I Bet If He Does, It Gets Edited Out
I don’t go to movies much any more. Cinemas are dirty, unhealthy environments, not just because of the risk of contagion due to poor ventilation, crowded conditions and prolonged exposure times. Bacterial and germ exposure make going to movie theaters risky. A Betway study conducted last year revealed that an average cinema seat holds 1,864 colonies of bacteria, which is 14 times more than found on a typical toilet seat. The dirtiest seat tested had around 3,000 colonies. Cup holders were found to be even more contaminated, with an average of 2,396 bacteria colonies— including Micrococcus, Bacillus and Pseudomonas— 18 times more than a toilet seat. In a segment aired by 20/20, they swabbed theaters in L.A. and NYC, and found high levels of contamination on seats, including bacteria found in soil, cattle and human feces. An investigation in East Texas theaters found fecal matter and other bacteria on theater seats. Dr. Richard Wallace, a microbiologist, was surprised by the presence of “stool organisms” on almost all samples taken from seats across different theaters. Experts suggest washing hands after visiting a theater, changing clothes to avoid transferring bacteria to home environments, sanitizing personal items like phones and bags and using hand sanitizers or wipes before eating snacks. Or staying home and watching Netflix, which is what I do.
But I do want to go see A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic. I don’t want to take my life in my hands, so I’ll do the same thing I do on airplanes— wear an N-99 mask, vinyl gloves, a hoodie and goggles. I imagine, though, that I’ll take a hard pass on the Melania movie Amazon is making. Unless it had a look at when she was a hooker and the affair she had with the head of security at Tiffany (or with Justin Trudeau). Bezos is paying Melania $40 million as a licensing fee.
The thing about not going to see it though is that an old friend is directing it. When he was just 17 and long before he became famous, Brett Ratner, the director, managed a band called BMOC, which Seymour Stein signed, more because of how he felt about Ratner than about the music.
Everyone liked the ebullient, eager-to-please Ratner back then and he wound up producing music videos for Run-DMC, Wu-Tang Clan, Redman, Public Enemy, LL Cool J, D’Angelo, Mary J. Blige, Seal, Madonna, P Diddy, Mariah Carey and Michael Jackson (and Cannibal Corpse). He had already started directing movies, first Money Talks, then Rush Hour, eventually X-Men: The Last Stand and, in 2014, before he was banished from Hollywood, Hercules. Long before he moved to Israel and became a crony of Netanyahu’s, that little Jewish kid from Miami really went all the way, which is what Seymour had always predicted for him.
Yesterday, Ben Smith reported that he had confirmed that Amazon had hired Ratner to direct the Melania documentary despite his #MeToo fall from grace in 2109. “The move,” wrote Smith, “is both a warm embrace by the e-commerce giant for the incoming administration and a dramatic return for Ratner, the director of X-Men: The Last Stand and the Rush Hour movies. One person who spoke to Semafor said they’d been surprised that Ratner, who reportedly lives in Israel now, had recently been seen at Mar-a-Lago. Last year, he and Trump were reportedly among the guests at the wedding of the son of [crime boss] Al Malnik, who [was like a father] to Ratner.”
Amazon’s purchase of the Melania Trump documentary is the latest entry in an escalating, head-snapping bidding war by the giant tech platforms to ingratiate themselves with an incoming president their executives had, in the past, criticized. Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos had positioned himself as a Trump critic before swiveling to support the President-elect this fall.
But the documentary, and Ratner’s return, also represent a changed cultural moment, in which the values and icons of Trump’s MAGA movement are making their way “upstream” from politics into mass American culture, as the conservative media activist Andrew Breitbart used to put it. And the culture’s new gatekeepers— the tech platforms, first of all— are rejecting progressive judgments on people and content.
Is ratner lining up for the leni Riefenstahl position?
For $40 million, I am sure she will "be best." At least we know for sure that there are no corrupt intents here. 😀