I was just watching Charlie Chaplin's THE GOLD RUSH and wow, you could just never make that movie today.
I was just watching Orson Welles CITIZEN KANE and realizing, you would never be allowed to make that movie today.
I was just watching Tarkovsky's 4 hour black and white contemplative masterpiece ANDRE RUBLEV and realizing my god they would never dare make that today.
Just watching Pauly Shore's seminal comedy SON IN LAW and realizing wow, no executive would dare greenlight Pauly Shore in this day and age.
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In BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S, Mickey Rooney played I. Y. Yunioshi, dressed up in buck teeth and a cartoon squint, a grotesque caricature of a Japanese person.
So I suppose in that sense “you wouldn’t be able” to make BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S today.
Which seems somehow preferable.
Now: what interests me is what it means to say *you can’t* make BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S these days.
It doesn’t mean you CAN’T. Unlike teaching, say,The Bluest Eye to Texas schoolchildren, there exist no laws to prevent Will Ferrell from putting in the teeth and playing Yunioshi.
So actually you *can* make BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S today, I.Y. Yunioshi and all, and throw in Long Duc Dong if you want.
You can if you want wear blackface and dance around in white gloves, like Fred Astaire in SWING TIME, if you want to.
You know what I never see from these "you couldn't make x movie today" people?
Them watching movies by a still too small but ever-growing group of hugely talented Black auteurs finally given a chance to direct and realizing "we refused to let these movie be made back then."
I think it’s healthy to criticize toxicity, misinformation, hate speech, abuse, and outright crimes, and I don’t see why being funny should provide any special exemption from that, nor why those standards should prevent anyone from being funny.
Anyone can say anything they want.
If you’re funny, people will laugh.
If what you say hurts people, people will understand you to be the kind of person who says hurtful things for laughs.
If you keep doing it, people will understand you as someone who doesn’t give a shit.
Part 3 further unpacks the nature of the two mysterious entities whose conflict provides the unseen context for all the drama of the main story. getrevue.co/profile/julius…
I don't want to brag, but I solve most Wordles in the allotted six guesses.
Sometimes in five guesses, sometimes in only four, but count on it, 95% of the time, I'll be there every time.
It's not a big deal for me. It goes with the territory when you are a "man of letters."
When I "flip five green" (my term for a solve) I don't dance or anything. I act like I've been there before. Some people make a big celebration. It's just part of my life, no big deal. Maybe just a little nod at the referee and that's it.
Those who desire obscenity also engage in profanity, of course. They do so for many reasons, but one of the strategic ones is to muddy the difference between fractious language and deliberate harm and abuse.