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isee-right-throughme · 7 years

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C’mon guys. Do better.

Look, I have been a huge fan of SNL since I was in sixth grade. I’ve rarely missed live shows since then, and I even saw it live with Bill Hader in 2014. I have bought numerous books about it and the players that come from it. One of my all-time favorite books is Darrell Hammond’s memoir. I used to say SNL was my form of church because I religiously watched it every Saturday, and I meditated on it after each episode. What was good? What was bad? What timing was off? Which jokes could I repeat to my family and they would laugh? I loved every minute of it. 2008 was a big year for SNL, and I was there to watch it all. They even had Thursday episodes because the election was so important. Their viewership skyrocketed, and suddenly, I could talk to everyone about it.

My high praise and love for the show started decreasing when Donald Trump hosted in 2015. This was before the Hollywood Access tapes were found, but this was still during his Islamophobic remarks, his overt racism of Mexicans, and the sexual assault of his ex-wife. There were many things wrong with Donald Trump at this point, but NBC loved him. Their viewership was up again! Everyone wanted to watch the celebrity monkey attempt the presidency. Hillary was gonna win, no question, so why not have the Orangutang up on stage? Maybe because he’s a terrible human being that hurt million of people with his words? Maybe because we shouldn’t have normalized hate speech and racism and discrimination and ableism? Why give him the platform? He did not run a single ad campaign. He didn’t have to. NBC gave him the time. Now, of course, SNL cannot predict the future and did not know what was to come. But maybe they shouldn’t have gone there in the first place.

I did not watch that episode. That was one of the only episodes I chose to ignore entirely and not watch any clips or listen to any sound bites the next day. I did not know what to do next. Should I continue watching my beloved show? Comedy was such an important part of my life, and I could not leave it behind. Should I forgive Lorne and everyone for allowing this racist sexist homophobic lying pig to host my favorite, beloved show?

Because I’m white and privileged, I had the advantage of being able to look past this episode. Because of my tradition and loyalty to the show, I knew I couldn’t give it up cold turkey.

And then last month Casey Affleck hosted. Again, I did not watch any clips (except for Kate McKinnon’s Love Actually as Hillary sketch because that went viral and I had to watch because I’m weak). I ignored the episode. Casey Affleck should not be normalized. The women he sexually harassed (if not assaulted) lost their jobs for speaking out, but the man who committed these crimes is going to be Oscar nominated. I was so tired of the blatant hypocrisy and sexism that run our daily lives that I started getting mad. I was mad at SNL for not holding these people accountable. In any other job title, these men would have lost their jobs (probably not because of how sexist and ridiculous society is as a whole but their actions would hold more weight in their fields). Hollywood always turns a blind eye towards sexual assault. SNL can pretend it’s avant-garde and edgy but it’s Hollywood just the same. You can make a thousand jokes about the Catholic Church covering up sexual assault of minors and child molestation, but you’re literally doing the same thing.

And then tonight, we have the beloved Aziz Ansari give a wonderful monologue about the current state of the US with some clever lines and tidbits. But then he equates Donald Trump and Chris Brown. And he’s absolutely right. People looked the other way for various reasons. For Brown it was because he was once a talented artist. He was welcomed back to award shows later and he sold albums for years after he committed a heinous crime. Donald Trump is accused of sexual assault over a dozen times, and is on tape admitting to it, and he becomes the President of the United States. So yeah, a lot of people looked away.

But then in this same episode where Ansari makes this great analogy, you have Big Sean performing. There’s no mention of his 2011 legal battle where he and another man held a 17-year-old girl against her will and sexually assaulted her. Sure, the charges were lessened when he pleaded guilty to “unlawful imprisonment.” That’s still a really big deal. And we’re all just going to forget about that? We’re all just going to let him take the stage at SNL and pretend it didn’t happen? How could you have this analogy in the monologue and then allow this man to take the stage?

But then the question becomes: where do we draw the line? How many hosts in the past have been accused of sexual assault? Domestic violence? Racism? Homophobia? Sexism?

When Andrew Dice Clay hosted in 1990, Nora Dunn told the press she was boycotting the show. Now there were some complications with this, but the female cast was hounded by calls from the public of how on earth they could support this man and stay with the show? Now, I have an affinity toward Lorne Michaels because I think he’s a comedic genius and just a genius overall, but this was all on him. He’s a show runner. He’s THE show runner. He should have taken over and had Steve or Tom come in and host that week. This was not about the women of the show taking a stand because they have contracts and this is their dream job. This is all Lorne. This is where he should have protected the cast.

He should have done that with Cheeto.

But there’s more to viewership than there is to moral conduct.

My sister is really good at cutting TV shows off when they promote something she does not like. She stopped watching Ellen (WHO CANNOT LOVE ELLEN DEGENERES?) after she had Kobe Bryant on. I agree with her boycott completely because there should have been no normalization of Kobe Bryant, especially by someone like Ellen. So my sister stopped watching her show. A devout viewer who would watch clips online and watch it every day at the gym, stopped cold turkey.

I do not have that ability. SNL has become a part of my personality. I have memorized sketches and characters’ catchphrases. Kristen Wiig and Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and Nasim Pedrad and Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones and Bill Hader and Kenan Thompson and Colin Jost and Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon and Darrell Hammond and Rachel Dratch and Bobby Moynihan and Fred Armisen and Jason Sudeikas and Will Forte and Gilda Radner and Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi and Eddie Murphy and Sasheer Zamata and Aidy Bryant and Andy Samberg and Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon and David Spade and Taran Killam and Tracy Morgan and Phil Hartman are all home to me. SNL is a comfort to me. But this week I was disappointed, again.

I think it might be because I hold SNL to such a high standard. I hold it like a religion. But it’s not perfect. It has its flaws. Tonight, they had an extended joke about the FriendZone, which is literally a joke from like 2013 that has come back to haunt us, and I sat there thinking, “This is it? During one of the most tumultuous presidencies in modern times, this is what we are offering? Another sexist point of view where the ‘nice guy’ loses?” It’s tiring. It’s tiring to grow and change and not have your favorite show change with you. I sometimes think SNL and I are connected in some way, but that’s pretty big of me to claim because the show literally could survive without me. I do not contribute much to it.

Should I just continue to call them out every time they have a host like Casey Affleck or Cheeto of America? Should I stop watching entirely? Should I stop expecting so much from a weekly variety show based on a network that I’ve devoted probably a sixteenth of my life to?

An essay like this is supposed to end in some gigantic flourish where I write off stunningly and everyone is impressed with all the points I made.

But that’s not how this one will end.

Should I stop watching this show?

I don't know.

#snl #saturday night live #trump #trump snl #trump nbc #cheeto #snl big sean #big sean #casey affleck #snl casey affleck #snl aziz ansari #tw #i'm sorry this is so long

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aboutcaseyaffleck · 3 years

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Actor Casey Affleck Reflects On The Past And 'The World To Come'

The last time I saw Casey Affleck was after an 8:30 a.m. Sundance Film Festival screening of “Manchester by the Sea,” which left my colleagues and I so emotionally drained we were pretty much useless for the rest of the day. Affleck finds this very funny. “Oh man, that’s awesome,” he laughs. “That was a tough screening. At Sundance I’m usually just going to sleep at 8 a.m.” We’re talking on the phone a few days after the festival’s virtual premiere of his latest movie, “The World to Come,” which made its Sundance debut last month under very different circumstances. “It’s so strange doing these things sitting in front of your computer,” he sighs.

Directed by Mona Fastvold, “The World to Come” is a powerful period piece about a forbidden love affair between pioneer women played by Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby, set in upstate New York during the early months of 1856. Affleck produced the picture, in which he plays a supporting role as Waterston’s uncomprehending husband, and he did his best to soldier through a crowded Zoom Q&A after the Sundance screening, with results pleasant enough, but nonetheless missing that in-person festival magic. “I used to love going to film festivals and talking to journalists and seeing all the movies and talking to other filmmakers,” he laments. “Sitting here alone in a little office in my house is such a drag. But it was nice to know that the movie was getting seen, at least.”

While big brother Ben plays Batman in studio pictures, Casey has exhibited a restless independent streak ever since he was a student at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. (Our ninth-grade classes competed against each other in the Mass. High School Drama Guild Competition. His won, perhaps unsurprisingly.) A longtime friend of the Brattle Theatre and former creative advisor for the Independent Film Festival Boston, the younger Affleck has always seemed more at home in indies. Not a lot of actors would follow an Oscar-winning role in “Manchester by the Sea” with a microbudget art film like “A Ghost Story.” But then his internalized, minimalist acting style is often at odds with the concerns of contemporary blockbusters. There’s a weird dissonance watching something like Disney’s hokey Chatham sea adventure “The Finest Hours,” with Affleck going full Montgomery Clift while surrounded by CGI silliness.

“The World to Come” is the most ambitious project yet from Affleck’s Sea Change Media, which partnered with Pamela Koffler and Christine Vachon’s legendary NYC indie institution Killer Films for the arduous production that began with a conversation between Affleck and novelist Ron Hansen nearly a decade ago. “When I did ‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford’ I got to know Ron Hansen, just because I loved the book so much. Ron has a very unique talent for writing 19th century language. He’s just from another era. I asked him if he had something he wanted to work on together, and I thought he would send me one of his things. Instead, he sent me this story by Jim Shepard. It was beautiful. I said, why don’t you and Jim write the script? And they took about six years, but it came together beautifully. Good things come to those who wait, I guess.”

The film eventually shot in Romania with a break built into the schedule to accommodate the changing seasons that are so crucial to the movie’s rugged, outdoor textures. “We were way out in Transylvania, out in the mountains,” Affleck explains. “We were just in some valley and they built a couple of farmhouses. I like being far away in a new place. It makes you feel outside of your life. And I love working in weather. There are so many aspects of moviemaking that are artificial, but when there’s extreme weather, it’s real. I did this Disney movie about a boat rescue, and it was, like, December in friggin’ Quincy and they were just soaking us with water every single take. There’s not a lot that you have to quote-unquote act. You’re just standing there, teeth-chattering, shivering, just being.” This reminds me of the scene in “Manchester” when he and Lucas Hedges have an argument walking in the blistering cold and can’t remember where they parked. “I forgot about that one,” he laughs.

I’d never say so on the phone, but I consider Affleck’s performance as Lee Chandler in “Manchester by the Sea” among the finest I’ve seen in my 22 years of reviewing films, worthy of discussion alongside Brando’s Terry Malloy in “On the Waterfront” in its aching, inchoate longing. Lee holds his grief somewhere very private and dear, as if to begin to forgive himself would be an act of betrayal. The movie nails a gruff, emotional constipation popular among men of a certain stripe, especially in New England. (My mother offered my favorite review of the film: “Why don’t they just talk to each other? Jesus, this is like watching you and your father.”) Words don’t come easily to most of Affleck’s movie characters, but he chafes at the description of them as inarticulate. “It’s funny, I find the characters in ‘Manchester’ to be sometimes very articulate,” he argues. “There’s misunderstandings, but they end up communicating what’s inside.”

“The World to Come” is rife with such mixed signals and miscommunications, about which co-star Katherine Waterston raved during the Zoom Q&A after the Sundance screening. “It was so much fun to play the scenes with Casey,” she said. “A lot of these scenes are written as dances, where somebody tries to reach out and engage and they’re misunderstood. Inarticulacy is a very interesting thing to see in film. The failed attempts. Failed communications. It’s actually fun to play those things. You don’t know what the other person’s going to throw at you. It keeps it really alive on set. Mona and I felt if we had the money we could have kept shooting this thing for months, because the scenes were so much fun to explore.”

Affleck agrees. “When Katherine’s character writes in her journal or she starts talking to Vanessa, they have this beautiful, expressive way of speaking to each other,” he enthuses, whereas his character “says what he’s gotta say in as few words as possible. He’s very brusque and curt, which I enjoyed. The way that he talks is the communication equivalent when he gives her a birthday gift of sardines and a tin of raisins.”

Indeed, her increasingly florid diary entries — originally intended as a ledger to keep track of the farm’s monthly expenses — become the heartbeat of the film, providing an emotional release otherwise suppressed by the rigid formality of the era and the ugly drudgery of day-to-day farm life. “The World to Come” is ultimately a movie about the need to share our stories, and how through telling them we make sense of ourselves. As producer Koffler explains in the press notes, “Part of the film’s vision is to dramatize a very basic human impulse: to create, to connect, to say ‘I was here, and I mattered.’”

This has become a recurring theme in Affleck’s recent work. In 2019, he wrote, directed and starred in “Light of My Life,” a little-seen but strikingly tense post-apocalyptic road movie about a father and daughter hiding out in the wilderness after a pandemic has wiped out most of the women in the world. The film begins with Affleck telling the little girl a bedtime story that runs almost 13 minutes and sneakily sets up the movie’s major themes. Then in last month’s well-acted but regrettably soggy “Our Friend,” he starred as real-life journalist Matthew Teague, whose soul-baring Esquire story about his wife’s struggle with cancer became a national phenomenon.

“Matt Teague wrote that article and then wanted it made into a movie as his way of processing everything that had happened,” the actor elaborates. “You transform pain into other things as you go through life. That was all him working through it. I like stories about storytellers and I like stories within stories. Obviously, I wrote and directed a movie that starts with a 12-minute bedtime story. I love that. I know that other people don’t love it as much as I do, so I have to be careful about it.”

That kind of love led to last summer’s “Stories From Tomorrow,” a project initiated during lockdown by Affleck and his schoolteacher mom Christine, encouraging children to send in poems and short stories to be read on social media by celebrities like Matt Damon and Jon Hamm, as well as his “The World to Come” co-stars Waterston and Kirby. “That was something I started out at the very beginning of the quarantine as a small project to encourage kids to write creatively, because I know it can be a great way of processing anxiety and working through feelings that you aren’t really talking about or aren’t aware that you’re having. It wasn’t something I thought would go on forever; once the kids are back in school that ought to be where they should be doing all that kind of work. But while they were sitting at home, I thought it would be a good way to get their attention off the awful news and into something more imaginative. And I also got a chance to read all these super-cool stories! Really creative stuff that kids sent from all around the world.”

Finally, as a Boston publication it would be dereliction of duty not to mention the hysterical Dunkin Donuts commercial parody from when Affleck hosted “Saturday Night Live” in 2016, so dead-on in its depiction of a local 'regulah customah' that on one of my critics’ poll ballots that year I tried to nominate the sketch for Best Documentary. Alas, the performer shoots down a pet theory I’ve been hanging onto ever since, that the dirtbag Boston guy in the Bruins hat is secretly a grown-up version of Affleck’s scene stealing, bug-swallowing Morgan from “Good Will Hunting.”

“I hadn’t thought about that, dude. That’s really funny. It never crossed my mind." He pauses before confiding, "I wasn’t that great on SNL… I just wasn’t all that funny on the skits, because it’s live and you’re reading the cue cards and it was my first time. But when we went to make that little pre-recorded short film of the Dunkin’ Donuts ad, I really felt like that was my wheelhouse there. I could’ve played that character in a movie. I could have gone to work and played him every single day, and I would have had a blast. That was really fun to do. I would love to do another one of those. That would be funny to see that character again.”

I bet that guy’s got some stories.

“The World To Come” is now in theaters and will be available via video on demand Tuesday, March 2.

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#casey affleck #the world to come #quote #photo #movies

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