Jeff Wells just posted something interesting on Hollywood Elsewhere, riffing on a post from Sasha Stone at Awards Daily saying Tate Taylor is “white telling” the story of James Brown in the biopic Get On Up starring Chadwick Boseman. That’s a very interesting way of putting it.
Personally I don’t know much of anything about James Brown or his life, but I do know I won’t be looking at Get On Up as some sort of history lesson. This is where Wells comes in with an interesting comment from one of his readers:
“Brown’s bombastic personality and absolutely unmistakeable personal style, not to mention his checkered personal life, really don’t seem like they would lend themselves to this kind of glossy wash . [Brown] was a very dark-skinned black man, intensely muscular and frenetic, thick necked and small (not matinee idol or even lead-singer material for the period that he emerged from) who just burst past all these hindrances by sheer force of will, fantastic charisma and unstoppable originality as a musical stylist. Boseman is lithe and handsome but sort of winsome and sweet and nonthreatening, and I see none of [Brown] in him.”
With studio produced movies you must always look at the bottom line before you look at anything else, this was a massive component to Boyhood. Therefore the decision to go with Boseman is a relatively obvious one. He may not look like Brown, but it’s not his fault, and I’d offer a little push-back against the “sweet and nonthreatening” comment using the tunnel scene from 42 as my evidence where he showed more than enough anger and rage as well as restraint.
However, what about this Tate Taylor comment from Stone? This idea…
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…he is “white telling” the story. Is her wording only due to the fact Taylor is white? If so, what does that mean? Jez Butterworth and his brother, John-Henry wrote the screenplay and they are white, but does that mean they can’t tell the story of a black man? Are they lacking in some social area prohibiting them from doing so? If they didn’t do the necessary research then most likely so, but I don’t know how much research they did so that’s yet another question without an answer.
If anything, I would say the issue has nothing to do with the race of the director, instead that comment from Hollywood Elsewhere seems to get a little closer to what we’re talking about, which is to wonder just how close to the “real” James Brown this film will get? And is Taylor the man to make the kind of movie described above?
Ever since the first trailer dropped people have been looking at Get On Up as a soft lob rather than anything too weighty. In that case, are we going to reach the awards race and find people arguing Get On Up isn’t receiving nominations because it was directed by a white director, or will the case be because people find it palatable and relatively safe? This is all assuming it’s good, and middle-of-the-road storytelling without a standout performance, which I think is a bit too much to assume at this point, though it’s easy enough to plant our expectations.
After The Help, I think we know what we can expect from Taylor. He seems mindful and respectful of his stories, but he also seems like he has a more studio-safe, glossy approach. If the goal was to get something different, a different director should have been hired, but I don’t think that has anything to do with his skin color as much as simply who Taylor is in terms of being a storyteller.
And, again, we have to remember this is a studio feature coming from Universal. Not even an independent arm such as Fox Searchlight or Focus where we might expect something a little more grounded, real and raw. It’s money first and from a studio perspective, safe is pretty much always the way to go.
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