WTF happened to Hollywood?

[mystery-ak]

WTF happened to Hollywood?
by James Rosen
 | June 19, 2018 12:00 AM



“I haven’t seen so many losers since my last fight at Madison Square Garden.”

Scattered laughs from a strip-club audience greet Jake LaMotta’s opening line as the bloated former champion, portrayed by Robert De Niro in "Raging Bull," makes his standup comedy debut. Released in 1980, director Martin Scorsese’s black-and-white biopic earned De Niro the Academy Award for Best Actor. He turned in a career-defining triumph, one that encompassed both brilliant onscreen delivery and off-screen physical transformations to match LaMotta’s own. The film has consistently ranked at or near the top of all lists of the greatest movies ever made.

In his post-boxing spiral into violence and despair, however, Jake LaMotta hardly possessed the wit or intellect of a standup comedian. Rather, as "Raging Bull" depicts, when confronted by a heckler, the semi-literate ex-pug can offer only the lowest, most graceless and unimaginative retort, favored solely by those too stupid and crass to think of anything else: “F*** you.”

With his performance at the Tony Awards Sunday night, Robert De Niro, America’s most prominent Method actor, took that final step downward and became Jake LaMotta.

Twice, standing before Broadway’s leading lights, De Niro bluntly exhorted the president of the United States to perform upon himself what the late Tom Wolfe used to call “a quaint anatomical impossibility.”

And the Broadway Swells — stewards of the American stage tradition, inheritors of Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim — gave a standing ovation.

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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/after-robert-de-niros-trump-tonys-moment-a-question-wtf-happened-to-hollywood

[Sanguine]

Good article.

[goatprairie]

I've got a few observations (which I could be 100% wrong about):

Hollyweird and other types of celebrities today are totally unafraid to make jackasses out of themselves by publicly insulting the president or half the American public. Not only De Niro, remember when Julia Roberts said Republican comes inbetween rattlesnake and repulsive or something similar?
Most actors today operate independently and don't care if the studio heads agree with their outbursts or not.
This in almost totally opposite of the old studio system where actors were careful not to be controversial. Certainly, no big name actor ever got on a Broadway stage and told the president to eff off. Or maybe old time actors just had more integrity than today's actors.
And in the old days many of the heads of studios were pretty conservative themselves as far as politics.  And many big stars were conservatives or at least Republicans. They did not try to make movies that were considered anti-American or cast one or the other major party in a bad light.
Today many studio heads,  like most actors, are very liberal politically and deliberately try to make films that offend half the public (we know which half) and don't care if they suffer financial losses or not.
There was a slew of movies about the Iraq War made in the 2000s. They were all against it,  and they all flopped at the box office.  This blows a huge hole in the idea that Hollyweird heads only care about making money.  The anti-war movies all flopped, but they kept making them. 
Another point: I like older movies a lot more than I like modern movies.  Maybe that is something to be said for the old studio system which many actors hated.
Maybe there should be another studio that puts out movies that the pro-American half of America likes.

[dfwgator]

Hollywood cares more about foreign box office than American box office.

[RoosGirl]

[WingNot]

What Happened to Hollywood?

Relax. Frankie went to Hollywood that's what.

[goatprairie]

Who is the goofy creep on the right?