New York Times culture writer Farah Nayeri asked the most ignorant, insulting, anti-art, and, yes, anti-women question yet in the Woke Era, and that is saying something.
The New York Times is now judging art based on the number of lines given to an actress.
A New York Times reporter, who was sent to cover the Cannes Film Festival, sat in the premier of a major motion picture from a major director — Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, and … kept track of the number of lines an actress was given.
Listen to this garbage question (with some of my commentary):
Quentin, you have put Margot Robbie, a very talented actress [she then corrects her wrongspeak], uhm actor, in your films; she was with Leonard [DiCaprio] in Wolf of Wall Street — I, Tonya — this is a, you know, a person with a great deal of acting talent and yet you haven’t really given her many lines in the movie [now keep an eye on Brad Pitt’s face]. I guess that was a deliberate choice on your part [Gee, ya think?] and I just wanted to know why that was that we don’t hear her actually speaking very much; and Margot, I also wanted you to comment on being in the film in this part.
Good God almighty, look at what America’s woke-tards are now reduced to… bookkeepers, scorekeepers, fascist accountants, and bureaucrats who believe art and artists should now be judged on statistics, scores, and hash marks…
Not only is this question the single most stupid critique of any kind of art I have ever heard, the question only insults and publicly humiliates one person — poor Margot Robbie.
Tarantino handled this obscenely dumb question perfectly. He kept his cool and said only five words, which were two more than I would have hurled.
“I just reject your hypothesis,” he said.
Of course he does. What artist wouldn’t? And what kind of “culture writer” is so ignorant of art and art history, and most especially film history, that she believes this matters.
Is this woke-tard oblivious to the idea of presence? Is she oblivious to The Third Man? The Terminator? Silence of the Lambs? All About Eve? Thelma and Louise? Steve McQueen?
Orson Welles is barely in The Third Man and still steals the movie right out from under Joseph Cotton while creating one of the most iconic characters, Harry Lime, in film history.
Arnold Schwarzenegger launched a second-to-none movie career with almost no lines in The Terminator.
Anthony Hopkins spends all of 16 minutes on screen in Silence of the Lambs.
Marilyn Monroe got everyone’s attention with a walk-on in All About Eve.
Brad Pitt turned a slim supporting role in Thelma and Louise into three decades of superstardom.
Steve McQueen was famous — and became famous — for cutting the number of lines in his movies.
How can a culture writer at no less than the “legendary” New York Times be so obtuse about art that she actually believes the size of the role and number of lines has anything to do with anything?
“There are no small parts, only small actors.” That is exactly right, which brings me to just how insulting and humiliating this question had to be for Robbie.
Basically, the New York Times told the whole world that Robbie failed to do her job, failed to leave a mark, to make an impression, to turn her small but pivotal role into a memorable one.
I’ve not seen Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, so I have no idea if this criticism is fair or not. Considering the impression she’s made in her other roles, though, my guess is that this cheap shot of Robbie is BS and that the bookkeeper-disguised-as-a-culture-writer is the true failure in this equation.
Obviously stung, Robbie answered the question in the best way she could:
I think the moments I was on screen gave a moment to honor Sharon. I think the tragedy was the loss of innocence. To show the wonderful sides of her could be done without speaking. I did feel like I got a lot of time to explore the character without dialogue, which is an interesting thing. Rarely do I get an opportunity to spend so much time on my own as a character.
From the sounds of it, Robbie’s job was to symbolize the entire theme of Tarantino’s movie, the loss of the innocence of the 60’s that came with the Manson murders in the form of the beautiful and doomed Sharon Tate.
That’s not a shit role, that’s not a sleight or an insult. To ask an actress to pull that off with almost no dialogue, through only presence and stature, is a major compliment. Do you know how few people are capable of such a thing, how few have the talent to pull that off?
In Tarantino’s defense, with the Kill Bill movies, he was way ahead of the woke-tards when it came to handing women juicy, starring roles.
And no one should ever forget Tarantino’s first movie made after Pulp Fiction gave him license to do whatever he wanted, was a movie that plopped Robert De Niro in a supporting role to the film’s star — a then-47-year-old black woman named Pam Grier.
The woke-tards and their scorecards and their political correctness are ruining art, and God bless Tarantino for being one of too few with the integrity to tell the Stalinists to go straight to hell.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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