named Kyuhyun?”

I lied, “No, this happened in a drama I’m watching, and I have no clue how it’s gonna end. I just—” My voice wavered as I wondered aloud for the first time, “What does it mean? Why did he keep the gifts?”

Heechul was unconvinced by my story, but he didn’t push me to admit the truth. “Well, obviously, he had a thing for the girl who sent the gifts. He left them at the office so the girlfriend wouldn’t find out.”

Needless to say, I hadn’t considered that; and even once Heechul said it, I didn’t consider it. “That doesn’t make sense. The gift girl was no competition for the girlfriend—”

“It doesn’t matter what you think,” Heechul said plainly. “Maybe he thought she was.”

I shook my head. “No, she was too young—”

“Look, as long as she wasn’t a kid—”

“She was 16 and he was 26—”

Heechul tried to tell me, laughing, “All men are pigs, Ae-Young; I’m just the only one who’s honest about it.”

There was nothing to laugh about. All I could do was say, “Kyuhyun isn’t a pig,” and cover my mouth at the realization that I had completely revealed that I was talking about us the entire time. 

I expected Heechul would rejoice at my mistake, but he didn’t. He busied himself with organizing our trash onto the tray as he agreed, “Yeah— yeah, I know. Look, I’m not saying that he was lusting after you when you were younger or anything. It’s just— whatever you have is special somehow. And maybe he felt like taking those gifts home where his girlfriend could see would expose cracks in their relationship.”

While my eyes widened at the depth of Heechul’s insight, while I remembered why I sometimes bothered to tell him these things, Heechul continued, “He and Dad have stressful jobs. Maybe keeping that stuff reminds Kyuhyun that life isn’t all about punishing bad guys. Maybe you’ve been brightening his days for a long time without knowing it.”

How do I respond? Even if I knew what to say, I couldn’t. Emotions tightened around my throat until I could barely breathe. I hoped, I prayed that Heechul was right with a desperation that made me hang my head.

[kiruuuuu]

Stuck in rarepair hell? I know that feeling, @legokay :) All of those are my favourite boys, so choosing wasn’t easy but I ended up going with Glaz/Echo, extra fluffy for you ❤❤ (Rating T, fluff fluff fluff, ~1.5k words)

.

“Right in the dick”, Echo announces gleefully, followed by a snort, “that dude’s not gonna breed anymore, that’s for sure, but he’ll be hella pissed at you and shattered balls might not be enough of a distraction to take out the guy who ruined his family jewels.”

“You’re unbelievable”, Glaz replies with a shake of his head but can’t help his smile. He’s reloading now and glancing up at the Japanese man stumbling about next to him, large VR glasses hiding half his face. They’re messing about after Glaz mentioned wanting to practise very long range shots – normally, it’s a quiet and boring affair, because even if someone’s assisting him, they’re all the way over by the target dummies to inform him of his accuracy. Echo, however, offered to pilot one of his aerial drones to check where Glaz’ shots hit: that way, he’s not going to be bored to death and Echo can practise flying his drones in virtual reality with the help of the 360° cam he installed on it.

With how competently Echo is navigating his drone after even bragging of being on par with actual drone flying competitions, Glaz somehow doubts he needs the practise but since this means Echo is choosing to keep him company, he’s not complaining. He’s lying on the floor and aiming downhill while Echo is excitedly dancing around, nearly falling over the cables coming from the small building next to them and tripping over the uneven ground now and then. So far, he’s managed not to actually eat shit but it seems to be a matter of when and not if.

“And boom. You’re dead. The neutered counter-sniper has taken revenge for his nutsack. You were too slow, Glaz, game over, try again. Maybe next time express your disdain for toxic masculinity in your free time and not on the job or I’ll get your brain jelly all over my shoes again.” The words are accompanied by animated gestures and Echo moving further and further away without realising. Something about piloting his drones always puts him in high spirits, has him turn off his verbal filter and leaves him excited enough to not care about potentially embarrassing himself. Glaz has witnessed it a few times in his own presence but not with anyone else – and he’d like to think that his colleague (and friend?) trusts him enough to show him this side of his personality voluntarily.

“You’re nowhere near me anyway, watch where you’re walking”, Glaz points out, amused, and takes aim once again as Echo cautiously steps towards his voice and stretches one of his legs to prod him in the side with the tip of his shoe. Moving out of the way is too easy and so the older man nearly loses his balance yet again. “I’m going to shoot the second one on the left right in the head.”

“So that means you’ll hit the one on the right directly in his kidneys. He needed those, Glaz, now he has to get dialysis for the rest of his life. Maybe he would’ve donated one of them! Congratulations, you just killed an innocent child who would’ve received a bad guy’s kidney to -” Wordlessly, Glaz moves the barrel up until it’s pointing directly below the tiny drone hovering in the distance and takes the shot. “Whoa, hey, did you just – how dare you!”

“Your little electrical mosquito better fly for its life”, Glaz announces with a grin and shoots again, still not aiming at the drone directly.

“Ha, with how rotten your aim is today, you couldn’t hit it even if you tried.”

The sniper takes this as a challenge and is about to actually fire at the device when Echo lightly kicks his arm to throw off his aim while starting to undertake evasive manoeuvres both himself and with his drone. They’re both trying to interfere with each other now, nudging and shoving until Glaz sets his rifle aside, trips him and sits down on his midsection facing his legs and starting to giggle when Echo remorselessly slaps his ass to get rid of him. They playfight some more, both laughing now and wrestling for the remote – Echo trying to not let it fall into Glaz’ hands and Glaz simply pushing the sticks wildly in an attempt to make Echo nauseous. The Russian is in an undoubtedly better position as he can actually see what’s happening while Echo blindly flails at him.

“Okay, okay, how about a truce?”, Echo suggests when Glaz has him pinned down and unable to move. “We call this a tie and I’ll let you fly my drone for a bit.”

Glaz can’t remember him ever allowing anyone to pilot any of his drones, not even Twitch who probably understands them best right after Echo himself, so he agrees readily and releases the Japanese man from his grip, half expecting him to take back the offer and continue the fight, but he pulls through. Glaz helps him get up and then listens patiently as Echo explains to him how the remote works and that he’d best stay high in the air to avoid any danger of collision. Then Echo puts the heavy VR glasses on his head and Glaz’ knees go weak.

The first sensation is falling because he’s suddenly so high up without any sort of safety measure that his body panics – all that his eyes are telling him is that he’s flying, hanging in the sky hundreds of metres above the ground. Being able to look around and see nothing that conflicts with this notion is extremely disorienting, and while he flinches when Echo wraps his fingers around his upper arm, he’s grateful for the supportive touch. It’s almost dreamlike, so unlike anything Glaz has experienced first hand that all he can do is move his head, turn around and marvel at the sight, at the feeling of being the drone. Simple 2D screens can never compare to this, can’t rival the sensation of being able to look around seamlessly.

“You know what, let’s go inside. I can watch the monitor to see where you’re going.” Echo removes the headpiece again and drags him into the building before putting it back on, allowing Glaz back into that endless freedom. “Try moving, like this.” Echo pushes one of the sticks in a direction and Glaz nearly stumbles and falls at the unexpected movement – it’s as if someone else had taken control of his body, an unreal and strange feeling. “Okay, it’s probably better if you do it, I don’t want you to throw up.”

“Can you – can you hold me? Somehow? I think that helps.” Glaz hasn’t seen any chairs around in the barren room and doesn’t want to sit on the ground as it would limit his movement.

A short pause, then Echo says: “Alright.” His hands come to rest on Glaz’ hips and the touch is reassuring, especially together with sensing Echo’s body right behind his. “Go on, move. I wouldn’t fly over the base but you can see some more of the countryside.”

And so Glaz begins his flight. The conflicting sensation of standing in place yet simultaneously soaring through the sky is upsetting his stomach a little but Echo’s presence helps. He learns the controls slowly as he doesn’t share Echo’s affinity to delicate tech, but the whole experience is mind-blowing nonetheless, the view is stunning and makes him want to paint it, paint the world like a bird might see it, roads weaving through the fields, houses no more than specks of colours and steep hills reduced to a gentle incline. He notices his cheeks are hurting and realises he’s been smiling in awe non-stop. “This is absolutely breathtaking”, he says quietly and Echo huffs a soft laugh.

“Isn’t it?” He sounds proud. “Let me do some tricks.” Warm hands slide over Glaz’ and take over, Echo has to step closer for it, press himself against Glaz’ back as he uses both of their fingers to pilot the drone so that Glaz isn’t surprised by sudden movement. it’s like riding a rollercoaster while standing still, a cheerful laugh bubbles up in Glaz’ throat as he’s made to do flips and a variety of other manoeuvres during which he has to lean into Echo as to not lose his balance. When it stops, he’s giddy and light-headed and finally understands why Echo gets so excited whenever he does this.

“Are you alright?”, Echo asks and withdraws his hands to wrap his arms around Glaz’ torso, hold him in a tight embrace that can’t only be friendly support. No. There’s more.

Glaz relaxes into the hug and smiles to himself, hoping Echo can’t see it. “Yeah.” And thinks: Now I am. He looks down where his feet aren’t, down at the English countryside which has never looked this beautiful to him and takes one hand off the remote to stroke over one of Echo’s arms. “Can we do this again sometime?”

[pinelife3]

Defending Green Book

Green Book, winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, has had some run-ins with the press:

I want to look at some of these reviews and think pieces, talk about the arguments being made and try to defend Green Book. I’m not planning on talking about the plot or actors or any of the various scandals involving writer Nick Vallelonga. I could write a review saying that it’s funny, the music is beautiful, that it’s hammy at times but generally pretty nice and try to defend it that way, but I didn’t love Green Book - it didn’t suck, but there are other films from 2018 that had burly, surprisingly supple stories, brawny imagery, shredded performances, super jacked action, rippling jokes, rugged special effects, muscle bound implications (i.e. they were very sexy) which I would commend way more highly: Loveless, Widows, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Can You Ever Forgive Me, Burning, etc. Loveless in particular is a film I’ve thought about at least once a week since I saw it (around a year ago). Probably any of these films is more deserving of Best Picture - but I think the level of negative coverage Green Book has received is unfair and I want to try to rebut some of that.

ONE ARGUMENT: Green Book flopped because it’s not the kind of movie people want any more

While sniffing around for content, I noticed the URL for Vulture’s write up on Green Book’s box office performance refers to the film as a flop - a word which doesn’t appear anywhere in the article itself:

I checked the history of the article using the Wayback Machine and found that when the article was initially published in November 2018 it had this title:

How interesting. 

By December 15 the title of the article had been edited:

The actual content of the article hasn’t changed since it was published so this is likely not the writer’s doing and is just some sneaky shit from Vulture. (The writer is Mark Harris - who, just quietly, is a pretty big deal and generally seems like a nice guy. I know it’s wrong to define people based on who they’re married to... but dude is married to Tony Kushner!!) 

I imagine when the film ceased to be a flop, Vulture didn’t want to look like they were wrong. I’m not a journalist so I don’t know what standard operating procedure is in these cases, but from my time reading articles online I’ve observed that when a correction or change is made to a published article, some small text down the bottom of the page says something like “This article was originally published under the title...” or “This article originally misstated the number of fries served with...” or whatever. 

Anyway - here’s what Harris had to say:

Two weeks ago, the movie arrived. The crowds did not. Following a disappointing opening on 25 screens, Green Book expanded to 1,000 for Thanksgiving weekend and finished a somewhat wan ninth. According to IndieWire box-office analyst Tom Brueggemann, its cumulative gross of under $8 million makes it “a work in progress, with a struggle ahead.” That struggle may offer a lesson that after 50 years, a particular kind of movie about black and white America has, at long last, run its course.

This is the top 9 in American cinemas for the weekend of Green Book’s wide release:

Was Green Book expected to compete with Ralph Breaks The Internet or Fantastic Beasts? Considering Green Book’s budget, I don’t think is such a bad showing. Especially considering this is the type of film which typically relies on word of mouth to generate interest - it’s a gentle human interest story. Parents will recommend it to their kids. Kids will recommend it to their grandparents. Families will watch it at home on their sectional sofas with their golden retrievers and one of those 70s wooden bowls full of kettle cooked chips. The awards and nominations may not have been expected (Farrelly’s last film was Dumb and Dumber To), but they helped generate interest as they nudged the film into prestige territory.

Besides, you can see that Green Book’s per theatre average is $5,000 which is better than Widows, Robin Hood, Instant Family and Bohemian Rhapsody. If we’re talking about flops on this weekend, Robin Hood is the obvious candidate - it opened at #7 and grossed ~$14 million internationally against a $100 million budget! Based on Harris’ logic, this is the type of film that audiences are really saying they don’t want anymore: modern takes on heroes from the Late Middle Ages (sounds kind of obvious when you put it like that).

No one should have expected Green Book to be a box office juggernaut, it’s an indie racial politics road trip movie produced by (amongst others) Participant Media - a film studio which produces work intended as ‘social impact entertainment’. That is, films creating a conversation and maybe even spurring reflection and change around current social issues. Other recent films produced by Participant Media include Roma, Spotlight, Deepwater Horizon, RBG, Beasts of No Nation, He Named Me Malala, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and The Cove. A wide range of movies - I’m guessing the social impact element of Deepwater Horizon is that you can have too much of a good thing (when that good thing is millions of barrels of oil tumbling into the ocean, suffocating and poisoning everything it touches). Plus Deepwater is interested in OHS (Did you know BP pleaded guilty to 11 counts of manslaughter?) 

Participant Media occasionally delivers surprise hits (like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) but produces a lot of smaller budget movies (<$30 million) which barely make their money back. Haha even Deepwater Horizon failed to break even (budget including marketing, etc. was $156 million, box office was ~$120 million). When a Participant film gets awards recognition (see: Spotlight) their investment in the film multiplies well. Looking at their 2018 films (including Roma and Green Book) this may well be their strategy moving forward. The point I’m trying to make is that not even the people who made Green Book were expecting it to be a box office hit. 

In the Vulture article, Harris’ general argument is that Green Book’s ‘disappointing’ box office showing on its opening weekend indicates that America is over this type of movie. Harris states that there are two types of audience member: white and nonwhite (I’m sure there are lots of people who would take umbrage with being defined as nonwhite but Harris has a point to make about how progressive and non-racist he is so get out of his way), and that of those groups:

The portion of the white moviegoing audience that needs to be handled with this much care and flattery is getting smaller every year, and the nonwhite audience, at this point, seems justifiably wary of buying a version of someone else’s fantasy that it has been sold many, many times before...  

As one person commented on the article on Vulture:

More from Harris:

There were loud critical complaints that in Three Billboards, the black characters were plot devices, abstractions designed to facilitate the growth curve of the white protagonists. That didn’t matter to Academy voters, nor will it matter to some of them that Green Book is a movie that could have been made 30 years ago. But Academy voters themselves, almost 30 percent of whom have joined only in the last four years, are changing, too, so who knows? It used to be a certainty that you’d never go broke selling white people stories of their own redemption — and that may still be true. But in 2018, it suddenly seems possible that you’ll never get rich that way either.

Should Harris disclose here that he is a white person? And isn’t a white person like Harris rejecting a trite tale of white redemption itself a tale of white redemption? Indeed, Harris’ prescient savviness to not be fooled by ‘a film which could have been made 30 years ago’ is a stirring tale of white redemption to rival Green Book itself.

(I got all raged up about the coverage of Three Billboards last year as well - you can check that out here.)

ANOTHER ARGUMENT: gReN bOOk iS JusT aN iNVerSioN oF dRivInG miSS dAiSy (and that makes it bad - obviously)

From The New Yorker:

From The Telegraph:

From sore loser Spike Lee:

Green Book, like Driving Miss Daisy before it, tells the story of a black character and a white character who forge a friendship in the face of racial hostility while behind the wheel. (In Driving Miss Daisy, the driver is black, and the rider is white; in Green Book, it’s the other way around.) “I’m snakebit,” Lee continued in the press room. “Every time somebody’s driving somebody I lose.” He paused dramatically. “But they changed the seating arrangement this time.”

(Side note: one criticism of Green Book that’s pretty solid is that the story in the film may not be as truthful as Nick Vallelonga and Farrelly insist it is. These arguments could also be made about BlacKkKlansman, so. Provided I’m not watching a documentary, I don’t care how accurate a ‘based on a true story’ film is. See also: The Favourite.)

From The New York Times:

In the above, Wesley Morris (one of the only black writers I’ve seen cover this in a major publication) makes a really strong argument for the issues with Green Book and other films from the interracial friendship genre:

Not knowing what these movies were “about” didn’t mean it wasn’t clear what they were about. They symbolize a style of American storytelling in which the wheels of interracial friendship are greased by employment, in which prolonged exposure to the black half of the duo enhances the humanity of his white, frequently racist counterpart. All the optimism of racial progress — from desegregation to integration to equality to something like true companionship — is stipulated by terms of service. Thirty years separate “Driving Miss Daisy” from these two new films, but how much time has passed, really? The bond in all three is conditionally transactional, possible only if it’s mediated by money.

(FYI, the third film he’s talking about above is The Upside.) Morris actually seems to like Driving Miss Daisy - but he is openly disgusted by Green Book:

The movie’s tagline is “based on a true friendship.” But the transactional nature of it makes the friendship seem less true than sponsored. So what does the money do, exactly? The white characters — the biological ones and somebody supposedly not black enough, like fictional Don — are lonely people in these pay-a-pal movies. The money is ostensibly for legitimate assistance, but it also seems to paper over all that’s potentially fraught about race. The relationship is entirely conscripted as service and bound by capitalism and the fantastically presumptive leap is, The money doesn’t matter because I like working for you. And if you’re the racist in the relationship: I can’t be horrible because we’re friends now.

As a plot device, I think the point of the money or the job is that IRL people from different worlds and communities just tend not to meet. That’s true now - in what other context aside from work, dating apps or maybe sports would you meet people even from a different suburb? Logistically, how do you get them in a room together? There are still real class divides in the world - I went to a very fancy private school with an indoor pool, an equestrian centre, a ‘wellbeing centre’, etc. which is based in Corio, one of the most disadvantaged suburbs in the state. Very few (no?) families in Corio could afford to send their kids to our school. I have no friends from Corio. Probably no friends from ‘working class’ families at all. I work a white collar office job so I don’t meet working class or long-term jobless people at work. I live in a gentrified inner-city suburb. What would be the set-up to get me in a room with a person from a disadvantaged background? Would I be doing volunteer work with elderly people? Serving lunch to the homeless? A school teacher at an inner city school attended by refugee children? Would I be a psychiatrist working with a bright, but angry and confused young man? (Hey, Will Hunting!)

In Green Book, our protagonist Tony Lip (Mortensen) is initially v racist, as are most of the people around him - we hear them use slurs, and we see Tony throw out glasses because black men drank from them. As Tony works for Dr. Shirley, they chat in the car - this is really the only black man he’s every had a one-on-one conversation with. Tony also observes the more extreme racism of the South. All of this undoes his prejudices. And Tony and Dr. Shirley learn from each other along the way: Tony to be a more considerate husband, more restrained in dealing with conflict, and more warm and open-minded with people who are different from those he knows - and Dr. Shirley learns to open up, have some fun rather than protecting his pride, etc. Morris is right, initially “[t]he relationship is entirely conscripted as service and bound by capitalism.” Tony took a job. Which is not a bad or unusual thing to do. Morris makes it sound sinister - ‘conscripted’, ‘bound by capitalism’. But working for someone is pretty normal - Morris himself works for The New York Times, bound by capitalism to be a critic for a great publication! It’s not so bad. 

The common criticism is that Tony only changes through exposure to an exceptional black man, a piano virtuoso with a psychology degree, who is, in the film’s portrayal of him, not ‘typically’ black because he doesn’t like fried chicken or popular music. Critics argue that this microcosm doesn’t prove that Tony won’t be racist towards other black people, it doesn’t deal with larger issues of race throughout America - and worst of all, it depicts Dr. Shirley as so lost, lonely, and broken as a person that he chooses to settle for Tony, a recently and possibly only partly reformed racist, as his new best friend.

Sure! Okay! I think when people are from different races, communities, socio-economic backgrounds, etc. are put together, it’s easy for someone who studied post-colonial literature at uni to get into battle mode. But there has to be a non-offensive way to tell a story about people from different backgrounds being in a situation and getting along. Because those situations happen all the time and it’s a good thing they do. That’s why people talk about the value of diversity. And it’s not bullshit. When people who are different get together, it can work and they can learn important lessons from each other.

Morris also talks about Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing:

Closure is impossible because the blood is too bad, too historically American. Lee had conjured a social environment that’s the opposite of what “The Upside,” “Green Book,” and “Driving Miss Daisy” believe. In one of the very last scenes, after Sal’s place is destroyed, Mookie still demands to be paid. To this day, Sal’s tossing balled-up bills at Mookie, one by one, shocks me. He’s mortally offended. Mookie’s unmoved. They’re at a harsh, anti-romantic impasse. We’d all been reared on racial-reconciliation fantasies. Why can’t Mookie and Sal be friends? The answer’s too long and too raw. Sal can pay Mookie to deliver pizzas ‘til kingdom come. But he could never pay him enough to be his friend.

Maybe there’s something innately American about race relations and black history that I’ll never understand, but - is Morris arguing that black and white people in America can’t get on? Closure is impossible?

In this interview with the Associated Press, Mahershala Ali, as the only black person involved in Green Book, clearly felt pressure to defend it:

Ali grants “Green Book” is a portrait of race in America unlike one by Jenkins or Amma Asante or Ava DuVernay. But he believes the film’s uplifting approach has value.

“It’s approached in a way that’s perhaps more palatable than some of those other projects. But I think it’s a legitimate offering. Don Shirley is really complex considering it’s 1962. He’s the one in power in that car. He doesn’t have to go on that trip. I think embodied in him is somebody that we haven’t seen. That alone makes the story worthy of being told,” says Ali. “Anytime, whether it’s white writers or black writers, I can play a character with dimensionality, that’s attractive to me.”

...

“A couple of times I’ve seen ‘white savior’ comments and I don’t think that’s true. Or the ‘reverse “Driving Miss Daisy’” thing, I don’t agree with,” he says. “If you were to call this film a ‘reverse “Driving Miss Daisy,’” then you would have to reverse the history of slavery and colonialism. It would have to be all black presidents and all white slaves.”

Yet the debates over “Green Book” have put Ali in a plainly awkward position, particularly when Mortensen used the n-word at a Q&A for the film while discussing the slur’s prevalence in 1962. Mortensen quickly apologized , saying he had no right, in any context to use the word. Ali issued a statement, too, in support of Mortensen while firmly noting the word’s wrongness.

I don’t want to wade into that whole mess - but it does feel like a kind of ouroboros trap where you want to condemn a word and the people who used it but can’t say the word, so your condemnation and discussion of the word is really neutered. Like when people talk about ‘You-Know-Who’ in Harry Potter. The word still flashes through your mind.

Gah so Ali had to go on The View covering for Mortensen and explaining why we should forgive him for his just-shy-of-unforgiveable mistake so we could all still go see the film without feeling weird. What a horrible position to be in.

A lot of the coverage of Greek Book is from critics who are saying the film is regressive and offensive, that it uses black people as props, that America should be better able to handle its history by now - they don’t even hate it, they feel ick about it. And it’s so unfortunate that Ali has had to hear all of this. In various interviews, Ali has spoken about how long it took him to break out in Hollywood:

“I was exhausted by . . . I don’t want to say the lack of opportunity, but the type of opportunity,” Ali says. “I’d get offers to do two or three scenes, with a nice note from the director. But I felt like I had more to say.”

From a different article:

“Dr. Shirley was the best opportunity that had ever come my way at that point,” Ali said. “You gotta think, a year-and-a-half ago, coming off of Moonlight, which was an amazing experience, but I'm present in that movie for the first third of it. And that had sort of been my largest and most profound experience in my 25 years of working.”

“So to be presented Green Book and have Dr. Shirley, a multidimensional character who had agency, who chose...no one else was doing that in this time,” he continued. “He didn't have to hire a white driver, he chose to hire a white driver in 1962 to be in the south and have a white man opening your door and carrying your bags and for him to be in that relationship, to be the person in power, for him to be as talented and as intelligent as he was, the dignity in which he carried himself with, his own personal struggle to keep his life and things about his life private because for those things to be public, it would not have been embraced.”

Does it sound to you like Ali is trying to convince himself that it was okay to do this job? 

Conscripted as service and bound by capitalism.

About a month after Morris’ article Why Do the Oscars Keep Falling for Racial Reconciliation Fantasies? was published, Green Book won the Oscar and he reflected on the film again, sounding more resigned and sad:

First, for all the changing that’s been reported about the academy’s membership — it’s getting less white and less male every year — it’s not yet entirely reflective of all that change: white and male and, at this point, capable of feeling better about a movie like “Green Book” more than, say, a movie like “Vice,” a fever dream about Dick Cheney... Peter Farrelly makes comedies and this movie, if you’re inclined to find laughs at the friendship at the film’s center, is funny. And the last line is so good and right and pleasing that I actually went for a third helping just to make sure I wasn’t wrong about it all. Only once I start thinking about what and who I’m laughing at do I get depressed...

For reference:

That is toasty warm.

As I said at the top, I don’t think Green Book is a fantastic movie - I just think it’s better than the criticism it attracted. The bulk of the criticism seemed to be mean spirited, referring obliquely to the fried chicken scene, and focussed on Peter Farrelly having a career in broad comedies and therefore not being a worthy match-up for Spike Lee, Alfonso Cuarón, etc. - plus also the obvious laughs to be had from Farrelly being forced to apologise for flopping his dick out ‘as a joke’ on the set of There’s Something About Mary (because haha his penis is so small and gross haha that’s the real joke). Hatred of Green Book has become a fun meme for Twitter. 

I don’t believe Morris is writing this stuff for his own amusement, or to be contrary, or as some kind of performative wokeness. He seems very genuine - he went to see Green Book again just to check he really disliked it. He seems hurt and troubled by the movie. The best I can get to is that maybe I’m wrong for feeling optimistic and liking the kind of movie where everyone can be friends. I am very open to accepting that there is something I won’t ever really understand about racial politics in America - and if that’s the case I may not be equipped to properly defend Green Book. 

(This is someone’s cue to make a movie about an Australian blogger who doesn’t think she’ll ever get American racial politics and then - on a yoga retreat in Texas, in the midst of a bird flu/zombie apocalypse, has to team up with a wheelchair-bound black politician (who was at the retreat to treat herself after a very stressful primary election). And then I the blogger becomes her driver, fleeing the flesh-hungry birds across the Texan plains, heading who knows where, but always squinting into the sun. We’ll They’ll saw the top off a Land Rover and restore a Civil War-era gattling gun to make it a death Jeep and the hair in our their armpits will grow long. It ends with us them howling like wolves and eating raw zombie birds. It will win many awards and annoy much of film twitter because the movie should have been about the black woman’s election and the blogger should have been eaten by the reanimated birds.)