Movies That Killed Careers

Ain't that the truth.

 

Soul Man definitely works as an edgy comedy, along with having a positive message about race and the privileged lifestyle. One aspect of this movie movie I find unintentionally hilarious is that it takes place in one of the most liberal cities in America (Cambridge, MA) and yet every other white character in the film is portrayed as a racist.

 

Kathleen Turner - V.I. Warshawski (1991) - This one is as clear a line of demarcation in someone's career as you can get. She is also said to have turned down the lead role in Ghost, a la Molly Ringwald.

 

If the point is to not to paint with too broad a brush then I don’t see the Cambridge factoid as either helpful, or actually supported by any evidence.

because they didn’t realize that’s literally what happens in a minstrel show?

 

A minstrel show was derisive and insulting by intent. Soul Man was exploring racism from the pov of someone who at been unaware or even naïve about it, but now had a front row seat. Anyone who equates that movie with a minstrel show is sadly mistaken.

 

Maybe by todays standards, but I’m not quite so sure that minstrel shows were that way by “intent”. Humor and culture has changed significantly in the last 100 years even if the underlying prejudices haven’t much. You’d have to be far more consciously mean spirited to create something like a minstrel show today.

 

He was hardly a star or even a household name at the time but Harry Hamlin has often talked up that Making Love killed his movie career. It didn't do much for Kate Jackson or Michael Ontkean either. I bet Brokeback Mountain must have been a bitter pill for him to swallow. And Clash Of The Titans certainly didn't help.

 

Soul Man was anything but a minstrel show.

 

The Island of Dr Moreau probably damaged Val Kilmer's career, I read movie was problematic even when it was being filmed

 

there were flops even before Looney Tunes, for example Monkeybone and Dudley-Do-Right
but in 2006 Brendan Fraser was part of ensemble cast in Crash, and movie won an Oscar
And in 2008 Journey to the Center of the Earth also did well. But yeah overall his career never fully recovered

 

I think she is pretty much "blackballed" ......as much for the stupid comments she made defending the movie......as for the movie itself

 

The idea that there were apparently no actual black candidates for the scholarship the character misappropriates is kinda bogus, but more importantly, you don’t get to decide when blackface is insulting to black people.

 

Vic Morrow - Twilight Zone: The Movie

Too soon?

 

But we do get to decide to not care when someone clutches their pearls and claims that something innocuous has offended their delicate sensibilities. The bar for what is acceptable speech in society does not get to be set by the people who have the most fragile and sensitive tastes. The burden is on them to turn off whatever they don't like to watch. The people who don't want to see same-sex kisses on TV didn't get to stop them from airing. And no one was told they have to change the way they think about same-sex kisses just because some people are offended by them. Nor were they told they are not allowed to express disagreement with the idea that someone should be offended by same-sex kisses.

Also, blackface is NOT used in the movie Soul Man. If you think so, you haven't actually looked up the definition of the word.

Absolutely, it's hard to see something from a different culture, or even our own culture 100 years ago, with the eyes that people saw it from then. Just read this from Wikipedia on Al Jolson:

"Despite his promotion and perpetuation of black stereotypes, his work was often well-regarded by black publications and he has been credited for fighting against black discrimination on Broadway as early as 1911. In an essay written in 2000, music critic Ted Gioia remarked, "If blackface has its shameful poster boy, it is Al Jolson", showcasing Jolson's complex legacy in American society."

Al Jolson was apparently using what was seen as an acceptable artistic device of the day, like "Polish" jokes might have been used in our lifetimes, to express his own creative variations on the idea. Even when we use stereotypical humor today, we usually have an understanding that it's "just a joke" and no one believes the stereotypes are true. But it's easy to see how people might eventually decide that it's not acceptable to build humor around certain stereotypes.

What Ted Danson did in his infamous routine in the '90s fit the actual definition of blackface as it's still written in any mainstream source you look at today, e.g.: "Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used predominantly by non-black performers to portray a caricature of a black person." Blackface had a very distinctive, exaggerated, unrealistic, caricatured look. Whoopi and Ted knew what it was supposed to look like and reproduced it exactly for that routine. It bears no resemblance to the makeup an actor of a different race uses when they are trying to look like a realistic, convincing black person. So, when people refer to what's done in something like Soul Man as blackface, they're indisputably using the word incorrectly to describe something that doesn't actually fit the definition of the word.

The idea that we should be offended simply because an actor uses makeup to play someone of a different race is a much newer idea. That was not seen as equivalent to blackface by most people ten years ago. Otherwise it never would've been done in 1980s movies or even as recently as Tropic Thunder (unless PLAYING an actor who does it is different from BEING an actor who does it?).

It's always worth trying to sort out who is actually offended by something and who is just posturing because they think they are supposed to act offended in order to be politically correct, virtue signal and win social credit points. SOME of the rationale against this you hear now is that "you are taking away a job from a black [or other] person." But we don't hear, when a British actor plays Batman, Superman or Spider-Man, that they are taking away a job from an American. We don't hear that Meryl Streep is taking away a job from a foreigner when she does an accent in a movie. Nasim Pedrad is a woman who plays a boy on the TV show Chad. We're not being told that she is taking away a job from an actual boy. So that argument sounds more like a phony way to rationalize faux outrage than an actual rationale for real outrage.

 

Judge Judy Reaction Gif By Agent M Loves Gif - Find & Share on GIPHY

 

Sure I do. They're called standards and definitions. Some things are clearly minstrel shows (Al Jolson), some things skirt the edge (Jimmy JJ Walker), and some things are not (Soul Man).

I also know a whale is not a fish.

 

No, that’s the point. You don’t get to declare when blackface should be “innocuous” to someone else.

And perhaps the most offensive thing about Soul Man is the excuse it purports to be about the experience of the black man in America when the story is told through the eyes of a white guy in blackface.

And that’s a claim that rings especially hollow when the same people that present the movie as having some kind of insight would likely call the story of an actual black person’s struggles “virtue signaling” and “sjw garbage”

 

Yer gonna need a new title for this thread:

Movies That Killed A Thread

 

Rosa Salazar has worked on 8 projects since "Alita" hit screens 2 years ago.

That doesn't sound very "blackballed" to me!

 

can we change the subject?
lets talk movies! yea! great idea...

 

But RKO kept him on for MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS and the unfinished IT'S ALL TRUE. I think it was other things more than Hearst.

 

Probably more with self-inflicting. I got the impression from Andrew McCarthy (talked to him while they were in town filming that movie) that she thought she was better than everyone else. She was the only person associated with the film who didn't stay at the same hotel with the rest of the actors and crew while they were shooting the movie. McCarthy said that she thought the hotel wasn't good enough for her, so she and her entourage decided to stay at an upscale, fancy hotel in downtown Cincinnati while the rest were at the nice hotel in Northern Kentucky. McCarthy told us she would look down on normal people and would ignore them if someone said "hi" or asked for an autograph in public (acted differently, though, if it was a scheduled paid appearance,) etc. I don't know how she was perceived by the Hollywood big shots and decision makers. If word got around about her personality, that may have had something to do with leading roles drying up after that. After she got married and had kids, it was probably a decision on her part to step back in being a full-time actor. She still does TV guest spots and does some writing.


Speaking of the Brat Packers (and other actors associated with them,) which ones seem to keep acting the most? If Robert Downey Jr. counts, he would be. Otherwise, James Spader, I guess.

Of the core Brat Packers, besides Molly:

1. Emilio Estevez hasn't acted much (guest spots) and likes to direct, instead. Though Disney+ has that new Mighty Ducks series that he is in, playing the same character from those movies.
2. McCarthy writes now and occasionally directs and does some guest acting on TV and takes minor roles in movies, but nothing significant.
3. Rob Lowe keeps busy, mostly TV work and supporting work in films. Nothing big like he used to be able to get.
4. Anthony Michael Hall does guest TV work and occasional acting work in films. I think his next film is going to be the next Halloween movie with Jamie Lee Curtis in October, 2021.
5. Ally Sheedy (my favorite Brat Packer) has done some minor acting, but nothing in the last 4 or 5 years. Has written a few books.
6. Judd Nelson - Some Indie films, TV films, Voice work in animated TV series, and guest roles on TV, but really nothing notable in quite some time.
7. Demi Moore - I think she's been covered already by someone upthread.


There was a time when all these Brat Packers were the biggest names in Hollywood and now none of them are doing anything noteworthy. Some of it might have to do with bad reputation in Hollywood (sex scandals, drugs, etc.,) some of it age-related, some self-inflicting (poor choices) and some by deciding to step back from the limelight. Even after the Brat Pack/John Hughes movies were done with, all these actors were still getting lead roles for quite some time.

Weekend At Bernie's II might have been the start of McCarthy's downward acting career with big roles.

 

Ben Affleck had a cold spell from 2003 to 2009 starting with Paycheck, Gigli, and Daredevil in 2003. Those 3 movies got bad reviews. He also won the Golden Rasberry for worst actor that year for those 3 movies. He wasn’t in any successful or critically acclaimed movies until State of Play in 2009 and The Town in 2010.

 

More accurately, uncovered.

 

loved Paycheck and the 13th Floor! never thought he merited the "worst actor" for the mentioned movies.