And instead of “underground railroad” she would lead a perky cast of young beautiful women and rakish men to a reality show parking lot that they all wanted to be on together!
A Story for the Ages!
The only way this could work is if Julia Roberts was playing an actress in a movie about some hopelessly out-of-touch movie executives making a biopic about Harriet Tubman.
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Of course they did. Scarlet Johanson was booked.
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Haven’t seen the film or heard this rumor before now, but I am bewildered…
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We’ll probably never know who this executive is, but they’ve gotten everyone to talk about this movie and that’s the important thing, amirite?
Haven’t seen it. But from the reviews it doesn’t sound like that character is a “main villain” or that this is a main villain sort of movie. That said this movie does feature a black slave catcher, and historically there were free blacks involved in slave catching and kidnapping of blacks in the north. So its historically plausible.
I’m not gonna speculate as to how well they pulled that off, the marketing on this seems a little off. Its getting pitched almost like a thriller. But we tend not to have every minute and every detail of people’s lives documented in detail. So creating characters or narratives in a biopic is kind of a necessity.
I was assuming the name is a reference to Richard Wright’s Native Son.
I’m sure they may have existed but we know enough about Harriet’s life that this likely did not happen to her, but either way adding a fictional character when one wasn’t needed in the first place seems really questionable. Her life is plenty interesting without that sort of embellishment. But as you said, this is speculation and it may take actually seeing the movie to get better insight on what they did.
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I heard that the Cynthia Erivo biopic will be starring Julia Roberts, so it all balances out in the end.
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Dear Hollywood,
What the actual fuck?
Signed,
Harriet Tubman
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I’m sure it is, but how many of that portion are going to want to see a Harriet Tubman biopic?
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Her life is certainly plenty interesting. But as with a lot of historical figures there’s a pretty big lack of detail. That’s not an issue for documentary presentations. But pressing historical events into a functional narrative always requires some level of speculation and creation. For example, you can’t know the content of conversations between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. But HBO’s John Adams has to have dialog.
Tubman lived the sort of life where documentation of a lot of things wasn’t gonna happen in the moment. After her escape there’s a lot of letters and contemporary writings, but there’s gonna be gaps. With this stuff you get broad strokes and major events. But you don’t get the minutia, details, or every single day coverage. You really aren’t doing this without adding things that likely did not happen exactly as depicted.
So the question is more about what they’re doing with it. Why the specific thing was added, and what they’re trying to say with it. If it’s as simple as adding a tense chase element, with a shocking twist cause he’s black? That’s pretty unnecessary, and pretty stupid. If it’s there for thematic reasons rather than mechanical? Well it might be pretty valid depending on what those are.
I’m expecting the former. Like I said the marketing on this makes it seem like a studio attempt to sell history as twisty turny action. I can’t seem to place it but there was some movie or TV show (or maybe a comic) that had a parody action series about Harriet Tubman. Its got me giggling a bit every time I see something about this movie.
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Of course it wouldn’t. No Hollywood movie ever makes a profit. Hollywood accounting - Wikipedia
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Fair point.
for some value of “no one”.
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I keep lynx around for just such an occasion. Text mode means no flashing gifs.
I saw it. If it was not great it was, I thought, damned good. No, it was great – I feel I’m a better person for having seen it, and I welled up at a few points, and I can’t say that about many movies. I’m happy to pay to see a film (with my daughter, and her friend) about Harriet Tubman. My hope in doing so is that it bumps up someone’s metrics, somewhere, indicating that yes, people do want to see more of these movies; and are less interested in (for example) a remake of a video game, or a film based on an amusement park attraction. (Or its sequel(s)). (Not to say that I don’t, or wouldn’t, see those films, but when something like this comes along, I certainly want to vote with my dollars.)
Honestly I did not even remember the character being named “Bigger Long” but he is also not the main villain; that would be the white slaveowner, Gideon. Without giving too much away, describing Gideon as saving Harriett from Bigger Long is a really novel interpretation of that particular scene. I’ll grant that my perception of this film, as a white male, is going to be different from those who are not white males (and, I’d guess, from some other white males) but I almost wonder if the people sending these tweets(?) saw the same film that I did (assuming they saw it at all). It most certainly did not make me feel comfortable with what my ancestors did. I would tend to disagree that it makes the slaveowners sympathetic or understood, although there is one scene where the family complains (to other slaveowners) that they’re “victims” of Harriet’s efforts, too (i.e. saving their own skins so they don’t take the blame for what Harriet has done after escaping their plantation), but the “victimhood” rings hollow (which, I’d figured, was the point). If that scene adds some kind of nuance to the characters (and, in hindsight, it wouldn’t have screwed up the plot if it had been omitted), I also don’t think it’s “going out of it’s way to make the white slaveowners sympathetic and ‘understood.’”
As far as “Black America NOT supporting that new Harriet Tubman film”, here’s my own anecdote, FWIW: I don’t know about the rest of the country, but at one particular theater, in a minority-majority county, on one particular weekend, there were more African Americans in attendance than whites.
While many if not most of the events, people, and dialogue in this film were certainly invented by the screenwriters (there is a fair amount of deus ex machina), I think it’s the type of film that Hollywood (given its resources) can and ought to be making. I’m typing this fearing I’m going to come off as a tone-deaf Joe-Biden type, because I don’t understand where these tweets are coming from but, my goodness, if getting a film about Harriet Tubman into national theater chains is a flawed victory, it’s still a victory, no? Trump nixes putting Harriet Tubman on the 20 dollar bill, and here comes a film – in movie theater chains, in Trumpian America --that demonstrates why she should be. That’s got to be worth something.
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Thanks for your thoughts and impression of the movie, again i didn’t want to put down the movie but seeing those tweets did make me doubt about wanting to see something i was previously looking forward to watching and i wanted to check to see if anyone could give some valuable insight. I’ll give the movie a try, and as you say even if the movie isn’t perfect the fact that it got made today when its most relevant should mean something.
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The review in the New Yorker is more effusive.
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I’m not planning to see it in theaters, because of the added character. Biopics are difficult because folks in charge in Hollywood too often feel the need to make things more exciting when the basic story is already compelling. Anachronisms in those films are even worse.
However, some of my relatives who’ve seen it said the film was very well done. Here’s more on the controversy (the comments are more enlightening than the article, IMO):
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