Academy:
I suppose I'm not the only one who has work to do but can't seem to get going? I feel like I need a doc by Ezra Edelman.
When it first happened, I assumed it was staged, somehow tied to King Richard -- which I dug. But I couldn't really figure out why, because the moral of the first part of that movie is not to take the bait — to resist violence.
Well, someday it will be lore. It will lose its bite. It will be written about too much. I'm sure it already has, but I haven't read much. You're getting Max off the dome here.
And there's too much to unpack: my experience of violence & how I've processed it v.s. the experiences of people who are coming at it so differently, Big Willie Style, masculinity, race, sexuality, Red Table Talk, infidelity, comedy, celebrity, Los Angeles, the psychological toll of the pandemic.
I just feel compelled to say, briefly & simply, that I think the slap was Bad. Yeah, it was just one slap. But it wasn't exactly a fair & fun fight in a context where you expect that -- a high school cafeteria, a bar, or a Worldstar video. My sense is that this event made a whole lot of people feel -- in varying, personal ways -- bad. I was watching at home like the rest of you -- if even you guys were watching live?! -- and I felt the air go out of the room, on the screen and in my own apartment too.
And that feeling -- that sustained silence, from the Dolby to your home? That gap where nobody knows what to do? Because it's crazy? And, well, a little scary? Doubly so because he's who he is? When they have to let him speak? When it's easier for everybody to wince and let him rant and rave about how hard it is to be him after he hit somebody?
Wouldn't it have been more comfortable for everybody except Will Smith if he had been asked to leave?
In that last hour, especially so as he spoke, I got a whiff of rot at the core of our industry, too deep for Ronan Farrow to have rooted out. Because, as our last president said, when you're a star, they let you do it.
Back to work. Hollywood Forever Y'all?
Max
P.S. this is so dark (and patently absurd given he grew up with security guards)
P.P.S. part of my experience here is that i fucking love chris rock