Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 240

Even Tom Cruise can’t save “Dark Universe” if the studio greenlights movies like “The Mummy”

Tom Cruise and Annabelle Wallis in "The Mummy" (Credit: Universal Pictures)

Last week The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Universal’s so-called “Dark Universe” — a planned cinematic universe containing classic Universal monsters like the Mummy, the Bride of Frankenstein, the Invisible Man, the Wolf Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and others — had been effectively cancelled. No official corporate obituary has been issued yet, of course, but with the producers cleared out and all impending projects in stasis, it’s fair to assume that the planned universe has been abandoned.

Where did they go wrong? There are actually so many ways, that it’s easier to straight-up list them.

1. They didn’t bother making a good movie.

As I noted in my review of “The Mummy,” the biggest problem with this film is that it felt like it was made by a committee. Instead of trying to tell a good story of its own — whether atmospheric and scary like the 1932 movie or action-packed and campy like the 1999 remake — this version spent more time trying to set up future Dark Universe films than being a memorable or even simply enjoyable flick of its own. When you look at movies that successfully launched modern cinematic universes — “Iron Man” in 2008, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in 2015 and so on — they were fun, well-crafted movies on their own that subtly planted the seeds for sequels and spin-offs. Even though the studios were planning future movies while creating the original films, they still clearly took the time and energy to attach strong storytellers (Jon Favreau, J. J. Abrams) to those projects so that they would stand on their own terms. By contrast, “The Mummy” threw everything trendy it could think of at the screen in the hope that as much of it as possible would stick. Because it had tried to stuff in so many different genre identities, it wound up lacking any distinctive mark.

2. There was no indication that anyone was clamoring for a Universal Monsters universe.

Once again, the success of the Marvel and Star Wars universes come to mind. While Iron Man and Thor may not have been particularly popular characters among casual moviegoers prior to their films, the massive successes of the “X-Men” and “Spider-Man” films had clearly established that audiences had an appetite for superhero fare. While trying to create new fanbases for more obscure characters was a risk, it was at least grounded in recent box office trends. Similarly, even though the “Star Wars” prequels wound up being maligned by fans as vastly inferior to the original trilogy, they still made bank at the box office, indicating that fans still wanted to see new installments in that universe. By contrast, the last Universal monsters property that had done well was the original “Mummy” trilogy, and even that had done little to drum up enthusiasm for more Universal monster films.

3. They don’t understand what audiences want in horror movies.

Yes, I’m not entirely sure “The Mummy” even wanted to be a horror film (which was part of the problem), but let’s assume for a moment that the Dark Universe actually wanted to deal with the darkest of all popular genres. There is a template that they could have followed — “The Conjuring,” which between its wildly successful sequel and “Annabelle” spin-off series is well on its way to launching a cinematic universe of its own.

What did “The Conjuring” do right, at least from a box office perspective? (I’ll refer you to a review by my colleague Andrew O’Hehir for a discussion on the film’s artistic merits.) For one thing, it was helmed by a man with a proven track record of success (James Wan of “Saw” and “Insidious”). It also dealt with a sub-genre that had already been proved popular (ghost films like “Paranormal Activity” and, again, “Insidious”). Finally, and most importantly, the producers took the time to see if there was a high audience demand for more movies in this universe before actually trying to make said universe.

As I noted in my review for “Thor: Ragnarok,” 2017 has been something of a redemptive year for American moviegoers. While it’s too soon to say whether this is a fluke or something more lasting, it’s clear that the public has grown adept at sensing when a film is more of a product than a work of art. This isn’t to say that every Hollywood movie isn’t first and foremost a business venture (thinking otherwise would be flat-out naive), but there is an important distinction between the ones that were still fueled by a vision and those which are artificial right down to their core.

“The Mummy” fell into the latter category and audiences, to their credit, picked up on that. If the movie had only been made with the passion of an “Iron Man” or “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” I wouldn’t need to write an article about a failed universe but could instead celebrate the launch of an exciting new world of gods and monsters.

So now Sean Hannity is giving away Keurig machines, because nothing matters anymore

Sean Hannity (Credit: Getty/Saul Loeb)

In a denouement to what may be one of the briefer, stupider battles of America’s furious culture wars, Fox News host Sean Hannity has announced that he will be giving away 500 coffee-pod machines from Keurig, a former and perhaps future advertiser on his show, “Hannity.” Yes, these would be the same kind of machines Hannity’s fans could be seen smashing in a flurry of online videos that surfaced on Twitter and other outlets beginning this weekend.

Initially, Hannity followers engaged in these acts of destructive conspicuous consumption after Keurig announced via Twitter on Saturday that it would longer be advertising its products during Hannity’s highly valuable time slot. That announcement came in response to a query sent by Media Matters for America president Angelo Carusone, who pointed out Hannity’s botched defense of Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore after a series of allegations involving sexual misconduct with minors emerged from Moore’s past. All things considered, it was a reasonable decision on the part of Keurig, one several other corporations have also made.

Angelo, thank you for your concern and for bringing this to our attention. We worked with our media partner and FOX news to stop our ad from airing during the Sean Hannity Show.

— Keurig (@Keurig) November 11, 2017

In response to this strategic commercial branding decision, Hannity fans began a bizarre backlash that included trolling Keurig’s online presence, hounding Carusone with accusations of bigotry and worse, and, yes, throwing coffee-pod machines off third-story balconies. Even first son and potential traitor Donald Trump Jr. got in on the fun. Hannity loved it.

Perhaps feeling the heat, Keurig CEO Bob Gamgort issued an internal memo to his employees Monday, apologizing to them for the incoming bile and crediting it to a botched social-media rollout that gave the public the impression the company was “taking sides.” Hannity picked up that letter and saw it — perhaps rightly — as a capitulation, saying on Twitter: “Hold on to your coffee machines @Keurig has recognized it got caught up & misled by a bigot.”

As it turns out, Keurig never admitted to anything of the sort, but never mind that.

In that same post, Hannity wrote “Still giving away coffee machines, which brand has yet to be determined. Stay tuned.” Those coffee machines, as it now turns out, are Keurigs. “To all of my supportive and devoted fans of the show,” Hannity tweeted Tuesday, “I am giving away 500 Keurig machines as a thank you for always standing by me. We accept the apology of the Keurig CEO, and look forward to enjoying a nice cup of apolitical Joe. Good Luck!”

To all of my supportive and devoted fans of the show, I am giving away 500 Keurig machines as a thank you for always standing by me. We accept the apology of the Keurig CEO, and look forward to enjoying a nice cup of apolitical Joe. Good Luck!https://t.co/0nxQdYlcdl @Keurig

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) November 14, 2017

It’s not clear where Hannity is getting these alleged giveaway Keurig machines. To this point, no press release or Twitter post from the company confirms that it is the supplier.

Furthermore, there have been no public statements from Gamgort or anyone representing Keurig to suggest that the company has apologized to Hannity or his fans for pulling its advertising, nor is there any indication that Keurig will return as an advertiser. A careful parsing of the CEO’s letter expresses, yes, regret over the announcement of the move, but not the decision itself.

As Gamgort wrote, pulling advertising from “Hannity” was “a prudent ‘business as usual’ decision for us, as the protection of our brand is our foremost concern.” Any apology within that internal memo, in other words, was directed to Keurig’s employees. “I apologize for any negativity that you have experienced as a result of this situation,” Gamgort continued, “and assure you that we will learn and improve going forward.”

Essentially, the CEO was saying he was sorry that Hannity fans went after individual Keurig employees on social media (which they did) and that the company was dragged by a group of Trump-loving rape apologists into the uncomfortably bright lights of modern American political discourse (which it was).

But, hey, in our current gamified system of tit-for-tat partisan cultural warfare, a victory declared and believed is a victory in actuality, no matter how hollow the declaration is or how chuckleheaded its believers are. In this, Hannity has certainly won and moved on to other quarry, quite specifically Media Matters and Carusone. He devoted 30 minutes of his 42-minute broadcast to Media Matters on Monday, and has continued to assail the group via social media. Congratulations on the big win, Sean.

Oh, and if you wanted one of those 500 Keurig machines, sorry. Hannity’s all out.

Trump repeated an odd falsehood about Obama while visiting the Philippines

(Credit: Reuters/Yuri Gripas/AP/Jim Lo Scalzo/Photo montage by Salon)

It is a tale that seems almost as old as time: Donald Trump is making false claims about Barack Obama.

Before Trump boarded Air Force One in Manila to wrap up his 12-day trip throughout Asia, he told reporters that U.S. relations with the Philippines were on the upswing, crediting that to his administration’s relationship with the country’s strongman leader, Rodrigo Duterte.

“And as you know, we were having a lot of problems with the Philippines,” Trump said, according to the Associated Press. “The relationship with the past administration was horrible, to use a nice word. I would say horrible is putting it mildly. You know what happened. Many of you were there, and you never got to land. The plane came close but it didn’t land.”

Except that never happened, the Obama administration never ran into any problems landing Air Force One in the Philippines.

Obama’s last time in the Philippines was in 2015, there were no landing problems.

Trump could have been referencing Obama’s scheduled meeting with President Duterte in September 2016, in Laos. The meeting was abruptly canceled when Duterte directly insulted the president.

Duterte referred to Obama as a “son of a whore” and said the U.S. president “must be respectful” and not question the brutality and controversy over Duterte’s nationwide drug war, which lasted 15 months and left roughly 12,000 people dead.

The Obama administration canceled the scheduled meeting following Duterte’s comments, and the president continued with his trip to Laos and met with other leaders instead, the Associated Press reported.

A similar, but less personal, warning was given to Trump last week as well. Duterte said Trump should “lay off” the topic of human rights before the two met. Duterte never had anything to worry about, however, because Trump has praised Duterte’s drug crackdowns.

The source of Trump’s story, the latest of a running list of falsehoods about Obama, isn’t known other than that he made it up. But at one point, Trump did know the truth and — as the rule never fails — he tweeted about it.

“China wouldn’t provide a red carpet stairway from Air Force One and then Philippines President calls Obama “the son of a whore.” Terrible!” Trump tweeted.

 

China wouldn’t provide a red carpet stairway from Air Force One and then Philippines President calls Obama “the son of a whore.” Terrible!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2016

Some people will always be single

(Credit: Getty/Jay_Zynism)

“I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m not psychic. I can’t look into the future and say for sure I’m going to be alone always. So it is true that I don’t know for sure I’ll be alone forever,” said Aimée Lutkin. “And a lot of people who respond in this very negative way to what I’m saying maybe have felt as I’m feeling. Maybe they never thought they’d meet anybody and then they did. So they have experienced what I’m experiencing, but they’re on the other side of it.”

Lutkin, a comedian and a writer based in New York City, wrote an article for Jezebel in December 2016 that asked the question, “When Can I Say I’ll Be Alone Forever?” I was drawn to it because I’m single and am trying to get comfortable with the idea that that might always be the case, but also because of the way Aimée explored that idea: honestly, both without self-pity and without a sugar-coated ending.

“I also believe that people don’t want to accept the idea that someone who’s, you know, fun or cool or interesting, who they like, isn’t guaranteed love,” she said. “But love isn’t a guarantee at all, for anyone. You don’t get it because you’re good. You don’t get it because you’re beautiful. You don’t get it because you’re smart. Like, it is a combination of luck and hard work and commitment and it can’t be guaranteed.”

In her essay she wrote: “It has been almost three years since I’ve had sex, more than six since I was in a serious relationship. Dating was fun while it lasted, but it now all feels very much over. I don’t know that it really matters why I’m single, nor am I particularly interested in the eternal back and forth over who has it better: couples, singles, the hardworking polyamorous — we all suffer and benefit from our respective situations. Anyone can feel alone. Anyone can feel they are striving for intimacy and connection, even if they’re in a partnership. But for the first time ever, single adult women outnumber married adult women in the U.S., and the narrative around our experience hasn’t evolved with the numbers.”

She continued: “The difficulty is in the inability to talk about it, the lack of language to explain how you’re looking at your life. No one who cares about you wants to hear that you’ve ‘given up,’ but there aren’t many other ways to describe this strange single purgatory that goes on ad infinitum, yet could theoretically end any second. I am never allowed to talk for long about what’s really going on with me and romance. That makes it a hell of a lot harder to live with.”

I had to have her as a guest on “The Lonely Hour” to talk about all of this further:

Patriotism, taxes, and Trump

(Credit: Getty/NosUA/Ron Sachs - Pool/Salon)

Selling the Trump-Republican tax plan should be awkward for an administration that has made patriotism its central theme.

That’s because patriotism isn’t mostly about saluting the flag and standing during the national anthem.

It’s about taking a fair share of the burden of keeping America going.

But the tax plan gives American corporations a $2 trillion tax break, at a time when they’re enjoying record profits and stashing unprecedented amounts of cash in offshore tax shelters.

And it gives America’s wealthiest citizens trillions more, when the richest 1 percent now hold a record 38.6 percent of the nation’s total wealth, up from 33.7 percent a decade ago.

The reason Republicans give for enacting the plan is “supply-side” trickle-down nonsense. The real reason is payback to the GOP’s mega-donors.

A few Republicans are starting to admit this. Last week, Gary Cohn, Trump’s lead economic advisor, conceded in an interview that “the most excited group out there are big CEOs, about our tax plan.”

Republican Rep. Chris Collins admitted that “my donors are basically saying, ‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again.’”

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham warned that if Republicans failed to pass tax reform, “the financial contributions will stop.”

Republican mega-donors view the tax payback as they do any other investment. When they bankrolled Trump and the GOP, they expected a good return.

The biggest likely beneficiaries are busily investing an additional $43 million to pressure specific members of Congress to pass it, according to The Wall Street Journal.

They include the 45Committee, founded by billionaire casino oligarch Sheldon Adelson and Joe Ricketts, owner of the Chicago Cubs; and the Koch Brothers’ groups, Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners.

They’re not doing this out of love of America. They’re doing it out of love of money.

How do you think they got so wealthy in the first place?

As more of the nation’s wealth has shifted to the top over the past three decades, major recipients have poured some of it into politics – buying themselves tax cuts, special subsidies, bailouts, lenient antitrust enforcement, favorable bankruptcy rules, extended intellectual property protection, and other laws that add to their wealth.

All of which have given them more clout to get additional legal changes that enlarge their wealth even more.

Forty years ago, the estate tax was paid by 139,000 estates, according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center. By 2000, it was paid by 52,000. This year it will be paid by just 5,500 estates. Under the House tax plan, it will be eliminated altogether.

Why do Americans pay more for pharmaceuticals than the citizens of every other advanced economy? Because Big Pharma has altered the laws in its favor. Why do we pay more for internet service than most other nations? Big cable’s political clout. Why can payday lenders get away with payday robbery? The political heft of big banks.

Multiply these examples across the economy and you get a huge hidden upward redistribution from the paychecks of average working people and the poor to top executives and investors. (I explain this in detail in the documentary “Saving Capitalism,” airing next week on Netflix.)

All this is terrible for the American economy.

More and better jobs depend on increasing demand for goods and services. This must come from the middle class and poor because the rich spend a far smaller share of their after-tax income.

Yet the middle class and poor have steadily lost purchasing power. Partly as a result, a relatively low share of the nation’s working-age population is employed today and the wages of the typical worker have been stuck in the mud.

The Republican tax plan will make all this worse by burdening the middle class and the poor even more.

A slew of analyses, including Congress’s own Joint Committee on Taxation, show that the GOP plan will raise taxes on many middle-class families.

It will also require cuts in government programs that middle and lower-income Americans depend on, such as Medicare and Medicaid.

And the plan will almost certainly explode the national debt, eventually causing many middle class and poor families to pay higher interest on their auto loans, mortgages, and credit cards.

I don’t care whether the top executives of big corporations, Wall Street moguls, and heirs to vast fortunes salute the flag and stand for the national anthem.

But they enjoy all the advantages of being American. Most couldn’t have got to where they are in any other country.

They have a patriotic duty to take on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going. And Trump and his enablers in Congress have a patriotic responsibility to make them.

Gun violence in the US kills more black people and urban dwellers

(Credit: AP/Alex Brandon)

On Nov. 5, just 35 days after the deadly Las Vegas shooting, a man walked into a church in a small Texas town and murdered 26 people with an assault rifle. The coverage dominated the news.

But the day before, even more people — 43 — were shot to death in cities and towns around the country. And nobody really seemed to notice.

Shootings kill more than 36,000 Americans each year. Every day, 90 deaths and 200 injuries are caused by gun violence. Unlike terrorist acts, the everyday gun violence that impacts our communities are accepted as a way of life.

Of all firearm homicides in the world, 82 percent occurs in the United States. An American is 25 times more likely to be fatally shot than a resident of other high-income nations.

As public health scholars who study firearm violence, we believe that our country is unique in its acceptance of gun violence. Although death by firearms in America is a public health crisis, it is a crisis that legislators accept as a societal norm. Some have suggested it is due to the fact that it is blacks and not whites who are the predominant victims, and our data support this striking disparity.

Urban and racial disparities

Within the United States, the odds of dying from firearm homicide are much higher for Americans who reside in cities. Twenty percent of all firearm homicides in the U.S. occur in the country’s 25 largest cities, even though they contain just over one-tenth of the U.S. population. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that of the 12,979 firearm homicides in 2015, 81 percent occurred in urban areas.

There is even more to the story: CDC data also show that within our nation’s cities, black Americans are, on average, eight times more likely to be killed by firearms than those who are white. The rate of death by gun homicide for black people exceeds those among whites in all 50 states, but there is tremendous variation in the magnitude of this disparity. In 2015, a black person living in Wisconsin was 26 times more likely to be fatally shot than a white person in that state. At the same time, a black person in Arizona was “only” 3.2 times more likely than a white person to be killed by a gun. The combination of being black and living in an urban area is even more deadly. In 2015, the black homicide rate for urban areas in Missouri was higher than the total death rate from any cause in New York State.

These differences across states occur primarily because the gap between levels of disadvantage among white and black Americans differ sharply by state. For example, Wisconsin — the state with the highest disparity between black and white firearm homicide rates — has the second highest gap of any state between black and white incarceration rates, and the second highest gap between black and white unemployment rates. Racial disparities in advantage translate into racial disparities in firearm violence victimization.

Americans are 128 times more likely to be killed in everyday gun violence than by any act of international terrorism. And a black person living in an urban area is almost 500 times more likely to be killed by everyday gun violence than by terrorism. From a public health perspective, efforts to combat firearm violence need to be every bit as strong as those to fight terrorism.

The first step in treating the epidemic of firearm violence is declaring that the everyday gun violence that is devastating the nation is unacceptable. Mass shootings and terrorist attacks should not be the only incidents of violence that awaken Americans to the threats to our freedom and spur politicians to action.

Molly Pahn, Research Manager, Boston University; Anita Knopov, Research fellow, Boston University, and Michael Siegel, Professor of Community Health Sciences, Boston University

Won’t someone please think of the men?!

(Credit: Shutterstock/Getty/Salon)

In the wake of the recent tidal wave of public allegations against Hollywood and media figures — a deluge unleashed initially by meticulous reporting by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey for The New York Times and Ronan Farrow for The New Yorker on the decades of abuse allegations made by what are now dozens of women against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein — men are looking over their shoulders. They feel the ground shifting under their feet. If untouchable comedy hero Louis C.K. can lose his career in two days, what could happen to poor anonymous me? they are asking.

To them I say, I don’t know, what do you think should happen? What reckoning do you, confused and frightened men of the world, personally fear, and why?

Consider the plight of this Denver-based cannabis dispensary platform entrepreneur, who told a New York Times reporter in a feature on male workplace anxiety that he’s “decided to be more careful about corporate offsites after seeing the swell of #MeToo claims.”

He added that harassment was not something he had thought much about before, but that he was considering his own behavior more. “Like, did I ever do anything?” he said.

Every girl and woman over the age of six is playing the world’s tiniest violin for men who have managed to stumble through their lives, achieving success and wielding authority over other people, and yet are only now getting around to wondering, like, did I ever do anything? As if that’s not one of the first self-interrogations girls are taught to employ without mercy and the hardest to ever answer in the negative, a reality which men have exploited since the beginning of time? Did I smile too much? Did I not smile enough? Welcome to our world, men.

Men who haven’t leered, creeped, groped, raped, and/or otherwise used their position of professional authority and access as a sexualized and gendered weapon against the women — and men, too — in their professional sphere can dial down the drama and stop acting like the Misandry Police are going to come for them at any moment. Keep being decent people; maybe be more vocal about your expectations for men and your support of those who have been abused and harassed while their grievances are being taken seriously for once. You’ll be fine.

Don’t be the guy who decides to roll out a tantrum of pseudo-intellectual thought exercises instead. This kind of man is canceling the office holiday party rather than trying to uphold a standard of collegial behavior; he is slamming the door of his Mike Pence Professional Man-Cave in our faces — out of self-preservation, he tells himself, but maybe it’s also out of spite. In the Times story, sexual harassment expert and lawyer Jonathan Segal’s patience with disingenuous “where do we draw the line?” bewilderment appears to be wearing thin already.

At a fund-raiser last month in Palm Beach, Fla., some men asked him if it was permissible to hug a woman and where the boundaries should be drawn.

Mr. Segal said he had explained to the men that the context mattered and that pretending there was a gray zone between collegial friendliness and sexual assault was absurd. For instance, he told them, hugging an old friend is very different from going up behind a co-worker while she was at a desk typing.

“If someone can’t understand that, then maybe they just shouldn’t be hugging,” he said.

If it sounds exhausting to be Mr. Segal right now, imagine sharing an office with the kind of man who is dominating every conversation about sexual harassment with dystopian workplace hypotheticals in which it will be forbidden to hold confidential meetings or his erection against a subordinate’s leg. Who’s to say what’s the difference anymore, aren’t we innocent until proven guilty, something something America?!

How do humans this dumb manage to get two matching shoes on in the morning, much less run so many industries? The answer, of course, is not that men have no way of knowing the difference between being friendly and being an abusive slimeball or worse. Of course they do. But some men want an authoritative articulation of the rules stated for the record now, while we are still processing and reporting on the structures that have kept abusers in power for so long, so they can start looking for new loopholes immediately. Then, in the next moment of cultural shift, they will have fresh ammunition to throw back in our faces when we push back against whatever the next vanguard of creepery turns out to be. No fair, you never said THAT was out-of-bounds!

“So how does this end?” frets Daily Beast columnist Matt Lewis in a column that ends by suggesting that women also bear responsibility for eradicating the misogyny that underwrites all of these tensions, controversies, scandals, crimes. In Lewis’ view, a positive outcome of #MeToo is a future in which “men and women go on to treat each other as equals,” as if women not treating men as equals has been part of the problem.

In this scenario, women feel safe and secure in the workplace, and lecherous cads who cross the clearly-defined lines are not tolerated.

But there is another version where every man feels guilty, even if enforcement is selective. In this version, you’re always waiting for another shoe to drop—always wondering if that time you rubbed someone’s shoulders in 1998 will come back to haunt you.

In record time, men have made this moment about their own feelings, and what women have or haven’t done to unsettle them and dredge up their feelings of like, did I ever do anything? Meanwhile, women still have to ask themselves things like: Did I smile back when he made a joke about not wanting to get “Weinsteined”? Wait, did I smile too much?

Lewis offers a haunting vision of the political wasteland of what’s to come if we don’t get to work soothing men so their “perceived victimhood” doesn’t swallow us all whole:

One of the trends we have seen in the Trump era is the perceived victimhood of men, which has led to their effectively checking out of work and relationships. This might sound ridiculous when it has clearly been women who were clearly victimized in these instances, but it’s hard to argue with the trend.

It’s in everyone’s best interest to address this problem and live (and work) in harmony. This means we must foster an environment where everyone feels free to discuss these issues without fear of being attacked. This will also require new leaders to emerge and help facilitate this healthy dialogue. We have enough divisions in America already. The last thing we need is a battle of the sexes.

Lewis doesn’t go so far as to suggest the “new leaders [who will] emerge and help facilitate this healthy dialogue” should necessarily be women. Sorry, ladies — the last thing America needs now is a battle for gender justice. Don’t want four more years of pussy-grabbing backlash? Now is not the time to roll your eyes when men in your industry admit to not understanding the difference between being a friendly colleague and being sexist or sexually inappropriate. Men who are targeted sexually by men who also wield more power? Same goes for you.

Ask yourself instead: What can you do to make the men in your life more comfortable when openly discussing your oppression? The men, they are so confused and so fragile. They are wandering through the wilderness of office happy hours and they don’t know what to do with their hands. Something has cracked open inside of them, something that threatens to destroy us all, and only we can guide them — while allowing them to pretend like they were leading all along, as is their earned right — back to the light.

Rolling Stone at 50: A bittersweet legacy

(Credit: Getty/Duane Prokop)

Intentional or not, the title of the new documentary, “Rolling Stone: Stories from the Edge,” which is now airing on HBO, references a central tension that simmered between the lines throughout the 50-year history of the magazine that has been at the forefront of American music, culture and political coverage.

Co-founder and editor Jann Wenner’s magazine started on the fringes but as it grew in popularity and prowess, that edginess increasingly inched toward the center and, for some, became dull at times.

“Rolling Stone: Stories from the Edge” doesn’t shy away from that tension and in fact digs deep into it, but the film, which was coproduced by the magazine and directed by Oscar winner Alex Gibney (“Tales from the Dark Side”), and Blair Foster, is primarily a celebration, not just of the publication but also of its subjects. Foster and Gibney sat down with me on “Salon Talks” recently to talk about how they developed a film on the cultural force that shaped music, politics and pop culture.

“It’s not a history of the magazine,” Foster says. “It’s a history of the last 50 years through the eyes of the magazine and that’s what was driving the project at all times.”

Foster and Gibney spoke about how they culled a massive trove of material. “We knew there were some stories we had to tell,” Gibney said. “And also this tension in the magazine between becoming a part of the publishing establishment.”

Those must-cover subjects include the magazine’s close coverage of Bruce Springsteen, John Lennon and several presidential political campaigns, as well as its disastrous story about rape at the University of Virginia, which damaged the magazine’s reputation when it was revealed to be largely false, thanks to an unreliable source. Speaking of dents to the magazine’s reputation, Wenner was accused last week of promising writing assignment rewards for sex 12 years ago.

Watch the video above to find out why Gibney acknowledges that this 50th anniversary tribute comes at “a bitter sweet moment,” when the magazine is being sold and after its clearly progressive political slant has been trounced by the ascendency of Donald Trump.

And, watch the  full “Salon Talks” conversation on Facebook to hear more about the writers behind the stories that played a huge role in shaping the publication.

Tune in to SalonTV’s live shows, “Salon Talks” and “Salon Stage,” daily at noon ET / 9 a.m. PT and 4 p.m. ET / 1 p.m. PT, streaming live on Salon and on Facebook.

It’s Ric Flair’s world now: The triumph and tragedy of “Nature Boy”

Ric Flair (Credit: Getty/Paul Kane)

In many ways professional wrestling has conquered the world. Donald Trump is for all intents and purposes a professional wrestling villain (or “heel”) who lies and bullies people, is tacky, obnoxiously rich and proudly ignorant, berates women and is a racist demagogue who does everything possible to earn the ire of his enemies while drawing power from the audience’s boos. It is obvious that Trump studied the performance art of professional wrestling during his long-time association with Vince McMahon’s WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment).

Trump’s association with professional wrestling does not end there. Linda McMahon, Vince’s wife and the co-founder of the WWE, now leads the Small Business Administration.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is one of the most popular professional wrestlers in the history of the WWE. He is now the highest-paid actor in the world.

The exaggerated narrative style and logic of professional wrestling has also crossed over to the American mainstream. From reality TV to politics and popular culture more broadly, the dividing line between what is real and what is fake has never been so blurry. In total, professional wrestling is a carnival stage and circus mirror for American and global society, where the postmodern and the spectacular have become the normal and the mundane.

In the history of professional wrestling there is arguably no greater personality and talent than Ric Flair. Born Richard Morgan Fliehr, the “Nature Boy” is agreed upon by most serious students of professional wrestling to be the greatest champion and talent in the modern era of the sport. Beginning in the 1970s, Flair’s in-ring career spanned four decades. He was world heavyweight champion at least 16 times and toured the United States and the world as the standard-bearer for the sport.

While Flair’s ring talents and verbal skills are legendary it is the persona and personality that he created which resonates across American and global popular culture to this day. His professional success did not come without a cost. Flair, like so many other professional wrestlers, struggled to maintain a balance between the larger-than-life persona which entertained tens of millions and the more quotidian and intimate responsibilities of being a husband and father.

As Ric Flair would so famously observe, “To be the man you have to beat the man” — but what happens when the lights are dimmed, the stage curtains are drawn shut, the fans are silent and you are left alone to meditate on what it means to be a mere mortal?

In his new ESPN 30 for 30 film “Nature Boy”, award-winning documentarian Rory Karpf examines the life of Ric Flair in an effort to answer that question. I recently spoke with Karpf about professional wrestling, the impact of Ric Flair on global popular culture, the dangerous balancing act between the public character and the real person and why Flair remains such an influential and compelling figure.

A longer version of this conversation can be heard on my podcast, which is available on Salon’s Featured Audio page.

Why do we both love professional wrestling? 

I love the escapism. People can act in wrestling in ways you just can’t act like in real life. You can say and do things and be so outrageous, you can turn on your best friend and hit him over the head with a steel chair. And I remember falling in love with it when I was seven years old on Saturday mornings watching WWF [the former name of WWE] and Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling. I grew up in Philadelphia and WWF came to The Spectrum and the NWA came to the Civic Center. Every time they came I’d try to get somebody to take me. I remember being eight years old and sitting there by myself. People would check on me like was I just some vagrant kid, but I’d go to any length to see wrestling.

What is your favorite era of professional wrestling? Who was the first professional wrestler whose work you really adored? 

The first time I saw Ric Flair in person he wrestled Ricky Morton. I think it was 1986. I loved it all, and I loved the WWF at the time. I also remember seeing ECW [Extreme Championship Wrestling] in person when I was maybe a freshman in high school. They came to my middle school and brawled all around, literally through the hallways, through classrooms. It was insane, there were 300 people there. I went to the ECW arena when I was in high school, so to me it was two great eras of wrestling — the 1980s and then the 1990s and the WWF Attitude Era.

It was as mainstream as it’s ever going to get. Everybody loved wrestling, everybody was doing the NWO salute, people were doing Ric Flair’s “woo” in class and it was very hip at that time. This is like 1996, ‘97, ‘98.

With the rise of Donald Trump — who really is just a professional wrestling villain–would you have ever imagined 20 years ago that wrestling would have this type of influence in America and around the world?

Donald Trump is so much of the era of “being the man” — which is exactly what Ric Flair personifies. But when you look at today, Ric Flair is more relevant, and arguably just as popular as he’s ever been. What other wrestler can you say that about? I think it’s because in our culture, athletes, musicians and our president always want to tell you how great they are. They want to tell you they got the most stuff, they’re the coolest, they got the best clothes, the nicest car, the prettiest woman. That’s what Ric was doing in the 1980s. That’s what he personified before Gordon Gekko [of Oliver Stone’s film “Wall Street”] with his famous saying, “Greed is good.” There was Ric Flair and he was really living it. That is why he’s such a fascinating subject for a film, because what wrestler from that era is still relevant today in popular culture to that extreme?

What was the elevator pitch like for this project?

ESPN wanted to do a project on Andre the Giant. As a wrestling fan I didn’t feel that was the best story to tell. I just don’t know how multilayered and multifaceted a character he would be.

We then did a film called “I Hate Christian Laettner,” and I wanted to interview a pop-culture villain on what makes a great villain. We interviewed Ric Flair and he appeared in one interview for the film. There was a buzz about it on social media. John Dahl of ESPN noticed. I wrote a one-page treatment, sent it to ESPN and then reached out to Ric’s management at the time. That got the ball rolling and it really wasn’t a hard process at all. The Laettner film aired in March and we were filming the Ric Flair movie in October that year.

How many hours of footage do you usually have to shoot and then edit down?

It’s not so much what you shoot, but also the archival footage. Ric Flair has had a 40-year career which means there are thousands and thousands of hours of his matches and promos. Then we did 46 interviews for the film — about a little more than half made it in. I interviewed Ric on two occasions, the first interview and the very last interview done for the film. Those were each about four hours long. They set the tone for everything.

The documentary is not a chronology of Ric’s greatest moments, it is something that tries to encapsulate who Ric Flair was and is, and at the same time what wrestling was and is. That’s not that easy to do so you have to make tough choices.

Most serious fans of professional wrestling would agree that Ric Flair is the greatest in-ring performer of all time. He is a larger-than-life figure. What is he actually like in person?

Some documentarians don’t believe you should be friendly with your subjects. But I’m not a journalist, I’m a storyteller. I think part of that is you have to earn the trust of your subject. And I think you can earn trust through friendship. That doesn’t mean I sugarcoat things — sometimes a real friend tells you a hard truth. I think that is where you get meaning. With Ric, he’s very much like his character when you meet him, he really is the character “Ric Flair” turned down a little bit. He is extremely generous and never let me pick up a tab. I found him to be very kind, and we got along very well. I also felt … it’s hard to explain, that there’s a little bit of a detachment there.

Ric has lots of acquaintances. When he got sick and I went to visit him, he was out of the hospital ICU and he was in physical rehab. I enjoyed that actually more than partying because, first of all, it was just him and me, there were no airs about anything. He’s in a hospital bed, he’s not trying to put up a front. We were watching football and he was giving me advice about my personal situation and he got on the phone with my son. Ric told my son, “I hope you’re proud of your dad, your dad loves you.” I just found him to be a very sweet and kind gentleman.

There is an energy to Ric Flair, I don’t want to say sadness, but something akin to deep vulnerability. I can only imagine being in his position and always being suspicious that people want something from you. Did you detect that?

Well I think it goes to [the fact that] he always needed adulation. He says in the film that he always wanted to be “The Man.” He could never live of just being “a man.” What does it mean to be just a man? To me, a man goes to work every day, pays his bills, takes care of his kids, drives them to school. I think Ric couldn’t have that ordinary life, there’s maybe something missing there, some sort of hole that always needs to be filled. I think everybody laughs and jokes when he says he slept with 10,000 women. I got to tell you, I actually find that sad, that he always had to be with a different woman all the time.

What I’ve found with really big celebrities is that usually what makes them so great, the greatest, can also be their greatest weakness; it’s a two-sided coin. I think it’s that way with Ric. What made him the greatest wrestler of all time may have made him not the greatest father and definitely not the greatest husband.

You hear that all the time with professional wrestlers where it’s, “I’ve got to be on the road, but then when I’m on the road I want to go back home.” Do you think Ric Flair will always be involved with professional wrestling in some way?

I think he’s got to be. As Ric said in the film, it’s his lady. It’s his No. 1 love.

Professional wrestling has everything. It is performance art. It’s almost Shakespearean and a Greek tragedy as well. To that point, is Ric Flair a tragic figure?  Because he has the loss of his son and there are also the family issues. He has the public face, he has the money but then he loses it. He seems happy but then he seems sad, you have substance abuse issues. Do you think that’s overstating it? Is he tragic or is he a hugely dramatic figure and not necessarily tragic?

Well, I think that’s up to the viewer, to decide if somebody is tragic or not. If you asked him, I don’t think Ric would tell you that he’s tragic. But in my mind losing your son because he’s trying to emulate your lifestyle is a tragedy. What is actually worse that could happen in your life? We cover financial issues a little bit but we don’t get that deep into it because a lot of athletes have financial problems after they retire. But Ric paid the ultimate price, he lost his son. Reid wanted to be Ric and very few people, less than 1 percent, can be that guy.

There is the film that makes the final cut and there is the film that was edited out. It has been rumored that Ric Flair has serious anxiety issues. He is also supposedly hard of hearing in one ear which means he calls the matches with his opponent. Those parts of his life were not commented upon. Why?

Well Ric mentioned going to a sports psychiatrist. It’s crazy that a guy who is so over the top and flamboyant — so much about me, me, me — actually has a very fragile sense of self that other people can influence so that he doesn’t feel good about his performances and who he is in the ring. That is the two-sided coin nature of Ric Flair: For all his boasting and for all his bravado, there is a fragile ego there. Ultimately that is more for a psychologist to analyze, but I think it’s all part of who he is.

Going back to his promos, Ric Flair is such a master of language. In professional wrestling and other creative work, they talk about the “It” factor. How do you think he embodies that intangible?    

If people could explain what that intangible factor is, it would be bought and sold. Rick had a quality that when you see him on television you don’t want to change the channel. He was so entertaining, he was such a good talker, he was so funny with his catch-phrases and improvisation.

Then he could flip a switch and be so intense. Hulk Hogan was great but he was pretty much one-note when he would do his promos. Ric Flair had many notes and he came out every Saturday and was fantastic. Usually somebody is not as good as you remember from your childhood. Ric was better, I said to him, “Man, it’s crazy you never crossed over and did acting, TV hosting or something other than wrestling.” He just always wanted to be a wrestler.

Who are some of the other professional wrestlers that you would like to feature in a documentary?

I would love to do a documentary on Hulk Hogan. He is the biggest name in professional wrestling. There are very few people who don’t know who Hulk Hogan is. He’s just a fascinating character and individual. To my knowledge there has not been a definitive Hulk Hogan film. If I had a choice and I’d pick another wrestler, I’d stick with him.

As a documentary filmmaker, how do you choose what arc of a life to feature?  

Those are really tough decisions. In my opinion you don’t want to edit your film on paper before you actually see the whole project. I just try to go with the best material. I let the material drive me and then it’s like a puzzle, you have to fit things together. In the documentary I think about how four of Ric’s rivals each represented something different. Dusty Rhodes was all about personalities in wrestling and characters. With Ricky Steamboat it was more about the athleticism of wrestling.

With Sting it was about how Ric was very selfless and giving in the ring and how he helped people. Ric could be very selfish in his personal life but was the opposite in his professional life. Then, finally, with Hulk Hogan it was really about two pop-culture icons. It is a constant balance between doing something that appeals to wrestling fans like you and me, but will also appeal to non-wrestling fans too.

What were the emotional notes you were trying to hit with this film?

First you make you them laugh and then you make them cry. Because when you make someone laugh it gets their guard down, so they’re very much open to showing emotion. I think there is a lot of humor in the documentary and during the screenings there has been more laughter than I anticipated. Then I think that leads to having some bigger tears shed in the final act of the film. At the end of the day it sounds simple, just try to keep it entertaining so that the viewer doesn’t change the channel or get out of their seat. For a little while maybe they forget about their troubles and you give them something else to think about.

Watch a reporter compare Roy Moore’s alleged child sex abuse to stealing a lawn mower

Roy Moore (Credit: AP/Hal Yeager)

On Saturday, The Alabama Political Reporter’s Brandon Moseley appeared on “CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin” to defend Roy Moore amidst the mounting allegations of sexual abuse against him.

It did not, as they say, go well.

Baldwin introduced Moseley as “someone who sides with Roy Moore” and who “just wrote an opinion piece on why he believes Roy Moore.”

Moore, now the Republican candidate in Alabama for U.S. Senator, had been accused by four women of sexual abuse or misconduct at the time of the interview; one of them, Leigh Corfman, was just 14 years old when the incident allegedly occurred in 1979. On Monday, another woman named Beverly Nelson came out to accuse Roy Moore of sexual assault when she was 16.

The interview started off with Baldwin asking Moseley why he supports Moore, to which he responded in part: “I’ve known Roy Moore, I’ve known Roy Moore for 20 years . . .  I think if this was a serious — if these allegations were out there and they were serious — I probably would’ve heard them.”

Baldwin followed up by asking why Moseley didn’t think these allegations were “serious.”

“They’re 38-year-old allegations,” Moseley responded. “This would be a misdemeanor at the time under the code of Alabama. The statute’s been up since ’86. If you go back and you don’t elect anyone who’s ever done anything wrong, we wouldn’t have had Barack Obama. I think he did cocaine. Bill Clinton supposedly smoked marijuana.”

Yes, there are reports that both of those former presidents indulged in illegal drugs. What that has to do with child rape, exactly, is unclear at this stage.

Despite the attempted deflection, Baldwin got the interview back on track by clarifying the sexual consent laws in Alabama.

“Just so everyone’s on the same page, sexual consent in Alabama is 16, and you acknowledge that sexual contact with a 14-year-old would have been illegal and would be considered sexual abuse by the books today,” she said. “But Brandon, you know, you make this argument that there wasn’t a law against sexual abuse in Alabama back in the ‘70s. So I just want to — let me ask: Are you saying that, because there wouldn’t have been a law, according to you, that that would have made it okay back then?”

Moseley said no, and described Moore’s alleged actions as “a sin,” but went on to say that “we’re not talking about an actual crime here under — that’s prosecutable in 2017. I don’t think you throw out 35 years of a man’s career and his reputation because of an unsubstantiated allegation from 1979 that can’t be proven either way.”

Baldwin responded that, according to Section 13A-6-67, Moore’s actions would have been considered sexual abuse dating back to 1977. When Moseley said it would have been a misdemeanor, Baldwin asked if that made it okay. Note that, along these lines, Moseley isn’t doing much in the way of denying that the potential member of the Senate sexually abused a 14-year-old girl.

“No, but again, if, you know, Roy Moore had stolen a lawn mower when he was 21, that’s bad,” he continued, “but that’s not a reason 50 years later to all of a sudden, you know, throw him off the ballot or let Mitch McConnell pick the next senator of Alabama.”

Having just heard a man incredibly compare the sexual abuse of multiple women to the theft of motorized landscaping hardware, Baldwin stayed firm and asked Moseley about his views on the similar allegations outstanding against President Donald Trump.

“I believe that President Trump, probably, at some point in his life, has acted inappropriately with women. He’s had three marriages, multiple mistresses,” he answered. Moseley went on to say that he “still voted for Donald Trump. I mean, as a Christian, I can forgive a past indiscretion, certainly one that’s not a crime at this time.”

According to Moseley, sexual assault stops being bad or even worthy of discussion once the statute of limitations passes. Those are mere “indiscretions” and certainly not worth ruining a man’s career over. 

Again for the right — and for many men — male careers and GOP congressional seats matter more than the Christian morals the movement claims as its rock and guide.

Moseley perhaps put it best in his own editorial:

A vote for [Democratic opponent Doug Jones] puts Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders one vote closer to control of the U.S. Senate, and the current Republican majority is just two seats.

Whatever you believed happened 38 years ago, that should not sway Alabamians from voting for the candidate who most closely shares our conservative Alabama values, and that is Roy Moore.

Even if you believe the allegations, even if you think child rape just happens to be wrong, the logic goes, it shouldn’t matter. Those two Senate votes do.

See the whole interview below.