It's very fashionable to make fun of writer and director Aaron Sorkin right now, and you know what? There's good reason for that! He has written some of the most absurd stuff ever committed to film and still manages to get more stuff produced.
Recently, his film Being the Ricardos starring Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem is being promoted, so Sorkin has started doing interviews again—and it's a mess.
In an interview with the Sunday Times in the UK, where he was asked about the controversy around casting Bardem as Desi Arnaz, who was Cuban. Bardem is Spanish, of Spain. Sorkin does not like the criticism, obviously.
"This should be the last place there are walls.," he said. "Spanish and Cuban are not actable. If I was directing you in a scene and said: ‘It’s cold, you can’t feel your face.’ That’s actable. But if I said: ‘Be Cuban,’ That is not actable."
But he wasn't satisfied with stopping there. He then got into the idea of casting straight actors in gay roles.
"Nouns aren’t actable," he continued. "Gay and straight aren’t actable. You can act being attracted to someone, but can’t act gay or straight. So this notion that only gay actors should play gay characters? That only a Cuban actor should play Desi? Honestly, I think it’s the mother of all empty gestures and a bad idea."
He also told the Hollywood Reporter last month that the movie worked with a "Latina casting consultant" which is a crazy title.
"We know when we’re being demeaning," he said. "We know that Blackface is demeaning because of its historical context because you’re making ridiculous cartoon caricatures out of people. We know that Mickey Rooney with the silly piece in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and that makeup doing, silly Japanese speak, we know that’s demeaning. This is not, I felt. Having an actor who was born in Spain playing a character who was born in Cuba was not demeaning. And it wasn’t just the casting consultant who agreed, Lucy and Desi’s Cuban-American daughter didn’t have a problem with it."
Most people would probably characterize Rooney's racist act as more than "silly" but there's just so to unpack here. And here's some of what the Internet had to say about Sorkin's comments:
Yes, if being gay and straight were exactly the same, there wouldn't be a hundred years of discrimination against gay actors keeping them boxed out of those roles. But I don't think Sorkin knows how to take directions from nouns or adjectives.
The post Aaron Sorkin Shared His Opinions About Casting Gay People In Shows appeared first on The Mother of All Nerds.
Aaron Sorkin Shared His Opinions About Casting Gay People In Shows
Source: Pinoy Inquirer News
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