Are nominations for doing the right thing a bad idea?
Come on, three Golden Globe nominations, including one for Christopher Plummer? You gotta be kidding. It’s not that I doubt the pedigree of the upcoming Ridley Scott drama “All The Money In The World,” which details the lacklustre response of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty when his grandson is kidnapped in 1973 Rome.
Nor do I doubt Scott’s motivation in reshooting key scenes with replacement actor Christopher Plummer after Kevin Spacey was given the boot for alleged sexual improprieties.
My issue is an artistic one: How can you parachute a new actor into an already completed film without having it look like an “SCTV” skit with Rick Moranis’s pixilated head on top of John Candy’s Chubby Checker body?
“There’s no time for pondering,” Scott told Entertainment Weekly, rushing against deadlines to meet his Dec. 22 release date (now moved to Dec. 25).
“Sometimes you’ve got to lay down the law. You have to.”
I applaud his efforts to (a) save his film (b) save money and (c) take a righteous stand against Hollywood’s culture of sleaze.
But after watching both trailers on YouTube — one with Spacey, one without — I have to say I’m not sold on the outcome.
Spacey, loathsome as he is, is brilliant: seething with curdled malevolence and Machiavellian glee. I’m not surprised he was touted as a potential Oscar contender.
Plummer, a great actor and fine human being, is like a block of wood: sturdy, solid, dependable.
To hear that the Globes have championed the film mere days after its frantic reshoot, before anyone had seen the finished product, not only defies credibility, it makes me wonder if the tempestuous cultural moment in which we are now living has officially jumped the shark.
Make no mistake, this would be a bad thing for the most important social movement of the 21st century: the long overdue purging of sexual vipers from positions of power, the realignment of pop culture along the lines of gender equality.
So far, its success has been unprecedented, with everyone from Senator Al Franken to “Today Show” host Matt Lauer and celebrity chef Mario Batali called to account after years of alleged sexual transgressions.
Masturbation, groping, innuendo and outright rapes have all been dragged into the spotlight after producer Harvey Weinstein — the unwitting catalyst — was revealed as a sad, sick parasite in a New York Times expose in October.
Two months after that cultural tipping point — and the birth of the #MeToo movement — The Great Reckoning continues with rigorous, clinical efficiency as the shrill, high-pitched whining of self-entitled males reaches a timorous crescendo.
Halt and desist, they say. These men can’t all possibly be guilty. What is this, the Salem Witch Trials? We will look back in horror.
But that’s a defensive move, left brain thinking.
The thing about “cultural moments” is that there is no logic, no sober second thought, no one step removed perspective — it’s seismic, unrelenting, without apology.
“(Men) want a sense of normalcy restored,” wrote Amber Tamblyn in a powerful New York Times opinion piece. “They want measured discussion of consequences, not swift punishment. They want us to leave poor Al Franken and his harmless grabbing alone.”
But you can’t control a hurricane. You can’t contain it.
You just hunker down and hope that when the smoke clears, things will be restructured in a way that puts you less at risk the next time.
“Why do we need to talk about the redemption of men when we are right in the middle of the salvation of women?” complains Tamblyn.
“Not even the middle, but the very beginning? This is more than a watershed moment — it’s a flash-flood moment.”
What we’re experiencing now, social critics agree, is righteous anger, a biblical outpouring after years of subversion, coercion and domination, a cultural tsunami washing away decades of shame.
Men are scared (the ones with something to hide). Women are defiant. Heads are rolling with gleeful abandon. And there are no exemptions for “lesser offences.”
“You’re either with our bodies or against our bodies,” writes Tamblyn decisively.
“The punishment for harassment is you disappear. The punishment for rape is you disappear. The punishment for masturbation in front of us is you disappear. The punishment for coercion is you disappear.”
“The only way to enforce seismic, cultural change in the way men relate to women is to draw a line deep in the sand and say: This is what we will no longer tolerate.”
I’m not a woman, but there’s an elegant simplicity to what she’s saying that feels, after decades of subterfuge and secrecy, undeniable.
It’s like the female version of “Django Unchained,” except instead of confederate slaves seeking murderous revenge against their masters, women are rising up against every flatulent windbag who tried to take advantage and exposing them publicly. Damn, it’s almost cinematic. “We’re in the midst of a reckoning,” writes Tamblyn, best known for the TV series “Joan of Arcadia” and film hit “Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants.”
“It’s what toxic masculinity’s own medicine tastes like. And people should allow the consequences to unfold, regardless of how it affects those they consider to be friends.”
Power brokers, alas, do not go quietly into that good night. Revolutions are not won over the tinkling of tea cups.
Social change, if it’s to stick, requires bold resistance, stoic integrity and dogged perseverance in the face of intractable odds.
If the bottom falls out, if political correctness overrules common sense, if people like Ridley Scott and Christopher Plummer are handed Golden Globe Awards just for showing up, the movement’s credibility is put at risk.
“This doesn’t do anything to ease the suffering of people who were all too personally affected by Kevin Spacey,’’ noted “All The Money’s” Michelle Williams of his cinematic ousting.
“But it is our little act of trying to right a wrong. And it sends a message to predators: you can’t get away with this anymore. “Something WILL be done.” Admirable sentiments, totally justified. And if we’re lucky, “All The Money in the World” will prove to be a defining masterpiece.
But if a film almost no one has seen with a clunky trailer turns out to be anything less than transcendent, it won’t be worth the price of a movie ticket.