When the levees broke...
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CallaghanFilms
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I will.Digigenic said:
CallaghanFilms said:
*From http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showpost.php?p=668905&postcount=36
Filmjunkie677
Master of Horror
Spike Lee has and always will be a reverse-racist. Anything to lay blame on and insult the white man, Spike Lee will jump at the chance.
To quote John, this guy is a "total asshat" and I refuse to watch anything this guy associates himself with and that is rare for me because usually I could care less about people's personal life, crusades, and agendas. But this guy is a whole other story.
He critices fellow writers/filmmakers about there writing and the use of the N word in a screenplay. For people that don't know what I'm talking about, he called out Tarantino when Jackie Brown came out and called him a racist because Sam Jackson's character uses the N word 36 times. Gimme a break, that was the way Jackson's character spoke and that's the way QT is gonna write him. A writer has the freedom to write whatever he wants and to make his characters realistic as possible, so that's the way QT is gonna write.
Tarantino ain't a racist, gimme a f'n break. And now, he's blaming the white man for Katrina... If not, I'm sure thats what he's getting at.
Spike Lee should be banished from Hollywood and never be allowed to make a film again.
Okay, rant over.
To quote John, this guy is a "total asshat" and I refuse to watch anything this guy associates himself with and that is rare for me because usually I could care less about people's personal life, crusades, and agendas. But this guy is a whole other story.
He critices fellow writers/filmmakers about there writing and the use of the N word in a screenplay. For people that don't know what I'm talking about, he called out Tarantino when Jackie Brown came out and called him a racist because Sam Jackson's character uses the N word 36 times. Gimme a break, that was the way Jackson's character spoke and that's the way QT is gonna write him. A writer has the freedom to write whatever he wants and to make his characters realistic as possible, so that's the way QT is gonna write.
Tarantino ain't a racist, gimme a f'n break. And now, he's blaming the white man for Katrina... If not, I'm sure thats what he's getting at.
Spike Lee should be banished from Hollywood and never be allowed to make a film again.
Okay, rant over.
Digigenic
Well-known member
Thanks for sharing your examples Callaghan
If you've seen Spike Lee's doc, would you care to elaborate on mcgeedigital's and other people's analysis of why Spike Lee's documentary is an insult to the artform?
And among the docs that you do have listed, are there any you can recollect that were met with some degree of controversy and why?
If you've seen Spike Lee's doc, would you care to elaborate on mcgeedigital's and other people's analysis of why Spike Lee's documentary is an insult to the artform?
And among the docs that you do have listed, are there any you can recollect that were met with some degree of controversy and why?
Filmjunkie677
Master of Horror
Digigenic said:
No and No.
Okay, I lied... I enjoyed Clockers.... Before I knew about Lee and the way he thinks.
Filmjunkie677
Master of Horror
Digigenic said:
Why do you keep replying with questions?
Im not Spike Lee, so I can't answer those. Sorry.
But if I was a succesful filmmaker, I wouldn't be running my mouth, causing controversy, I'd be making films.
Respect for what? For being a racist and hatin' on the white man. Gimme a break.
Just beacuse the guy's a good filmmaker doesn't give him the right to bash and lay blame on people.
J.R. Hudson
Spirit Animal
Digigenic said:
Who Shelton is?
Is that a good thing?
Good, there's TONS to go around.NO CA$H said:
We like our mayor a lot and it took a while before we could accept the fact that he could have done a few things better as well. We were ready to point the finger outward. But point is there's not a level of government that didn't screw up royaly at some point. The thing is this is a result of rampanty corruption on the local level and laziness and ineptitude the higher up you go. State and federal aid and legislation has been tabled and sidestepped for over 40 years that would have had levees in place that would have stopped this. What work was done was inferior due to state and local officials and private citizens pocketing money, using inferior materials, and inflating false employee numbers and generating false invoices. This is just the way it works in New Orleans. To insure my car in Dallas it was $99 comprehensive. In New Orleans it was $145 liability only. "Why?" I asked the isn. agent "because of the drinking and partying?" "No" she repilied, and went on to say that the last three NOLA insurance commisioners were in jail and it costs the insurance companies a lot more to operate in New Orleans for lesgislating all the falls claims. This is how it's always been there. But it's one thing when people are getting screwed on their auto premiums and another when playing with people's lives.
... Sooooo I'm all for the blame game, as long as it is spread evenly amongst all the principle players. This was not a Natural Disaster any more than the Hurricane was the year before that turned up on our cost with a whimper. The difference is that the levees that year could withstand the flooding rains. This year they couldn't. But it was well within the scope of man to have staved off this hurricane, 80% chance if just the correct building materials were made to 99% if the legislation was passed to upgrade the levees and if the experts who said that this was coming for the last 20 or 30 years had been listened to. How anyone whose job it was to know this could ever claim that it was unforseeable is a unfathomable. Megan and I sat there during the hurricane scare a year before and watched 3 TV specials on it.
Probably. But add one part government FAILURE (not conspiracey but inpetitude and corruption) plus one part Tuskegee Experiment (who would have believed that our goverment would intentionally inject black soldiers with siphillus during vietnam) plus the nature of racial tension and inequality that is unique in New Orleans (I can elaborate later in another post if anyone is interested) and it looks less asinine and more and more like something that a group of people who got screwed real bad might come up with while trying to make sinceof this. There have been government conspiraceys that screwed black people, but that is something you can fight. A bunch of random events lining up to kill your family members and or errivicbly alter your life - in otherwords something you have no control over and could never have any control over, is much scarier from an emotional standpoint than a conspiracy ... so that's where the notion comes from.John_Hudson said:
The real place to look for conspiracy is not in making of the event happen but how it was responded to. I'm sure there were spin meetings before the response or presence of top goverment officials to figure out how to handle accusitions that this should have never happened in the first place due to their inpetitude (though not conspiracy).
FACT ... New Orleans is a bowl surrouned by the Missispi and Lake Ponchetrain. If you fill it it will flood. It's below sea level. If you burry people in the ground their caskets will float to the surface in a hard rain. Now the frenchquarter HAPPENS to be the highest part of the city. This is why the Indians chose it, why the Spanish took it from them (hence the Spanish archetecture in the French Quarter) and so on and so on. This is the reason our place was fine after the hurricane. (and before you think we are rich we paid $640 a month in what would have been slave quarters back in the day and was now a small studio). The other rich area would be Magazine Street where there are large plantation style houses and Magazine street did partially flood. CONJECTURE So the only way an intentional consipracy theory works is if you believe that someone could accurately predict just how far the water would rise and it did literallt come within a block of the French Quarter. That's pretty pinpoint accuracey for knocking down a wall and flooding a bowl shaped city ... so yeah that's pretty implausible.jaustere said:
jaustere said:
FACT: You betcha they did. There's some kind of chemical/industrial plant in the Ninth Ward right by the railroad tracks. (I what it was exatly) but the point is there were lots of pressurized canisters of various gasses inside. Now this thing was huge. Like a couple of football fields in size. I learned of it when I was souting locations for ODD squad. I met an artist who's studio (kind of a Barn) was in this industrial area and he was stuck there for the hurricane. Standing in his open air loft we looked across a road to the railroad track where this rubble from a massive building looked like a bomb hit and he explained to me what it looked and sounded like with the large gas cannisters exploding and rocketing through the air like missiles, some even flamming as this building just exploded and was demolished from the inside like a fireworks factory in Road Runner cartoon. So you bet they heard explosions.
Without seeing the documentary it's hard to know in what light he's reporting it. But if a substantial number of people that were their feel this way then it is a very important part of the story ... not because it my uncover some conspiracy but because the fact that THEY believe it is an interesting, integral, and relevant part of the story. If a bunch of people said they saw John Henkley in his true Alien form for a spilt second right before he busted a cap in Ronny, then that might be a relevant and interesting part of the story. Not because any of us would put much faith in the likelihood of this happening, but to explore why those people thought they saw that ... they couldn't deal with the trauma? lack of control? and there was an Alien on a movie poster across the street ... that would be a story. Similarly, here, and I think much more profoundly, the exploration of why poor blacks would be so willing to go there might cast light in certain dark corners that are in fact at the heart of this thing, both in the greed and incompetence that led up to it and in the apathy and corruption on all governmental levels in the response.John_Hudson said:
NOW ... AGAIN ... I have not scene this, so if he is putting it out there like some Area 51 pseudo doc designed to titillate and leave it hanging as a distinct possibility to fuel nut job theories, then that it ridiculous. If he is reporting it as a strange and legitimate part of the story - what people were there thought/think - then that's another thing. Of course a real REPORTER or JOURNALIST would say something like "While many people are adamant in this belief there has been no hard evidence to support it" or some such. But also if one or two people just said it and he left it at that I think that's OK too, but obviously open to debate as to how responsible or not that is.
So I'm on the fence about the appropriateness of including it until I see it.
anyway .... that' my more than 2¢
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J.R. Hudson
Spirit Animal
Wow Jack
That is an incredible, insightful and articulate post. Thanks for chiming in on this.
And I agree 100% on everything you just wrote:
As I previously stated, I too have not seen this. My comments are steeped only in this conversation.
As I type this; I am sitting on the front of Ernesto here in Carolina Beach; welcome to the South
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That being said, at first glance I would not give Spike the nod for creating dilligent Civil Discourse but if it can get the attention of anyone who can make a difference than that I will applaud.
Then again, having faith in them isn't very encouraging.
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Thanks for the history as well and let us hope this Documentary is not Spikes personal Soapbox, becuase that would be the greatest disservice of all.
That is an incredible, insightful and articulate post. Thanks for chiming in on this.
And I agree 100% on everything you just wrote:
As I previously stated, I too have not seen this. My comments are steeped only in this conversation.
As I type this; I am sitting on the front of Ernesto here in Carolina Beach; welcome to the South
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That being said, at first glance I would not give Spike the nod for creating dilligent Civil Discourse but if it can get the attention of anyone who can make a difference than that I will applaud.
Then again, having faith in them isn't very encouraging.
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Thanks for the history as well and let us hope this Documentary is not Spikes personal Soapbox, becuase that would be the greatest disservice of all.
Filmjunkie677 said:
Yikes - those are some powerful assertations!
For the record, I'm not the world's biggest Spike Lee fan but I think that some of his films have said some interesting things and were well executed.
I don't know him personally and as such can't legitimately comment on his "reverse racisim".
There are many colorful characters in our business and making controversial statements seems to be par for the course regardless of whether or not they coincide with our beliefs. Many people (not myself) might include QT in this racially charged mix as well, given his frequent use of the N word - regardless of the fact that he has gone on record as saying that by using it in an excessive/shocking manor he hopes to take the power away from it's ugly nature/backstory.
That said, perhaps it is Spike Lee's exact hope that stirring things up a little will keep fresh in peoples minds, something that he feels very strongly about. (I'm not comparing them as filmmakers but Spielberg certainly did that with Schindler's List.)
dmc
Filmjunkie677
Master of Horror
dmc said:
Are they? I'm just speaking my mind.
dmc said:
I agree.
dmc said:
Either do I, but if you don't think he's a reverse-racist, well I don't know what to tell ya.
dmc said:
Ugh, I don't think he uses it for shock value, thats absurd, he uses it because thats the way his characters talk.
dmc said:
Something he feels strongly about? That the white man sucks.... Yeah, thats something to feel strongly about and believe in. Sure. Okay.
Filmjunkie677
Master of Horror
True. Good point, Blaine.
Filmjunkie677 said:
That's cool - maybe you'll think of something.
Filmjunkie677 said:
I absolutely agree. QT writes (one of the best IMO) true to his characters. The net effect however could be deemed as shocking or excessive by some some folks. He himself has discussed this subject at length.
Filmjunkie677 said:
Possibly, your statement above is somewhat oversimplified (It certainly has a very defensive posture about it). If in fact that is what SL is professing then I won't be putting too much stock in what his message is. Regardless I think that this is heading in an all together different place - probably not appropriate within this forum.
Peace.
dmc
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