{"id":98,"date":"2007-12-03T00:55:48","date_gmt":"2007-12-03T00:55:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/?p=98"},"modified":"2007-12-03T00:55:48","modified_gmt":"2007-12-03T00:55:48","slug":"someone-buy-russell-a-clue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/someone-buy-russell-a-clue\/","title":{"rendered":"Someone buy Russell a clue…"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago Entertainment Weekly<\/i> ran an interview with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, who are both starring in the new movie American Gangster<\/i>. I was reading along, amused at their reminiscences of the only other movie they\u2019ve both been in, Virtuosity<\/i> (a completely nonsensical piece of trash that I sat through only because I was on a Russell Crowe kick at the time), when I was totally knocked out of the mood by the following exchange:<\/p>\n

Russell Crowe:<\/b> I said a thing to Spike [Lee] one night, and he\u2019s never been the same with me since. He was trying to get me to play Max Schmeling in the Joe Louis story. If I was in it, he\u2019d get this $100 million financing. But it\u2019s just a secondary role. And I said to him, \u201cI want to be Joe Louis. I want to be Muhammad Ali. If you want to work with me, let me be Joe Louis. Can you not dig that, man?\u201d<\/p>\n

Denzel Washington:<\/b> And you haven\u2019t heard from him since?<\/p>\n

Crowe:<\/b> Well, I think he took it the wrong way. And quite frankly, I think there\u2019s no wrong way of taking that. It\u2019s like, You\u2019re the fucking man, you\u2019re going to make the movie, but I don\u2019t want to be there, playing second fiddle. I want to be the thing you\u2019re focused on and I\u2019ll focus on you and we\u2019ll work on this together. But for whatever reason I don\u2019t get any more birthday cards from him.<\/p>\n

— Entertainment Weekly, Nov. 2, 2007<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Crowe has a reputation for being an asshole that I used to discount as selective reporting, willful misreading of the facts in pursuit of controversy, whatever\u2026 Now I have to admit that he IS an asshole. So he\u2019s only willing to work with someone if he gets to play the lead role? Even if that flies in the face of plausibility and takes a job away from a black actor? He\u2019s not satisfied with all the white boy roles? He wants to take the small sliver of the pie that black people get away from them, too? What an arrogant, self-involved, clueless jackass. Granted, he is from Australia, where the cultural backdrop and history of racial tension is a little different than here in the States, and maybe he doesn\u2019t fully understand how his words will be taken. But he isn\u2019t even willing to try. In his mind, Spike Lee is the one who is at fault for not understanding him. Except that, even if you do understand him, he still comes across as an egomaniac. I can just imagine Spike Lee leveling his patented dead-eyed stare at him in reaction.<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s reaction is a model of restraint. Rather than immediately calling Crowe out on what he just said, he waits until later to point out something obvious:<\/p>\n

Washington:<\/b> Have you been offered any superheroes?<\/p>\n

Crowe:<\/b> (smiling) A couple.<\/p>\n

Washington:<\/b> Ha! \u201cA couple.\u201d See, I haven\u2019t gotten that. I can\u2019t be Superman. I\u2019ll tell you what: if you can be Joe Louis, I\u2019ll play Superman.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Touch\u00e9. I wonder if Crowe realized how thoroughly outclassed he was in this interview. If not, maybe someday he’ll figure it out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago Entertainment Weekly ran an interview with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, who are both starring in the new movie American Gangster. I was reading along, amused at their reminiscences of the only other movie they\u2019ve both been in, Virtuosity (a completely nonsensical piece of trash that I sat through only because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-filmtv"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}