« Mid-Morning Art Thread | Main | Leftwing Media 2-in-1 Post: CNN's Low-IQ DEI Propagandist Abby Philip Defends AOC's Performance By Saying "Buh Trump;"
Steven Colbert Caught in Lie About CBS Censoring Him »

Wednesday Morning Rant

Bad Actors

Last week marked a major film festival in Germany, called the Berlinale. It has been particularly interesting this year, given the major cultural and political shift through which we're living. Everyone has come to expect political grandstanding at any event by and for the media. Actors, directors and producers historically adore delivering stern political lectures to the hoi polloi. You can usually set your watch by it. Whatever the issue, some loudmouthed celebrity will wax retardedly about it.

But Berlinale has been interesting because it shows a major shift in how these things go. First, a number of the apparently smarter actors have started to just refuse to engage. This started slowly years ago when one of the smarter (or perhaps just the worst-burned) of the Hollywood actors - Brie Larson - refused to wade into politics when a reporter at Cannes asked her about the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial. This is becoming more a theme at this year's Berlinale.

The festival's jury president declared that they ought to consider shutting up about politics:

"We have to stay out of politics," Wenders replied. "If we make movies that are dedicatedly political, we enter the field of politics. But we are the counterweight to politics."

There was, of course, "backlash" and most of it not from the industry people who were there. It came from the real bad actors there. Take these quotes, and consider what is not being said by The Hollywood Reporter.

This year, however, politics threatens to overwhelm the festival itself. In press conference after press conference, talent has found itself fielding questions less about their films than about Gaza, German state funding and the return of Donald Trump to the White House. What was once a forum for engaged -- sometimes heated -- debate has, critics argue, become a stage for viral confrontation.

Neil Patrick Harris, in Berlin with the Generation title Sunny Dancer, faced pointed questions about American democracy and healthcare systems. "While I have my own political opinions," Harris said, "I never read this script as a political statement."

Honorary Golden Bear recipient Michelle Yeoh was pressed within minutes of her official press conference about the U.S. political landscape. "I don't think I am in the position to really talk about the political situation in the U.S.," she said, pivoting back to cinema.

What is missing from each of those descriptions? The actual point is clear in that actors and the like are increasingly refusing to answer nakedly political questions that often have no relevance to their work - but what The Hollywood Reporter leaves out is why this is coming up in the first place. There is another party in all this: journalists.

Many actors aren't talking politics of their own accord, they're being cornered by reporters. Re-read those excerpts above, and this time put the unmentioned second party into it. For example:

Neil Patrick Harris, in Berlin with the Generation title Sunny Dancer, faced pointed questions from journalists about American democracy and healthcare systems. ...

or:

This year, however, politics threatens to overwhelm the festival itself. In press conference after press conference, talent has found itself fielding questions from journalists less about ...

This is what the coverage leaves out. For the first time in recent memory, some movie actors and others in the industry actually want to "shut up and sing." This is probably because they're tired of being constantly pilloried by the masses and seeing their projects fail, but I don't much care about the reason. It isn't generally true - not yet, anyway - but a lot of actors have apparently learned to just not do it. These are the people who are among the the most stupid and vain people on earth, and even they are starting to figure it out.

But as a group, they are still much smarter and much less vain - and somehow, less ideological - than journalists. The journalists are the ones putting Current Moment Politics front-and-center at every Berlinale event. Plenty of movie people are, too, of course - there are still loads of retarded cretins on the industry side of things - but the journalists are the ones forcing the issue at every opportunity, peppering the industry people with irrelevant political questions and then berating them if they choose not to answer or don't answer will full-throated support for the journalist's position. For all the excesses of Hollywood's political insanity and stupidity, they have nothing on journalism.

Even the director of the festival eventually had to an issue a statement in an attempt to make the point that blasting actors and directors with political questions and then getting enraged when they decline to answer is not evidence of a failure of "free speech" and is wildly inappropriate:

In a statement, Berlinale director Tricia Tuttle noted that "people have called for free speech at the Berlinale. Free speech is happening at the Berlinale. But increasingly, filmmakers are expected to answer any question put to them. They are criticized if they do not answer. They are criticized if they answer and we do not like what they say. They are criticized if they cannot compress complex thoughts into a brief sound bite when a microphone is placed in front of them when they thought they were speaking about something else."

Like The Hollywood Reporter, she didn't have the backbone to call out the journalists directly, but they are the ones doing these aggressive political interrogations at what is supposed to be an industrial convention.

As you might expect at a film festival, there are plenty of people screaming their left-wing politics - but to find the highest concentration of bad actors, you need to look not at the stage, but at the press pool.