Thoughts and Arguments

Thoughts and Arguments Human behavior is nuanced, rules pushed on social media are not. Bill Murray can wrestle a woman in an early-eighties comedy and we know she is not in danger of being raped and the attention is not actually unwanted. If we watch these scenes through reactionary and self-congratulatory eyes of nostril-mining twitter activists, all hijinks are a joyless exercise. Indiana Jones of the Nineteen Eighties killed a lot of people and was the American exploring the world in a way that provokes the term xenophobia but is in fact merely adventure. Indiana Jones of 2008 was relatively safe, still conflating unnamed indigenous figures with magical creatures, but much of the movie takes place in the United States, Indy kills only one person, and instead of being a middle-aged man who can take a punch and look like it hurts he is a senior who can take a much worse beating and shake it off. The era where vegetarian people of India eat chilled monkey brains and the same Thuggee cult we saw in Gunga Din were still operating was frankly a lot more entertaining than the apologetic and tentative offerings of today. Point of view is vital to any story engagement, and the Western Caucasian or North American view is as good a starting point as any - especially since the white guy can be a flawed character and even an idiot without that being taken as a comment on a culture. https://plus.google.com/share?url=https://goo.gl/images/xUGcJD I recall the first article on pop culture that really alarmed me about how film could be hurt. A columnist was overanalyzing a moment from Beverly Hills Cop where Axil Foley passes someone who is wearing a Michael Jackson replica Thriller jacket and laughs to himself. The moment is the sort of thing we are better off taking for granted and going along with, but the columnist feeling like an outsider could not get past the idea that a lead fish-out-of-water is presented as superior to the culture he visits. No mention of Eddie Murphy's two concert films in which he wore leather suits approximately as tacky as the Thriller outfit. Detective Foley is not a millionaire comic and movie star, but is a more grounded everyman who has the right to laugh at whatever he finds frivolous.

wanted more money

So somebody on the internet answered my question about why Eddie Murphy isn't fulfilling his lifelong dream of playing Richard Pryor. Apparently director Bill Condon wanted to keep the budget down to keep creative control and Eddie wouldn't accept a pay cut. So he's probably walking away from an Oscar just so he is free to make Norbit money and continue diluting what's left of his name's value. I tell you money is tearing the heart out of show business.

I can see the advertisement now: Marlon Wayans is Richard Pryor. . .

Uh, no, he isn't.

This makes me wonder about Condon, however. The below-the-line budget would be the same even if Eddie's fee lifted it into the danger zone. But even if he had to make his deal with the Devil to make a $70 million dollar movie instead of a $50 million dollar movie, what kind of input could the studio suits really give that could throw Condon off? He's doing a bio-pic. The suits wouldn't have as many templates to refer to as hip bio-pics to pass themselves off as knowledgeable or creative. Most life story movies are a mess, like life. Condon can only vindicate himself if his script and final film are a masterpiece. Albeit a masterpiece with the wrong actor in the lead. But the other thing that could happen is that Wayans - under years of pressure from his brothers - might be a revelation finally working with a decent script and high stakes. Not that Requiem for a Dream isn't a great script and director, but people don't think of him being in that. We think of disposable movies like Senseless and Scary Movie crap. Good luck to him, but it's a shame for Eddie that money had the last say.