Get in, loser, we're going hunting for double standards
This week on Jacob’s Letter: Universal cancels a movie amid political backlash, Disney unveils its grand plan for its new streaming service, Tyler Childers puts out another fantastic album, and the “Fast & Furious” franchise has some squabbles.
Welcome back to Jacob’s Letter, a free pop culture newsletter full of puns and badly-PhotoShopped dog photos. This week’s pop culture news pales in comparison to news of the three mass shootings that happened in America over the last two weeks, with combined dozens dead and more injured in Gilroy, Calif., El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio. To donate to those victims, go here for Gilroy, here for El Paso and here for Dayton. If you’re an Alamo Drafthouse fan, you can donate to the above funds by purchasing tickets through their app.
But those shootings, as tragic as they are, have already been used for political posturing, and in one instance, has affected the pop culture world. Read the next section for an example.
Universal calls off ‘The Hunt’
Amid news of three mass shootings within a week, plus conservative backlash and a few tweets from the American president, Universal Studios and Blumhouse have collectively decided to cancel the release of their upcoming satirical social thriller film “The Hunt.”
"While Universal Pictures had already paused the marketing campaign for The Hunt, after thoughtful consideration, the studio has decided to cancel our plans to release the film," the studio said in a statement Saturday. "We stand by our filmmakers and will continue to distribute films in partnership with bold and visionary creators, like those associated with this satirical social thriller, but we understand that now is not the right time to release this film."
How did we get here? Let’s backtrack.
A few weeks ago, I included the teaser trailer for Universal Studios/Blumhouse’s “The Hunt” in this newsletter’s “Trailer Park” section. It was a short, one-minute clip that acted as a fake advertisement for a hunting getaway vacation that gave off strong “The Most Dangerous Game” vibes.
So, in short, a riff on a story that’s been around at least since that short story’s publication in 1924. I had to read the story in high school English, and I’m betting you did, too.
Last week, the full-length trailer for “The Hunt” dropped, revealing the “Most Dangerous Game” 2019 update: The 12 folks being hunted (including Betty Gilpin, Emma Roberts, Justin Hartley, Ethan Suplee, Ike Barinholtz and Sturgill Simpson) are so-called “deplorables” and “MAGA types” being tracked down by “elites” like Hilary Swank and Glenn Howerton. Edgy, but not the most crazy riff on this formula — “The Purge” series exists, after all.
Then, the shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio happened within 24 hours of each other on Aug. 3 and 4. In both shootings, a lone, white, male shooter intentionally shot and killed dozens of people and injured dozens more in public spaces — a Walmart in El Paso, a bar in Dayton. Earlier that same week, a lone, white, male shooter killed four people and injured more at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, Calif.
All of this led to Universal pulling all promotional materials for the film out of sensitivity to the tragic news, while still planning to release “The Hunt” on its intended date of Sept. 27.
Then the president tweeted about the movie (not by name, but it’s pretty obvious which film he’s talking about here):
Let’s put aside the semantic issue that “elites” and “deplorables” are adjectives and not races. The president tweeted this after the publication of a Fox News report about “The Hunt” that called the film “demented and evil” and heavily sourced a Hollywood Reporter article detailing the film’s script, which includes the following exchange:
"Did anyone see what our ratf***er-in-chief just did?" one character asks early in the screenplay for The Hunt, a Universal Pictures thriller set to open Sept. 27. Another responds: "At least The Hunt's coming up. Nothing better than going out to the Manor and slaughtering a dozen deplorables."
To be fair, that dialogue is hackneyed and waaayy over-the-top. This is Blumhouse, the same studio that financed “Ma” and “The Visit.” Subtext is not their thing. The original title for “The Hunt” was apparently “Red State, Blue State.” This film very well could have just been a bad B-movie. But maybe we’ll never know.
The president was also probably swayed by an Ingraham Angle segment Fox News did a few days later on the film, where Raymond Arroyo asks the viewer to “consider the cultural impact of a movie like this- that you should kill your political adversaries.”
There’s no comment in that clip from Arroyo or Ingraham on the fact that at a rally back in May, the president jokingly encouraged the shootings of migrants, which is the type of anti-immigration rhetoric that the El Paso shooter explicitly evokes in his “manifesto,” let alone our commander-in-chief’s previous comments about murdering someone on Fifth Avenue and getting away with it, or how the leader of the free world continues to insinuate harm against his political rivals, but I digress.
After all of this, Universal and Blumhouse collectively decided to cancel the release of “The Hunt” effective immediately.
Canceling films or delaying TV episodes in light of current events is nothing new. One of the more memorable examples is “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” postponing its episode about a school shooting because of Columbine. Promotional materials for the first “Spider-Man” movie were pulled after 9/11 because they prominently featured the Twin Towers. After everything that happened in Gilroy and El Paso and Dayton this month, it was a prudent move to cease promotional material for “The Hunt.” It would be insensitive not to. But that’s not the issue.
The issue is, it seems that the film would not have been completely canceled had it not been for the amount of conservative hypocritical pearl-clutching over the violent and objectionable content of a film nobody’s even seen yet, while using the murders of dozens of people as an excuse.
“The Hunt” could have turned out to be another Fall Movie Season dud that nobody would have heard of had it not been for Twitter and Fox News. Or, it could have been a great social horror film like Blumhouse’s “Get Out,” with a bait-and-switch premise that actually champions the hunted (just a wild guess on my part based on two minutes of trailer footage: The Hunt is itself a manipulation of both the deplorables and the elite by an unseen entity, which only exists to sow dissension among the masses as a way to keep everyone in line. This forces the elites and deplorables to band forces to target the real evil). We may never know at this point.
I don’t recall the same amount of outcry about “Us,” a violent film about (in one reading) the horrors of the haves lording over the have-nots. Nobody was up in arms about “John Wick: Chapter 3,” one of the most violent films of the year so far, in which Keanu Reeves designs creative ways to kill multiple people who are hunting him. “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw” gets gleefully violent in parts, but it’s currently the No. 1 movie in America and nobody’s bating an eye. Among all of the dialogue I’ve read about the way excessive violence is used in “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” I haven’t seen any conservative voices rise up and claim their sensibilities were offended by the end of that film.
In the wake of these shootings, this administration is using pop culture and media and video games as the scapegoat for what happened in Gilroy and in El Paso and in Dayton, despite the fact that none of the shooters mentioned films or video games as the things that emboldened their decisions. Instead, they cited “the Hispanic invasion of Texas” and the Christchurch shooting (El Paso). They kept “rape lists” and “kill lists” and embraced fringe, extremist politics (Dayton). They read both white supremacist and Islamic extremist texts and sought to target places of worship and political institutions (Gilroy). So far, none of them have been linked with anything resembling a “mental illness.”
But that didn’t stop conservative politicians from making video games or movies or “mental illness” or pop culture the boogeyman in order to avoid owning up to their own words. It’s much easier to do that than to acknowledge your own words and rhetoric may have contributed to the radicalization of a domestic terrorist.
At this point, Walmart has said it will stop showing violent video game imagery in its stores but will keep selling guns. In Texas, gun laws will become more lenient starting Sept. 1. Divisive and violent rhetoric still dominates our political conversations on the left and the right. One movie is not going to “inflame and cause chaos,” at least, not any more than has already happened.
But we’ll have one less violent film in theaters this fall. Surely that will stop the next mass shooter.
Music review: A Kentucky castle
There must be something in the water in Kentucky. Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson and Tyler Childers all have roots in the state, and all have taken the country world by storm in the last five years. With Childers’ second record “Country Squire,” he further builds his country/bluegrass empire and establishes his bonafides as a songwriter.
The lyrics of the first, titular song on the album set the tone: After the success of 2017’s “Purgatory,” Childers is ready to start building a life for himself and his wife, trying to build a Country Squire airstream trailer castle of his own making. (Nevermind that a Ford Country Squire is a station wagon; Childers has said he wrote the album while under the influence of ‘shrooms and other drugs.) He’s cut his hair, he’s chopped off his beard and he’s ready to establish himself as country nobility, a squire himself.
He does so on this album by expanding his sonic palette while staying true to what set him apart in the first place — his songwriting. “All Your’n” and “House Fire” feature Childers at his best in terms of evoking imagery, and “Bus Stop” (my personal favorite) is a country love song that should become a new standard.
Plus, at nine songs clocking in at roughly 35 minutes, it lends itself to repeat listens.
Check it out on Spotify here:
My rating: 5 mushrooms out of 5
Business model as old as time
The next best thing in streaming is here, and it’s…a cable bundle. Earlier this week on the Disney earnings call, the company announced its plan for Disney+ pricing. It will initially be available in a bundle with ESPN+ and the ad-supported level of Hulu — all for $12.99, a better rate than Netflix. This is both a better deal than the lowest-priced level of Netflix and a better deal than paying for separate subscriptions to all three services. That sound you hear is a bunch of customers putting their severed cords back together, like a reverse cable vasectomy.
More: 'The Office' is leaving Netflix. Here's why you should just go buy the DVDs.
In addition, the House of Mouse revealed its plans for its newly acquired 20th Century Fox vault, which basically amounts to “remake all of these franchises in our own image.” Plans to “re-imagine” Fox properties for “the millennial age,” including “Home Alone” and “Cheaper by the Dozen” are already underway. As Kevin McAllister would say, “Yikes!”
Fractured franchise family
Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) is one of the heroes of “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw,” but let’s not forget that he is the one responsible for killing “Tokyo Drift” favorite Han Seoul-Oh at the end of “Fast & Furious 6.” That fact has apparently been “torturing him,” according to an interview that “Fast & Furious” series writer Chris Morgan gave to Entertainment weekly last week.
“I would say that the super-arc for Deckard Shaw is going to be one of the most interesting, cool, rewarding character arcs in the franchise. Justice for Han is owed. It’s something we have discussed for a very long time and want to give the right due to. I think the audience will be satisfied and should know it’s coming.”
But Michelle Rodriguez said that’s not the case, and tweeted after the interview was published that Morgan “has absolutely nothing to do with where this narrative is or where it’s going FYI.”
Will “Fast & Furious 9” see #Justice4Han? Who knows, but between this and the behind-the-scenes beef between Vin Diesel, The Rock and Tyrese, the backstage drama on this franchise is almost as entertaining as the actual thing.
Trailer Park
Want more trailer news for all the movies coming out this summer? I have just the thing: Read my summer movie preview here at jakeharrisblog.com.
“The Irishman”
This trailer is old, but I had to include it; it’s Martin Scorsese’s first film since 2016’s “Silence” and it’s his longtime passion project about Jimmy Hoffa. The de-aging technology looks decent, and may be improved by the time the final product rolls around (on Netflix, no less). It’s also Robert De Niro and Al Pacino’s first team-up since “Righteous Kill” in 2008.
“Little Monsters”
Lupita Nyong’o continues to pick projects that don’t box her in. This one is a zombie comedy set in Australia, where Nyong’o plays a schoolteacher trying to keep her students safe from zombies on a field trip.
“Tigers Are Not Afraid”
Horror master Guillermo del Toro has endorsed this upcoming magical realism film set amid a drug war. That’s fitting, because the film I thought of most while watching this trailer was del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth,” a Spain-set magical realism fairy tale about the horrors of war.
“1917”
No, it’s not a prequel to “Dunkirk,” though you’d be forgiven for thinking that. Sam Mendes directs an all-star cast of Brits in a story that looks like Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk” and sounds like a WWI version of “Saving Private Ryan.”
“Honey Boy”
In this semi-autobiographical film written by Shia LaBeouf, a child star navigates fame while dealing with his father, who lives vicariously through his son. It looks like Lucas Hedges stars as the adult Shia, and it sounds like he’s got his vocal cadences down pat. Also, is that an “Even Stevens” reference in there?
Letter of Recommendation
Movie: All I wanted to do immediately after seeing “The Farewell” was to go and hug my Nana and my Grandma, and I think that’s the highest praise one could bestow on this film. Lulu Wang’s “based on a real lie” story about how her family didn’t tell her grandma (Nai Nai) she has stage 4 lung cancer and faked a wedding as an excuse to gather everyone home to see Nai Nai one last time is poignant and heartfelt. I laughed more than I expected to and I cried about as much as I expected to, and I'm still thinking about the film’s message about what it means to bear responsibility for others. See it soon before it leaves theaters.
Music: The original Broadway cast recording of the Tony Award-winning run of “Hadestown” is now available to stream, and I haven’t really stopped listening to it this week. It’s got everything: Greek mythology, speakeasies, full horn sections, a Gospel choir, a Hades that sounds like Leonard Cohen…
Listen here:
TV: Those looking for a funny, absurdist comedy to binge-watch should check out “Los Espookys” on HBO. The 6-episode show follows a group of Mexican horror enthusiasts who fake scary events for money (example: In the first episode, the gang stages an exorcism so an old priest can show the younger priest who’s boss). It’s more funny than scary, with humor that reminds me of “Napoleon Dynamite.” It’s also in English and Spanish, with subtitles for each.
Book: In addition to writing three books, Shea Serrrano is also a master of online writing as an art form (case in point: this moving piece on his family and Tim Duncan). “A Wedding Thing,” now available for free on Amazon Prime, is another example. Here, he collaborates with his wife Larami (or, as she’s better known to Serrano’s Twitter followers, The G.O.A.T.) to tell the story of their wedding, which took place in a hospital while Larami was on bed rest preparing to deliver their twins early. If you don’t shed a tear by the end of it, I don’t trust you.
Comic Book: If you are a fan of the X-Men at all, you owe it to yourself to read the “House of X” and “Powers of X” miniseries, out now from Marvel Comics. The things that Jonathan Hickman is doing here will blow the minds of longtime fans, and will entice the imagination of new readers.
Video Game: I’ve found lately that I like it when video games are just purely relaxing experiences that allow me to roam freely. “The First Tree” is a perfect example of that. In this game, you play as a fox searching for her cubs, while an unseen narrator tells his wife about a very vivid dream he had about his father. The colors are gorgeous, the music is striking (some parts reminded me of Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight” or Justin Hurwitz’s score for “First Man”) and the story is well-developed. By the end, I was surprisingly moved.
Friday News Dump
A list of online stuff I really liked this week:
Speaking of “Hobbs & Shaw,” I loved this profile of Dwayne Johnson and his Samoan heritage, and how it was showcased in the film. (via Jen Yamato in the L.A. Times)
This deep-dive into the possible true story behind book club bestseller “Where the Crawdads Sing” is bananas. (via Laura Miller in Slate)
A recent poll states that 22% of millennials have no friends, 30% say they always or often feel lonely, and 30% say they have no “best friends.” This is an alarming trend. (via Brian Resnick in Vox)
Pacific Standard announced this week that it will be shutting down. That’s a shame for many reasons, but one of them is because they were one of the only outlets to do this good of a profile of Dave Ramsey. (via Helaine Olen in Pacific Standard)
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This newsletter is written by me and edited by my favorite person, Taylor Tompkins. Views expressed here are my own and don’t reflect the opinions of my employer, yadda yadda yadda.
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See you next week,
Jake