The
NYT is helping Oliver Stone lay the foundation for the excuse he's planning to use when his movie "Alexander" bombs. (I pointed out Stone's plan
here.) Here's the NYT:
As the culture wars rage anew between social conservatives and their liberal counterparts, Hollywood is preparing to break fresh ground by releasing a high-budget epic film in which the lead character - a classic, and classical, action hero - is passionately in love with a man.
In Oliver Stone's three-hour [$155 million] drama, "Alexander," Colin Farrell, as the fourth-century Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great, has a number of tender love scenes with his best friend, Hephaistion, played by a long-haired Jared Leto.
We're being warned not to give in to our impulse to laugh as these two dopey actors -- in big close-ups and, we're told, heavy eye make-up -- declare their love in "tender" scenes.
Don't laugh or you're homophobic! Yes, but what if the scene is laughably BAD, as tender love scenes in Hollywood ancient history movies usually are?
No, you have to sit there and behave solemnly, appreciating the lesson in diversity and history that Oliver Stone is now going to teach you or you're a homophobe, you bad person! Now, just a minute
, Oliver Stone is going to teach me history? Haven't we been there before?
[T]he director, who critics say took liberties with historical fact in films like "J.F.K." and "Nixon," said that his choice with "Alexander" was to hew to the record.
"I don't want to corrupt history," Mr. Stone said in an interview. "I don't want to say, 'How do I make this work for a modern audience?' Alexander to me is a perfect blend of male-female, masculine-feminine, yin-yang. He could communicate with both sides of his nature. When you get to modern-day focus groups, to who'll get offended in Hawaii or Maine, you can't get out of it."
Oh, yeah, that sounds really historically accurate. The Greeks with their yin-yang philosophy and their self-help books about "communicat[ing] with both sides of [your] nature." What's
feminine about Alexander? I mean, even assuming he had sex with men, what's
feminine about that? I love the way Stone is lecturing us, as if we are too backward to tolerate homosexuality, when he's relying on the stereotype that men who have sex with men are
feminine. Are gay men supposed to be so damned pleased a big expensive movie is
including them that they have to appreciate the way Oliver Stone defines them? And in the end, it will all be about Oliver Stone, won't it?
Mr. Stone said he was concerned that there might be a backlash. "I'd be naïve not to be concerned, in America, anyway," he said. "I didn't know there would be a parallel situation going on."
The parallel situation Mr. Stone refers to is that in the wake of the presidential election and the passage of prohibitions on gay marriage in a number of states, homosexuality has resurfaced as a focus of debate and controversy among cultural critics.
Oh, Oliver Stone will cry: I'm being politically
persecuted! Ooh, the
backlash! How was I to have known, when I set out to provide this useful history lesson, that there would be a -- gasp! --
political situation? Oh, no! So if you're not right-wing, and you wanted Kerry to win, you better get out there right away and see my movie and applaud me. And don't you
dare laugh, because laughing means you're a homophobe.
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