Currently.
CROWE: I like that we get to pepper our conversation with our liner notes. So when I say The Help, what do you think of?
STONE: Bourbon on the front porch of Tate Taylor’s rental house in Greenwood, Mississippi, with Viola [Davis], Octavia [Spencer], and all the girls, and Tate and Chris Lowell … Tate’s mom cooking blueberry-and-peach pie and beans … It was like living in Mississippi for a summer. I go to the off-camera stuff, but it was really special … There was so much bourbon.
In case you forgot that Emma Stone is perfect, Interview provided more proof on the subject.
Ughhh, been saying this forever.
Like the novel on which it’s based, the movie adaptation of “The Help” will likely be a huge hit with white audiences. But for black viewers it is condescending and frequently insulting, despite admirable performances by Davis and Spencer, who bring a measure of complexity — actual flesh and blood — to the characters of Aibileen and Minny. It speaks volumes about the ongoing racial chasm in this country that a feel-good movie for white people will leave many black filmgoers feeling sad — and pessimistic that America can ever become anything more than “a nation of cowards.”
Beneath all of these factors, there’s a basic, staring-you-in-the-face element that I think has been responsible for a certain moralistic ire that has greeted The Help. And that is this: Why, in 2011, at a moment when we have our first African-American president, does the most prominent movie of the year to deal with black life in America center on housekeepers and servants from 50 years ago? Is this really an exploration — or is it a kind of genteel, borderline racist nostalgia?
I gotta testify, come up in the spot lookin' extra fly...
