Form and Function: How the casting and the actors served the function of 12 Years A Slave.

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A third watch of Steve McQueen's essential Oscar winner "12 Years A Slave" proves my initial feeling upon seeing it..That it was a monumental achievement. Awe inspiring and humbling in its precision and its cinematic language. The subject matter itself should humble anyone tackling it, but prior to 12 years, (and to some extent after) I don’t know that that humility has been felt or present in many films on the subject matter. Foregoing the self assured faux moral exactitude of previous efforts on the subject, it seems like a benevolent understanding of the importance of being in service to not only the work, but the story- is ever present in McQueen's film. 12 Years moves beyond the painstaking processes of the cinematic to the spiritual, and yet does this by way of attention to the painstaking processes of the cinematic, and this goes doubly for the facet of the movie that I know and love as a familiar - Acting. What I'm seeking to pierce and dive into more specifically is how much of the casting (Truly exceptional work by Francine Maisler) and the way the actors employ their particular skills ends up deepening, lending weight to, and underlining a central, but sub textual theme of just how institution goes beyond any individual, and inversely institutions continue and thrive precisely because of individual behavior. How the film illustrates that there is no kind of white person above slavery, no “kind” slaver, and how cowardice, capitalism and fear held a stranglehold over all. It does the same for the slaves, acknowledging humanely how easy betrayal comes in a system that is in and of itself a betrayal of humanity. Compassionately but with a steely eye portraying just how one moment of self survival or self care could impact a life of one or many. I've never seen a movie so thoroughly, so vastly reach out onto the nebulous black void of slavery and pull back something that gives a meaningful semblance of just how exhaustive, traumatic, and complex the institution was while informing the ways in which its arms still extend into our current ideology, construction , and function, and deploy a litany of actors in such interesting ways very very near devoid of ego and bias towards outside factors like financing or nepotism.

Scoot McNairy and Taran Killiam “Brown and Hamiliton"

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The first two demons we meet in McQueen's slavery inferno are at first sight harmless. They present themselves not as the duplicitous actors in an unforgivable transaction they are, but as the embodiment of opportunity. This is an example of the tendrils of routines refined and sometimes developed during slavery. New forms of restriction, reduction, and harm, are often presented as opportunities, from “broken windows” to ebonics to neoliberalism. To properly nail down the constitution, make up, and disposition of these “actors”, you want actors that bring exactly what Mcnairy and especially Killiam bring. Killiam, has a tenderness about the face that comes mostly from him seeming to have retained baby fat , but his eyes bare a quality of mischief easily tapped into, and something more sinister if deployed with more skill. There is a natural softness to him that he handily employs in service of the narrative. In a underrated scene emblematic of and comparable to white liberalism, he strokes the face of Solomon Northup - our soon to be beleaguered protagonist with a wipe after purposely getting him drunk and drugging him for the purpose of selling him off into trauma and degradation. Hamilton's conscious is clearly riddled with guilt, and shame, but his best offering is merely a few kind words, not an actual reversal of his behavior followed by contrition. It’s not only the only thing he can muster, it’s the only thing he will. Killiam and McNairy are not asked to stretch beyond their skills, ( the latter of whom I think has considerable range to excavate) merely to stand in what we naturally see in each. Mcnairy for his part has always shared an uncanny ability to conjure up balmy sleaze in a way that mirrors much of what Ben Mendelsohn does, save that its more straightforward and also a bit more compassionate. These two represent the cowardice, beleaguered morality, and baby face of an evil empire of individual avarice thus also serving as placeholders for the ills of capitalism and in that the evil of a racist system itself is emphasized not over, but with the individual. In case we doubt this particular point, the ending shot of the result of their treachery is a pan upwards from Solomon’s cell, past the sturdy bricks that hold him prisoner, to the top of the building where the White House can be seen just but maybe a few miles away as Solomon cries out for help… The individuals are backed by the apparatus.

Michael K Williams “Robert"

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By the time “12 Years A Slave” was released actor Michael K. Williams had already solidified himself as an actor heavy with his iconic role as Omar in the definitive TV show of its era “The Wire”, and was now well on his way to a Hollywood favorite. Here though he is employed not as a 4 to 5th billed character actor, but in such a manner that if you blinked you might’ve missed him, a day player one might say. Having an actor of his repute show up and be clearly recognized only to dispatched so rapidly with surgical indifference surprises the audience in a way similar to Janet Leigh being murdered in the early portion of “Psycho”. Both to varying degrees provide voyueristic horror and a reinforcement of the tenuous nature of life itself under murderous, psychotic, and dehumanizing forces, but one (Psycho) emphasizes the lone psychotic individual, 12 Years emphasizes individuals as well as a psychotic system of oppression. In this system being explored and reenacted before our eyes our “Michael K Williams” is not celebrated, he is not here to remind us of how good the movie we are watching is, or of its prestige, he is merely a function. We meet “Robert” (Michael K Williams) on a slave ship churning across the river. He is introduced just as a conversation between another enslaved man “Clemens” (Chris Chalk) and Solomon about the proper philosophical approach to their predicament is being held. Clemens advice and approach regarding survival amounts to “shut up and keep your head down”, and no sooner than he finishes his sentence, Robert appears head down, with a contraption that gags his mouth. A slaver whose face is never shown comes down only foot in frame, his hands come into screen releasing the contraption with a further warning…“keep your mouth shut”. Robert looks up at the slaver, then at the Clemens and Solomon and the very next scene is Robert passionately exclaiming “I Say We Fight!” It is potent and gifted that potency through William’s elegant skill for emotional sincerity, repressed anger and vehemence. Williams had a possessive hold over roles like Chalky White in Boardwalk Empire where this seething but quiet rage was put to similar use in scenes where he would exclaim “I ain’t building no bookcase”. The bookcase scene in Boardwalk showed a similar character serving a different purpose. Chalky is as belligerent, and rebellious as Robert in 12 years, but he is now also a agent in the wheel of capitalism, as well as a victim of racism. The black capitalist in Chalky might cast aspersions on the likes of a Robert. Implied in the messaging of that very Bookcase scene is “I ain’t my ancestors", but here is Chalky's ancestor saying he wasn’t either, but the wages were so often death, and over time death can act as a a greaser for revisionist history. These subtle representations of various out growths of slave mentality from the “Coonery” (which in this case I prefer traumatic conditioning) in Clemens, to the colorism represented in a light skin woman unchained serving water to Adepero Oduye's “Eliza” and her children condescendingly telling her to “Cheer up and don’t be so cast down”. Each representative in and of themselves could warrant a piece of their own, such is the nature of the exhaustively precise and yet STILL incomplete portrait of slavery McQueen paints to as a means to connect the various functions. Returning to Robert, the character tries to conjure up a plan to commit mutiny with an impassioned plea alluding to the degradation and horrors that lie ahead in Solomon's future.. Nothing comes of it, the boat churns on and the next scene is yet another slaver creeping downstairs with the sole intention to rape Eliza. Robert commits his last act of rebellion to put his hands on the slaver. Was it to plea with him? To harm him? To ask him for something? Most likely one of the former two but we never know, for a knife from the slaver is plunged into him so fast we barely have time to recognize what has happened, until it is revealed. Solomon awakens shocked at what has taken place, and Clemons who has been awake “but in full praxis of his head down theory, also jumps to aid. Eliza stands by clearly in shock and most likely additionally traumatized, watching this man die trying to protect her, which for what we know does not even work (it stands to reason that this fiend continued on his original intent). The whole scene is a microcosm of the ripple effect. One act of discriminatory violence, and the way the horror, confirms, conditions, and harms those that witnessed it, including us the audience. The next we see Michael K Williams he is in a body bag being tossed over like laundry by those who witnessed his death, and he is no more. Status, reputation, station, in the cinematic context of this film, makes no more difference than his humanity in the context of slavery, and the film underscores that through the main character of Solomon and by way of characters like “Robert” being played by an actor like Michael K Williams. Both are reminders that the radical nature of this film lays not in its meaning or messaging, (which we know by knowledge and blood) but in its execution and exploration of both.

Paul Giamatti “Freeman”

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Paul Giamatti is one of the most versatile actors of this or any other era. Able to alternate between deploying degrees of inviting approachability or repulsive menace in different (Sideways, Duplicity) and sometimes the same roles (The Illusionist). Here McQueen encourages the combination, and it expresses mostly the capitalist POV while not for a moment ignoring the anti blackness and racism involved in the character of these men. Giamatti's Freeman is a slaver/auctioneer, a very explicit profiteer in the market of black bodies, and as Giamatti's effortless congeniality serves the capitalistic endeavor, his menace serves the racist. The tone is set from jump. Freeman appears in front of the newly named Platt ( Solomon), Eliza and others calling out their names for record, in this opening introduction he feels much like a cordial teacher in front of a class, (but therein also lies the paternalistic nature of racism) yet not but a few moments later when Solomon (who does not yet know they have changed his name to Platt) tells him his name is Solomon, the menace makes itself known. These two faces do not alternate, they are both there in Giamatti in the same way one might mix red and blue and get purple. They are there as he slaps Solomon and calls for “These niggers to be brought to my cart” intertwining and giving the application of the word a sort of straightforward nonchalance that is appalling in its own right. This nonchalance is the purpose of this particular chapter, this portion of slavery. McQueen moves the camera in this very same manner of straight to the pointedness. It moves as if it were from a patron's pov following Giamatti's “Freeman” around as he shows off “the merchandise". The camera is not preaching or sermonizing, or even telling , its just there to see, and we see in plainness very real, a very civil, and very vile behavior. Now back fully into the weaponized cordial pleasantness common to a salesman, Giamatti, giving no actorly sense of the sentimentality or burden of truth, parades around these people with a sensible matter-of-factness that grows increasingly and almost to a crescendo of gross joviality until it is interrupted by a slave named Eliza's ( Adepero Oduye) pleas to keep her and her family together. Here we are also introduced to Benedict Cumberbatch, but I’ll get to him later. Freeman hits, slaps, pats and yells at these men and women as if they were..well livestock, and it is all intentional as is backed by an interview with Giamatti in “The Collider” speaking about McQueen..

He was amazing! He is a really, really interesting guy. The way it was shot, he is a very interesting dude. This movie could easily be freaky. His whole take on it is to kind of take any kind of modern sensibility off of it and just create a world in which its completely normal that people get chained up and beaten and sold to each other. He wanted to create a sense in which its totally normal, so he’s not commenting on it, at all.

When asked about his sentimentality, by Cumberbatch's Ford, Freeman answers “it extends the length of a coin”. The intertwining of capitalism and racism, their synergistic relationship now expressed in laymans terms through John Ridley's script, McQueen's eye, and embodied in Paul Giamatti's ability to flexibly play at being agreeable while being pathetic and putrid. This circle of hell now complete and explained he moves on.

Paul Dano and Benedict Cumberbatch “Tibeats and Ford"

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Paul Dano has not only a small role in 12 years but also one of the more recognizable archetypes in both Slavery and “Race” films made from white perspectives and/or for white audience. The overt racist, the man meant to conveniently symbolize and summarize racism. Benedict Cumberbatch as slave owner Ford, is much like the inverse of Danos archetype, the character meant to remind white folk of their inherent good, their disdain and “redemptive”sorrow at the whole enterprise, so they're nowhere near as interesting alone as what McQueen has them form together, a good cop bad/cop act that looks to be separate but is actually co-dependent and cooperative. Tibeats announces himself as Fords head carpenter, but he acts quite a bit like a overseer himself, and most of what he does seems to be backed up by and co-signed by Fords actual overseer, which by proxy means its co-signed by Ford himself. It should be understood that’s the objective of good cop bad cop, to cover up the cooperative nature of your oppressors. To shock the supposed perpetrator into fealty and compliance by bombarding them with an emotional 1-2 punch. A presentation of what seems like extremes in choice to herd and corral them into a false sense of security so that they may become useful to the system. It’s also worth noting that cops are descended from slavery, and that our introduction to Tibeats includes him gleefully singing a song about “Pattyrollers” ( Slave Patrols) catching negroes, so again we see a direct connection and correlation between functions, strategies, attitudes, and archetypes that live on today even in our police, in our state, in our election. 12 years tells the story of Solomon markedly different then the book, which is more a straightforward telling that misses some of the greater ironies and intricacies of the order of things. McQueen and crew want us to notice that Solomon himself is blinded and in some ways has blinded himself to what America is, and what he is. The former occurs in a flashback where he remembers the way a white man took special note of him in a store where another black man is retrieved harshly and peturbedly by his owner, the latter occurs later at the very Mr Fords plantation, where Solomon does not and refuses to see the connection between Tibeats and Ford. In order to reinforce the “act" of good and bad, which seemed to fool even the real Solomon Northup in the book, its important to get two actors that demonstrate themselves the extremes needed, and in Cumberbatch and Dano you could find no wider apart duo. What each actor does, what they're known for, is extremely far apart. Cumberbatch is a lead, who can character act on occasion, Dano a pure character actor. Dano's previous roles include a role in Denis Villeneuve's “Prisoners” as the “Person of interest” in a series of child abductions, and as the enemy of Daniel Plainview “Eli Sunday” in Paul Thomas Anderson's modern classic “There Will Be Blood”. There is an unorthodox quality to Dano's work born of both training but also a willingness to rebel against it. Much of Dano's work consist of playing meek, and withdrawn characters with ferocious underbellies of cruelty and rage lurking underneath. Dano like Kiliam also has a baby faced quality that makes him appear boy- like, innocent, and a relaxed, almost slack quality around his shoulders that makes him appear low, and lowly. His voice constantly breaks (which adds to his boyishness) whether he’s screaming in There Will Be Blood, sobbing in Prisoners or singing in 12 years a Slave, all of this serves the portrait of Tibeats as an icky, petrified child who wants so desperately to be a big strong adult. There’s a sliminess there in Danos Big Baby Huey act that makes you want to hit Dano, and it aids in allowing the audience to see how Solomon could end up snapping and beating the tar out of him, in the same way it helped us understand what made Daniel Plainview despise him, and aided in our complicitness in maybe mentally supporting if only but a little Hugh Jackman’s actions in Prisoners. It’s a Trumpian sensibility, that makes him easy to hate set in direct opposition to (Biden like) Cumberbatch. It covers the synergistic relationship between he and Ford, whom fair tempered though he may be is still a slaver. He abuses, then Cumberbatch comes in with kindness, He sings the A selection the Ford comes in with the sermon. Cumberbatch is a rigidly trained actor it’s what helps and hurts him. Here it helps. Arguably Cumberbatch's best weapon is his voice, and the way he deploys it nearly yells classical training. It has a beautiful, engrossing, and forced quality that fits Fords demeanor perfectly selling his cultured, and curated sense of benevolence and authority. It is especially effective during Fords Bible readings, ( which McQueen never allows to be read alone they are always intertwined with either Eliza's suffering, or Tibeats dreadful singing of the dreadful song “Run nigger run". Cumberbatch's qualities serve well to illustrate and illuminate a very specific kind of authority, the paternalistic racist father figure, and the falsehood behind it, one which another character in the film brings to plain sight.

Adepero Oduye “Eliza”

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12 Years could be looked at as two different things, and Eliza's role becomes clearer in the one than the other. If a sobering, unflinching, intentional education on slavery, then shes just a token of representation of suffering that either works or doesn't work. If a story of the journey of one man through not slavery, but the fable of his existence as a black person in the hell of American slavery as an institution, (be it south or north) Eliza is a a prop character with depth, whom through her journey we are reminded ( then he is reminded) that this is indeed hell. Its still a weakness of the script for 12 years that its women feel underserved, but in Eliza's case there is still something vital to be mined from her experience. For it is Eliza who most tells not just by way of words but through her entire history in the movie on the fable and folly of Solomon’s approach and on the cruelty of Master Ford and thereby on anyone involved in the whole foul business. From the way he's willing to separate her for his needs, (which he views as a kindness) to the way he allows her to be gotten rid of merely because she mourned her children “too much” for the tender ears of his privileged wife, Fords benevolent cruelty is laid bare. If you focus too much on Solomons “I will surivive!” rant you will miss the heavenly glory of Eliza’s retort which serves as the most poignant representation of not only the humble of approach of the makers of this film in that moment, but of the enterprise of oppression, and of its effects on those whom it harms.

There are two sections to Eliza's portion or role in this film, and both are colored by way of Adepero's acting and her youth. Just but two years earlier Adepero played a 17 year old in Dee Rees endearing portrait of a coming of age lesbian in “Pariah". In that story she is on the path to embracing, here she has embraced, who she is and what she means to the institution, and it is of no aid to her, or her sadness. This is the first section, embracing her grief, her despair, and looking firmly into the hypocrisy of the whole enterprise. It is important, because Solomon is under the false impression that he can strategize his way out of this, that he can figure, that there is some way to know his way through it, and Eliza having now arrived where he will just now begin to see, knows better, for reasons better explained by a black woman, black women have always been able to stare straight into a thing and see it for exactly for what it is, be it anything from their children to a predicament, save maybe their romantic situation very few things escape their intuitive glare. For all that this movie doesn’t give them, that much is made plain through Eliza, Alfre Woodard's Mistress Shaw, Patsey, and even the knowing eyes of the elderly black woman who sings the spirituals. Solomon and Eliza are two trains passing in the night who would be headed for the same destination were it not for chance and Solonon not being born into it. There lies a privilege in Solomon, hes not keen on seeing, and for that matter, Eliza's presence reminds Ford, Solomon, and even us the audience of it and its uncomfortability. Her misery is a discomfort, her truth is a discomfort, and her fate is a discomfort to all involved. How many times are we, must we be reminded that black women's pain is an inconvenience to us, an affront even to black men. This begins the second section, pay attention to how Solomon acts both as she cries, but even as she reads him for exactly whom he is. Two of the best bits of acting in this film are to be found in this scene and given by Adepero. The enunciation and body language that accompanies the word “luxuriate” is something I can't easily forget it's like those portions of a great song that you always anticipate and wait for. This is followed by Adepero's delivery of the line “So you settle into your role as “Platt”. It lacks judgment but it's nonetheless a powerful strike for its statement and assessment of what Platt has done. I love it when actors bring Things to words statements phrases that ultimately back up what the script means to imply or something that they will later say so that when Eliza then says (and I paraphrase) I don't judge you Solomon I've done things myself it now has been reinforced we know it to be true because ultimately it's there in her words and in the way they are delivered just before. Adepero's authenticity is vital because this is an important aspect to the discussion that's going on here and again a kind of commentary that while allowing points to be seen does not necessarily feel the need to vocalize them in a way that preaches to the audience. For myself I hear Eliza's words and it reaches across time to speak to me of the issue of humility in community action. Eliza does not stand in judgment because she knows she herself has committed acts that no one including she herself would be proud of for the sake of survival, she understands this instinct coming from Solomon but she rightfully puts him in his place and lets him know what exactly it is he's doing and what she views as the folly of what he is doing. This is something I see in today's discourse, constantly missing the idea that those who commit certain acts for the sake of their survival are victims in and of themselves and a sort of connective tissue between the “I" and the “them” and I'm talking only between people who are mostly likely in in the same “house". Solomon and Eliza though different are mostly in the same “house" but not so vastly different that Eliza can stand in judgement of him anymore than he can her. Though Solomon has privileges that he holds over Eliza it is not as if he is free, and Eliza herself is a sober reminder of that. The True Villain of all villains here is the institution and then directly under that the actors who directly incompetently, implicitly, and explicitly, and in any number of ways help aid the system. Those who were victimized by and have varying types of reactions to the institution and the oppression are still victims, they may also become agents, but even as a house nigger you are a victim. So why Eliza stands firm and tall in her defense of her morning and in the truth of her view this hell, she does not stand in judgement of Solomon and his desire to be free by the way that he knows how, she just points out plainly and righteously it will not incur the desired effect. I'm reminded of Audre Lorde speaking on the way her impotence under oppression made her hate it in others before she caught herself. It is powerful and beautifully plain acting making a beautifully plain point. The point being Ford is an actor in all of this and he is no more free events wheel desires and blame than we are and as a matter of fact pure fact he is actor in evil, where we are merely just fallible because of it.

Lupita Nyong'o “Patsey”

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The most difficult scene in this film for me is not Patsey's whipping, and or her rape though those too are difficult. It is not Solomon's near hanging either, though that also is difficult, it is to eliminate all other competitors none of the physical acts of violence displayed or portrayed throughout the movie.. it is Patsey begging Solomon to end her life. Lupita Nyong'o adds such a spiritual weight to the plea it is almost too much for me to bear. It’s such a unrelentingly tragic scene I tear up at the thought of it. I am angered by it too. It’s Lupita's sanguin smile as she thinks the thought before she reveals it to us and the Solomon when uttering the words “I have a request”. Its the bodily shift, and the embers of hope and desperation now fully ablaze in her eyes as she says “There is God Here!”. It’s the way her hand hovers over his back, as she watches the flame of hope extinguish. I won’t go too deep into Patsey because I feel her pain is so uniquely her own and black women’s there are definitely parts of it I genuinely dom’t understand. I also feel she is the one portion of he film where Ridley and McQueen missed the mark. She feels dimensionally cheated, and the meat of her soul is left solely upon the shoulders of Lupita to outline to us what is not there in story. Whereas Eliza suffers like all in the film but has an arc, it feels like Patsey merely suffers, but again it is Lupita who provides a quiet soulful and heart breaking sense of poetic melancholia to the role without romanticizing it. In fact it is Lupitas work that most assuredly brings to light the cruelty of fetishization, and the oppression of love from someone who doesn’t even view you as an equal, or consider you in the equation at all. The tragedy of Patsey is the combined tragedy of a silencing of the full experiences of black women throughout years of this heinous endeavor, and of Lupita’s Godly work in a role where there is none.

Michael Fassbender, Sarah Paulson Mr and Mrs “Epps"

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“Do not set yourself up against Patsey, my dear. Cos I will rid myself of you well before I do away with her.” It is a fiery quote and one that encapsulates the power dynamics of the relationship between white women and white men in this country for some time. When Bill Burr went on his brutally truthful rant about white women inserting and centering themselves after playing such a significant role in said oppression I thought immediately of Sarah Paulson's Mrs Epps, a cruel cantankerous, self pitying woman who laid her frustrations at the feet of a black woman because she was intimidated by her, and jealous of her husband's desire, and also because she could. Paulson has that quality so many of the greats have, where the same quality that makes them affable, can be inverted to appear nasty, menacing, repulsive, a la Harrison Ford, (the aforementioned Giamatti) or Bette Davis ( Though not as skillfully and flexibly as Davis). Paulson carries a polite stiffness well. Especially noted in her work in much of Ryan Murphy's shows, and here all she needed to do was turn off the polite. If you watch Mrs Epps she doesn’t move much in any action and her movements are always precise and without flourish. This aids and upholds the believability of the backstory her husband gives us that she does not come from money. This is practiced. As a woman whose station itself is precarious you would think she would identify and relate to those who also lack agency and power but so many times this is not the case, instead as practice she clings to what little power she has, and views Patsey as an imminent threat to it. It’s not a reach to suppose that if Epps knows of what has transpired across the way with the “lothatrio” on the Shaw Plantation and fears Shaw beguiling Patsey, than his wife would (knowing of what happened on the Shaw Plantation with Mistress Shaw) fear the exact same. White women it seems have always both known the tenuous nature of their stature in a white male dominated hegemonic society and enjoyed the fruits of it, but it leaves them often times in perpetual limbo, and Paulson works as an avatar for this precisely because she has that ability for both repulsion and affability as an actor. Now in the case of her movie husband, Mr Epps Fassbender’s work is in my opinion the central acting force of the film. As Epps Michael Fassbender conjures something so ugly, so hideous, it’s jarring. It defies being called villainy, it’s far too human for that, and yet it doesn't defy being called evil. Fassbender is so spot on in his depiction, so wild eyed and authentic in it, I think it has caused a hesitation by the audience to look directly into the black abyss of humanity he created and critique or praise the performance. Epps is a small man who quite literally leans on others to give himself height and strength, so its understandable, he is also vile and a serial rapist so its understandable that there is a moral question that raises itself out of the root of the importance of storytelling as well as the consequence. What is the value of praising such a performance? The consequence? What if Fassbender had won the Oscar, after an avalanche of praise for playing to the absolute hilt one of the worst human beings this side of Hitler. It’s a question with no easy answers, so I will try and talk about Fassbender's work with as much rigidity and frankness as is possible without being effusive. Fassbender has always had a piercing stare…Shame, the 300, Fish Tank, in various ways he made use of this in all of these films, but here is where the stare being Eddie Brock, found its sentient symbiote in the character of Epps and became literal venom. Where Fassbender finds Epps is in his unadorned trivialities, his nude bitterness, and his matter of factly belief in the institution. He does not give his words the fervor of hate, he gives them the fervor of a believer, and yet not a “True” believer. The most pertinent example being in his conversation with Brad Pitt's “Samuel Bass”. Epps argument is not dressed in elegant actor fire, in fact some words barely make it out they're so understated. When Bass calls Epps slaves laborers, he scoffs, but though it comes with the proper amount of bewilderment, his “what the hell?” is so plainly delivered it almost feels under his breath. He responds “They ain’t hired help, they're my property” and Bass responds “You say that with pride”, he responds back “I say it as fact"..He is right, Fassbender delivers the line exactly as if it were fact, and like many believers his supposition and disposition rest upon a foundation of constant and consistent reinforcement. In one way or another to cause Epps any form of disbelief in the purity of the system that props him up is a threat. It makes Patsey a threat because he is in love with her, Solomon a threat because he is much smarter than he, and Bass a threat because he is outright questioning the institution as a white man and subsequently Epps righteousness.. and what does Epps have if he doesn’t have his rationalizations of his cruelties? Thing is though Fassbender doesn’t play Epps for depth, he plays him for simplicity, and finds Epps complexity through it. He stares at Platt holding him close, the proximity a thinly veiled threat, but also the bodily admission of something underneath, (admiration, kinship, maybe even some form of desire) and the stare directly into Solomon is one one would give a map, trying to divine from it its secrets. He accepts Epps explanation for the accusation he was writing a letter, less because it seems the truth, which is much too complex for him to ascertain, and more because he is happy with Epps capitulation to his superiority. Had the movie chose to follow Epps outward beyond the Epps home, it would be easy to see him as one kept just outside the circle of elite who know well what and who he is, but find him useful a simpleton propped up by numbingly violent, and hypocritical institution as machine for capital. A tool happy in his work and also confused by it. His “moods”, his drinking being propelled by it. Fassbender's performance is compelling, and pure, there is little to no “acting” in it, and it is by far his best work to me, and by far the most difficult to celebrate, but in him and through him we see the mechanical touch of the empire in a way that shines away from morality plays that were so common in the telling of this bleak history, and into something that took the immorality as evident without need of extra service, and instead chose to focus on the viscera, and the inner workings of this body. Let us find our emotion through it, and in that approach it deployed each and every one of its actors as tools to represent it machinery to tune it, and tighten it, and allow it to run to its conclusion.

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12 Years as told in the hands of McQueen, Ridley and the other storytellers is a not just an epic telling of one man’s horrific experiences through the various hells of slavery, it’s an attempt at trying to do justice to the various gears, nuts, bolts and the ideological deformity of the institution that served as the foundation of a world super power by way of acknowledging the inaccessibility of the whole, and focusing on the parts. Solomon ‘s story as a story to be told for the awe and approval of the audience, is eschewed for his story being told as a way into individuals performing and reacting as a collective in their roles in service of an idea regardless of its merits or harm. In other words its good in the way that best fits the limits and the strengths of this medium we call film. Each person is specific in his or her work, and casting wise each is perfectly employed in that usage. Its amongst the greatest cast in cinematic history, not just in talent but again in, the way that they each and every one so perfectly imperfect, so authentic, and the way the work they’ve done before made them ready for the work they would do here. From the highest to the lowest, from Ejiofor to Alfre Woodard, to Garrett Dillahunt ( Armsby, the white overseer turned slave) great or small, marquee or character, they are given roles large or small according to what the film needed exactly, and they find their mark with a precision unseen in very many films. The films sole miss is its casting of Brad Pitt as Bass, who brings too much actorly imposed confidence, and righteousness to a role, that would've much better been served and played with more apprehension and less modernity. The approach of McQueen's work is worth questioning, so too the film in some manners, it goes in a certain context as the tension with praising Epps goes, should such beauty, skill, and craft be used in such a way, for such a subject? In the same way ( though not necessarily the same degree ) I find some significant hesitation in my desire to praise Fassbender's work, I find that hesitation in celebrating the craft. This Laurren Michele Jackson piece was foundational in helping articulate my own tensions. It’s an astoundingly intelligent ( as in I feel the borders of my intelligence in reading it ) well written and conceptualized breakdown of the power, significance, and maybe most importantly flaws of this film, which spoke to me of, and illuminated for me what lies behind tension of a film I consider an absolute favorite, that I don’t particularly like yelling about. What I’m left with after this watch is an appreciation for the genius behind casting and its vital importance when we discuss the great acting ensembles and performances, a great respect for all the actors involved, for the craftspeople involved, especially Francine Maisler, for the tapestry, and for the ways in which in the words of another Fassbender character “David” from “Prometheus” big things have humble beginnings.

Sean Connery was The Man and The Myth.

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Very few actors had what Sean Connery had in the way he had. Very few could get away with it. Connery like another one of my favorite actors George Sanders should probably be thankful he was born in the era he was, where the anonymity of celebrity, and the mystery of their inner lives allowed them to miss almost completely any compelling challenges to their actual personhood. It was a type of peace actors today could not enjoy, and in cases like Connery should not. Connery was the type of man that lived in the rarified air of the myth. One of those figures that like John Wayne, or Clint Eastwood seemed to actually be the men they portrayed on screen. Wayne was the Cowboy, Eastwood the quintessential “Tough guy", Connery's particular myth was the Warrior Scholar. The well studied, well travelled man of action. Resolute in action, sturdy, analytical, and quick on his feet. He was best suited for so many warrior scholar roles because he exuded exactly those qualities. Warrior scholars hold a very mythological place in our society because in many ways they are myths. A realistic example of them in life is extremely rare. They have a dichotomy of approaches that rarely congeal. Upon further interrogation they rarely stand up to the idea of them in our heads. The analytical and action oriented being who measurebly enacts not necessarily with balance but with prudence when the time for either should be is mostly the consequence of storytelling. The archetype has endeared itself to us through masters of story and legend by way of representing two of the qualities we admire most in people especially in our men, wisdom, and strength. So that when as Dr. Henry Jones Connery decisively crowns his own son across the head mistakenly, and then expresses regret for what he has ( also mistakenly) believed was a prized artifact we all go “wow…what a man” even if not in any way that is spoken. …

But again it’s fair to ask does the Warrior Scholar truly exist in the way we see them? These men who always know instinctively when to act and when to analyze in a way that appeals to the most upstanding virtues in ourselves. Apparently not. Connery was accused of abuse in her memoir by ex-wife Diane Cilento both mentally and physically, and in all those years where was the analysis of situation then? Where was society's, especially other men? Later when asked about his distasteful comments about abuse he doubled down and didn't back off one bit. His explanation is horrific, and lacks analysis of even the most banal sort. It’s the kind born of the audacity of not only an individual, but an age. Make no mistake thinking this entrenched is always backed up by a body of thought, and yet when we are honest with ourselves we find some of that “body" in us. Our society not only allowed, but celebrated Connery as he would appeal to this sentiment many times over his career as Bond, and if not directly, implicitly in films that range from the Lion in Winter to The Anderson Tapes ( One of my faves) and then even more as he grew older in The Highlander and The Untouchables. It’s not just about physical violence it’s the mindset that seems to not even desire to question the harm. There’s no empathy, because there is no analysis, no analysis because that’s hesitation, that’s pause. Connery could look the scholar, feel it, but he didnt really understand it, it was a concept to him. In the latter of the last two films I mentioned ( The Untouchables) Connery is in rare form. As Malone, he is a street scholar, a man that understands the guttural heart beat of a cruel city. A man that knows the streets, and understands the mentality of the gangster while fully being dedicated to the law, the type that would sooner laugh at a scholar, a thinker, because he is a doer. This is not only fool-hardy, its copaganda, but its myth and Connery understands the power of it, and we believe Connery exactly because he’s so damn sure he’s right he assures us. Elliott Ness (or at least Costner’s and DePalmas idealized version of this actually very mediocre person ) is all innocence and uncertainty, but Connery's Malone is all worldliness and confidence. He knows he’s right even when hes wrong. Hes seen it all, done it all, so what’s the point of thinking about it, ACTION! “You’ve got to take action SON! Stop thinking about what’s right and worrying about your precious morality and ACT!” That’s the sum of what hes saying here. Connery fills it and almost all his roles with this mythical confidence, this complete lack of doubt in his words this power, this virility, and truth, not objective truth mind you, because that’s not what he's going for, hell it doesn't matter that this is complete bullshit, Connery gives it the ring of truth by being true to the man, the myth that is Malone, there is no contemplation in Connery and there is none in Malone as to why he is, he just is…Connery was nominated for his first and only Oscar …

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The truth is most of Connerys best roles occupied this exact space, a space made all that much more believable because in real life he occupied this same mythical space. A member of The Royal Navy, an accomplished soccer player, a body builder, who also read works by Tolstoy, Proust, Ibsen, and Joyce, I mean c'mon, the man’s real life resume read like one of those 80s /90s action heroes, in fact his own John Patrick Mason in Michael Bay's “The Rock". This is the framework that made possible the aesthetic belief of Connery the screen legend, but the intrinsic belief came by way of skill, and presence. Connery had a simple but extremely effective and organic way of putting, placing , or saying things that reminded one of a warrior. Miyamoto Musashi- a famed Warrior who was also a philosopher - had what could be seen as a disdain for hesitation for doubt. He and others felt “be quick to action but graceful and poetic”, it was a common refrain and his code, Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s as well. Connery embodied this spirit to the point even some of us who knew better let him pass as a world travelled Egyptian who picked up much of these warrior ethics along the way. John Patrick Mason, one of his most prominent characters molded in this visage was also one of his few escapes from this, it’s where Connery proves hes adept at vulnerability, and had he continued down this path it would’ve been profoundly interesting to see what he found. In “The Rock” Mason skillfully, and rather comically escapes the grasp of the FBI who seeks to use him as a pawn in their desire to get rid of an undesirable, and his first and only desire is to make contact with his estranged daughter. While telling her of his plans to try and build a relationship they’ve never had, Connery makes Mason unsteady but not hesitant, each word each thought has a rhythm, a bassline, even while the man himself is slightly unsure. This is courage, and it is grace, and it is extremely masculine and yet it is also a dash of the feminine. For a moment..the unknown in Connery makes an appearance, and when I say moment and dash, I do mean a dash and moment. For the entire scene his eyes have the Eastwoodian glare, that centrality of purpose, that “Oh so Male” sureity, while the body reveals the doubt beneath, but the moment he begins to utter the words “Jade I’m not an evil man..” they soften to reveal a depth of vulnerability rarely seen in Connery but severely wanted, because he wants this. It's something we’ve rarely if ever seen in Connery…desperation. We won’t see it again for much of the film, but it is enough and it all Connery needed.

This kind of unabashed appeal to masculinity is rarely tolerated these days , (and for the record I don't know that it should be) and those that have it (The Rock, Schwarzenegger, Stallone) , are usually completely unable to pull off the scholarly factor. One of the few actors that could shared the screen with him as his son ..Harrison Ford was one of the few, but Ford was always more vulnerable, more penetrable than Connery allowed, this is why it was so believable that Connery was intimidating father figure to Ford. Ford was an everyman that could be anything including scrappy and scholarly himself, but it was that new sense of vulnerability that he and later others "(Bruce Willis, Keanu Reeves) brought to the new hero that made Ford appear directly susceptible to the men they came from, the men like Connery they may have idolized. It was truly one of the more perfect castings ever put to screen. As a side note this is one of the reasons I was so disgusted by the rumor of Chris Pratt as the next Indiana Jones. Pratt's sore and total lacking in that all important scholar quality. Sure he could pull off being a smart ass, and scrappy, but a scholar? Indie sure, Dr Jones?? Not on your life. Pratts whole schtick is based on no one including him believing a word he says, it doesn't work putting him on positions of authority or intelligence. It tells us how far we come regarding our sensibilities about our heroes and also that not all forms of vulnerability and willingness to be unsure are equal, and when faced with the decision to choose between complete doubt in what you say or do, and complete belief in something that could or might be completely ridiculous, I think we’ve all at some point shown where we stand. It is in all this that I find that Connery was both statuesque and classic. Both a representation of the sturdiness of nostalgia and a relic of a by gone era. He tapped out just at the right time leaving us with the picture of the actor and the flawed and at times villain that was the man. We should remember both , not just for posterity, but because it encompassed and informed the work. What made Sean Connery Sean Connery was that he got through his life and work with no hesitancy and a definitive decidedness, that should be praised in his work and cautioned and chastised against in his and anyone’s life, and that is the fallacy of the man and the legend of the actor.

Gary Busey: The Consistency of Chaos

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I love Gary Busey, I love him because he's volatile, because he's unpredictable as an actor, I love him because hes well…hes at least a little insane. Busey is raw combustible energy, chaos, connected to nerve endings, connected to tissue, connected to bone. He's a natural storyteller, and a natural performer and over time I feel that’s what has gotten lost in the drug abuse, the reality TV rants, and the antics. Busey's got a type of performing which is at the heart of why I love movies, the ever present possibilitiy to be wowed, especially by a performance, (maybe partially because I am an actor) this lingering possibility is always the juiciest part of turning on or sitting in a dark theater for me.  In my world actors are the most accessible part of a movie. Even when direction fails, or writing is incomplete, or plot holes abound, a great performance or two will keep me interested, it's just the way I'm wired. It’s actually not even necessary for the performance to be great as much as it is interesting for the formula to work its magic in me. This is where Gary Busey over his entire career has never ever failed me. Busey is amongst my absolute favorites ever because he is almost always - if not flat out always - supremely, impossibly interesting to watch. The crackling purity of “WTF" energy in a Gary Busey performance is one of the most reliable forces on earth right up there with sunrises, gravity, and dog videos on the internet. I’ve watched him for over 30 years now and he is a model of consistency, as well as a complete original. My introduction to Busey like maybe many people my age was as “Mr. Joshua” in Richard Donner's "Lethal Weapon." I can recall with exceptional ease the way he shot up from beyond the screen to me, hell, he might as well have come from a pop-up book.   Not only was there the look - the rabbit white hair, ( I always found it interesting that Gibson also found him to resemble a Rabbit "Jack Rabbit son of a bitch" ) the preppy look that alluded to his particular brand of covert sociopathy - but there was the focused electricity in his eyes and delivery. It's exemplified in his opening scene where he combines a laser-focused stillness exists in his eyes, with a body brimming with the energy of a shaken bottle of soda. Watching him it feels like a presentation of computerized animation of the inside his body might look like a cavalcade of exploding and firing neurons.

Character actor Ed O Ross ( an underrated actor unfortunately following the unfortunate trend of playing an ethnicity not of his own) screams fervently that these guys are crazy, and its pretty safe to assume much of that is directed at Joshua, whose hand it is being burnt by General McCallister. What I find fun to think about is that if the character of Mendez had known what kind of characters Busey would go onto play, Mr Joshua would seem rather tame by comparison, but this is Busey's range. In that way hes a bit like the great James Cagney, who was mostly remembered as one thing, ( his gangster roles) but lived far beyond that scope. Now Busey of course didn’t have Cagney's level of range, but he had more than he was and has ever been given credit for, and he also has Cagney's propensity for electricity with maybe a bit of Jerry Lewis for good measure. Busey's live wire nature and propensity for high energy is well documented in roles like Point Break, Predator 2, and Under Siege , but they're not the limit, there are multiple sides to that energy used in movies like Silver Bullet, Buddy Holly, and especially my favorite - his role as “Willy” in Dustin Hoffman's underrrated directorial debut "Straight Time". Busey plays a long time friend to Dustin Hoffman that ultimately ends up betraying him and while he still has those moments of spontaneous combustion, it's like there's a silencer on the gun, and the effect is profound, and beautiful, and tragic especially in his final moments..

A couple of things I really deeply admired about Gary Busey's career is A: that no matter the prestige or level of the film you were always going to get Busey giving you full 100 percent Busey. If there was a phoning-it-in performance it was very hard for me to tell, and I appreciate that kind of reliability. That particular quality is not local or present only and/or to Busey but it's important to state as it connects to B: That you could always count on at least one very "Busey" thing to happen in a movie he's in. You never knew when it was going to come, you never know or knew what time, it was always surprising (and in my opinion it was always pleasant ) never boring, but it was going to happen. Now even when other actors committed to their own style in a similar such way, such as John Wayne or in the latter half of his career Al Pacino, it's served either to remind you of their brand or that they were an actor's actor, but with Busey that “Busey-ness” was a direct part of what grounded the characters in something very real. The steeple to a church, lights on a Christmas tree, the things that inform you as to exactly the thing or what this thing is beyond just being a tree, or a building, or an actor. It was some action that would become inextricable aspect of that character, to their psychosis, their attention to detail, their spite. Whether it was a snapped finger as he "promises" Mel Gibson's Martin Riggs a quick death in Lethal Weapon, or an extra "Two!" as he leans out his car confirming his order for meatball sandwiches in Point Break ..


I call that grounding element of Busey's work follow through, and Busey had a wonderful follow through. In both basketball, (as it pertains to shooting) and baseball, (as it pertains to pitching) follow through is extremely important to technique. What it does is set the direction as well as the motion, and landing, of the pitch or shot. In acting follow through accomplishes much of the same save maybe change motion into emotion. The better your follow-through, the better the emotion of your action or feeling lands. Busey has a follow through so good it for better or worse lends power to the idea he's off his rocker, (and to be sure his rampant cocaine usage through a great portion if the 80s added to that) but its also about the intensity, velocity, and ferocity of his intention. Speaking on himself Busey once said "I was blessed with boundless energy, and reckless momentum" - I've rarely heard anything so damned spot-on in my life. It shows the kind of self awareness I find is actually rare save amongst the best of actors. It's Busey's superpower, and he could deploy it to a wide variety of uses. He could use it in a way that made him soft and endearing like in Silver Bullet where he played one of my favorite movie uncles ever because he let it live so intensely in the moment it added leverage to the characterization of his growth as stunted and child-like..

He could use it so that it made him appear committed to destiny as in John Milius's "The Big Wednesday" or again in "The Buddy Holly Story", and he could use it to appear as a fiery but charismatic sociopath in an underrated B-movie version of The Most Dangerous Game called "Surviving the Game" where he delivers a chillingly memorable monologue about a frightening "rite of passage" into manhood

You watch that monologue and theres almost no action, no point he makes that he doesn't emphasize by accompanying it with a gesture. If the firecracker pops, so does Busey, the dog bites so does Busey, and when he says he wiped his Blood, Busey wipes the "blood" off his face. Busey has you in his grip, and much like that dog hes not letting go. It's not only good for selling us on character, but it's good storytelling. Something Busey was clearly into. Busey felt he had- a for lack of a better word- kindred spirit in writer journalist Hunter S. Thompson, and it’s not remotely hard to see his inspiration and effect on Busey. When once explaining his love of Thompson Busey said about Thompson's work and storytelling in general…

That’s why it’s fun because it’s always leading you on to something new, something you haven’t seen before, something you haven’t discovered, something you haven’t thought about

Its interesting because just as well as it is about Thompson's work, it could be about why we love movies, and at its core it’s definitely why I love Busey, and why I hope the shadow of the other stuff doesn't become the sum total of a brilliant actor. Busey embodied the ever present possibility of the unknown, the undiscovered, or unseen. I don’t pretend to know anything but less than nothing about Chaos theory but it immediately came to mind when I thought about Gary and so I looked it up and it boom, I'll be damed if it didn't come to be defined as such.. "Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary theory stating that, within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, interconnectedness, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, and self-organization." - that is Gary Busey. Chaotic, complex and both. A pattern of predictably unpredictable, loops, tics, idiosyncrasies, and repetition, deployed for the sole purpose of what seems like spontaneous on the spot creation, the freestyle rapper of actors, defiant, charismatic, and yeah a little insane.

Robert Pattinson in The Devil All the Time: Fascinating is not synonymous with good.

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Watching the trailer for Netflix's latest "The Devil All the Time" was pretty much like watching the movie, it was slow moving, with all the accoutrements of a great hillbilly epic, and symbols of a prestige movie, but none of the feeling. For a movie with so many frail, vulnerable, and doomed characters I never got close to being choked up, crying or feeling really any feeling, I just watched morbidly as the movie did. Character after character is introduced as unceremoniously as they are dispatched in a very "pay attention to how little attention we pay to these characters sort of way save for one very peculiar Robert Pattinson, who enters into and departs from the movie and the church like the wind from "Something Wicked This Way Comes". I have written about Pattinson before and he is an outstanding young actor. I Iove his willingness to be an avatar for the idea of shooting for the moon and at least falling amongst the stars. I love his imagination and how it allows him to go beyond the borders of self exploration and find something that looks as if it came from a wholly new dimension. Yet, in light if his recent tear of “Whoa, what is he doing?" performances I’m beginning to ponder the line between being unique, and being a peacock, mesmerization and wonder, and skill and service, and how Pattinson's performances inform our ideas about acting. Everytime Pattinson reaches into that abyss he's pulling back something new and strange and interesting, and its possibilities for revelation excites the spectator so much that like Dr Hammond in Jurassic Park we stop asking vital questions about the performance, like “what if what comes back has no regard for the material, the character, or even your co- stars?” What if it eats them all and swallows them whole? Watching what Pattinson does in “The Devil All the Time” interesting and engrossing though it may have been, I was not sure it served the script nor his co-stars, many times I was left confused as to what was going on like watching a magician who waves his hands about and recites incantations with no magic trick it ended up as much a novelty to his co stars and the work as it wass to the audience. There are those who applaud the idea of it, Pattonson being in a completely different movie than everyone else, and I understand where it comes from, because in specific context this can be wonderful, but it is not a one size fits all concept. For me whatever the “different” movie you’re existing in has to be a movie that still firmly exist within a similar context as the one you're actually in, or even rather that it must still serve the movie you're in and your co-stars. If it serves the script and the folks you work with by making their performances better and confrims your unmatched brilliance in comparison by happenstance so be it , but if not then it is simply upstaging and it is selfish whether it is intentional or not. Pattinson is amongst my favorite young actors working, but coherency matters and two of his most recent roles provide ample evidence to an issue by comparison In the first, David Michod's “The King” , I liked the performance, but it was also a very good performance. It was committed, but wild, fun, but as well crafted as it was unorthodox, and it made sense. It was informative to the characterization of the dauphin as this maladjusted, immature, self important wanna be. The rapping of the fingers, the posturing, the almost crooked way he sits in his chair. The luxurious way he moves, and yes even the accent felt like they all pointed to one thing… imitation by an imitator, a fraud…

In The Devil All the Time, Pattinson arguably does slightly better with the accent, but there's less information, less fun and more gestures to sell you on what's happening externally rather than internally, like when he tastes the sauce from a plate of food. There's narration meant to tell you what’s happening but Pattinson is just going rogue, and sure its intriguing, but there was nothing revealing about this moment in time. Exposition by Tom Holland's Arvin later in the car gives us the most likely motivation, but it's not backed up by Pattinson who makes it so mysterious it could’ve been any number of things, for instance that maybe he actually found the food distasteful. I sat on it awhile, when I am troubled like this I like to think about similar scenes with similar “asks”with actors who practice similar styles, see if any answers reveal themselves in the contrast. This time, I thought of what I think qualifies as a similar scene in Mary Herron’s modern classic “American Psycho" -the business card scene..

There is narration and exposition in both the pot luck dinner scene in The Devil All the Time and in the business card scene in Anerican Psycho that allude to something internally going on, and the actors are both inherently interesting and intriguing, and both scenes one way or the other have at their core an implied jealousy, but in one the actor (Bale) is providing the subtext that deepens and enlivens the script. An unnerving energy seeps from behind Bales eyes, it’s in the trembling of his hands, the pursing of the lips. Bale looks like a prisoner becoming ill after staring jealously out at the sun from inside of his cell. On the other hand Pattinson sucks on the juice as the narrator says he “swished the juices around followed by the feeling of a sermon coming on” and I, A: have no clue what is going on -whether it tasted good or bad, or decent even, or B: That he feels a sermon coming on. Pattinson tastes and I see nothing, Im not even sure he tasted it, and then he just glides along acting and performing various gestures with seemingly no rhyme or reason, so that when Tom Holland's Arvin storms off into the car trying to console his mother after she was insidiously berated (again mostly by the script and not Pattinson) implying that what Pattinson just did was out of jealousy I don’t feel anything. I cannot join in with Arvin's frustration of anger, because I was genuinely confused by it all. I normally feel when I’m watching vile characters be vile on screen. I couldnt here because it didn't feel connected to anything emotively, because what I saw felt like a one man show going on in the middle of an ensemble scene almost completely disconnected from most anything that was going on, and it continues throughout the movie, in a car scene, in his final scene, Pattinson gesturing, and provoking but irrespective of anything the movie was asking or needed from him. I remember reading Stella Adler saying these words in her book “The Art of Acting" - “Truth in acting is truth in circumstances and the first circumstance, the circumstance that governs everything is Where am I" - and I remember thinking “YES!”. I believe it applies here, I believe even beyond the circumstances that exist in the presence of the character, their exists the circumstances that exist in the presence of the actor. What movie is this? Who am I working with? What are their circumstances? What is this movie about? Some of the issues I have lies with some questionable choices by Campos who seemed to me to be interested and disinterested in his actors at precisely the wrong times. Lines and words that deserve close ups are shot from afar or at best at mid distance. The writing also fails almost all of its actors, even as as it is telling a compelling story. The script did not, does not look empathetically or compassionately at its characters, which is okay inside the context of the film, but not outside. Inside the characters can be callous and disconnected, outside we must be made to care and be connected. The scripts mistakes are especially clear in its especially cruel treatment of its women, whom it fails in almost every way that matters. It dispatches and discards them without a care as to who they are, what they want, and subsequently why we should care. They are simply props, canvases upon which men’s disdain for self and god can be painted in blood. It wants so bad to show us it despises the evil that men do, as well as religion and God it puts it characters through hell to prove it, at the cost of story elements and good characterization. Still, the great weight of what goes on or wrong with Pattinson lies upon Pattinson, even if clearly hes being encouraged by lacking. Everything about Pattinson ’s Pastor Teagardin that matters comes from exposition not Pattinson's performance, because as others have remarked it is as if hes acting in a completely different movie.

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There are ways to do this well, I feel like Laurence Fishburne is delightfully confused about what movie he’s in John Wick 2 and 3. He thinks it's Shakespeare in the Park, not a zany wild action movie, and yet it lives completely within the context of the film, and hell, maybe John Wick is Shakepseare, and Fishburne calls attention to that through himself not by calling it purely to himself. The performance supports that as well as many other of Wick’s needs, and those of his co-stars. Dare I say it compliments and improves upon them, and the franchise has been all the better for it. Here its more like Pattinson saying “I got my life preserver on I dont know what the rest of you are gonna do?” Pattinson makes himself look good, but also places himself on an island. I was fascinated yes, intrigued yes, but I wasn’t moved. Actors should not be applauded for merely being interesting. Acting is always an act of service ether to society or self or crew. It’s a collaborative effort that involves connecting actions and emotions that spring forth from the work, and then return to reflect upon the work, and to escavate the truth. It is not merely ostentatious oration and flailing for the purpose of captivating with no motive or objective and no service to anything but the actor . Being interesting is not enough, and fascination alone should not be synonymous with good, after all tantrums too are fascinating, but are they good? I ask the same here.

Chadwick Boseman Borrowed from an Icon then became one himself.




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I remember the first time I really really watched a Chadwick Boseman film. The film was "42", a film that I saw get decent reviews but from the trailer had turned me almost completely off. I'm not a particular fan of biopics, lesser so in the recent era since Taylor Hackford's "Ray" feat Jamie Foxx. I kind of mark that film as the beginning of what would be a downward spiral for biopics. Less truth, more catering to estates and public lionization, as well as a lot of straightforward uninteresting storytelling approaches. 42, directed in a very workmanlike way by a very workmanlike Brian Helgeland (who with respect did direct a very respectable remake of Point Blank in "Paybakc") seemed like just another in a line of mediocre autobiographical films that seemed unsure of what or how to tell these stories any longer, and at current movie prices I can’t afford the risk...for the record I was right, but one thing came out of it...Chadwick Boseman was legit.

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When I think about Chad a number of things come up, but funny enough Black Panther is not first, legendary as it already is.. No, I think about the dance scenes in Tate Taylor's "Get on Up", and how the performance is so much of why the movie works. I think of how like any good actor Boseman seems more focused on the essence than the steps, not in that he didn't do them extremely well, but that the spirit, the quality of what drove the steps was MORE important. I'm thinking the scene where he argues with his band about the music. How precise his movements were; a wave of the hand, the arms barely leaving his side, his temper clearly raised, but never flexed in his face, the only give away being a tight glare. It works much like the way he captures James voice. There’s a clenched feeling to James Voice, a feeling that the vocal chords are not truly free, thus the wonderful breaking you would hear in songs like "The Big Payback". Boseman seemed to allow his physicality as Brown to stem forth from this tightness, that eventually gives way to marvelous explosions. It’s the kind of brilliant work and informed ingenious that gave power to Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles and Denzel as Malcom , it's much less about pure mimicry and much more about pure soul



That second name is important because it is a quality of Denzel Washington's I most respected in Chad. Outside of maybe his walk and his smile one of the main things Denzel Washington may be recognized for as an actor is his ability to make very average movies look good or be good. Chadwick had his own megawatt smile, and his own trademark swag, (on full display in the now iconic walk back onto the battlefield in “Black Panther”) but most importantly he had, and maybe borrowed somewhat - the same ability to make lesser material feel that much more entertaining…

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This is the quality that leads people to say there is no bad Denzel movie. It's a very very rare quality in actors, that starts with the fact that the actor doesn't give a bad performance. This is an incredibly difficult thing to accomplish even in a barely over double digits film career like Chadwicks. It's a combination of picking your scripts well as they pertain to your abilities, ( not just their quality) knowing your wheelhouse, having an almost unholy quality of and more importantly consistency of personality, magnetism, charisma, and of course of technique, and work ethic. To keep yourself focused and consistent even when you can see or feel the material is a bore or boorish is no small feat, and even some of our greatest Brando, DeNiro, DDL ( “Nine” anyone? ) can appear disinterested or disengaged from the work.. not these two, or maybe they are and we just can’t tell. There's an effortlessness to their talent of the same type that kept folk underrating Redford and Newman for YEARS. For Boseman, there's an ever present intensity in his work that reminds me of Laurence Olivier, Montegomery Clift, and even at times a young DeNiro round the eyes. Theres a physicality that matches two of my favorite action heroes of all time; Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves. You don’t have to look hard to see all of this in Brian Kirk's extremely underrated "21 Bridges". The physicality I spoke of is in a harrowing chase scene with Stephen James that becomes all that more amazing when you realize what he was dealing with while performing these amazing stunts. The intensity, well, from basically the opening of the movie to the end, and finally the effortlessness in the final scene with the great J.K. Simmons. If you're not watching closely it appears as if Boseman is barely even trying, as if he's just standing there delivering lines, and yet he's giving each one a special purpose, special meaning. He carries some, let's others go, quantifies, enlarges another. He glares, he pauses, he ponders. But all of that is what I grasp by watching the scene intensely, when I first watched it all I knew is that I felt everything the scene was intended to do and I felt the power of both of these actors reacting and bouncing off each other even though Simmons was holding a lot of the more obvious power of the scene - for reasons I couldn't describe before focusing to watch and find the "why" - I felt Chad was Simmons equal the whole way through even while his dialogue, and character is not the level of inherently interesting that Simmons is...



This energy, this broad appeal is the reason why Chadwick could be every bit as appealing in films like "The Express" or "Message to the King", (which maybe don't hold up to the level of talent that he has) as he was in Black Panther, or Spike Lee's "Da 5 Bloods". That exact same type of energy that allowed Denzel to be (at his age) running and carrying a string of sub-par action films that were basically upheld by his inescapable charm. Films that could have likely ended up as pure duds without him. Out of time, Unstoppable, a remake of The Taking of Pelham 123, Fallen, DeJavu, 2 Guns these are films that run the gambit from “having a quality of their own, but nowhere near the kind of quality they would reach with Denzel”, to “outright bad ideas that became confoundedly tolerable due to Denzel's existence in them”. This is exactly the quality that to me Chadwick Boseman was exhibiting in films that he was in. Before anyone can say that anyone was able to, or going to hold that mantle that Denzel had you would have to first show me that they could be this interesting in and hold up movies of this kind of quality. It is also one of the major reasons why I will miss Chadwick Boseman so much. In a certain way this leads to something that he also shares in common with Denzel Washington. It's a surprising thing (and maybe even something that points to race) that Denzel Washington over his entire career never really got to work with a (white) director that had an equal quality to himself. When considering the most revered and most known directors we have to date you could say the one name that reaches the top of the list is Ridley Scott ( American Gangster) . But if we're interested in assigning directors tiers ( questionable I know) many of the directors that Washington worked with over his career were undoubtedly anywhere from second, to third and fourth tier directors, with names like Zemeckis (Flight) , and Ridley's brother Tony ( A slew that included Crimson Tide, and Man on Fire) at that top second tier, and names like Nick Cassavetes ( Out of Time) , an Gregory Hoblit (Fallen) at the bottom. Spike Lee and the underrated Carl Franklin are great directors, but again we know over Denzel's career era that black directors were hard to come by. For an actor of his talent it strikes me as somewhat insane that we never saw him work with the likes of Scorsese or Paul Thomas Anderson or Michael Mann, or Fincher ( Almost the case on Se7en) or Mendes. This sadly is also the case with a Chadwick Boseman who never got to work with a director of his quality over his entire career. This also strikes me as insane and very telling of how narrow the opportunities for black actors and actors of color still are in the industry.

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That Boseman never got a chance to work with a Derek Cianfrance, a Denis Villeneuve, a Tomas Alfredsson, a Tarantino, or even an Robert Eggers, nevermind the black talent that's has just started to flex its muscles like Dee Rees, Ava DuVernay, Nia DeCosta, Barry Jenkins, or Jordan Peele, and now never will, truly carries sadness to my bones. Boseman had the greatest of his generation written all over him and it says plenty that it's still pretty hard to take that away from him considering the quality of the films that he did do. Black Panther is truly iconic and it's the one time that we saw Boseman be paired with a director in Ryan Coogler that put him in material that would lend to his blooming iconic abilities. The fact that Denzel was secretly paying for Bosemans schooling is now making its rounds around the internet, and I think to myself it’s obvious Boseman inherited more than just money from the acting legend. I take solace in knowing that there is not one Boseman movie that I couldn't pop on right now and watch from beginning to end (especially when you consider something like "Message to the King” be as completely Netflixy as a Netflix movie can be ) and enjoy it knowing that he put everything into everything that he did, and left us with the hope and the belief that the unthinkable whole that will be left whenever Denzel Washington leaves us may not ever be able to be replaced, but can and will be carried on, and that just like the ancestors he speaks to in Black Panther and the mantle of the Black Panther itself, he passes it on to the generation he birthed quite literally from the hand he recieved from Denzel. RIP Chad.

Delroy Lindo Sets Black Masculinity Ablaze and Then Shows Us Redemption in “Da Five Bloods"

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It’s an incredibly difficult balancing act telling a story centered around Vietnam vets, that does not cater to propaganda about the military industrial complex and patriotism, that is honest in its portrayal of various forms of racism traded back and forth between different oppressed people's being used as tools against one another, and that offers a unique version of black masculinity that is so much freer from the normal rigid portrayals of black men from this time, but Spike Lee has done it in his Latest “Da 5 Bloods” and its central spigot is the performance put forth by veteran actor Delroy Lindo. Lindo's performance is a full bodied reckoning with black male masculinity and trauma that finds so many vibrant, symphonic, movements and sounds it’s easy to compare it to one of the great classical symphonies, or better yet, the masterful compositions of Quincy Jones as pain and release. It is performative jazz, with a clear intention and racing improvisation along the way. It’s all to tell us a story about a man we may all be familiar with, just not this intimately. He gives us a backstory to the folk we have come to despise relaying a tragic sorrow to the men we’ve lost to racism and patriarchy.

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In the beginning it’s not made instantly apparent, ( but damn near) that Lindo's Paul is a shell of a man, much like so many mortars left behind in a war he was conscripted to fight in, on behalf of a country that never loved him, or his people. There came a point in the movie when he says “We fought in an immoral war that wasn't ours for rights that weren't ours”, and I thought “this is kind of the underscore of this movie”, the ghost around which this shell is wrapped. They are powerful words that speak every bit as much to Paul's inciting incident of trauma as does another poignant scene involving forgiveness. Lindo in every way sevices this role with an intelligence, an almost prophetic fire , and an intensity and emotional sincerity that governs his every move. Paul is a Volcano. A rock of a man, who refuses to move from the birthplace of his harm, filled with burning resentment that explodes in repeating intervals making it hard to be around him. Lindo adds features that further explore his bodily agitation and mental unrest as it appears on his body. There's constant shifts in his weight, his mood, and even the wrinkles in his face. His voice trembles, he seems to be reaching for his breath on occasions where he has been triggered, and the script and Lindo work together to let us know this is because he is repressing, and by the time the movie nears its end we will find out exactly what it is he's been holding. His clueing us in is important because even if subconsciously, it validates the experience. The great Arthur Lessac - the famed voice and body coach created his “Lessac Method” to show the connection between the body, the voice, and health, which in turn can also be used to show a lack of it. Changes in the potency of ones vocals or movements, or the ways in which they radiate can suggest to an audience exactly what's going on physically or mentally with a character in a way that doesn’t constitute “acting” because accessing that particular wavelength informs our bodies as what to do. It’s very funny how tapping into a certain action will bring you to an emotion. Sanford Meisner (Another extremely famous acting teacher) devised a technique that might involve banging your fist to find anger, in Lessacs case, quivering ones body would not only inform the audience of your frailty, but you of your own. Lindo whether through training or not seems to understand in ways very few actors can or have these concepts, and deploys them profoundly.

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Later when we see Paul at a bar with Eddie (Clarke Peters) Paul will allude to this pending reveal in the movie again speaking to the fact that “his pain is different”. As he thinks on it Lindo covers his mouth, (again repression) he almost cries, but he holds it in, he says “I Saw him die”. We don't know yet what it is, how it is, what that is, we allow it stand on its own, because it stands to reason considering. He closes his eyes, it’s coming again, he wrinkles his mouth to one side, contorts his face round the left eye to fight it back, swigs his beer and its gone... the bucket is sent back down to the well.

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What Paul carries is the same water many black men carry, and have carried, and more importantly he carries it how most black men carry it. It can be said that while black women carry burdens alone because they have to, and in many ways are left with no other choice, black men carry burdens alone voluntarily under the belief that they want or need to, informed by their sturdy belief and not-so well hidden admiration for white patriarchal power. In that way Lindo’s Paul transcends the screen and reminds us of the pain we inflict upon ourselves and those closest to us, by not even reconciling with our own trauma.

The wounded child inside many males is a boy who when he first spoke his truths was silenced by paternal sadism by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings - bell hooks

Later on in the film, after yet another explosion- Paul rebukes his own child for a perceived betrayal, the trauma continues to be generational. Much of what forms and constitites Paul’s anger is betrayal - betrayal by people, a country ,and ultimately life, and he passes this down, and around to those who love him most. Paul heads off on his own, as he moves on further into this breakage and into the foliage of the jungle, he begins to scream, we don’t realize it yet, in fact it seems as though he's only diving deeper down regressing into a manic state of cantankerous madness the pinnacle of which Lindo explores with the kinetic genius of Dizzy Gillespie, and the focused intensity of Denzel - but we are being fooled by our own bias, he's beginning to break, and as Tom Cruise's Jerry Maguire once said in the titular film, “Breakdown - Breakthrough”.

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Not always, but on occasion when the breakage is deep enough, on the other side of a breakdown is a breakthrough. Lindo's primordial yells are spiritual in nature, and they are painful, and representative of his need to let it it all out, but still he is holding back, still he is holding on, and I’ve heard very few things like it. It’s as if someone merged the spiritual energy of Robert Mitchum singing “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” in Night of the Hunter, and the purging menace of Deniro speaking in tongues in Martin Scorcese's Cape Fear..

Paul finds redemption in the form of accountability through literally facing his ghost. He was infected with poison, the poison of betrayal and grief, and finally it’s being sucked out. Lindo himself speaks of the fact that he informed Paul's ideas, his very traits with this exact intention and purpose, with this poisom. In an interview with “The Daily Beast” he says..

In the process of creating a biography for Paul I also placed in a number of other personal betrayals so we have the large betrayal of the country and the culture and then we have the betrayals that I had suffered- the loss of my wife, the loss of my son. When I say the loss of my son, I mean the fact that the relationship is as fractious as it is. That constitutes a loss, because I cannot interact with my son and express the love that I have for my son in the way that I would like so those are two very, very deep-seated losses

Creating an actor biography ( a backstory beyond the script) is indicative of training for actors, it has a long history and it's a powerful factor in deepening the connection between actor and role. But Lindo’s intellectual approach to this particular character also showed a understanding of the common attributes that plague black men in our society (especially one of his generation) and that connection not only deepens our connection to him through our own experiences or our understanding of the experience- but also deepens our understanding of the character. Paul is a rusted relic of a war not only waged by a country to another country, but also by country on its own peoples. Like so many of those landmines left in Vietnam he too was left there, and also like them, once triggered he's bound to explode. This explosion reaches out beyond the screen and spreads emotional shrapnel onto any audience member viewing it. Touching them, hurting them, triggering them, but at the highest moment, the very peak moment of the performance it provides us with secondary emotional catharsis through the journey of redemption that Lindo brings us all on through a number of minutiae and larger performative activities that remind us of Lindo’s genius, and our own struggles for emotional and physical freedom from a world that hates us, and more importantly from ourselves. When the movie ends we find that in fact it is only beginning, and Lindo is where we are all at, or at least where we need to see ourselves at. The entrance and intrinsic change that starts with accountability and taking down the ghosts of our collective and individual pasts. Once more bell hooks..

For me forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their Humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?

Oh Nino, Oh Nino, Wherefore Art Thou in the Canon?

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I’ve studied acting for thirteen years officially and formally, unofficially I've been studying acting since I was a very young boy. Even though I loved movies in their entirety, always I had an acute focus on actors. From top billed to bottom. I was always mimicking lines, quotes, paying attention to certain gestures, walks, creases in the mouth, I’d watch Bogart smoke, Nicholson scowl, Whoopi animate a hand gesture. Once I began to actually study, it bothered me how centralized the focus was on white actors, when many of my favorites like Glynn Turman, Yaphet Kotto, Lynn Whitfield, or Diahann Carroll were black. That centralized focus continues even today. It colors the way we see the canon of acting, and harms the way actors grow up. So I feel it my duty to bring into the forefront some of the past performances of black actors that really deserve a lot more word of mouth and passing down through the ages than what they have received to this date. One such performance is Wesley Snipes work in New Jack City. Though it is most certainly well known, it is still rather underappreciated. In fact its the fact it’s so well known that informs me of its lack of true understanding as one of the all time great performances on film. Consider that the bulk of this movies power is owed to him in a way very few movies have been indebted almost solely to their lead actor. Scenes that don't include him hold the weight that they do because of the character he has created. Nino Brown is a cloud over the city, Snipes over the movie. His shadow looms separate from his body. The cold unaffected eyes pierce through objects, characters and the audience. He deploys that ferocity of the eye much the same as Pacino uses in Godfather and equally as effective. He mines every single word for its optimum value.


From the very first iconic line reading of “See you and I wouldn't wanna be you” (one of many) I was sold. I knew that I was watching someone that had that had that level of presence, magnetism, and skill that can only be called a Movie Star. Snipes was like nothing I had seen before, chiseled high cheekbones sunk into onyx saturated black skin, a resonant vocal pitch that was always floated between a threat and a charm. He was the antithesis of Denzel, eh seemed a rebuke of that kind of respectability and dignification that seemed rooted in acceptance. The scenes in New Jack City that contained him had a clarity of purpose that reminded me of Konstantin Stanislavsky talking about a class where in the teacher did an experiment to have someone just sit in a chair and look out to the audience. A student then comes up, sits in the chair, and commits to trying to act, they keep trying to do something “interesting”. Stanislavski explains that the audience was not the least bit moved by this persons actions, but that when the teacher goes up himself and sits - they were transfixed on him, mysteriously unable to move their attention. The teacher first showed them, then explained to them the difference. Stanislavski goes on to say ..

What is the secret? He told us himself. Whatever happens on the stage must be for a purpose. Even keeping your seat must be for a purpose, a specific purpose, not merely The general purpose of being insight of the audience. One must earn one’s right to be sitting there. And it is not easy.

Specificity, a clear-cut understanding of who you are, and what you are doing in at any moment is vital to performance, because many times you may not be very sure about where it is you're going or where you're headed, so the purpose of the moment gives you a Northstar. Wesley Snipes clearly has one in New Jack. Cagney, Pacino, Bogart, you can see their influence all over the role. Its embedded in the DNA of Nino Brown and Wesley gives life to that so that this…

Is alot like this …

And this at about the 2:45 mark …

Bears similarities to this at around 1:17 ..

Nevermind outright call outs to who Nino and thusly Snipes is embodying like this…

In many ways Wesley's performance as Nino Brown ( and its subsequent nuanced lack of appreciation) mirrors Kobe Bryant's career in the NBA. He followed memorable performances by masters and crafted them so well in the image of those things (escpecially one, but not only one) that the greatness of it is taken for granted, or maybe everyone feels this way and just doesn’t say so. All I know is that Snipes didnt even seem to be considered for an Oscar. The Oscar's have never been a trustworthy barometer of taste or quality, but add that to the fact that a google search of Nino Brown produces not a single article or piece on Wesley's performance, that Wesley didn't get nonstop calls from some of the greatest directors of the time (Including Scorcese whom he really wanted to work with) and it says to me a role iconic exactly because of its actor, with an undeniable cultural residue is not receiving its due. For some it may be the movie itself that hurts the weight of Snipes performance. Though I still think New Jack City is better than it’s been given credit, its certainly not Goodfellas or the Godfather, though I’d argue as a film its better or equal to Scarface. You can never discount racism, and for others the mimicry may be a discrediting factor. Context matters though, and considering who Snipes character is and what he worships, it’s a spot-on and intelligent approach. Never mind the way Snipes never lets a word escape his mouth without first adding to it some additional power or importance through a number of gymnastic-like changes in cadence, speed, or pitch. “Dont nobody know nothing” changes pitch quickly to “Whatup with this ?” a much higher pitch. “Somebody gotta know something of whats going on, seewhatImsayin" (the latter which he says so fast it smashes altogether. This is not only the acute understanding of vernacular, but an understanding of what someone like Nino wishes to accomplish by and through language. Snipes breaks up the words to “Sit yo five dollar ass down before I make change” in such a way that the words obtained eternal life in the minds of almost every viewer who has ever seen the film. It’s a line that could've easily went left, but Snipes brings it up, and elevates it into the realm of classic. And less than a minute later follows it with another “I never liked you anyway..pretty muthafucka”, which is indicative of Nino's arrogance, and his unwillingness to be ashamed. There is not much of an oral history of this movie, a failing of the critical community as a whole, but I deeply suspect this might’ve been improvised, and even if it wasn’t snipes gives it the air of something off the cuff rather than planned.

Snipes is still not finished though, he sits down, exhausted from 5 minutes of a tyrannical dressing down of his subordinates, relaxes in his chair and in royal fashion lets the words “Now..leave me” fall from his tongue as if they were apart of the ragged air he'd been holding onto during the duration of his tirade. It’s the cherry on top of a very dark but delicious sundae of a performance where every beat is exactly where it is supposed to be, even when it is almost absurdly grandiose. Snipes, (beyond the aesthetics of everyone being dressed in black in this knights of the round-like environment makes this scene iconic which it most certainly is. Not only with his vocal acrobatics , but his movement, (who can forget his jump roping the dog chain?) pointing the cane with a potency that is again indicative of the precision of his invention. He is holding court and his subjects are not only there in the meeting, but behind the camera, and in front of the screen. The meeting scene is the crown jewel of a monarch performance that is far and away the most memorable thing in a movie that though uneven is quite memorable itself, whether that memory is in reference to the soundtrack, Chris Rock's greatest acting achievement, Mario Van Peebles unique camera choices, or Bernard Johnson’s costume design.

Bernard Johnson's costume design was another iconic feature of new Jack city

Snipes flourishes to the performance are legion. There is the toxic “Future-ness” (The Atlanta rapper) of the line “Cancel this bitch , I’ll get another one” and rebellious schadenfraude of watching him purposely butcher and reupholster Italian dishes (Skingilli?? Lol) when talking to the extremely racist Italian mob members, (Which reaches even outside the confines of the screen as a punch back for all the black and racist jokes made in Italian films ) and the “meeting's" only rival for best scene - the court scene, where again Nino's Ted Bundy like narcissism shines through Snipes visceral menace and coiled smugness. The signature work continues right up until his death where Snipes employs the agile physicality (we would all later find out came from martial arts training ) to provide at the time maybe the most memorable fall to ones death since Hans Gruber left his Tag Huer behind on his way down in Die Hard.

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It may be Snipes filmography after New Jack City that keeps people from talking about this performance in the volume it deserves, (which would be indicative of the genre bias I’ve written about before amongst cinephiles) but maybe it’s one of those where it’s not talked about, but if you mention it everyone recognizes it’s an all time great performance, but this does it a disservice. Actors need to hear about this performance, it needs to be reference point not only for what Stanislavski mentioned , but as a template for how to significantly vital an all-in performance can be to a movie, and thusly why its important to give your best no matter the material. Its important because far more black actors be added to the canon of discussion around all time great performances beyond the few we bring up time and time again. Nino Brown in the movie may never have revieved the legacy he so ambitiously sought after, but Wesley Snipes work as the Iconic gangster most certainly should.

Revisit: The Unmitigated Brilliance of Bridesmaids and Kristen Wiig.

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If I were to have made a list of the best films of the 2010's Bridesmaids would be on it. It’s a movie that drew comparisons to Todd Phillips “The Hangover” , but this was a very superficial connection. Todd Phillips is a very immature director and I mean that in the classical, traditional sense. His films always feel far too driven by impulses with little composure, edge for the sake of itself. The things that happened in the hangover films felt like they came from a point of view, or direction that was like “Michael Keaton egging The Joker on in Tim Burton's “Batman”. “You wanna get crazy?! Lets get crazy!!” Its message and approach to male bonding is basic, juvenile, and much like “Joker” over simplified and barely connected to the story, as in it feels like watching those very violent Saturday morning cartoons like G.I. Joe that had the little message at the end where they said something like “Stay in school,” followed by “Yoooooo JOE!” ...at that point who cares. Bridesmaids is actually from beginning to ending about the absurdity of expectations, the ones we put on ourselves, on our growth, on our relationships, the shit we get ourselves into because of it, and how to step out of it. It's emotionally authentic, and mature, and even the ancillary characters have motivations that feel rooted in truth as well as farce. This is an incredibly thematically acrobatic and difficult feat, one this film accomplishes with an ease similar to 1984's Ghostbusters. Along those same lines, for many of those same reasons, if I were to pick the best scenes of this past decade, the airplane scene from this film would also be amongst the best. It's outrageous, it's temperamental, its hilarious, and it’s phenomenally structured…

The scene is the pinnacle of Bridesmaid's genius.  It’s edited brilliantly to show an upward staircase of unhinged anxiety. Cuts from one part of the plane to another are slowly but surely increased with a frequency that increases as each member becomes more frantic, until it spreads and pops. No one is trying to upstage anyone. Ellie Kemper and Wendi McLendon-Covey could almost form their own movie based off the conversation, improvisation, and chemistry they construct and erect in this scene. Melissa McCarthy is off on a quest for the holy grail of focused zaniness, Rose Byrne's giving a smug smarmy sermon from the book of comedy revelations, and Maya Rudolph is just there trying to keep it all together in a straight man role that shows off her range, and her intellectual, instinctual understanding of comedy. Everyone is on 10, actually no.. Spinal Tap's “11”. But Kristen Wiig, my God Wiig. I've seen this movie several times,  and it was still INCREDIBLY hard to watch this without losing it the entire time. It's small things like in the interaction between her and the (actually great) flight attendant when she puts the shades on. He confronts her, and with an overload of wispy caricature, Wiig simply replies “Ummm no". To big large obvious things like "There's a colonial woman on the wing!”.

It is one of the most farcical and hilarious things I've heard in my life , I can just sit and think on it over and over again and laugh forever. There are levels to it, the first being you recognize the reference (The famous Twilight Zone episode) which already (at least with me) puts a smile on my face. Then she takes it somewhere you wouldn't expect in a million years, ( She was churning butter, I saw her!”) and yet, if you think about the context of the anxiety,  and what it is she might ultimately be afraid, where this comes from, what the institution of marriage, and the expectations anchired to it - it makes pretty damn good sense.  Then there's the commitment to the idea, to resonance, to some true objective with every comedian but Wiig just seems to find levels under the pre-existing levels contorting her face, twisting her mind to slip past the boundaries. Here she ultimately mines a similar level of paranoia as displayed in Shatner's episode.  "There's something they're not telling us!" is the encapsulation of the terror in the seminal Twilight Zone episode, but funneled through Wiig's energetic, frantic, ridiculousness, it gets me every time. Wiig is so connected to every action, every word no matter how far out they are- it bends reality.  With Will Ferrell (who in his prime was also incredibly brilliant to me ) I laughed knowing the farce.  Knowing it couldn't happen,  wouldn't happen,  with Wiig, (because she's always adds a dash of genuine emotion)  right at the site of where the seed of the absurd will grow - I laugh because I believe it could,  despite knowing the likelihood. 

Danny Aiello: Time (Clock of the heart)

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Danny Aiello was from the first time I saw him on screen, a favorite of mines. He had preternatural presence, he was large, not just physically, but intrinsically. He had this sense of an undisturbed peace about him. A centeredness, a focus that seemed to attach him to the ground in a way uncommon to actors. Most impressively he seemed to have this uncanny sense of timing and of time. In terms of anger Aiello could just bend time so that he arrived as his destination with no herk and jerk start up, no stop watch with a gunshot. He was able to tap into shifting, fluid fits of rage with a grace uncommon to the profession. For most actors becoming enraged is as violent as being there, but Aiello slid into it with the ease one might slick ones hair back with - like when he breaks into the hospital to get Jacob (Tim Robbins) out of a gruesome hospital in Jacob's Ladder”…

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or in Harlem Nights when his character Phil Cantone goes on a diatribe that reveals his own Jealousy and hatred for black people in Eddie Murphy's Harlem Nights...

Again the skill here is in the arriving at a point where you aren't as much working up to the anger as you are simply arriving there as if transported, and to do without showing the work. After all that is maybe the most sincere way that anger…well…works. Sure while in many cases we do tend to work ourselves into a lather with anger, that is not to say that the work always shows. There is always a foundation to our anger, but we are not always building up from it. Sometimes many times the feeling is sudden and without warning. You were going one way and in an instant you just find yourself there. Times where we are simply there, and then we are not, with not much clue how we got there so quickly - as indicated by the fact that most times we forget what we were angry about in the first place. Aiello let’s anger overtake him suddenly and then it's gone, and it’s as if it were never there at all. As supremely difficult as this is, it is still not his greatest skill or attribute. Both of those were in the heart he brought to characters, and through that the patience. He focused with it, he listened with it, he reacted with it, and it colored and informed the great bulk of his performances. It’s why despite the fact that he could and would play despicable, disreputable, or even as dullards, you never (or I at least never) disliked an Aiello character. Many times you loved him. In “The Professional” he loves Leon, and through that love expresses frustration, loyalty, and kindness. In “Moonstruck” he loves his mother, and through that comes his confusion, ignorance, sweetness, and again loyalty. In “Do The Right Thing” he loves the neighborhood, despite his own racist tendencies and attitudes, and through that comes his dedication, service, wisdom, and his condescension, and paternalism. So that even when expressing a subliminal level of racism and disgust for black people, it comes off as fatherly…

The brilliance of this is the exactness of Aiello's performance in that particular space of racist attitudes. The genial well meaning belief in the inferiority of another people. This is not as much about tapping into a dark side as some would like to believe. You need heart to pull this off. You need to tap into the humanity to make a vile trait apart of a likeable person. To find that ssd tragic juxtaposition, you cannot like most accept off hand that this person has no humanity despite the fact that the actions or act lacks any. In this comes a truth, that like Mooky (Spike Lee) we like Sal because he lives a life or service, (though he also has the privilege of being able to build and own the right to provide said service in our neighborhood) , we like Sal because he's stands up for some of us against his son’s wishes (though it is an extension of his paternalistic attitude toward black folk) and we like Sal because he is a straight shooter, he tells us whas’s on his mind or at least we know where he stands. Mookie likes Sal, we like Sal, and Sal is also a racist. It’s only so long before the latter incurs a debt the former can’t pay. You need exactly Aiello to pull this character off . Exactly his skillset, exactly his traits. The heart, the patience which conjure up the warmth of a tender father figure explaining to his son why Sal's will never leave the neighborhood, and the anger that conjures up the the most destitute and putrid pits of white supremacy in the destruction of a Radio and all the contemptible sentiments that spring forth simultaneously…

If you watched Aiello inevitably you had to watch him listen, and then take his time reacting. He had to be one of the easiest actors to procure an organic feeling from cutting off another actor mid-sentence in scene, because he’s an actor that was always going to take his time getting there. It was always such a natural progression since Aiello provided these wonderful spaces for the other actor where he seemed like he is in the middle of saying something while saying something, whether he was speaking or not. You can see this happen throughout '“Moonstruck”, like when his character Johnny Cammareri proposes to Cher, and maybe most accurately in The Professional when Oldman interrupts with “Wait, there’s more”. The interruption feels both punctual and off beat, just like a natural interruption would. In fact it’s maybe the closest to perfect I’ve seen an interruption because I pay attention to obnoxious things like this. If you watch, you also see how patient of a listener he was. I like to watch actors listen I’ ve said many times sometimes it’s the most difficult part of our job. In my comedy and improv class one of my most memorable teachers would always say “There was not enough shut up". It was in relation to temptation to fill space with unnecessary words. She would plead with us to shut up long enough to hear something real spring forth from the well of our soul. That's what Aiello did, he didn't always take an extra beat, (in Moonstruck he’s exceedingly fast with reactions) but he can be that fast and still ring incredibly, amazingly true with reaction because he listens so incredibly, amazingly well. Same is true in Hudson Hawk, Purple Rose of Cairo, Ruby, or 2 days in the Valley. Pick a movie with him in it, pick a scene, watch him, and what you'll see is listening and patience, and the guts of it is all in the heart. Boy George's Culture Club had a song I love called “Time (Clock of the heart). It reminds me of the main attributes at the core of what made Aiello special. There is a part of the refrain that goes “In time we could’ve had so much more" and its exactly what Aiello did, he gave us that more, and he accomplished that because he led with his heart and took his time. The song is a lament of lovers who the mistake of seeing one (time) as synonymous with the other, (love) and the irony that it takes time to understand the difference. But that difference is something (at least as an actor) Aiello seemed to understand right away. It always felt like Aiello loved what he did, and it transferred that energy into his characters who almost always seemed to love what they do, or love someone they knew. ’The patience comes from that, the listening was an extension of that..

Aiello's patented patience and cadence always helps his co stars and his own performance, because he could deploy it in so many interesting ways. He was an extremely intelligent actor who one could tell always had a very definitive bead on who his character was and it showed. Any person who might’ve been a co-star in the future will be a little less good because of his not being around and that is sad, but all the remaining co-stars have his kindness, his presence of heart, and his patience to pass on to the next even if they aren't aware, and that’s wonderful. RIP.

Robert Pattinson Imagined something far outside the Paradigm in Netflix's The King

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I measured Robert Pattinson's performance in the Timothee Chalamet vehicle "THE KING" not by good, great, or bad, but by it's willingness to border all three. I don't know what to make of his accent. His posturing, and histrionics could be viewed as overacting, and yet is that not a fair assessment of the intention? Is the dauphin not meant to be a wannabe? A boy posturing as a man, as a killer, as a leader? The film sure does spend a lot of time speaking explicitly and implicitly about the difference. About growth, and stunted growth. Disfigured growth caused by outside interference. In most storytelling especially that of a western tilt , the hero must have a mirror image, the villain, someone who is almost exactly the same except less. Usually by way of depth of journey. Where a hero continues to grow beyond, a villain simply stops, remaining undeveloped, repeating similar tactics and schemes meant to undermine the hero, but also to mask their own willful defiance of their own inadequacy. Is the dauphin not such a man. A grand fool, who spends a great deal of his screen time trying to prove the same in his chosen adversary. Pattinson brings this to life in ways both organic to his own artifice, and in ways that portray his craft. His posture is a bit stunted. He sits and stands as if their is a hump on his back, huddled under the weight of his insecurities. His opening scene has the energy of a child; the fingers tapping on the box, the poor posture in his chair, the robes seem almost too much for him. He jostles about in his seat, it is Impertinent, impatient, giddy, and mischievous.

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His performance is uneven, slightly off kilter, like his accent falls and it rises, it fails and it succeeds, it's silly, and it is deadly serious. The great actor and coach Uta Hagen highly respected imagination in an actor, she thought it one of the most important tools in our box, but I don't know that collectively we respect it as much as we should. We have arrived in an age of acting closer to Hagen's version of acting than that of Stanislavski or Adler, but it lacks one of her core tenants imagination . Which is funny because with so many actors in roles that live outside the realm of reality, playing captains of America, and strong men who can pull down helicopters by the will of their biceps it's very sad and somewhat tragic that their imagination does not reach the heights of their play, and their surroundings. Here though is Pattinson, creating something altogether unrecognizable. Something we are not used to seeing in this age, or in the way most actors play people from it . Something that pierces the boundaries of our collective perception of what the performance of a persona from that time feels like. It stands out from the rest of the film because everyone else is so clearly displaying more of a regard for that time. No doubt Michod's film is a lot more modern a take than usual, and its historical reverence has a lot more in common with Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette than it may seem on its face, but Pattinson's performance is not merely modern it's outrageous. Precisely what we need more of in acting. The unsure, the unsettled, the ridiculous, the unmitigated gall to REACH dammit! Knowing full well that you will come well short while in the presence of an entire audience. To that I say Bravo Robert, encore Robert, ENCORE.

Wesley Snipes May be Back and it's About Damn Time

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In the words of many a rap bar “once again it's on!” Wesley Snipes is finally back, and of course it took someone black and of course it was Eddie Murphy. As I wrote before, Murphy has had a long career of using his own dream movies and cache to bridge generations of talent and he is back at it again in his latest "Dolemite is My Name". The film sets out to pay homage to spirit of Rudy Ray Moore, by way of continuous themes of persistence, crude humor, and camp, and it succeeds largely because everyone is so clear on what it is they're doing. No one more -so than Snipes. The actor with the most bonafides on set dived the most headlong into the spirit of this film creating a character that is less a practice in exactitude, and more in essence of not only D'Urville Martin, but the movie and the times. It's something that is apparent from the his opening scene in the movie. Murphy's Rudy Ray Moore seeks to hire D'Urville as an actor in his movie , and as the movie goes D'Urville is as large in his own mind as the people he has worked with. The performance is recognizable as an outrageous adaptation of the trope of the egotistical actor, as well as an amalgamation of characters from blaxploitation films like “The Mack” , black stock characters like Antonio Fargas, the largeness of a Frederich March, and even a bit of W.C. Fields.

Dolemite shows us his acting and kung-fu chops. #Dolemite #EddieMurphy #WesleySnipes 📺: Netflix ⚠️: I don't own or stream this show. Just a fan of it!




What Snipes's opening scene and beyond moved me to feel is both profound happiness for the loud rediscovery of Wesley Snipes, and continued rebuke for the quietly tragic loss of he and so many other large black talents to a Hollywood that refused to let them be seen. To realise what or why it is that I feel that Snipes has been dealt a lesser hand, (though not altogether bad), you have to go back to the role that made him, but should've MADE him. Wesley had been around in Michael Jackson’s “Bad” video, (the one time he would work with any true white Autuer in Scorcese) on major TV shows like Miami Vice, and in films like Major League, and King of New York, but he broke out in Mario Van Peebles searingly fatalistic crime ballad “New Jack City” as Nino Brown. As breakthrough performances go it's better is difficult to find. Snipes was imprinted on every square inch of the reel, his barbarous magnetism served as the centrifugal force of the movies pull. Every word every line, every look, movement, step was a defining criterion for Nino's explosive temper, alpha male presentation of masculinity, and his omnipresent charisma. It's in the way he eats a banana while dismissively listening to a soon to be rival explain to him how disrespectful his latest move is to the Italians..

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It’s in profound moments of inner conflict, and tightly guarded vulnerability, like when he decides to kill close friend G-money, holding back tears he can’t stop, clinching and reclinching Gee to his chest as if to get just one last feel for his brother in arms before doing what he feels is the only way out for him continuing his path of ruthless self survival by murdering his own supposed brother (which would be his worst act if not for using a child as a human shield) it's a kind of depraved self control and victimhood…

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And finally, it’s most certainly in the centerpiece scene of the movie when he interrogates his entire team over a recent infiltration of the Carter building ( he himself ruthlessly commandeered) by the police. Snipes enters the room with that kind of rare screen presence occupied by some of our greatest acting talents, Brando, Hepburn, Rowlands, Redgrave, Pacino. He’s in full possession of that certain je ne sais quoi that makes so many people loving, fearing, hating, and pledging fealty feel completely possible because we the audience go along for the ride and end up doing much of the same. There are moments of trained elegance, like the scenes final moment when Snipes utters “Now..leave me” and of slick rambunctious improvisation like when he jumps rope over his dog chain…all of it is brilliant...

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Snipes and the scene itself compare favorably to another film about Cops and Gangsters; DePalma’s “The Untouchables”. In its infamous “Baseball” scene Robert Deniro is Al Capone heading up a dinner meeting with various associates of his empire. Both scenes are constructed such as the spend a great deal of time on the actor, the set up is similar, and a shocking bit of violence occurs, but, how they arrive there is different...

The Untouchables movie clips: http://j.mp/1BcPG9X BUY THE MOVIE: http://amzn.to/sW4EVr Don't miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/1u2y6pr CLIP DESCRIPTION: Capone's (Robert De Niro) baseball metaphor ends badly for one gangster.

What’s different is how much in each scene the set-up leaves for the actor . In The Untocuhables the setting seems congenial, setting up the surprise. In New Jack City, the mood is already ominous, lessening the surprise element if not curtailing it altogether. Each one brings its own unique power, but New Jack is asking more of its actor. Both have the job of making a sudden act of violence feel authentic, but one has the storytelling element of surprise already behind them, the other (Snipes) has to convince us of the expected being unexpected as well.

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A breakout performance like this comes every once in a blue moon, and usually it garners a shipload of attention, rave reviews, at least some Oscar attention, as well as a step into the big leagues. For Wesley Snipes it meant a strange purgatory of near A list ability and stardom, with B- movie projects, save for White Men can’t jump, and a couple Spike Lee films right up until he and Marvel teamed up to make Blade. Yet as influential as two of those films were, as much money as they made, and as singular as Snipes was in the role of Blade, for that period and after it was the only thing he had going. Snipes like Angela Bassett, and Don Cheadle was a victim of a rigid and unimaginative Hollywood that exit today more-so in its storytelling than its its racial make-up which is rapidly changing (while still having a long way to go). The big heavy coveted roles were for majority of white people, the black ones to Denzel, and everyone else had to fight amongst the scraps. Fortunately for Wesley plenty of black filmmakers existed in the 90’s but when the need for “black films” went out so too did many of Wesley’s opportunities. And now some 6 years after his release from prison for tax evasion (insert eye roll here) Snipes is finally back on the scene, being rightfully awashed in praise for being at least one of the best things about this movie. After all these years of watching Snipes be excellent in nearly everything he does from New Jack, to better than given credit for action films like Drop Zone, to To Wong Foo, Sugar Hill, and more, I am ecstatic about a possible return for Snipes, and all the possibilities for him in this new space. Eddie Murphy himself is at the beginning of his own comeback as well, and rightfully that has been huge news, but I wouldn't want anyone to forget the level of talent Snipes is, and what roles in Indies, comic book films, action films, horror, and as we can see comedy would look like with Snipes. For autuers like Barry , Ava, Coogler, Rees, Taika Waititi, Kathryn Bigelow, Winding- Refn, Kasuma, and more to take a second look at what he has done, and realise what he can add to a production. To these possibilities, and to this return (Coming to America pt 2 included) all I can say with apprehension and caution as to whether this will lead to a proper resurgence is “It’s about damn time”





















On Succession's Jeremy Strong: "Walk the Line"

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Michael Caine once said that on the set of “Hannah and Her Sisters”, Woody Allen gave him the advice to think about what your character wants to say, and then don't say it. It was a powerfully insightful bit of acting guidance that applies to Jeremy Strong's performance as Kendall Roy to the letter, especially this season on Succession. Scene after scene, episode after episode, Strong's depiction of Kendall Roy the oldest most complex, maybe most inconsistent and definitely the most mentally beleaguered of the Roy clan - teetered the line between pathetic and sympathetic, and then despicable.

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“Because my Dad Told me To” …The line is given its persistent recall, and treatise precisely because of Strong’s delivery. It’s complex storytelling, that informs where he is at now, and predicts where he might end up. From the beginning of the scene Strong makes it clear Kendall is not into this, that he takes no pleasure in this. As the camera follows him along down the hallways and into the main room, he looks like he’s on the way to the gallows himself. As he informs the employees at Vaulter of their fate he says the words with no emphasis, with no emotion, but not the kind that implies a natural state of being unmoved by this, but one that implies an affected act of trying to portray himself as such. The kind that implies he’s going through the motions of feigning no emotion. He’s an avatar for his dad, doing it precisely because his dad told him to. He avoids eye contact, and when he does its not hard to see he’s steeling himself, holding steady, trying to appear as if he’s his father, but its clear he doesn’t have the callousness, nor the same relish in this as his father does - in his eyes, in his body language. The appendages, and orbitals are not dead, their just pretending to be. Which has kind of been Kendall’s through line this season..pretending to be dead, not as a strategy to win, but as a strategy not be beat upon anymore. Sarah Snook’s Shiv once remarked that her brother basically volleyed between loving and hating their father, and Kendall acknowledged the truth in that. Strong’s acting functions skillfully in service of that truth. When he utter’s the words “because my father told me to” there is a fierce loyalty that empowers the emotional production he’s putting on, but there is also not much love there, or at least thats my reading of the scene. Whatever yours is, its undeniable the driving power of the scene is Strongs’ ability to say less, be more.

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I could not in good conscious say Jeremy Strong is the best actor on Succession, Sarah Snook, and Matthew Macfadyen exist, and they do quite a lot with much less. But Kendall Roy is the most riveting character on Succession thus far and that is due in large part to Roy’s acting. It is dedicated, and committed acting as when Kendall presents his father with the grossly over the top LOG rap. Present and affecting as when he vulnerably breaks to Shiv, (in what can't be a revelation to Shiv as to the existence of his insecurity, and trauma both over his misdeeds, and his father’s abuses, as much as a revelation into the depth of the guilt and harm they have bludgeoned upon him) and it was nebulous, and layered as in the finale when he seems to be accepting of his father’s instruction to take the fall for the company. Strong’s adept rendering of Michael Caine’s words foreshadowed, but didn’t snitch on the ending. Watching Strong closely as I have become prone to doing , I had the feeling that he would do exactly what he ended up doing, because Strong was doing something similar to the Vaulter scene with a different objective. In Vaulter he was pretending to be the lion, in this he was pretending to be the sheep, but it was clear to anyone paying attention to his performance that something, if not this, was going on underneath this. That something had broken from the point he asked his father to tell him whether or not he thought he could ever be in charge. It was in his eyes as he assured Roman (Kieran Culkin) he was okay. In his walk as he walked up to the media presser, it was ominous acting, the kind that tells you something is going on , but not what is going on. In many ways both the direction of the final ten or so minutes of Succession took, and the performances of both Marcus Aerelius (Richard Harris) and Commodus (Joaquin Pheonix) and Logan Roy (Brendan Cox) and Kendall in “This is Not for Tears” and “Gladiator” are similar. ..

Gladiator, a masterpiece in cinematic history, and one of the most powerful scenes in the movie that reveals a genius performance of Joaquin Phoenix, here with Richard Harris.




They both feature a father who informs a son he will never be the one, that their power will pass to another. They both feature sons with skills their fathers don’t believe suit the positions. They both feature the son’s retribution, and lastly they both featured skilled actors who brought to life a well of complex emotions, about concerned, and divisive fathers and their mal-nutritioned pathetic, despicable, and yes at time sympathetic sons, and the actors who think and feel quite a lot through the characters, but don’t alway say it with their tongues, and thats god company for Strong, even if not for Kendall.



Two amazing Women, Johnny Gill and my writer's block.


I recently started writing again after a good six or so month "break". it was really more-so a break down caused by the intense feelings of stagnation and overall unremarkableness of my life so far, never mind that during that time nothing on TV or film moved me to write, and when those that did would appear, I'd be in the middle of working on a piece about them, see someone else write something better on the matter I was writing on, in a very similar fashion, and be like.."There you go....unremarkable". Comparison truly is the thief of joy…

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I promise this is not a pity party, and in actuality I not only know I’m a damn good writer, I know I belong here . I am no more bereaved at this than New Edition losing Bobby Brown and gaining You guessed it ..Johnny Gill. I just believe quite plainly that there is a point where a subject has been covered, and that it’s okay to say sometimes “Hey, they see this more clearly than I have and there is no need to expound any further”. The opposite of this belief in my mind gives rise to insidious behavior like man-splaining. The loss of joy is in actuality over the loss of my artistic child, given up for adoption to a parent who proved they could better care for it than I could at the time. I assure you most days when I don’t look at it sternly in the face. When it doesn't all hit me at once I'm pretty fucking happy with my life, my acting (when I get to act), my writing, and with myself. Most days I like me. I like the way I think, the way I dress, look, commune, and most importantly the way I empathize with others. Which is integral to my writing which I happen to think is pretty damn good. The prophets once said “Sunny Days, everybody loves them but tell me can you stand the rain”. The fact that I am able to empathize with people whose point of view may irk me, (like people who say”Denzel is pretty much the same in all his movies” or who reduce Quentin Tarantino to his use of the N word in movies) people with whom I may not f*** with on any “real” level , don’t abhor, but rather don’t see eye to eye with - It's probably my favorite part of me. That little voice in my head that says "Well you know, think about it from the their point of view", when I'm in my head cursing someone's name for some sin or the other against me, or done in the general vicinity of my nerves. That voice keeps me honest, humbles me, and gives me my best perspective by challenging me to challenge my own ideas. I digress...funny enough this post isn’t about me, it's about the two people that helped lift me out of my slump without lifting a hand..by merely existing, writing.

Sheila O’ Malley (Left) and Angelica Jade Bastién …Writers Supreme.

Sheila O’ Malley (Left) and Angelica Jade Bastién …Writers Supreme.




I knew nothing about writing before Angelica Jade Bastien and Sheila O'Malley. I started writing seriously maybe five years ago, first read Shiela double that amount of time on I believe Ebert's site (could've been shorter, my memory looks like a burnt out cops desk in the movies). Writing was the furthest thing (No Drake) from my mind before Angelica and Sheila... and sometimes to this day is still the furthest thing from my mind. BUT every time I read Angelica and Sheila - Masters of their craft, top of the Heap, Kings of the Hill - I'm infatuated with their writing. I'm enamored with it. In awe of, obsessed by, and intoxicated by it. I feel inferior in the presence of it, but not in that way that actually makes one feel sad, or pathetic, more like a Wayne, Garth, and Alice Cooper way. What Angelica and Sheila are able to do with words.... I don't have the words for. But they do so look, listen an read for a moment…

For The Matrix, the Wachowskis coaxed a genuinely transcendent performance from Reeves, while also successfully synthesizing a host of inspirations (from cyberpunk literature to anime classics to various strains of philosophy detailing our notions of consciousness). The results profoundly rewrote the expectations of what an action star could be. Neo’s mournful, curious gaze and joyful compulsion as he learns about the real world brought to the fore the idea that more soulful, willowy folks could carry a hidden lethality — a suggestion new to the American landscape, which often preferred its action stars’ powers conscripted to immensely muscled bodies, with true emotion either nowhere to be found or wrapped in slickly delivered sarcasm. Reeves suggested that an action star should feel, at full tilt.
— Angelica Jade Bastién "The Beatific imperfection of Keanu Reeves in The Matrix 20 years Later"

This isn’t a kerfuffle of words crashing into each other while competing for superiority of thought, no this is an A-team formed of the best an most concise word usage for the job, on a mission to re-route the discourse of our understanding of one of our greatest action stars ever. Cue the last two notes of the Mission impossible theme, which have always been in my mind a stand in for Mission accomplished “duhh daaaaaaaaa”.

It is only in the director’s cut of Aliens that we learn Ripley’s first name is “Ellen.” All business, she charges past the injured Hicks, before stopping to say in an almost hopeful tone, “See you, Hicks…” When he says, “Dwayne. It’s Dwayne,” in gigantic close-up, the subtext turns text. Weaver, caught in his gaze, in the shattering of rank, in the rise of something being acknowledged, says, without prompting, “Ellen.” Eyes glinting with flirty mischief and intimacy, he sends her off with, “Don’t be gone long, Ellen.” It’s as though they’re suddenly in bed, in a world where they could be who they want to be to each other. As father-figure to the abandoned child Newt, as husband-figure to Ripley, Hicks is essential in creating the “found family” of the reproduction-obsessed storyline of Aliens. It’s impossible to imagine the film without him.
— Sheila O' Malley "Almost Like Falling in Love"

I haven’t seen Aliens in years, but I might as well have seen it yesterday, and the way Sheila so aptly, so masterfully described what goes on in a scene that makes you feel like you knew it the whole time even though you’re just now seeing it that way because Sheila just said it…Thats her magic. I read her work, especially her scene breakdowns like this and it feels a bit like being in the room with the pre cogs of Minority Report, when they’re thoughts flash on that big screen providing insight to a scene you weren’t even sure you knew existed yet. These two don’t always write about film, both also write personal essays, and if you think either of them lose any of their magnificence in this particular arena, well…

He and I had many moments in alleys accompanied by dramatic weather:
1. Freezing black ice-drenched night. Orange light from the street lamps. Slushy, grey, cold. Scrawny prowling stray cats. We stepped from iceberg to iceberg, suddenly shy with each other in the silence. His soft voice, “Sugar, step this way.”
2. A rainy night. We sat in his parked van. Speckled fogged windshield. We drank beer, played a tape, and sang along. Harmonizing. He said later, “That was the night it started for me.”
3. Downpour. Wooden stairway. Darkness. Our first kiss. Which was actually more like a nature program on the Discovery Channel than a kiss. Biting, scratching, shoving. Each one of us struggling to grab the reins, and dominate. Kissing to kill. His hand clamped round my throat.
4. Heat wave. Muggy hot close air. We rubbed ice cubes over each other’s faces. He lifted me up, placed my feet on top of his feet, and then danced me around the alley, holding me in his arms.
5. Tornado watch. Huddled against the van, huddled against the wind. He was getting married in a week. Not to me. Standing in the massive wind, pressing our cheeks together, not talking. For once, we were not talking. No other body parts touched. My cheeks wet with tears. His cheeks were dry. But when I pulled back, the look in his dry eyes was worse than weeping.
— Sheila O' Malley "74 Facts and One Lie"
I was always an odd child, prone to health issues and anxiety. I had a nervous tic of looking at my shoes when I walked, leading me to careen into door frames and people, as if facing the world with a direct gaze was too much to bear. By then, my mother noticed that my natural oddities had given way to something darker, and my suicide attempts and musings landed me in a mental hospital just as the holiday season was in full bloom. I still can’t see Christmas lights or smell a traditional Thanksgiving dinner without my heart seizing in my chest. I was in the hospital for over a month, and by the time I left, I was not the girl I was when I entered. My mental traumas in the years following that first hospitalization grew deeper. Even though my diagnosis shifted over the years — depression, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type II — one truth remained: I have tied my identity to my madness so fiercely, I don’t know who I am when I’m not ill.
— Angelica Jade Bastién "What Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s Depiction of Mental Illness Has Meant to Me This Season"



Did you just exhale? I did, and I’ve read each of these pieces several times. It is not ostentatious, it’s not overbearing, (though they tend to bring out emotions that feel that way) It's just there. It just exists, and in its existence you just know..." I'm not doing that" "That's not going to happen, just be happy with your mediocrity. I mean your mediocrity as compared to them.. like you're still pretty good bro, you're just not them good." Seriously they inspire me to the core, my very being as a writer. When I think of writing but I don't feel like writing, and I'm not sure of myself as a writer - I read either one of them and I'm ready to ride again, and I love them for it. So this is just a thank you note, before I forget saying thank you because the quagmire of my own tangential life found it's way to my living room again , or met me at the front entrance of my job. Art matters, and what these two women do in expressing their love for others art is art, and in that expression I feel seen. Even when I COMPLETELY disagree, or have no idea what the fuck they're talking about (they read alot , I well ...don't). In that expression of love I feel challenged, and fulfilled, and amazed. They're much better looking Burgess Meredith's from Rocky, in my corner, spewing out paragraphs instead of profanities as inspiration. Their words are Johnny Gill’s parts in “N.E. Heartbreak” revving me up, emphatically warning me to “I better be ready”. I've never met either, physically, but my appreciation for them is intense. If I prayed much anymore, or as much as I'd liked to, I'd pray for them everyday to be granted a 1up if ever their number was called as a personal favor to the world. So ...I'm back writing now, it feels good..for now, and oh yeah here’s more Johnny Gill espousing my exact feelings on these women’s words. ..

So good My, My, My Listen Put on your red dress And slip on your high heels And some of that sweet perfume It sure smells good on you Slide on your lipstick Let your hair down Cause Baby when you get through Im going to show you Tonight will

Art and the Artist must be separate if we really want a better society.

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In the wake of the death of  alleged abuser and Hip Hop artist XXXtentacion, and allegations of pedophilloic abuse for R. Kelly, and Michael Jackson, a long standing debate has followed on social media about the separation of Art and the Artist. In the case of "X"'s untimely death it sparked a debate that pitted a social impropriety (speaking ill of the dead)  against actual abuse.  This bit of nonsense formed out of a desire to cover up for the fact that his fans - either never believed he committed these acts of abuse and rape, or that they paled in comparison to his art - prompted them to ask that we separate the art from the artist.  The counter argument being that they are one in the same. That as an extension of the artist, art is ultimately inseparable from its creator. Citing for instance Woody Allen’s appearances in most of his films not only in physical form, but in psychological form as well. A form that acted at least as a baseline for many of his protagonists. That that separation is a form of cognitive dissonance that makes it impossible for the public to do the work of holding our favorites accountable. I must respectfully disagree with the premise. Great art is not synonymous with great people,  with great politics,  or wisdom.  Great art is simply great art.  Art is a production, and as such it has value but contrary to what capitalism may assert implicitly, that value is not inherent, but directly beholden to what we assign it. When I hear a good rhythm and I move my hips, that has no inherent value other than however it might make me feel. The kind of value that would see that almost involuntary reaction turn into making its creator beyond reproach…that’s a different story. It's I believe an absolutely important distinction to make precisely because of its difficulty. It’s an important distinction to make because it scapegoats our own response to what essentially moves us rather than interrogate patriarchy,  misogyny, our myths about genius, celebrity culture and our desire to often give art more importance than it actually deserves as what actually leads to the destruction of principality,  and morality much more-so than merely appreciating the art.

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Art as inseparable from an artist in any reading is a premise based in fear of society's ability to wrestle with moral complexity. The fear that propels this position ostensibly lets capitalism, and celebrity culture off the hook. Reducing them to gallery players in this macabre play, when in fact they are the stars. It acknowledges the fact that the great bulk of people who say “separate the art from the artist” in fact do not separate the art from the artist, while never truly reckoning with the main forces behind that lack of recognition. In what I’m sure is mostly unintentional it points the largest finger at the audience for tapping their feet to a good song, or acknowledging the aesthetic qualities of a film, or enjoying a game changing TV show, (the production of which are collaborative processes) , rather than the infrastructure that creates the problem. The process of making the important decision as to whether you want, or in fact should divest from the art of an artist, is a difficult one, but one that in my opinion is A. Much easier to do, when you can reckon with what makes the art separate from the artist, and B. Make a decision to divest from and criticize a culture that allows any human being to consider themselves as apart from and often times above the rest of us. Granting art such cultural importance, and privilege that it acts as a stand-in for activism, morality, or politics. Enjoying, buying, or patronizing art did not create the the safeguards, towers, and sycophancy that insulate artist, capitalism and the evolving culture of celebrity fanaticism rooted in those very capitalistic ideals did that. It’s important to understand that for much of history artist were the working class, and suffered the same sort of a sort of moral equivalence that extended from what society thought of that kind of work. Patronage in medieval and renaissance Europe in part helped elevate the social status of the artist to something akin to that of a celebrity, even while many of them remained financially destitute, and enjoyed very few of the kind of freedoms and protections they enjoy now.

Myths about Amadeus Mozart persist more easily than the truth, which make it hard for us to acknowledge that Amadeus was less a rock star than perceived.

Myths about Amadeus Mozart persist more easily than the truth, which make it hard for us to acknowledge that Amadeus was less a rock star than perceived.



Art is a creation, a physical gathering of personal expression in a house of visual, and audible cues that reference cultural values, or personal emotions, creating entertainment for an audience. Our response to it many times is primal, and in many ways can't be helped, but the artist is just a human being, who found in themselves a desire or ability to craft stories or express themselves in a way that others found valuable. Our response to the creator also being contemptible or even criminal though is absolutely under our control.   I don't think that giving a person millions of dollars immediately flips into "Oh so I can be terrible". Though we're still not asking enough for my taste why we pay these people millions in the first place? Art is extremely valuable to society, but that much more valuable than what teachers and doctors, and scientists do?  Some may respond “well that pulls in much more money than other disciplines”, and my response is “Do you think that is a coincidence?”    Acting, dancing, or making music has evolved from a craft no different than any other, into celebrity, and celebrity has evolved from the screaming-fainting fanaticism of the eras that made stars of Cary Grant, Marilyn Monroe, The Beatles, Elvis, Michael Jackson- to the "stanship" generation that we now currently exist in. From being born of the awe,  wonder,  mystery, and yes talent associated with creation and performance, to the deification that seems born of the fact that we are in awe of materialism,  and fame in and of itself to such a point that we not only admit our obsession with it, but we are proud of our obsession.  Stan after all is word created by the culture, not the artist in reference to. A combination of the words stalker and fan (itself shorthand for fanatic) traced back to a popular Eminem song about an obsessive fan that ends in tragedy.  What's so interesting about the etymology from this particular song is that Eminem's Stan is also about a fan who is unable to separate the difference between the art produced, and the artist.

"But what's this shit you said about you like to cut your wrists too? I say that shit just clownin' dog, come on, how fucked up is you?" -Eminem "Stan"

"But what's this shit you said about you like to cut your wrists too? I say that shit just clownin' dog, come on, how fucked up is you?" -Eminem "Stan"

Whether conscious or unconscious this is an important connection,  as this admission of a lack of ability or desire to engage in any critique of our favorite artists, or cognitively disassociate two clearly different things can mature from a benign act like making the mistake that an actors performance is simply "Them being themselves" or a winking reference to some celebrity as being actually "divine " to a much more perilous Hardy Boys Jr detective type amateur sleuthing that I would wager would have some social media inspector-detector passing off "Murder by numbers" by The Police as an indication of intention and/or guilt if Sting were to someday be charged with murder. “I knew it! It was right there in the song!” Or inversely the same disassociation the cause of an unwillingness to imagine or engage with the possibility that he could have murdered someone.  In the negative, this association can lead to revisionist history without context,  perspective,  and reductive criticism. In the positive it is equivalent of a quote from Bojack Horseman about "rose colored glasses".

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Donald Trump having money surely helped his ascendency to the presidency, thus capitalism, but I'd argue that another important factor was the fact that so many were willing to imbue him with qualities he most certainly didn't have due to his role in the apprentice. It created a false correlation between the entertainment and the reality that helped him arguably more than even his monetary privilege, or exterior popularity of the show.  The artists currently at the vortex of this discussion especially in the black community from Kanye,  to Nas,  R.  Kelly,  to Cosby, and Michael Jackson,   and outside of the community a Kevin Spacey, or Weinstein and Allen are at various way stations in their careers.  Ye for sure is still at his peak,  and Nas saw a bit of redemption from teaming up with a Kanye whose shenanigans always seem in proximity to promotion, but Nas's previous efforts were well short of the multi million numbers he was doing in his hay-day,  and the buzz around those efforts was noticeably lighter too.  R Kelly's album sales have been even worse,  and widely reported on.

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 Spacey was doing quite well on House of Cards before his abuse came to the light,  but Cosby was all but invisible save for his classic hit television show,  and occasional appearances on white news stations as their local black grand wizard to conjure up some nonsensical finger wagging at black people.  My point is I see very little to connect popularity, or consumption of art to people's willingness to defend reprehensible people or those who commit or say reprehensible acts and things.  The Cosby show is or maybe was beloved no doubt,  but  even if you assume that the popularity of the show is what contributed to Cosby's ability to get away with so much for so long,  at the root of that assertion you must inevitably come to the conclusion that the association between Cosby and "Dr Huxtable" is the stem.  The roots are patriarchy,  and the soil is hardened by the culture around celebrity, and the idea that the art is in fact the artist. You cannot pick and parcel the parts of that position that fit your narrative, you leave the answer then to perception. I can pick scenes from the Cosby show that indict him, ignoring all others, or pick scenes that show the kind of man he wanted to be seen as, ignoring all others. The impetus that led to Kanye saying "George Bush does not like black people" is the same impetus that led to him interrupting Taylor Swift, and the same that ultimately led to him saying "Slavery was a choice". The difference is in the " "landing" , the perception, and that he was emboldened by the audience who began to confuse Kanye the artist as a wholistic representation of Kanye the man.  They missed this valuable distinction because they believed College Dropout Kanye was an actuality.   As told to us by others who knew Kanye before he became known to the world ( Dave Chappelle,  Jamie Foxx)  Ye was always extremely confident in his assertions I would gather as both a survival and defense mechanism in an industry that often wants to tell you (especially people of color)  your worth.  But that same braggadocio,  under the influence of the sycophancy,  and insulation particular to fame, and massive amounts of money morphed into provocateurism,  and that from a call and response that earned Kanye (sometimes rightfully sometimes not)  a voucher as a socio political voice,  when the reality was Kanye was a man in search of the truth, more than anything willing to speak his truth, as if it was the truth whenever he felt the urge.  And that subjective bit of narcissism was the motivation for his actions moreso than any staunch political stance.

Kanye interrupted his concert to espouse his own personal "truths" about Beyoncé, Jay-Z, and Hilary Clinton in 2016.

Kanye interrupted his concert to espouse his own personal "truths" about Beyoncé, Jay-Z, and Hilary Clinton in 2016.



 

Art is an expression of a person or an ideal, but it is not that person or that ideal, because if it is, it stands to reason that if the art is great,  so then is the person,  or the ideal. Art is the offspring of the artist, but it is no more an exact copy of the artist than actual offspring. Children much like art are the result of a collaborative process. They may take on some of our image, they may embody our desires, our hopes, dreams, but they are not us. I think if you get to the root of a culture that allows us to discuss almost any and every important issue through the lens of a celebrity, and capitalism which says you are merely what you produce, therein is your value -   when the origins of God or the cosmos isn't mostly hosted by Morgan Freeman, and Climate change brought to you by Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon, you'll get to a place where people will make better decisions about whose art to divest from or support.  The "rose colored glasses" are not so evident in our ability to consume art (that in actuality may still be great under the given parameters of whatever made the art or artist great in first place)  as much as they are representative of the aesthetic political culture we have nurtured.  The kind that has us voting based on appearances, rather than our interests. After all a chef's political inclinations has no bearing on whether or not his food is good.  And my refusal to eat at his restaurant has little to no bearing on the political/ social  environment in the country at large.  I argue that "cancellation" culture (because actual cancellation does not exist while the culture around it most certainly does) ignored the grim realities and processes of actual change in favor of superficial acts of evolution and denies its own role in the creation of fabricated role players in social justice within institutions known for make believe.  The template becomes clear.. In a world where your every move is being watched with curiosity,  where a misstep, mistake, or bad take could mean the worst kind of publicity, and potentially "cancellation" which can have real world consequences on said career, where hyperbole wins the day,  and deep interrogation or nuance is written off as coddling or complicit support, - careful and even cynical curation is your best friend. It doesn't matter how real these threats are objectively, only how real they feel to the artists and the people around them.  Celebrity in this form takes on the character of the Chinese magician Chung Ling Soo in Christopher Nolan's "The Prestige".   A carefully curated performance that never truly ends even beyond the stage.  The ways in which fans, and critics hang on the every word, and action of these people with looming consequences to their public profile that can deflate or inflate their popularity is incompatible with the natural process of internal change or evolution in social political mindset, which in turn is incompatible with any ability by us the audience to properly judge as to authenticity.

 

Recorded with http://screencast-o-matic.com


The need to break down complex subject matter into more simpler terms is I believe crucial,  important, and understandable, but not always conducive to creating long standing change.  Teaching people to deal with the intricacies of existence is in my opinion a must.  In this case that it is human to like a bop, or enjoy a great film, because if the quality of it appeals to your senses you naturally want to move, or watch.   But also that we must reckon with our greater reason as to whether any art is important enough to engage with if and when doing so allows the creator to continue to abuse or harass others in its name. This separation is integral to the fight for social and cultural justice, because it eliminates the amount of obstacles in ones way. If art and artist are the same you are fighting not only patriarchy and misogyny, but the art, and celebrity together. This is the equivalent of fighting an ideological Voltron, when if you can separate them it's much easier to attack the individual lions. The art is open to criticism or even attack, always has been. The artist has most certainly in the past been open to critique, if not at times unfairly so, but the steady, encroaching, conflation of art and artist has morphed into the near impenetrable bubble of celebrity. Where Dwayne Johnson cannot separate his name from his stage name "The Rock" because the two are considered synonymous, and become “Brand”. And this cultivated personality becomes such that very few even bother to try and differentiate between the two because again they assume that actor is merely playing himself. Which is fine I guess... Until he actually runs for president….

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I AM LOST

Get a Grip

There is a recurring dream I have where everything is bigger than I am. I mean ginormous. It could be chairs , and tables, or even those cinders that stop your car from going over the allotted space in a parking spot. But I am surrounded by the objects, and the sheer size of these objects in relativity to how tiny I feel induces vertigo. I feel imbalanced, unconnected, I am on the ground, but I am grounded to nothing. I feel sick, but I cannot vomit, and any thought I have feels locked behind a door I can’t summon enough wherewithal to reach, let alone unlock. Eventually, this feeling of helplessness, of lopsidedness, becomes so overwhelming to my senses it yanks me hurriedly from my sleep, but the feeling may stay with me a further fifteen minutes. That dream used to just be a dream, (a reoccurring one) but a dream nonetheless, now it feels like its my life.


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Same old Story

I always wanted to be in movies, around movies. I grew up shuffling around various parts of the Inland Empire (A large metropolitan area just east of Los Angeles) in Southern California. We were a steadily growing family, (we would eventually be nine - seven children) that would move from neighborhood to neighborhood each time trying to move up, and away from the consequences of the inner city. I never had many friends, just my imagination, courtesy of books and television. We could rarely afford going to the movies when I was younger, so most of my movie watching came via TV and video rentals, but I fell in love with the escapism. The farther away from reality, from the world I knew, a movie went.. the more I loved it. Movies allowed me to disappear, and at the time I liked disappearing. Not in some morose, melodramatic sense, ....I just liked it better somewhere else. My favorite book then was C.S. Lewis’s “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe”, I became somewhat obsessed with the idea that this world, and another so much more fantastic than this one could be so conjoined that merely going through a closet could transport you from one to the other. I would walk around waving a pencil in front of my eyes, drawing out the world I imagined myself in, most of which I borrowed from movies. In some sense movies were my closet, but I wasn’t hiding from anything drastic. I wasn’t abused, I wasn’t bullied until middle school, (and lightly even then) I wasn’t the only black kid in my neighborhood, and I wasn’t an outcast. I spray painted walls with my sometime friend Charlie, played Nintendo with Jeremy, rode bikes, and flipped on mattresses (cliché but true) but I just preferred the company of the TV set, and the inside of my head. I lived in worlds conjured by Spielberg, and Ron Howard. I watched films like “DragonSlayer”, “Return of the Jedi”, “Conan/Red Sonja”, and “The Neverending Story” until I memorized them. School came pretty easy save for math so I daydreamed through most of that, despite being placed in classes for gifted and talented students. At this time I had no conception of self, and I didn’t put much time into thinking about it. The only time I did it was in pretending I was someone else, the actor in me already forming. Indiana Jones, Conan, He- Man, anyone but myself. Because at the time the only thing that mattered was in those worlds. We spend a lot of time talking about fairy tales for women, and subsequently their effect on women because we largely effeminized the word, coded it for women. But men have fairy tales, and I wonder how much these male constructed fairy tales around masculinity affected my sense of reality.

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In these tales, these male fantasies like; James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Dune, Conan, Star Trek, Star Wars, there is always destiny, and at some point surety. There is a time of being unsure, of feeling lost, helpless, incapable, but that is mostly a sign of boyhood. Manhood was all about knowing, and it was this “knowing” I was afraid of, even as a child. Fear…How much room is allotted for that in manhood? “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me”. I mean we can talk about it, I’m sure in the abstract, disconnected from the reality, from its true face, from its worst possibility. I’m sure in this era where we are deconstructing the pillars of toxic masculinity, we mean it when we say men should be able to express it. But when it’s front and center in our face, when it doesn’t take the form we see in our minds eye, when it’s not polite, or poetic like in the cinema, or literature..still? I am reminded of a quote…

in china there was once a man who liked pictures of dragons, and his clothing and furnishings were all designed accordingly. his deep affections for dragons was brought to the attention of the dragon god, and one day a real dragon appeared before his window. it is said that he died of fright. he was probably a man who always spoke big words but acted differently when facing the real thing.
— Tsunetomo Yamamoto, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

I am often afraid, always have been. Afraid of my destiny, and afraid of saying I’m afraid of my destiny. If fear, or vulnerability is used as the dragon in the above quote, then I am the dragon, and I wonder for that dragon what it must’ve felt like watching a man die of fright at the sight of him, after expressing such deep affection for him? How many people can really stand the sight of a man truly afraid? There is acceptable fright in a man, the kind that drives us to action like in this scene from Jurassic Park…

Jurassic Park movie clips: http://j.mp/1nXDPTF BUY THE MOVIE: https://www.fandangonow.com/details/movie/jurassic-park-1993/1MVfaa4d254242cf0c06aa0772c9318099d?cmp=Movieclips_YT_Description Don't miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/1u2y6pr CLIP DESCRIPTION: Dr. Grant (Sam Neill) helps the children escape from the T-Rex, but the lawyer, Mr. Gennaro (Martin Ferrero), is eaten while hiding in the outhouse.

But what about the kind of fear that paralyzes us, leaving us unable to move in any direction, leaving us rudderless, and unable to help ourselves more less others? I don’t think we like to see that up close in anybody, but in men it can be seen as borderline repulsive. In my life right now, when anxiety, self doubt, and fear seize upon me without mercy, it’d be a lot easier to punch them, to fight them, but I can’t fight them, not in that way, and I can’t joke them away, or even love them away. I don’t feel a call to action, and I don’t feel brave, I feel a lot more like this..…

"Saving Private Ryan" is a 1998 American epic war film set during the Invasion of Normandy in World War II. Directed by "Steven Spielberg" & Starring "Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns, Barry Pepper, Vin Diesel, Matt Damon, Giovanni Ribisi, Adam Goldberg & Jeremy Davies".

It is said, If you want to see into a sick persons heart, become ill yourself. When a man is sick or in trouble, those who do not keep company with him are cowards, even those who are close to him in daily life. We should visit those that are unhappy and give them gifts. We must not become estranged in life from those who have a sense of gratitude. At such times one can see into a mans heart .In the world there are men who ask of others when they are in great need. However there are men who don’t remember their obligations afterwards.
— Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

“Do you know what fear stands for? False Evidence Appearing Real”. 


I am sick. I have seen into the hearts of others, I have been a crutch to others but I have hid my sickness. I have hid it in idleness, in busy work, in advice given to others, in promises, in drink, and laughter, in sex, and darkness. My sickness, I am sure everyone else has in some form or another, but theirs seems less detectable than mines, I must hide it more.

“Pride goeth before a fall”

This year I turn 40. I have two goals and they have always been near me; To be an actor, and to be a writer. My relationship with them is polyamorous and I want both, one is not sufficient enough for me without the other. I have worked and studied thirteen years to be an actor, performed in plays, and short films that number enough for even a skeptic like me to be proud of, and that work no one can take away from me try as I may. Since I started writing again a year ago I have written over seventy pieces, and though that’s not gangbusters, it’s also work that cant be taken away. The Romantic in me says that is beautiful, the idealist, that, that is enough, and the realist says none of it has paid so much as one bill. Near the end of last year I was evicted out of my cheap studio apartment in LA. Gentrification did not care that I had no place to go, that I had mostly kept up with my rent , and that I was only one week late, with payment in hand. I had space near the “New and Improved” downtown LA, a minutes walk to the Staple Center, and so I was gone, my pride stayed there though.

“Don’t just stand there, try and brace it with something”

Another dream. I am surrounded by snakes. Snakes in the sky, and snakes on the ground, so I hover, but my movement is restricted. The snakes can move, some of them are cobras, some of them seem larger than is natural for cobras, they reach for me, but they don’t hiss, and they don’t seem to want to bite me, but rather to swallow me. I begin to move faster hovering above and below them, but they begin to enclose. I wake up. How much work is there for a 40 year old, actor/writer? How much work is there period? I served my country for six years, but the work I did is not very transferrable to the real world. There are jobs I could do, but they are careers. I don’t want careers, I have two. People suggest I get a new career. They do it politely for the most part, they mean well..well some of them. They offer suggestions on how to build upon my craft, to monetize it. Some of the suggestions are good, all of them require money, money I don’t have. Besides that, there is my sickness. Suggestions on how to neutralize it are much worse than the suggestions for my craft. They are all sympathy, they lack empathy. There is some disdain I sense there too, some platitude ready to plant its flag on the newly discovered island of “get it together” …except there are already other flags here too. I reflect on these suggestions often. Some of them I have tried, to varied results. I tried to take on several jobs in Los Angeles, the idea was to create multiple streams of revenue. I couldn’t get the one, while maintaining the other. I was only fired once, most of them I lost to some form of relational nepotism, racism, or seasons. I was always grateful, because I was always that close to quitting. I took jobs in Long Beach, The Valley, and Santa Monica while living in downtown Los Angeles with no car. If you know the area you know what that means. I spent four hours of my day in transportation each day. I’ve worked as an extra in movies and TV, a security guard, a financial aid advisor, a concierge, a leasing consultant, and even a door to door knife salesman (don’t ask) and Im still working on the monetizing. In both the artistic world, and what some refer to as the practical world, building an audience, and competing for jobs is both exciting and exhausting, and I haven’t done enough. And maybe that’s why I am here, back at my parents house, (which I am very grateful for) trying to get my bearings, trying not to sink, trying not to let the snakes swallow me whole.

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“Be like water my friend”

Every time I watch the beach scene with Juan and Chiron in Barry Jenkins masterpiece “Moonlight” I cry. There is such vulnerability there, such tenderness, but more-so than anything I appreciate being encouraged to let go, knowing that someone has got you. I can feel the water in that scene. I have never had a good relationship with water. I almost drowned more than once. I didn’t care much for showers when I was a kid, I don’t drink enough water, and have taken to forcing myself to lug around a jug of it to ensure I do better. I once went boogie boarding with a friend near Carlsbad. He rode me out, tried to teach me how to balance myself on the board, and to ride small waves. He was very patient my friend. I was very bad. He left me for a few minutes after I assured him I was fine. I was not fine. I fell off my board, and could not stay on when I would try to board it, so I gave up and decided to head back to shore. I’m a pretty good swimmer, my high school coach told me I’m a natural, and I agree. There is something calming about swimming and running, you can shut everything else out and just pay attention to the rhythm “1..2..1..2..1..2”. I swam confidently to shore, but each time I looked up it seemed I was further away. I swam more furiously each time, minding my form, pushing harder with each stroke, flapping my feet about vigorously, but with precision, but I made little to no headway. I could feel the panic settling in, I could feel it enjoying itself…I wasn’t going anywhere. I had tired myself out, I could barely move my extremities. The water rose above my head in much of the same way it does the camera in Moonlight. That part always makes me uneasy. I started calling out for my friend, as the water rose above my mouth muffling my voice, and filling my lungs with water. Water surrenders, there is that great Bruce Lee quote about water “Be like water my friend”, I long to be like water. My friend heard me, I am beyond relived, I want to cry. He pulls me up and lets me rest awhile. He instructs me to surrender. I have to swim, but let the current take me in. I want to surrender. I want to surrender to “Its okay I’m not doing …., by 40”. I want to surrender to needing help, and a lot of it, to the present, and to time, and most importantly to being lost.

“Just keep swimming”

My Mother gets lost on purpose. She is at this point by far the better driver (between her and my father) and a human GPS because she is willing to get lost. I asked her how she knows so much about backroads, and shortcuts, and street names, and she said she just takes new roads. I feel that panic again as if her story is mines, and the first thought catapulted into my conscious is “but don’t you get lost that way?” I ask her, and I remember her tone a lot more than even her exact words because there was no anxiety in it. It was some version of “I don’t mind getting lost”, but I definitely remember the follow up.. “That’s how I find my way”. I hate being lost. I’m probably as far as any one being could be from a control freak, but being lost is a bridge too far for me, and yet, here I am. I turn 40 this year, and I am lost, and I am afraid I have no idea where I’m going. I guess the idea is to let go of the idea I need to know. To take both my mother’s, and my friends advice to just keep swimming, surrender to the water, and to understand that is exactly how I find my way. I want to cry.

My Favorite Performances of 2018

Performances are far and away my favorite part of any film. What actors commit to, what they do from behind a camera is a strange magic, and at the height of its power can alter your own connection to reality. Causing any one of us to temporarily lose the sense of the real and our grasp on discernment, like confusing the character on screen with the actor behind it. This year was one of my favorite in film, and much of that was due to a bevy of fantastic performances in some of my favorite films of the year. That being said, there were certain performances that rose above, that reached out grabbed me by the collar, looked me in my eyes and whispered simply…”Remember”. These performances mixed, technique, and skill, magnetism and charisma, authenticity, and risk, and created a concoction so powerful that when I thought about 2018, the year in full, the memory of them came tumbling out right along side my own actual highs and lows, achievements and disappointments, as well as memories made with friends , family, and lovers. I am thankful as an audience member and as an actor I was treated to every last one of them.

M'Baku Black Panther

Black Panther (2018) - It's Challenge Day Scene Subscribe To FilmVerse For More ➤ http://bit.ly/2l5ySn0 Movie Info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1825683/ Blu-ray: Film Description: After the death of his father, T'Challa returns home to the African nation of Wakanda to take his rightful place as king.

Black panther was one of the most enjoyable cinematic experiences I've had in recent memory. Definitely the most enjoyable experience at the movies i've had this year.  And while there were a number of fun, charismatic, performances In the film, none stood out to me as much as that of Winston Duke as M'Baku.  Duke imbued M’Baku with more charisma than Boseman’s T’Challa, while having as much fun with it as Letitia Wright as Shuri,  and crafted a better character than Michael B. Jordan as Kilmonger.  In the movie, Duke”s tribe (The Jabari) worship the gorilla, and within duke's performance, you can see him take on the elements of the animal, not just in the barks, but in his physical gesturing, posturing, the way he engages with his opponent.  Duke does interesting things with his cadence, with his eyes, and with the physical space around him. That's one of the reasons why what Duke did resonated with people so well. Consider that afterward something called the M’Baku challenge went viral. Wherein which people would record his now famous monologue right down to the cadence, and his purposeful and noticeable filler word “Hmm”. For people to be so moved and enamored with his work to perform his monologue? As an actor, I don't think there's any greater compliment. It was a beautiful thing for any actor, I think, to see and indicative of the greatness of Duke's performance in that scene and throughout the movie.




Anna Kendrick A Simple Favor

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If there is any problem I have with comedic actors as compared to actors who engage in comedy, is that comedians tend to put the punchline, the gag, the joke, the funny over authenticity. This is the reason why I disengaged from a lot of what everyone else tends to love about certain comedic performances in films, especially when they are given by comedians. Anna kendrick's performance, in “A Simple Favor, is one of those that merges the most important aspects of being an actor with the important instincts of a comedian.  The movie is such that it hinges itself, (much like “The Favourite”) on the performances of its stars, because a lot of the plot is going to be driven by them. Where you do, or don't think the plot is going is going to be based in what they do or don’t give you.  The power of kendrick's performance is in it's ability to choose the complexity of both comedy and acting instincts so that she never strays too far from where she seems to have tethered her performance while clearly offering moments of inspired improv. When you're an actor and you’re discovering a character, there always has to be some kind of driving objective, a through line to return to to make sure that you're never moving too far, that your always tethered to something that motivates this character in almost every way. Every reaction, gesture, movement will flow forth from this well once you have located and internalized it. From there it becomes easier to make the right decision in combination with your instincts with your instincts literally glueing themselves to that objective, merging with that objective until they become one so that you get a whole new performance even while acting somewhat similar to the piece of you that remains present in all of your other performances. This is something that DeNiro and Denzel Washington do extremely well, and this is what Kendrick does in “A Simple Favor”. I wish I had the video in order to show a lot of the little, tiny things she does, especially when she's stumbling, or when she's bumbling for answers, or when she feels unsure about herself, but as a guide I will say her introduction to Blake Lively, and subsequently her drunk scene on the couch with Blake lively, where she tells the story about her brother were amazing work. The degree of difficulty involved with playing that character while trying to convey discomfort, being drunk and telling a lie while giving just enough for us to detect that something is off but not so much as to make it easily detectable cannot be understated. Her reactions to being prodded, her deflections….that scene right there is good enough for me to make it one of my absolute favorite performances i've seen all year.






Ethan Hawke First Reformed

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I won't say much about Ethan Hawke's performance in Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed”, because it's the kind of performance that I think requires a lot of tape viewing, a lot of me checking it out over and over again, discovering the nuance of what he does well in particular scenes.  What I will say here is that what Ethan Hawke did, and what I feel was so impressive to me about what he accomplished was his ability not to overstate understatement. In a role like this it’s easy to lose oneself in quiet verisimilitude, but Hawke gives a very impassioned performance, while remaining quiet and mostly still almost the entirety of the movie. This is important because his character is a metaphorical active volcano. We must sense that something is going on the inside, sense the rage, while barely being aware of it all aesthetically. Again, complex emotions are the most difficult for any actor to relay on screen, and the fact that you or I relate to this character so much is not just an idea of the fact that we all understand that feeling of losing faith in various things, not just in religion and our conception of God but in people, systems, and so on, but also that Ethan was able to reach an almost otherworldly sense of hyper realism. To the point that I began to arrive at a place where I felt like I was watching something beyond even a documentary, rather than a performed reality. That doesn't happen very often, even in other great roles that Ethan Hawke has performed, like Boyhood for instance. I’m always aware of the performance aspect and that's not always a negative thing, merely that there's always something when a person disappears so far into that world, into that connection into that place, where they become almost indistinguishable from who it is that they are , a performance of being.









Viola Davis Widows

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Viola Davis in “Widows” is powerful, she's funny, she’s callous, she’s heartbroken, and intelligent, but the part that interest me is the way she plays this characters grief under fire. As Veronica the new widow of Henry Rawlings, she's unraveling steadily, but she's holding onto the spool tight, trying to stop the momentum. Davis is special playing the quiet storm, the person who tries to hold up in the face of terrible circumstance. Its there in “The Help” or in “Fences”, or even “Doubt.” The difference here is she gets to let this quality reside in power. Its like she's funneling Aibileen Clark from “The Help” through Amanda Waller in “Suicide Squad”. You feel it in every gesture, word, and every movement. That many times she is just trying to hold on while giving the air of consistency, while reminding everyone that she is not to be played with and she will not go down easily. Her Breakdown as she tries to fix herself in the mirror, or in a pivotal scene during a visit to Elizabeth Debicki’s character’s house, where Debicki gives her character the opening to feel what she really feels, in their numerous meetings as she hands down orders, and its rarely one or the other emotively , its frequently all. This is one of the few performances where I feel I don't know that any other actress would have sufficed, the character tailor-made to the skill-set that Viola Davis embodies so well, and whenever the meeting of character and actor seems fated a great performance is never far behind.









The Trio of The Favourite

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Although this movie is riddled with spirited performances like that of Nicholas hoult, the movie belongs to its Trio of actresses Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone. The film is my vote for the best ensemble of actors this year, and if I was listing my favorite actors this year I'd have to consider the trio at or near the very top.  What these actresses do in this film is nothing short of olympian. Its full on no holds barred commitment. Present when Olivia Colman tells the young boy to close his eyes, in Rachel Weisz’s “I won’t stop kicking you until youre dead” showdown with Emma Stone, and in Emma Stone’s wildly funny and spot-on snort as her only retort to Rachel Weisz. It's in there body work, the interesting risks they're take, all memorable and integral because they act as signpost that tell us exactly who these characters are, and where they are in terms of evolution and power dynamics in each scene.   As close to perfect as any acting performance can be, it was on display by these three actors work in the movie. I can not detect a false beat a wrong note throughout the entirety of this film. Olivia Coleman Queen Anne is a storm in the winds of her own windy temperament, and Colman tosses her about like ship at sea, splashing down on upon unsuspecting sailors trying to navigate her ire, capsizing at a Royal meeting. Everything from Rachel Weiss is posture and presentation. Her manicured cadence feels true to a character who conditioned herself to react and act in a certain way so as to protect themselves. Emma Stone does what Anna Kendrick did except for on a higher frequency, weaponizing her best comedic instinct into a performance full of duality, emotional range and the ridiculous, like her dastardly cry after she takes her own abuse. The Trio’s work in ‘The Favourite” is not just some of the best work i've seen this year, it is some of the best work i've seen in this decade.








Tom Waits The ballad of buster Scruggs

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Tom Waits performance in the Coen Brother’s latest “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” may be the truest performance on this list. Especially as it pertains to isolation, to loneliness, and what it might feel like. The far away glare, his body language, and how he carries himself, world wary, bent but not broken, a life full of both tragedy and love. I could write a story about who this person is based completely upon the clues Tom waits gives us about this man without barely a word, a recognizable word that comes forth from his mouth. The point when I knew I was sold on how great a performance I was witness to, was when he would speak to himself. I've seen a lot of actors try and perform talking to oneself , ( and I mean perform it) in order to show the audience at this person is slightly off kilter that they are losing some bit of themselves and it is based in a narrow ableist idea of what that looks like. You can see some of it in even Brad Pitt's performance in “12 monkeys” (Which I actually think was one of his better performances) but there is still the air of performance in it. A realization of what I am doing here so I need to gesture out this idea of speaking to myself and what it might sound like to speak to myself, what it might be like to be to speak to myself to create an authenticity to myself. It's very hard as a person, as an actor to give oneself the appearance that you are talking to yourself in a genuine way. You really have to find something, you really have to find an anchor to hang otherwise it's noticeable in varying degrees, varying levels on the spectrum, but nonetheless noticeable that this is what you're doing. Waits on the other hand performs it less for the audience, more for him, which is what talking to ones self should feel like. Waits brings such an air truth that it was barely noticeable at all, if at all, that this was a performance, it felt as real as him talking to someone right next to him, it felt like wind, like air, like truth.


Toni Collette Hereditary

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Toni Collette’s work in this film is an all-time great feat of acting. It’s the best performance this year period for me. The Levels, the transitions from one emotion to the next, the complexity, its truly a marvel. Pay attention to her reactions, especially those in the now infamous dinner table scene, or the instantaneous shock that sets in once she tells her son “she never wanted him”, or the progression of the body language in the gym scene, the way each facial expression, each accompanying gesture explicitly relates to a complicated emotion. Her character Annie, does not want to be there, she does not want to talk, but she needs to talk, it almost erupts out of her, she cannot help herself, and Collette’s body reverberates, and it reiterates that to us. It’s a performance so lived in, so organic, so natural, it borders on seeming like possession. It is a cavalcade of unique choices, and expressions singular to Toni Collette, the kind that usually make for the rare occurrence where a role finds the one actor meant exactly for it same as Viola. All Toni Collette did in this film was create in Annie Graham, one of the great women in horror, and one of the greatest horror performances ever. It’s a performance dipping in genius, and mastery, and it is for me THE performance of 2018.





Sam Elliott A Star is Born

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Sam Elliott is a national treasure in my eyes. He has always been one of my favorite actors out there, especially as pertains to character actors. Elliott definitely belongs to that group of character actor where in general it is thought they are playing upon some aspect of, some version of themselves. That statement has always been a gross oversimplification but it is not necessarily all wrong. Every actor to some degree brings some portion of who they are to a role. We don't magically transform into someone else, we take who we are and funnel it through our imagination twisting and conforming it into something that can be recognized as the other through a number of techniques. Actors like Elliott just have more recognizable traits and qualities so that in the process it always seems to be as simple as “They’re just playing themselves. Nevertheless, there is a verifiable, undeniable, magnetism to what Sam Elliot does on screen. The low growl, the knowing glare, the drawl, and the steady cadence that I don't think it's possible to pull off by very many actors not named Sam Elliott. He is the type of actor everything he says just sounds ike its worth listening to, so that if he were to say “You know a door only opens when you turn the knob” you’d be like “Wow Sam you’re so wise”. There is some part of us actors that recognizes that it becomes our job to give the audience what they want of us, not what we don't want them to see about us,and a great deal of actors who do character work learn to perform their character. Sam Elliott feels like a man who is always willing to just give us exactly who he is, unafraid to stand straight and tall in front of that camera and proclaimed this is who I am, take it or leave it. In “A Star is Born”, Elliott steals the show because once again it's one of those cases where a character seems so tailor made for a certain actor that it's uncanny, but also it's a case of Elliot doing something more than even i've seen him do in previous films of his. He starts to give us things that may even be beyond him, things that I think come with age, whereas I felt like before he was always willing to give a straight up version of who he is, I feel like the difference here now is that he evolved, and he gave that to us. Once again, it takes the best of what Sam Elliot does puts him in the best situation to allow him to give us something we haven't seen before, something that up to date is new to us. And then allow us to watch the fireworks. With no shade to the performances of Bradley Cooper and Gaga.

Glenn Close The Wife

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This image from this scene captures all that is so magnificent about Glenn Close’s Performance in “The Wife”. If in my mind there is any significant competition for Toni Collette, it is Glenn. Close walks a wonderfully fine line between high flying grandiosity and grounded veracity. Again this was another performance that was vital to the plot, if Close over plays her hand the plot is revealed, or we are at least very much so on the trail. If she under plays it the reveal may seem unearned, and ridiculous. Close plays it just right, and through her uncanny ability to convey a bevy of emotions in just one look, (think the ending of Dangerous Liaisons) she sets up the film, and the arc of her character in a way that informs the audience that something is amiss but only that. Close builds on her characters tendencies throughout the movie, burning the rope just a little bit as she sheds through each layer of her tether to the composure, and the nuance of her hurt and shame. Its a gorgeous bright, big, bold, sure, and genius performance reminding anyone watching of Glenn’s undeniable brilliance.

Michael B. Jordan, Acting and Black Masculinity in Leading Men.

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I think it's vital, especially in this era and this time, we discuss acting potential, capabilities and craftsmanship with the kind of nuance it deserves. The declining nature of the stranglehold various schools of acting had on up and coming actors has led to a more relaxed interpretation of good work that I think allows for a more ingratiating idea of what entails a good actor. This in turn has led to some very good revisitations of careers that were unfairly maligned for years due to the intended and unintended effects of the various bourgeoisie schools of thought that had up this point dominated the field. As usual when one style or paradigm shifts to give way to another balance is rarely ever achieved and there tends to be a throwing out of the proverbial baby with the bath water. In this case that “baby” is method and craft, as the erosion of the mystique around actors has led to some dubious claims about what acting is, the conflation of various descriptors, ( Movie Star, Character actor, Leading man woman) and ill-suited comparisons. Today actor Michael B Jordan has become a sort of focal point of the best and worst of what has come forth out of this interesting vortex. In a NYT article from earlier this week film critic Aisha Harris posits that Michael B Jordan is “More than a Movie Star”. It’s a great article that I highly recommend reading before this to gain some context, Harris properly identifies Jordan’s potential, some of his strengths, and his skill-set, but whereas Harris seeks to counter the idea that Michael B. Jordan can’t act (an absurd conceit) or that he is merely a movie star. Here I’m more interested in identifying what he may lack that lies at the source of what causes people to say such a thing, and explain why I disagree with the notion that Jordan, based purely on merits of acting - is anywhere in the vicinity of Denzel, Leo (whom Harris lists him as in the realm of) , but closer to Tom Cruise and most certainly Will Smith (Also listed) and how he can improve.

Denzel, Tom Cruise, and Leo chose roles that required a lot more deviation from the norm, character work, and vulnerability than MBJ has done to this point in his career.

Michael B. Jordan has always been an actor to me, a natural actor, a born actor. I think anyone saying Jordan can't act is giving in to a lazy (usually uninformed) interpretation of Michael’s weak points, or of the places where he struggles. I also think it's a bit - not as lazy as the previous statement, but still a bit lazy to claim that he is in the same vein as Denzel Washington or Leonardo DiCaprio. There is a major distinction to be made here that while Washington and DiCaprio are lead actors, they are also lead actors with very strong character actor sensibilities. They know what is expected of them from the audience, of what sells, of what they do well, and to some extent chart their starry-like careers based upon that. However, they are also always willing to surprise, embarrass themselves, and shock. They tend to like doing “films for themselves” a trait character actors are more prone to carrying than leading men. Most importantly, there's an instinct there. To make the kinds of choices steeped in vulnerability as Miss Harris described. What differentiates and separates those two especially (in my opinion even Cruise by quite a large margin) and Will Smith, and Jordan is the level of vulnerability. Vulnerability is not just showing a soft side, although that's the thing that tends to be most associated with vulnerability, (especially as it pertains to men) it's also about being willing to embarrass oneself. Being willing to truly look bad, detestable, repulsive, cruel, and not have it anywhere in the vicinity of cool, because the funny thing is,..that's how you end up with a really cool scene. Leonardo’s sad ugly cry in the basketball diaries, his pitiful moans of despair, and desperation speak to a level of vulnerability we have never seen Michael B. Jordan even attempt do.  The goofy, old man dance Denzel Washington performs in the kitchen in “Fences” is an act that reaches a level of embarrassing that I believe it would be Jordan’s instinct to protect himself from. This is not about talent level, and is in no way singular to Jordan. I think as actors, as male actors, and especially as black male actors ( I cannot speak for other male actors of color, but I would assume certain similarities) - it is instinctual to protect our self and our image on the stage and in front of the cameras. This is true to varying levels of all genders, and races, but black male actors I run into always seem to be hyper aware of our representation thus far in Hollywood, and addition to the socialization and conditioning common in all men that leaves us adamant in our insistence on vulnerability as a sign of weakness. This double portion of repression in my mind is partially what leads to black mens obsession with “cool” and ironically what helps keep us shackled to an idea of self that goes beyond the stereotypical norms set by white patriarchal supremacy. This instinct to protect the image goes beyond what the script allows, as a man, as a black man, as well as as an actor, this is about imagination, choices and willingness. These choices this willingness, the emotional intelligence is partially why when you want to find fhe best actors doing both mamy times it’s black women. Ruby Dee, Diahann Carroll, Marlene Clark, Viola, and Angela are just a few examples of the kind of black women who exuded movie star presence and charisma while still presenting a core value for pushing their own boundaries and limitations. You see it in not only their choices of roles, but in performances. Its in Diahann playing a single mother with Children, when black men mightve said the equivalent would've been like playing a stereotype. It’s Viola's “snot" the most genuinely authentic and ego free decisions we’ve seen on screen. Keeping in mind that our choices are usually guided by our willingness to engage in whatever alternatives are present in the choice. In the context of on-screen black male acting, an example can be found in a comparison between the energy and emotion present in both the “King Kong” scene in “Training Day”, and the “Is this your King” scene in “Black Panther” because the conditions and the set-up are similar. They both involve a face off that takes place in front of an audience that includes a rhetorical question rooted in feelings of anger, betrayal and indignation, but pay attention to the difference in expression between the two actors.


Black Panther - Fall of the King T'Challa - MOVIE CLIP (4K HD). Black Panther is a 2018 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. Produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, it is the eighteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).

What you will notice in MBJ, is an unwillingness to go very far from his body. Whether with his arms or neck, he never strays too far. His movement is restrained, therefore so too is his emotion. As actors we are often taught that if you are having trouble conjuring up an emotion simply engage in a movement that will help you produce said emotion. Many times our mind will follow our body as much as the opposite is true. This has its basis in the Stanislavski Technique, but can be found whether or not you've studied that particular method. My point, in pointing all of this out is to show that Jordan seems to afraid to let go, to explore the fullness of his body and it shows up in more than just this role. Now compare that to Denzel in “Training Day”…

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Denzel’s performance is based upon a very similar emotion in a very similar scene, but is much less restricted, much less safe. If it were a drawing it would resemble DaVinci’s “Vitruvian Man” while Jordan’s would be a stick figure. This is not just indicative of age and career length, its indicative of training, and more importantly a willingness to overshoot the mark in order to find the range. After all, Daniel Kaluuya is two years Jordan’s junior and his scenes in both a gym and a bowling alley in “Widows” show off a very similar willingness to do something no one expects, to explore the borders of his range.

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Although it's a funny thing, I maintain that having any expression or line you've delivered appear in the form of the increasingly popular gif is a testament that you've given something that really has caught on and become sort of legend in the annuls of the minds of the audience. Most actors have some form of a gif, but very few gifs that reach the level of popularity, frequency of use, or number that Denzel, DiCaprio , or any actor of any gender enjoy. From Denzel’s single tear in “Glory,” to DiCaprio biting his knuckles in lust in “Wolf of Wall Street” these gifs are indicative of an audience’s conscious/unconscious recognition of the power of an interesting choice in acting. Jordan on the other hand has next to no gifs not made up of something he has done off camera, something physical, or an expression of vulnerability. Michael’s now nearly ubiquitous “ is this your king?!” line in Black Panther is an occasion where what Michael B. Jordan does best, what he wants to do best - is met, complimented, and hugged by what the script desired of him.  But to paraphrase what Aisha Harris states in her piece, Jordan has a tendency to under throw the script. I want to be clear about my stance on Michael be Jordan; before I go any further. He has immense talent as an actor, the kind most of us dream of. I think he's one of the rawest, most gifted actors we have out. I think the potential he has as actor to quite literally turn on the flames and light the screen up has ben on display multiple times. BUT, in order to move beyond that realm of movie star and into not just Oscar territory (which is quite possible to enter even without pushing such boundaries), but that territory that makes the industry and the audience give you that sort of respect as being a craftsman beyond charisma, magnetism, and hard work - you're going to have to do roles that puts you squarely outside of that. Michael still has plenty of time to do that, and more than enough talent to implement it with interest, but again, I just find it incomplete to not investigate where it is these gripes and proclamations come from. Where they have the hint of truth; in order to find answers to things like the British invasion of American roles because of a general (and I think somewhat fair from my experience) sentiment that our actors don’t really bring it because they don’t have the training.


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Both DiCaprio’s expressive gestures of lust, and Denzel’s masterful single tear scene have become indelible images and a testament to the affect of their work on audiences.

For Michael B. Jordan to join the ranks of the actors that Miss Harris speaks about in her profile. He's going to have to give a little bit more of himself than he has given thus far. Same goes for other actors in his ilk and future actors. We are going to have the step firmly outside of the realm of what we’re clearly so comfortable doing with no tether to coolness, and the limiting assurance of a prototypical form of black masculinity. Make a decision to be something, to do something that breaks apart and reconstructs the persona we may have worked so hard to build because as of right now it's clear not just in someone like Michael B. Jordan’s choices of roles overall, but in his acting choices from within those choices that he is very concerned about the presentation of Michael. I didn't need an interview in the New York Times with him stating this very sentiment to tell me that. It was made clear in almost every scene in the bulk of Jordan’s career thus far. As an actor, Michael tends to act with his body and not in the way that some actors are taught to use it as sort of an instrument, but in a way that makes it clear just how very aware of his body he is. I don’t mean body as in the aesthetic look of it, but rather in that spacial sense.   Movie star, character, actor and anywhere in between, the job is the same - you live in service of the role. Nothing else should be nearly as important to you. When you start to place other things outside above that, it becomes evident to the audience, whether they can articulate it or not.  For instance, all the things we can remember from Heath Ledgers performance of the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s crime masterpiece “The Dark Knight” have to do with the choices he made. Choices that register even if we are not fully aware of it. They are each tiny pieces of a puzzle that begins to form, providing us with a full picture of this character- from idiosyncrasies to cadence, gait, motivation, objectives, and personality which were made with body and mind in perfect collaboration, and clearly in service of the character he was playing, not in service of his own ideas for his career in as far as what he wants people to understand about him or to think about him. The licking of the corners of his mouth allude to the scarring. Dramatic pauses like when he replies “I’m not…no I’m not” after Gambol calls him crazy allude to his sensitivity to the subject, or his tendency toward the dramatic, as does his numerous bits of gesturing. It is not the roles or the difference in them that goads people into jumping off the cliffs of nuance to make such oafish proclamations about MBJ. It’s partially that they’re ignorant, and partially that they recognize that the roles are equally tasty, but the actors aren’t equally game.

Rip :( #Heath Ledger

I don’t mean to imply that Jordan simply cynically calculates his every acting move based upon what he thinks is best for his audience and career. I mean to suggest that it is quite possible that his hyper-attention to his image in Hollywood permeates his conscious to the point even his subconscious decisions as an actor can be affected by this marching order of sorts. Now I would be remiss not to point out the fact that Michael B. Jordan is an African-American and that Heath Ledger is white because obviously as an African American, considering our legacy on film there continues to be verifiable reasons as to why we as actors would seek to protect the presentation of our images. From Portier, to Washington, Will Smith and now Jordan, we've heard this similar refrain about the manner of representation available to black men and how important it has become to us over time to have agency over this presentation. Historically African American men were portrayed as pimps, hustlers, criminals, deadbeat fathers, and other such derivative portrayals, but in what I think has become an over correction on our part in combination with the continued legacy of homophobia, transphobia, and distorted manhood borrowed from white patriarchal standards with the black community. Over the past few years Black American male leading actors have been for lack of better words homogenous in their portrayal of masculinity. They have left little room for the kind of sensibilities that lead to more interesting characters as far as I am concerned. The fact is when you think of the actors doing the most interesting work right now, the ones who really show an a-typical vulnerability in their work of a kind that really challenges standards of black masculinity rather than uphold them, that is being done by men willing to explore their feminine side with curiosity, and candor, Chiwitel Ejiofor, David Oyewelo, Mahershala Ali, LaKeith Stanfield, Yahya Mateen, Jeffrey Wright, Michael K Williams, and Daniel Kaluuya. Many of the names just mentioned are not household names, even less are actually leading men. A significant portion of the blame here is still due to Hollywood and its institutionalized racism, patronization, and myopia about what plays to audiences. They’ve long understood that leading men don’t need square chins, and rock hard bodies. The era of Hoffman, Nicholson, Voight, Pacino, and DeNiro ushered out the prevailing theory. With male actors of color, they run in extremes between fetishizing, and desexualizing us, while also dehumanizing us; rendering us a cinematic monolith. So then we are rarely afforded the wide range of opportunities and choice given to so many white male actors. Yet, it is not as simple as saying “well, African American actors don’t get the roles.” If one explores the roles our actors have gotten it’s not hard to see how uninterested these men not named Denzel, Morgan, Forrest, Cheadle and the aforementioned are in exploring their feminine energy in any meaningful and committed way. Sensitivity, empathy, and gentleness; are rarely invoked in characters like “Ghost” in TV’s “Power” in ways that explore what we men are traditionally taught are attributes of weakness. Let me tell you something it is very hard to be an actor of any salt if you are unwilling to go there. Not for Cary Grant, James Cagney, Mel Gibson, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Daniel Day Lewis, or Don Cheadle. For an example of the considerable effect this could have on a performance watch the atypical femininity Chiwitel brings to his warrior-assassin “Operative” in “Serenity”, or his soft-spoken slow-to-anger Ju-Jitsu instructor in Redbelt, never mind his Kinky Boots which is what put Ejiofor on the map.

Universal Pictures Barry Mendel Productions

Everything that is interesting about Ejiofor’s work in the scene above comes from the way he taps into typically feminine traits for his warrior operative. The gentleness in his inflection and cadence, the empathy he shows his victims. It’s interesting because the acts , the murder, the fighting, the interrogation typically involve masculine energy. Some of this is inherent in the role, but much of it is just what Ejiofor thinks to bring to the role. Each generation of leading black men from Poitier, James Earl Jones, and Glynn Turman, to Denzel and the class of men that came with him ( Freeman, Whitaker, etc) has passed the torch onto the next with a little bit more freedom and range to explore blackness and masculinity. Whomever the next generation of leading black men are, need to let loose of these ideas about what the world thinks of us and merely aim to represent ourselves in the truest manner of what we know to be true about who it is we are. To let go of that white man that seems to take up residence in our minds that has us moving from one direction to the other, trying to make sure we don't fall somewhere within the vicinity of misappropriated ideas about our blackness or our manhood.  Of course, that means just stop it with conversations that circle the parameter of homophobic and transphobic ideas about manhood. To understand you can be gay and still be a man and still be strong. That there is strength in traits a lot of men consider to be weak like vulnerability. Real vulnerability not the kind most men have decided is safe enough to display. The direction an interview with actor Michael K. Williams took on the (frequently problematic show) The Breakfast Club is evidence that there are not a lot of black male actors willing to do roles like this, most likely because they refuse to cross those invisible lines of masculinity.

Actor Michael K. Williams stops by The Breakfast Club to discuss his struggles early in his career, the complexities of playing Omar, how he got the scar on his face and much more. #BreakfastClub

Many people point out the single tear in “Glory” as Denzel’s definitive crying moment. It works as both a feat of indelible servitude to a character and what's going on in that exact moment. His character “Trip” is not interested and giving his superiors the satisfaction of seeing him break. It takes every bit of whatever power he has remaining, whatever agency he has left over his own body to say “If there's anything I have power over, I have power over this, and I will not let you see me break.”  At the same time, it falls very neatly and squarely within the realm of the way many black men, and men in general; like to see their masculinity. Men are not allowed to cry and the act itself coming from a man, especially in a way that is deemed unbecoming of a man, is repulsive. So it doesn't surprise me that very few people bring up Denzel Washington's crying scene in “The Hurricane” or in “Malcolm X.” In both films, when the character is forced into solitary confinement, they break. Left in the shadows, with only themselves, trying to stand tall, with no one watching, eventually they give in to the darkness and begin to moan. It is the exact opposite of the traits Denzel built himself on up until this point. It is UGLY, undignified, sad and pathetic. They are each scenes that I'll never forget, because of that level of vulnerability and I think both firmly put Denzel Washington on the level, that goes well beyond the limited term of movie star. It showed those kinds of sensibilities normally associated with the actor’s actor, and not the actor that treats his endeavor as an enterprise (though clearly Denzel does both). If you want to ask for the equivalent of Michael Fassbender amongst African American males, I think you would find it hard. If you were to ask for the Philip Seymour Hoffman of African American males, I think you'd find it hard to find any such thing. Not just an exact comparison, - because nobody is exactly anyone else - but just someone that firmly has a career within their realm. So wouldn't it be nice if a black man with the clout of Michael B. Jordan tore down some of these walls, these limitations placed upon us and sought more than just to become “winners”, but to become everything in between? I quote bell hooks from her book “We real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity”…

“Black males who refuse categorization are rare, for the price of visibility in the contemporary world of white supremacy is that black identity be defined in relation to the stereotype whether by embodying it or seeking to be other than it…Negative stereotypes about the nature of black masculinity continue to overdetermine the identities black males are allowed to fashion for themselves.”

I want to make it clear that Michael B. Jordan has the talent to do this. The absolute ability to match Denzel and many of our other actors star power and pure acting instincts. To be willing to give into them he has to some degree let go of the importance of “winning” as he called it.   Winning is too limited a term, too limiting a space, with too limiting a definition to provide anything interesting worth exploring for the actor with any consistency or regularity. When Jordan does this, when he aims for something higher in both his choice of role, and choices within a role, I believe many of those same detractors that say that he can't act, will disappear. As a matter-of-fact, they will become his most ardent defenders in this very same way, with the very same energy. If he but takes that power and focuses that energy and light into the darkness of vulnerability, that's where he will find some of those things Miss Harris speaks on in her New York Times article. Until then, when I think of Michael B. Jordan’s talent, skill, and career to this point, I'm reminded of a scene in the anime version of Street Fighter (by far the best version of Street Fighter) where M. Bison is watching a split screen video display of Ken and Ryu’s technique, form, and abilities as they fight against their enemies. When his top scientist points out that both Ryu and Ken are equal in potential, M Bison replies “That does not mean they are equal in capability”, and I think that's a very important distinction.

Greetings from Planet Glenn

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Greetings earthlings, we here on the planet Glenn Close prime have been monitoring you for quite some time. As such we have become irritated, unnerved, perturbed, and vexed at the manner in which you have treated our benevolent and supremely talented Queen Glenn whom we beamed down to your planet on a donkey in a manger so that acting may have eternal life. Yet, over the years we have watched time and time again as you looked over her in favor of *ahem…Lesser talents (Okay Not really, but certainly lesser works). We pondered; had your feeble two-hemisphered brains (HA! pathetic, Glenn has 6!!) escaped that horse paddock you call a head when you gave the gold plated G.I. Joe that we scientifically knew to be hers to someone else?! Our High Priestess made the otherworldly work of making a very lame character fly in “The Natural” look like flicking on a light switch and you gave it to a woman named Peggy? Had the regrettably last bit of sense you own left you suddenly for more greener pastures in regal creatures like …Badgers, and Manatees?? Is that why you gave 1989’s Oscar to some Jodie creature after we specifically armed our Queen with eye lasers, two more vertebrae to increase her posture levels to “Bitch I wish you would” and some of our finest threads to make exactly this kind of embarrassing loss impossible!!! We are here to let you know that we have just about had it with your ignorant, petulant, pathetic attempts at trying to prove your own superiority in acting - something Glenn clearly invented!.

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BUT…we Glenn Closians are merciful bunch if nothing else, and though a great deal of us had decided that we should beam Glenn’s long suffering ass right back up to our planet and shoot one ginormous side-eye ray right down that receding hair line you call the polar ice caps, thereby rapidly running doomsday clock you already started on your planet…*breathe…Our better Michelle Pfeiffer's, (one of our other higher forms of intelligence) decided against it. So in short you have now been given one more chance to rectify this very serious dishonor against our very existence, our family , and our Shaolin Temple ( which we also invented). This year when the Oscars are unveiled, we forbid anyone other than Glenn to win. Not Toni (Though we really do think her work is actually equal to Glenns’ we admit this) not Viola, and damn sure not Gaga. Not Gloria, Gladys, not Glenn Oaks, or Shady Glen, or GlennGary/GlennRoss, just Glenn Close for her measured, engrossing, perfect portrait of restraint, resentment, and long suffering (similar to her Oscar treatment) in this year’s “The Wife” got dammit. If our very simple demand is not met, just know it will be the very last thing you see…. after the Best Picture is revealed, and the Vanity Fair after party, but definitely after that. ….NOW we ask you are we not merciful?……

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Even in Death Bernardo Bertolucci Denies me Form.

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Eulogizing Bernardo Bertolucci is I think an A-typically difficult endeavor.  Discussing even his unique filmography seems to escape any singular context or understanding of what he means to me both in and outside of the art he produced.  What does come easy to me is that Bertolucci and his art definitely existed at the higher end of the spectrum artist. By that I mean I would consider Bertolucci the predominant stereotype of what a artist tends to look and sound like in my head.  And his filmography, as well as his biography, is full of those traits that I most readily align with artistic behaviors. Contrarianism, somewhat tortured, sadistic and masochistic, aloof, stubborn, temperamental, and idealistic, but that the great bulk of these traits don’t really apply to Bertolucci himself as much as they seem to match what one would imagine the man who makes films like he did would. What’s interesting is I have very little affinity for his body of work as a whole, but the man looms so largely in my head for what I enjoy about his work . I think I enjoyed “The Dreamers” most, “The Last Emperor” (though the most problematic film not named “Last Tango in Paris”) is also his most readily accessible and typically satisfying, but the rest of his filmography “The Conformist” (A film so non conformist that it took me seven tries to actually finish it) were of the type of constitution that I had/have little to no interest in ever revisiting them.  The Conformist, and it's ideas, themes and motifs so scrambled in my own head, so parted and distorted from frequently departing and then revisiting the film, from stepping outside of the headspace created, and then climbing back into it abruptly, that I don't think anything worthwhile would come out of a review of that film from me.  “Last Tango in Paris” is a microcosm that becomes the macrocosm of what I think about Bertolucci the man and the artist. It's a wonderful dream like experience of Paris, and a unnerving authoritarian expression of raw desire and unbridled lust seems almost alien in its understanding of romance and connection. It's ethereally gorgeous and somewhat dream-like to the point of idealism,  and yet as cynical and brutal in its depiction of it as something like Derek Cianfrance’s “Blue Valentine”. What we now know took place on that set as told to us by the actress Mariah Schneider makes any eulogy of Bertolucci that doesn't include that very fateful day incomplete, and I think, serves as a warning of the dangers of something as authoritarian as the “Autuer Theory”. The idea of which gives a sense of infallibility to something/someone inherently fallible…men. We cannot give such authority over to men because men are gonna men. The completeness of the lack of empathy involved to place ones vision over the safety of an actor. To conspire to ambush an actress into an act of simulated rape thus committing actual rape is to break every rule intended to create bonds of trust between people who have lent their power over to you. Taking this bit of real life horror and looking at the rest of Bertolucci’s films what I find, what I feel (cliché as it may sound) is that often times the same things that make us great are the same things that make us terrible. And great and terrible are incidentally the two words I most commonly associate with Bertolucci.

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COSBY was never it for me, that was Eddie Murphy.

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In recent times there has been a lot of conversation surrounding Bill Cosby and his legacy.  See a recent episode of “The grapevine” (Currentlyon YouTube) and the extremely interesting discourse around the recent conviction of the creator and star of one of television’s landmark sitcoms. While I'm not going to sit here and retroactively deny the impact of Cosby’s game changing sitcom during the 80s, I do want to say that Cosby was never as big, as impactful, as influential to me as some would suggest, and it didnt take long for me to actively dislike him. The guy that some ardently defend as “black America’s Dad” was for me just Bill Cosby. To be quite honest I didn't feel like anyone was my ‘Dad” from film and television, there were just TV/film Dad's I got and ones I didn't, but I did have a very very cool older brother; Eddie Murphy. Starting in the early 70’s Cosby (whether as a consequence of the projects he pitched and/or attached himself to, or because it was his intention all along) began to position himself as a teacher of sorts. Many of the projects he hitched himself to were rightfully image conscious. Ever since D.W. Griffith’s vile depiction of the antebellum south blazed onto screens in the earliest days of Hollywood, black people had endured and chaffed under a conceptualization of blackness in white imaginations. The trajectory, and nature of Cosby’s projects suggest he sought to do his part to remedy and rectify this. The trajectory of tone suggest that he began to take seriously his unofficial role as America’s father, especially black America’s. As patriarch of the indelible “Huxtable” family, Cosby was there every week trying to topple harmful stereotypes of the black family and erect in their place positive images that could and would stand the test of time. The Cosby show was regularly funny, often times hilarious, well acted for the most part, and did a fantastic job of introducing us (especially the younger generation) to the greats that came before them and us. Cosby the patriarch on television and in real life was always talking at us, but rarely to us, and as I grew up with Cosby his messaging often fell on def ears. The show was a black version of leave it to beaver - rarely leaving the confines of its brownstone neighborhood, and upper middle class sensibilities. The lessons to be learned were as trite as a Saturday morning after school special and while great writing and Cosby’s incredibly brilliant sense of humor kept the show from becoming irrelevant - in the era that saw the burgeoning popularity of Hip Hop, Cosby’s “Get off my Lawn” act, and his overcorrection in response to white folk made him seem just what he was,….old-and out of touch. Meanwhile Eddie Murphy’s youthful exuberance, prolific profanity, and no f****’s - given attitude made him cat nip to a child of the era of MTV. Murphy's run during the 80's until about 1992, with a small gap in between 90’ and 92’ is near unprecedented for anyone, but especially for a black man. No one loomed larger for me during that time, or to this day. Alnost every routine from Delirious, and Raw, (Note the homophobia is the one extremely cringe portion of Murphy's comedy and I’m extremely glad he apologized) and every possible quote from anyone of his huge blockbuster films were omnipresent around my neighborhood. If you were a black male and you were funny, chances were you were drawing a Murphy comparison at school or in company in those days. The differences between the two, and thusly our growing contention with Cosby couldn’t have been more crystallized at the time than in this segment from Murphy’s record breaking stand up special “Raw”.

Eddie Murphy.


Not only is the bit a brilliant impression of Cosby, but it highlights Cosby’s hyper-concern with image and respectability, as well as our combined lack of appreciation for his tone- at least for those of us who were either young enough to feel his ire directed towards us, or outside the very narrow spectrum of black respectability politics. Murphy’s bit was spot-on, rebellious, and hilarious; and cemented his status as the coolest man on the planet pre-Denzel. Murphy was and is still the owner of several of the funniest scenes I've ever seen in my life. These particular scenes (unlike large portions of Murphy’s Stand-up and Cosby’s rhetoric) have lasted the test of time, the growth of my own personal taste, social awareness, and sense of humor. A lot of these scenes were based not just in farcical humor and irreverence, but in something very rooted in reality for the black experience in America. These experiences were transmitted in uproarious vignettes that spoke of the small interactions that black people experienced on a day-to-day basis.  Many times they were fantasies, like what it might be like to be us and have some modicum of a power differential in comparison to whites. It’s important to understand contextually what it was like in the 80’s to see a black soon to be ex-convict, using the propped up power of a badge to perform the same kind of textbook harassment on whites that many of us endured on a daily basis in our own neighborhoods and businesses. Even now as I recognize the fallacy of a black man with a badge as a resolution in a broken justice system, I still find the scene exhilarating. Maybe because it was such a specific fantasy, maybe due to nostalgia, maybe a bit of both.

Uploaded by TheREALJackael on 2014-04-20.

Then other times, these vignettes would just exist as frank, and earnest examples of certain dispositions local to our cultural blackness.  Like how we might respond to people disrespecting our home when we're having a party...

Trading Places is a 1983 American comedy film directed by John Landis, starring Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy. It tells the story of an upper-class commodities broker and a homeless street hustler whose lives cross paths when they are unknowingly made part of an elaborate bet.


Or recognizing code switching...

Daily uploads with thousands of clips on the way. SUBSCRIBE for a taste of the past! CLIP SUMMARY: The Second Team. Axel makes fun of how one cop speaks. ENTIRE PLAYLIST: http://bit.ly/1KwRlt0 ABOUT THE FILM: Axel Foley is a young, reckless Detroit police detective.


There are few times, wherein I go through a day where someone hasn't said something that will make me recall a quote, or a random line from one of Eddie Murphy's numerous hit films. In the spirit of giving people their roses while they're alive, I want to give Eddie Murphy his roses while he's still with us, to acknowledge (especially In the 80s) the size, and the magnitude of Murphy’s career. Which for me far overshadowed the one iconic TV show that Cosby delivered. This is not intended as a slight to the legacy of The Cosby Show, but just matter-of-fact for me in regards to Cosby the man, and a map for what I think is the most effective way of using ones platform to elevate your community. I think I ventured into standup based upon what I saw Murphy do; the whole way that I think about comedy, the way that I applied comedy was a direct result of watching Eddie Murphy growing up. The wry cleverness, the animated delivery, the appreciation for The Police's “Roxanne” (which is how I discovered The Police).  Much of the way I envision my acting career going is modeled after Eddie Murphy's career choices, the varied roles, the refusal to be boxed into any one type, and most of all, the utilization of his power to produce, and open a space to create his own personal black renaissance in film .

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One of the clear differences between Murphy and Cosby philosophically was that while Cosby’s work was constantly cognizant, and preoccupied with what white people think, Murphy’s work seemed to come from a standpoint of “I don’t care”. Murphy like Pryor before him was upfront with his blackness, and wanted white people to know it, fully aware of what might be their response. I don’t know that Murphy was as provocative as Pryor could be, but free from the pressures of having to legitimize black dignity Murphy was far less likely to delegitimize existing segments of blackness because they existed in proximity to white people’s wild ironically unimaginative imagination. That particular obsession is what sanitized and sterilized Cosby’s work. It made it safe, kid friendly, but rarely profound; and nowhere near as threatening to the status-quo as some black folk (post conviction) would lead you to believe. Murphy was acutely aware of white people and subsequently of the effect their narrow characterization of African Americans, but rather than pushing back by purifying blackness, Murphy would call out those depictions directly, and caricaturize whiteness. Like in an SNL sketch where he identifies the troublesome depictions of black fatherhood with Lou Gossett Jr , or even in the legendary sketch “White Like Me” a hilarious but rather spot-on (even in its most ridiculous moments) portrayal of white privilege. …

In this short mockumentary, Eddie Murphy masquerades as a white man around New York City to explore existing racial inequalities. Aired 12/15/84 #SNL Subscribe to SNL: https://goo.gl/tUsXwM Get more SNL: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live Full Episodes: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-liv... Like SNL: https://www.facebook.com/snl Follow SNL: https://twitter.com/nbcsnl SNL Tumblr: http://nbcsnl.tumblr.com/ SNL Instagram: http://instagram.com/nbcsnl SNL Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/nbcsnl/

Murphy instead of engaging in depicting blackness in his own likeness, decided he would engage in the radical act of depicting all kinds of black people as they are, rather than admonishing them for it. At the height of Murphy’s powers within mainstream Hollywood Eddie would create and attach himself and others to the kind of projects that allowed us to see ourselves in genres and roles rarely if at all explored by African Americans before that time. From fantasy to romance, Kings and Queens, to Gangsters, Murphy would try his hand at just about anything while still maintaining and fighting for the presence of black people, and not just himself on American screens. Murphy was not content with being the token autonomous black man in white worlds. As soon as it became clear he could green light almost anything with his level of stardom and autonomy within Hollywood he made the incredibly brave move of leaving the whites behind. Almost as soon as he did Murphy ran into an all too familiar predicament that comes with asserting oneself in such a homogeneous industry. A very typical labeling ensued that had dogged people like Bette Davis, and fellow legend Richard Pryor before him…”difficult”.  It came from Director John Landis on the set of “Coming to America” and from a great deal of critics who began to gratuitously invoke language that suggested he was conceited, or egotistical, cocky, and unruly. From Paul Attanasio of the Washington Post’s review of The Golden child,

“The problem is that Murphy takes all this jabber personally -- he appears to think that he is the Chosen One. The entire movie is tailored to Murphy, sodden with a sense that his every remark is hilarious, that his every smoldering look will have ushers shuttling back and forth with salts of ammonia to revive the women expiring in the aisles. "The Golden Child" is edited to Murphy's sloppy improvisational rhythms, so we watch him stumbling with his lines, searching for laughs he never finds. And, along the lines of his stand-up routine, most of the humor consists of Murphy approaching various thugs, Tibetans and special-effects demons (created by Industrial Light & Magic) and offering to "break" what the delicate would call "the buttocks."

From Peter Travers review of “Boomerang” over at Rolling Stone Magazine,


For all the sex talk in Boomerang, there's very little nudity. The only thing naked is Murphy's vanity”.

Once more from the Washington Post this time from Hal Vinson,

"Harlem Nights," which Murphy starred in, wrote, directed and executive produced, may not waddle its way to box office infamy, but it deserves to. "Harlem Nights" is Murphy's folly. It's a vanity production if ever there was one, launched on behalf of a star with vast amounts of vanity to soothe. And it's hard to imagine a more wrong-headed, aggressively off-putting exercise in star ego”.

And finally maybe worst of all this one from Lawrence Cohn at Variety,

“Though set in contemporary Manhattan, the picture’s iconography is a fantasy world almost on the level of Philip Wylie’s “The Disappearance.” Redressing the traditional Hollywood formula, the white characters (instead of the blacks) are in menial positions for comic relief, e.g., a silly waitress, a bigoted clothing store clerk and muscular slaves pulling supermodel Grace Jones’ chariot.

Whites appear briefly in positions of power, in high-level executive meetings or as the comical French owners of Murphy’s firm, but they’re strictly absentee landlords.”



This is a problem how? It’s not the mere fact that these critics disliked his films , but that its so evident they dislike Murphy, and what it is he’s trying to accomplish. Being so concerned with the opinions of white folk Cosby should’ve been paying attention to how they reacted, because while I would hesitate to say that every time white folk laud black work it is because it doesn’t challenge them in any meaningful way, I don’t hesitate at all to say that many times when white folk hate black works it is because it challenges them in some meaningful way. Racism rooted in white America’s general disdain for blackness, and a not all that latent belief that they are doing black people favors whenever one of us ascends - made white people chafe. Murphy could do no wrong when he made pictures as the token black man, the proverbial “black fish-out of-water, but as soon as he stepped outside of that to build, imagine, and fill these worlds with black people it was an affront to white people’s fragile sensibilities. One has to consider that then and now there were few events as unapologetically black as a number of Murphy films during his run. The cadre of black actors that an Eddie Murphy film would provide opportunities to be reintroduced or introduced was and is something I don't know that i've ever seen before or since. Contrary to the common assertion made by his critics during this run, Murphy was a gracious actor. Providing space and ample room to breathe for his fellow actors. Which in turn led to a plethora of gut-busting scenes featuring Co-stars that would rival some of the things that Eddie Murphy had done himself.  Like this one from 1992’s “Boomerang”

Boomerang movie clips: http://j.mp/1uwJaLQ BUY THE MOVIE: http://j.mp/MpZtzB Don't miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/1u2y6pr CLIP DESCRIPTION: Marcus (Eddie Murphy) experiences the wrath of Strangé (Grace Jones) when he rejects her sexual proposition. FILM DESCRIPTION: Eddie Murphy plays Marcus Graham, a hotshot ad exec who's also an insatiable womanizer.

Or This one in Coming to America…

One of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies.

Or this one from Harlem Nights featuring Della Reese…

FLAVOR316 Classic Movie Clips & Comedy Central Presents: Get Ur Laugh On & Movie Moments. The Shawshank Redemption (Get Busy Living). Laughter is Da Best Medicine - A cheerful disposition is good for your health; gloom and doom leave you bone-tired.

What’s clear in all these scenes is we remember them for the actors, not for Eddie Murphy, even when he’s right there with them. This is not on par with the actions of someone who supposedly created or joined these projects to inflate his own ego. Watch the scenes and you won’t see an actor desperately trying to upstage, or steal the spotlight, you’ll see an actor giving ground to the forces of nature that many times were the performers across from him. James Earl Jones and Madge Sinclair, Eriq LaSalle,  Samuel L Jackson, Vanessa Bell-Calloway, John Amos,  Della Reese, Layla Rochon, Red Foxx,  Richard Pryor,  Arsenio Hall, Robin Harris, Grace Jones, Halle Berry,  John Witherspoon, Chris Rock,  Tisha Campbell-Martin, Robin Givens, Geoffrey Holder, Eartha Kitt,  Dave Chappelle, Jada Pinkett-Smith, David Alan Greer,  and Martin Lawrence. These are the actors who not only featured in, but stood out in what amounted to just four Murphy films. If you include 1999’s ‘Life” it grows exponentially. These were actors who received their start, or were thrust back into the spotlight for a new audience after some wonderful features in Murphy’s films. He wasn't the only one hiring large swaths of African Americans. Keenan-Ivory Wayans, Debbie Allen, Robert Townsend, and later Martin Lawrence were known to do the same things. However he was the only one with his level of power to do these things for other African Americans, without addendums, and restrictions on what kind of blackness could be displayed at that time.  This is the map of a career spent affirming blackness instead of trying to constrain it. A career spent trying to find ways to surprise himself while upending conventions. A career spent utilizing and being box office while refusing to be shackled by it. A career spent refusing the cramped space inside white folks imaginations. Comedy, romance, fantasy, action, and even musicals, there’s very few things Murphy’s career hasn’t given us. It was during that extremely special run in the 80’s when as a black man he was the biggest box office star in the world, using his name to make black people feel seen and represented - It was he that was THAT guy and until further notice…My guy.