← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Lewis Wetzel
Thread ID: 8694 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2003-08-02
2003-08-02 06:44 | User Profile
The Coen brothers. They're the only ones I can think of who are willing to portray their co-ethnics in really negative terms.
Miller's Crossing deals with a Prohibition-era Irish gangland boss whose Jewish mistress is pressuring him to protect her crooked bookie brother. The boss's refusal to let an Italian underboss rub out the bookie, who had been defrauding him, provokes a war. The movie's protagonist, the Irish boss's right-hand-man, tries to infiltrate the Italian boss's gang, but to prove that he's really "turned" he's tasked to locate and kill the bookie. In one of the most spectacular scenes of craven cowardice ever committed to film, the bookie wails, weeps and begs on his knees for his life. The protagonist takes pity on him on the condition that the bookie leave town and never come back. Days later the bookie reappears, blackmailing the protagonist with the fact of his continued existence. He concedes,
"It's true, you didn't kill me..."
"But what have I done for you lately?" retorts the hero.
I can't praise John Turturro enough for his performance. His greasy, ratlike demeanor, his lack of inhibition in the scene where he begs (he's as unwilling to talk about the scene now as Ned Beatty is about the "pig" scene from Deliverance), the mixture of choked rage, shame, and malignance when he contemplates the wringer he'll put the protagonist through - all make his character one of the most vivid villains of recent times. I should add that he's a homosexual whose sister apparently tried to "cure" him in his youth by seducing him. If you haven't seen it, check it out.
And to prove this wasn't an anomaly, I refer you to Barton Fink. There the hero of the title, again played by Turturro, is an up-and-coming 1940's playwrite based on real-life Jewish playwrite Clifford Odets. He's hired as a screenwriter by a Hollywood studio because of his reputation. Fink has a reputation as the "voice of the common man," but it's clear from the start that he's a self-absorbed intellectual who'd rather talk about the common man than listen to an actual common man (John Goodman) who's his neighbor at his hotel. In one scene, where he goes dancing at a club to celebrate his progress on a screenplay, he flips out when one of the soldiers who fill the club (it's WWII) asks to dance with his partner. He begins hectoring the crowd about how he's an "artist" who "creates," while they know nothing about the "life of the mind." All the while, the fighting men shout "get off the dance floor, 4F!" (that's medical exemption from the service for you foreign readers - Fink wears thick glasses).
There are several other Jewish characters in the movie. All the studio executives are Jewish, and all are variously loud, fast-talking, tasteless, obnoxious and exploitative. The one really sympathetic character is a Gentile woman; and Goodman, as the ordinary joe with an extraordinary secret, manages to give Fink some real-world experience in a way designed to blast through his self-absorption.
These movies hardly make up for all the Spielberg/Reiner/Sorkin/Stone crap, but it's good to know there's at least something on the other side of the scale.
2003-08-02 19:10 | User Profile
"Well, Weinstein made LOTR, and he has to be given some credit for not forcing Morgan Freeman as Gandalf on the production."
Nonsense! Harvey Weinstein only provided the seed money to Peter Jackson to explore production of LOTR. When Jackson discovered Weinstein intended to bloat LOTR production company with useless members of his tribe, force the casting of semitically correct box office stars, and demanded that Jackson compress all episodes into a single movie, Jackson refused to direct LOTR.
Jackson then begged and borrowed to regain control of his creation and paid Weinstein all of his blood money plus interest. Weinstein's still threatened to sue and Jackson was forced to give the Weinstein 10% off the top of all LOTR profits in perpetuity.
Weinstein did nothing but fund initial pre-production funding of LOTR, then tried to destroy it. Jackson and his almost exclusively non Jew crew and actors managed to get LOTR released despite Weinstein.
2003-08-02 20:38 | User Profile
Welcome Relevant1, and an interesting response.
I had often wondered how a relative unknown like Peter Jackson could come to be helming the LOTR trilogy, and even more so how he managed to retain artistic control thereby preventing its degeneration into a disneyesque vehicle for superannuated action heroes.
But if not die Gebrueder Weinstein, then whom? To the best of my my knowledge New Line Studios is not not known as a hotbed of Anglo-Saxon enthusiasts.
Where did the money come from, do you know?
2003-08-04 01:07 | User Profile
Hi dan
I know this is further off topic, but it is important to Jackson, and those who honor the artistic creation of the LOTR trilogy that the Jews Zaentz and Weinstein brothers not get artistic or creative credit for this great work of art. I cannot readily find my authoritative sources, but I'll post them when I find them. I know I kept a major write up from Time which also revealed how Saul Zaentz and the Weinsteins were trying to lard up Jackson's masterpiece with members of the tribe, and fought Jackson to pervert his vision.
Googing found me this on your question on how New Line got involved:
..."Weinstein grudgingly agreed to give Jackson three weeks to try to find a new backer -- with several seemingly prohibitive restrictions. Among these demands were that Miramax's investment be repaid within 72 hours of a signed agreement; that the two Weinsteins share executive producer credit with Zaentz on any film that resulted; and that the brothers receive a hefty 5 percent of the gross earnings of any and all films.
With the clock ticking, in late summer 1998 Jackson's representatives began shopping the two scripts and an animatronics tape (a reel of storyboards accompanied by actors' voice-overs) to major studios and a few top producers who held significant sway with certain studios. Quickly, nearly every potential patron summarily passed on the "Lord of the Rings" project, citing issues of cost, scope or Jackson's ability to pull it off. Only two companies -- New Line and Polygram Filmed Entertainment -- were willing to hear Jackson's full pitch for the project. "
[url=http://www.theonering.net/perl/newsview/8/1005874795]http://www.theonering.net/perl/newsview/8/1005874795[/url]
On thing is certain. Peter Jackson's genius and the almost exclusively Anglo Saxon cast made the Jews Saul Zaentz and Weinstein hundreds of millions without their having to do anything except the usual Jew money lending.
2003-09-10 21:44 | User Profile
To this I would add that the Brothers Coen (Cohen?) also tend to portray Gentiles sympathetically. Or, as good as it gets, anyway. There is of course the usual stuff about Whites being goofy or perhaps dense, but most of those characteristics exist on the surface of the characters. Dig down, and see that they are good-hearted people, nicely quirky instead of weird, or simply suffering from circumstances beyond their control. I'm thinking of Raising Arizona and Fargo here. This is in direct contravention of the usual Jewish portrayal of Gentiles: as slick and pretty on the surface, but really hollow and evil inside, like cyborgs of some sort. Or, as goofy and dense, but unredeemably so.
Man. Why the flip by Joel and Ethan?
2003-09-19 08:52 | User Profile
Perhaps the Coen brother aren't really yids, only posers?