It’s not uncommon for acceptance speeches at award ceremonies to fall prey to the temptation to overshare. (“You like me, you really like me!” is the mother of Oscar oversharing moments.) Less common is saying more than saying it out loud. It is to watch a speech that reveals a lot. But that’s what happened Sunday night when the filmmakers and stars of Emilia Perez took to the stage to accept the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture (Comedy or Musical). is.
The film’s director, Jacques Audiard, had already spilled his guts earlier in the night when accepting the Best Director award in an awkwardly translated and rather drawn-out speech. Audiard, looking like an old golfer in a porkpie hat, was speechless. “Obviously, I haven’t prepared anything,” he said through an interpreter. In what seemed like a spontaneous gesture, he motioned for his leading role, trans actress Carla Sofia Gascón, to come forward. She looked hesitant but very ready.
Gascón, speaking slowly and quietly, said she decided to wear Buddhist colors (her dress was light and dark orange). Then, gaining momentum, she declared, “Light always triumphs over darkness.” This is not exactly “There is no justice, there is no peace!”, but it is a noble sentiment. But the audience understood what she meant, and their applause motivated her to go even further. Mr. Gascón shook his head, speaking almost to himself, with an expression of sadness rather than celebration. “I have a lot to say to you.”
You can put us in jail, she said. you can beat us. But nothing can ever take away our soul, our being, our identity. This was an unintentionally beautiful expression because Gascón was talking about transgender people, but the expression may almost be talking about us. And in a way, isn’t she? “I want to tell you,” she declared, “speak up.” Because of her accent, the words sounded like an angry voice, but it was also a beautiful event. After a while, she concluded by saying: “I am who I am…not who you want.” Talk about rebellion! Her message was about the dignity and rights of transgender people, but given the timing of the award ceremony, which aired around the world two weeks before President Donald Trump’s inauguration, some of it was different. You may have heard the message contained in it. I’m going away.
Ironically, the message may have been aimed more at the companies releasing movies like “Emilia Perez” than at President Trump and the forces he represents. Because they have been resisting it as if it were someone else’s problem.
An early warning sign that the powers that be running the entertainment industry were nervous about the possibility of a Trump victory and what they would do if he did so came eight months ago, when the incendiary biopic “The Apprentice” hit theaters. It arrived at the Cannes Film Festival. The film, starring Sebastian Stan (as Trump) and Jeremy Strong (as the evil genius leader Svengali Roy Cohn), depicting the rise of Donald Trump, created such a stir that no distributor was left. caused a stir. I’ll go near it. This was a real headache for several weeks, until the idea that businesses feared a Trump victory became widespread. They didn’t want to be on the wrong side of it. They weren’t interested in releasing a movie that spotlighted the ridiculous story of how Trump became Trump (the lies, the betrayals, the worse).
“The Apprentice” finally found a distributor (Briarcliff Entertainment). However, by the time the movie was released on October 11th, interest in the movie had been so subdued that at the time I thought there was nothing more chilling about The Apprentice than the hardships it went through before the movie was released. I noticed that it wasn’t there. . You could say that this film was mostly suppressed by capitalist forces rather than political forces, but it could be almost as serious.
The story of treating The Apprentice as a movie with a scarlet letter didn’t end there. When it came time to line up the contestants for Variety magazine’s “Actors on Actors” series, there were no actors to star opposite Sebastian Stan — but no matter how good and popular he was, Given that, and given that the actors tend to stick with each other, I overwhelmingly suspect that that decision was made by the studio of the movie the actors were in. are. Nevertheless, it was disturbing to see an actor potentially effectively shunned for daring to play Donald Trump in a movie. A movie that President Trump hated.
There are other signs within the industry that companies are eager to take on President Trump. At the Sun Valley conference in July, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said his top priority as president of the United States would be to find someone friendly to mergers and acquisitions in the entertainment industry and a general climate of deregulation. suggested something. , in hindsight, it can be read as a tacit endorsement of Trump. So is Amazon’s recent announcement that Prime Video will license a documentary about incoming first lady Melania Trump, and that she will serve as executive producer. And how about this as the icing on the cake for the new era of Trump? Disgraced director Brett Ratner, accused of sexual misconduct by six women in a Los Angeles Times exposé, signs post-#MeToo director Melania on his way back to the industry. i got you. And animation studio Pixar recently announced that it would drop a transgender character from its upcoming Disney+ series Win or Lose.
Connecting the dots of these disparate events, we can glimpse a new challenge for leaders to get along culturally and financially with a government that has been openly hostile to the entertainment industry. This is an overview of the company we own. .
But now, more than ever, the industry may find itself at odds with the high-powered people who drive it. Politically speaking, the Golden Globes maintained a fairly subdued tone. The event’s historic party atmosphere was reaffirmed, and the closest it came to a “statement” was Brady Corbet’s insistence that filmmakers should make final decisions on their loftiest dreams. Even relatively edgy host Nikki Glazer avoided mentioning Blake Lively. Justin Baldoni’s Imbroglio. But that’s because this is a moment of ambiguity. After all, Trump hasn’t been president in four years, and he hasn’t been president…yet.
But let’s assume that once Trump takes office on January 20th, he will do many of the things he promised to do on his first day, or even his first week or month. Suppose he pardons the prisoners of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, takes the first steps toward handing Ukraine over to Vladimir Putin on a silver platter, and begins a plan to mass deport immigrants. . If that happens, the Academy Awards ceremony on March 2 will not be a quiet ceremony. Even if it doesn’t burn, there will be resistance and it will be lively.
And so it should be. It has become commonplace for actors and filmmakers to ridicule their acceptance speeches as political statements. Some of the ridicule is justified. Advocating on Oscar night can come across as selfish or just plain boring. But there are moments when it’s decisive. And in a culture where companies that serve no purpose other than to control information seem to be offending the political powers that be, it’s imperative that we speak up wherever we can. The point is not that Hollywood actors shape policy. It’s about protecting the arts and entertainment sector as a place where free expression can thrive. But in doing so, they may bring corporate oversight closer to the fire.
