I have come here to confess: when I first heard about Matt Damon schooling Effie Brown on the finer points of diversity on Project Greenlight, the first thing that popped into my head was, "Well, kudos to Damon, he probably could have had them edit out that moment if he wanted."
See, of the Affleck/Damon entity, I've always preferred Matt Damon. Damon, for one, did not, upon being asked to extinguish a cigarette by a person in whose home they were shooting for Good Will Hunting, look the homeowner in the eye as he stubbed the cigarette out in her potted plant. (Guess who did?) Additionally, while Damon did participate in creating that execrable piece of Oscar-baity bullshit, he has since stepped back and allowed his pal Ben to take the lead in creating more unduly lauded movies, choosing instead to build an impressive acting career.
You might even say that I have a teensy, weensy lesbian crush on Matt Damon. So I weally, weally wanted to believe that Damon let the offending incident air because he believed it might generate a conversation about the racism that resides in even the most well-meaning of white people. I know. Pathetic. Sigh.
Here's how I think it more likely went down:
Firstly, while PG is a reality show and therefore somewhat untrustworthy, I am inclined to believe that the incident unfolded in real life much as it did in the episode. Trust me: you don't script (or soft script) Matt Damon to condescend to the producer of Dear White People on the issue of race. So the moment had.to.be. somewhat documentary.
That being said, I'm sure that most people in the room were unaware that anything explosive had happened. People performing "conversation" for camera often get caught up in what the next thing is they should say, and don't really listen to each other most of the time. Damon, in particular, seems oblivious to having caused offense. He has the relaxed demeanor of a person confident in the correctness of his beliefs. It's possible that even the producers shooting the scene didn't know what they'd got. Following story in the field can sometimes be like tracking hummingbird mating rituals while juggling knives on a solowheel. Effie Brown, we can assume, was less oblivious.
Whatever the case, no one is oblivious in post. Editors and post producers have two goals: find the drama and bring it. And on a show as vanilla as Project Greenlight, any conflict is going to be milked. So, if I'm working on that show, that Effie moment would go straight in. Sure, the guy's a star, but the moment happened and it is great conflict. Post producers don't tend to censor themselves around celebrities; those are the decisions we leave to executives. And those executives likely aren't going to eliminate good content unless they have to.
So, in the end, the decision probably lay with Damon and his team. I suspect they could have insisted the content be removed, if they wanted. And just to play devil's advocate, maybe it never even occurred to them to remove it. But I find it hard to believe anyone would be cool with being portrayed (even slightly) as a racist, if they had the option of removing the content. And yet they didn't. Why?
Re-enter Ben Affleck, stage right, smoking a cigarette. You have to figure that Affleck's recent Finding Your Roots saga informed Damon's team's discussions. If you recall, that scandal pre-dated Nannygate but was equally, if not more, damaging to Affleck's image. It was the kind of shit the right wing lives for: an espouser of liberal politics pressuring PBS to edit (censor) his slave owning ancestor out of a documentary program. (And let's not forget, they do kind of pretend that Greenlight is documentary).
Damon and his team had to know that if it came out that he'd had material of this nature suppressed it would be devastating. It would only take one person in the vast chain of people involved in producing the show to leak it, and Damon would wind up looking as devious as his ol' buddy Ben.
The best that Damon (and/or his people) could do, and did, is request that he be allowed to express his viewpoint in interview (which he did - unfortunately compounding the initial insult). Team Damon might also have applied pressure to get the moment watered down (although it seems to play pretty straight to this producer's eyes). Whatever the case, they clearly realized there was no stuffing that particular genie back in the bottle.
And that, I suspect, is how the moment made it to television. And, look, I'm grateful it did. We need to be reminded that while racism looks like this, sometimes it looks like this.
White people (like me) benefit from a system that is weighted in our favor. We should not be surprised, then, when we reveal ourselves to be, well, ill-schooled in just how weighted that system is. But it would probably behoove us to get an education. If this incident gets even a few people (including Damon) to start examining their privilege, I would be willing to say Project Greenlight has at least one redeeming quality.
OT (maybe?) Does it make me a bad person that I'm still totally salivating for the upcoming installment of The Bourne Identity?
#Damonsplaining
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Monday, September 21, 2015
Project Greenlight, Matt Damon and the Myth of the Visionary Director
Fuck Matt Damon. No, seriously, fuck this dude. Because of his mansplaining (or #Damonsplaining) of diversity to a Black woman, I felt obligated to watch Project Greenlight. And I hate Project Greenlight.
Particularly because it relies on that most problematic of Archetypes, the Visionary Director (AKA Auteur).
Take the following incident from season one, episode six of the show. Writer/director Pete Jones wants to cover a scene beneath an elevated train track in an uninterrupted tracking shot. This tracking shot is his Vision for the scene. Yet, when Jones arrives on location he discovers that the train comes every ten minutes or so. Somehow the crack team of professionals hired to guide Jones through his first feature failed to check the schedule (because, Reality). Uninterrupted tracking shot plus young actors (struggling to remember/deliver dialogue) plus train every ten minutes equals disaster (i.e. conflict). You might say those seasoned professionals allowed Jones to be hoisted by his own Vision.
Indeed, the greater the hubris of the Visionary Director (hereafter referred to as the VD), the greater the possibility for conflict. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Jason Mann has been elected season four's VD. Mann exhibits all the "Fuck-you-all, I'm the director!" the VD position requires. While other competitors tried to remain polite about the Farrelly brothers script they would be shooting, our friend Jason had no such qualms, stating that the script would need to be extensively re-written to suit his purposes. Fuck the writers, Jason's got a Vision. (He also, apparently, gets that he's supposed to be an asshole to be on the show, and has an appropriately VD-ish way of filling a director's chair).
The team that Effie Brown was supporting, Leo Kei Angelos and Kristen Brancaccio, by contrast were polite (AKA not VDs and not, therefore, viable for the show). It is worth actually parsing the words that have landed Damon in the pile of shit on which he currently sits, because they reveal more than internalized/institutionalized racism that is standard operating procedure in Hollywood. In the episode he says, "when you’re talking about diversity, you do it in the casting of the film, not the casting of the show.” The use of the word "casting" has been somewhat lost in the understandable maelstrom that has ensued. However, what Damon is saying, in so many words, is that the Angelos and Brancaccio team don't work as a cast for Project Greenlight. Not that they don't work as viable potential directors for a film.
Which isn't surprising because, as anyone who has actually spent any time in the industry can tell you, film is a collaborative fucking medium. While there may be some VDs out there, most directors fall into a spectrum somewhere between good and mediocre, and most are supported by a team of people (cinematographers, set designers, wardrobe people, editors) who are integral to delivering a strong product (and who prevent them from doing stupid shit like Jones' tracking shot). A good team not only compensates for weaknesses in the directing, but also provides a sounding board for the director. Smart directors (one might even say Visionary Directors) know this and, as a result, keep the same group of people around them from project to project.
And yet, young filmmakers coming up, whether in film school or simply by studying the industry, are force-fed the VD Myth that they are supposed to rule their productions with a singular vision. I bought into it myself when I started out, and it brought me nothing but unnecessary pressure and misery. Over time I figured out that I didn't have to have all the answers, that the work might actually be better if I empowered everyone on my crew to have and express their opinions.
Nevertheless, the Myth of the VD persists. **UPDATE: A loyal reader has also pointed out that the DGA effectively promotes the VD Myth by making co-directing credits almost impossible to obtain!** Even on Reality (that most non-VD-worthy of forms) young directors are convinced that their role is that of dictating, not trying to elicit the best from their team (resulting in predictably awful work). A prime example of what happens when a would-be VD gets their hands on a big feature is evident in Josh Trank's epic meltdown on the set of The Fantastic Four.
However, some instances of VD-ness are not as entertaining; some are lethal. Such was the case when mediocre (to poor) director Randall Miller insisted (in a moment of excessive VD) on shooting on a live train track despite having been denied permission by the railway to do so. No other rail option (and there were other, safe options) suited his Vision. One dead Camera Assistant and several injured crew members later, Miller sits in Georgia prison having plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter.
So, quite honestly, fuck this whole VD Myth. For real.
Frankly, by already teaming up in their endeavors, Leo Kei Angelos and Kristen Brancaccio (the eliminated Project Greenlight directing team) are already winners. Between them they bring the kind of diverse viewpoints that inherently makes for stronger work. And in bypassing the whole debased VD Myth in agreeing to share the directing role, they indicate an acceptance of collaboration that will bring the best out of their production team. In that regard, they are (combined) a Director who is much more likely to succeed than your average, know-nothing VD.
Particularly because it relies on that most problematic of Archetypes, the Visionary Director (AKA Auteur).
Take the following incident from season one, episode six of the show. Writer/director Pete Jones wants to cover a scene beneath an elevated train track in an uninterrupted tracking shot. This tracking shot is his Vision for the scene. Yet, when Jones arrives on location he discovers that the train comes every ten minutes or so. Somehow the crack team of professionals hired to guide Jones through his first feature failed to check the schedule (because, Reality). Uninterrupted tracking shot plus young actors (struggling to remember/deliver dialogue) plus train every ten minutes equals disaster (i.e. conflict). You might say those seasoned professionals allowed Jones to be hoisted by his own Vision.
Indeed, the greater the hubris of the Visionary Director (hereafter referred to as the VD), the greater the possibility for conflict. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Jason Mann has been elected season four's VD. Mann exhibits all the "Fuck-you-all, I'm the director!" the VD position requires. While other competitors tried to remain polite about the Farrelly brothers script they would be shooting, our friend Jason had no such qualms, stating that the script would need to be extensively re-written to suit his purposes. Fuck the writers, Jason's got a Vision. (He also, apparently, gets that he's supposed to be an asshole to be on the show, and has an appropriately VD-ish way of filling a director's chair).
The team that Effie Brown was supporting, Leo Kei Angelos and Kristen Brancaccio, by contrast were polite (AKA not VDs and not, therefore, viable for the show). It is worth actually parsing the words that have landed Damon in the pile of shit on which he currently sits, because they reveal more than internalized/institutionalized racism that is standard operating procedure in Hollywood. In the episode he says, "when you’re talking about diversity, you do it in the casting of the film, not the casting of the show.” The use of the word "casting" has been somewhat lost in the understandable maelstrom that has ensued. However, what Damon is saying, in so many words, is that the Angelos and Brancaccio team don't work as a cast for Project Greenlight. Not that they don't work as viable potential directors for a film.
Which isn't surprising because, as anyone who has actually spent any time in the industry can tell you, film is a collaborative fucking medium. While there may be some VDs out there, most directors fall into a spectrum somewhere between good and mediocre, and most are supported by a team of people (cinematographers, set designers, wardrobe people, editors) who are integral to delivering a strong product (and who prevent them from doing stupid shit like Jones' tracking shot). A good team not only compensates for weaknesses in the directing, but also provides a sounding board for the director. Smart directors (one might even say Visionary Directors) know this and, as a result, keep the same group of people around them from project to project.
And yet, young filmmakers coming up, whether in film school or simply by studying the industry, are force-fed the VD Myth that they are supposed to rule their productions with a singular vision. I bought into it myself when I started out, and it brought me nothing but unnecessary pressure and misery. Over time I figured out that I didn't have to have all the answers, that the work might actually be better if I empowered everyone on my crew to have and express their opinions.
Nevertheless, the Myth of the VD persists. **UPDATE: A loyal reader has also pointed out that the DGA effectively promotes the VD Myth by making co-directing credits almost impossible to obtain!** Even on Reality (that most non-VD-worthy of forms) young directors are convinced that their role is that of dictating, not trying to elicit the best from their team (resulting in predictably awful work). A prime example of what happens when a would-be VD gets their hands on a big feature is evident in Josh Trank's epic meltdown on the set of The Fantastic Four.
However, some instances of VD-ness are not as entertaining; some are lethal. Such was the case when mediocre (to poor) director Randall Miller insisted (in a moment of excessive VD) on shooting on a live train track despite having been denied permission by the railway to do so. No other rail option (and there were other, safe options) suited his Vision. One dead Camera Assistant and several injured crew members later, Miller sits in Georgia prison having plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter.
So, quite honestly, fuck this whole VD Myth. For real.
Frankly, by already teaming up in their endeavors, Leo Kei Angelos and Kristen Brancaccio (the eliminated Project Greenlight directing team) are already winners. Between them they bring the kind of diverse viewpoints that inherently makes for stronger work. And in bypassing the whole debased VD Myth in agreeing to share the directing role, they indicate an acceptance of collaboration that will bring the best out of their production team. In that regard, they are (combined) a Director who is much more likely to succeed than your average, know-nothing VD.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)