Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 08/08/20

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Saturday, August 8, 2020

Hollywood Shuffle (Robert Townsend, 1987)

Jimmy Woodard and Robert Townsend in Hollywood Shuffle

Cast: Robert Townsend, Anne-Marie Johnson, Craigus R. Johnson, Helen Martin, Starletta DuPois, David McKnight, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Lou B. Washington, Brad Sanders, John Witherspoon, Eugene Robert Glazer, Lisa Mende, Dom Irrera. Screenplay: Robert Townsend, Keenen Ivory Wayans. Cinematography: Peter Deming. Production design: Melba Katzman Farquhar. Film editing: W.O. Garrett. Music: Udi Harpaz, Patrice Rushen.

Thirteen years ago, Vanity Fair ran an article about how Robert Townsend's Hollywood Shuffle hadn't aged in its then-30 years of existence. But in their essentials, neither the article nor the movie has aged since then. Granted, some of the movie's satiric targets, like the TV reviews of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert or the search for Eddie Murphy clones, are no longer fresh, and movie and TV stereotypes are somewhat more self-consciously maintained today. Now, Townsend would probably be lampooning the Magical Negro stereotype instead of the pimps and hoods that his comedy centers on. And Hollywood Shuffle is a little more brash and raw than might win critical favor today. Still, as a wakeup call for Black artists and for white audiences, the movie still rings true and cuts deep.