Mike Fleming Jr. for Deadline:
In a move that might well put Apple in the awards season conversation, the company has made a big worldwide rights acquisition of The Banker, a fact-based period drama that George Nolfi directed and co-wrote.
Anthony Mackie and Samuel L. Jackson play entrepreneurs who tried to circumvent the racial limitations of the 1950s as they turned their business savvy into social activism and decided to help African Americans get loans in Texas…
The film joins a roster of films, docus and series for Apple TV +, but sources said the plan here is for a significant theatrical release for the buzzy title during awards season.
MacDailyNews Take: We’ve got a feeling that we’ll be hearing a lot more about The Banker come awards season!
I guess there just are no other actors than Mace Windu.
Most overrated actor in Hollywood, the tired theme of blacks victims whites evil is just what Apple’s customers were asking for, right?
I respect history, however I find the milking of it to be cowardly, manipulative, and duplicitous. I long to see someone make a movie that inspires, and reflects the current world, rather than dredges up decades and centuries old issues that no one can change. Every human being alive is descended from someone who was wronged by others. There is nothing special about black Americans.
You also cannot tell me that Apple doesn’t look at the subject matter and think, this has Academy Award written all over it. Cook is already checking the seating charts to see where he will be sitting. The best production reinforcing the black victim trope goes to…”
It’s time for a new black narrative.
“The blessing of forgetfulness: that was the first essential. If everything one did, or which one’s fathers had done, was an endless sequence of Doings doomed to break forth bloodily, then the past must be obliterated and a new start made. Man must be ready to say: Yes, since Cain there has been injustice, but we can only set the misery right if we accept a status quo. Lands have been robbed, men slain, nations humiliated. Let us now start fresh without remembrance, rather than live forward and backward at the same time. We cannot build the future by avenging the past. Let us sit down as brothers, and accept the Peace of God.”
—The Once and Future King
Thelonious, do you object to other movies set in the past like Forest Gump, Saving Private Ryan, or Schindler’s List? All of them deal with universal human themes of goodness and diligence overcoming adversity. It would obviously be difficult to cast an African-American actor in a film about bankers in 1950s Texas without mentioning discrimination; there were no black or Jewish lawyers at the major Houston law firms associated with its banks until at least 1959.
As I said, I do not object to history. I object specifically to the exploitation of the black victim trope. I am tired of the cliché. It only serves the true racists of this day and age I.E. the people who PROFIT from the idea. People like the Democratic Party.
The black victim has become an archetype. The incompetent black race. The under achieving black race. The poor old black race that cannot compete unless white leftists help them out.
Fuck that shit and the hypocritical opportunists who keep serving it up as truth.
There were no blacks working in Texas banks in the 50s. There was discrimination. So fucking what? What’s new? What else is there left to learn?
Nothing.
The only purpose this movie serves is academy consideration. It is said, if you want an Oscar, make a movie with lots of black sweaty slaves. Hollywood loves them some slaves, This is no different. Hollywood loves seeing blacks mistreated.
Show me a movie with an all black cast about any subject matter that does not make reference to the fact that they are black, one time. This might come as surprise to leftists, but black people don’t think about being black, or think about white people, any more during the day than white people sit around thinking about their whiteness.
That is the reality of being black and it is utterly ignored by Hollywood. If someone wrote a movie with an all black cast about starting an engineering firm that manages to create a stable wormhole in space, the fact that race played absolutely no part in the story would be more unbelievable to people than the fucking wormhole.
Again, what is the difference between an uplifting film about black folks who overcome adversity to create a wormhole and an uplifting film about black folks who overcome adversity to create a bank? Both films would be about black victory, not black victimhood. The whole point of the proposed AppleTV movie is that many African-Americans have refused to accept victimhood and have instead taken control of their own lives to improve the quality of life for themselves, their families and their communities. That is the quintessential American story and a distillation of core conservative and Christian values. It is rather sad that some people think otherwise.
You’re missing the point. The point is that the folks who create the company have no adversity to overcome. There is no racism. There is no evil white man in the shadows. You are so conditioned by the leftist “black victim” trope you cannot see that black people live everywhere in this country without having to overcome adversity, and that people who do have to overcome adversity come in all shades.
That’s where the courage is. Make a movie that shows the truth. People don’t suffer because of racism, they suffer because of the decisions that they make.
The whole point of the proposed Apple movie is to revisit the same tired old “look what evil white men did to poor black people” cliché again. If Apple wants to make a movie featuring black people, I defy them to make a movie where there’s only black people and race never enters the subject matter. A movie that reflects reality.
It’s a massive difference. Apple is just vying for an Oscar. Just like Joe Biden hanging out at the soul food restaurant and grinning like a jackass yesterday.
Sickening.
The brightest student I knew in the school district where I grew up was valedictorian of her top-rated high school, aced the SAT, attended one of the three best metallurgical engineering colleges in the world, and graduated summa cum laude. Nobody gave her anything; she earned everything with brains coupled with a winning personality.
After she won her M.Eng in 1972, the biggest mining and metals company in the US refused to hire her as an engineer but offered her a job as a secretary. There is no possible explanation for that that except that she was “engineering while female and black.”
If anyone can hear that story—and millions like it—and claim that nobody suffers because of racism but only because of their own bad choices, he is clearly a candidate for the KKK regardless of his race. What was her bad choice aside from aspiring above her station by hoping to be an engineer rather than fetch coffee for white men?
Yes, she went on to become successful, but not nearly what she deserved. Female and minority engineers face fewer obstacles today, but that isn’t because white men decided to take pity on their little brown sisters. It is because the women and minority members themselves refused to be treated as victims and took responsibility for their own lives.
If you want to forget the history that made whatever success you have enjoyed possible, you might want to remember that those who ignore history are fated to repeat it. Otherwise, you’d best be teaching your granddaughters to pour coffee.
P.S. The mining and smelting firm was not only known for its minority hiring practices but also for housing its minority employees and their families in “smeltertowns” subject to mind-boggling levels of industrial pollution. When President Nixon passed the Environmental Protection Act, the slums were quickly declared as Superfund sites. Medical care for the children with lead poisoning bankrupted the company. Its remaining assets are now owned by a Mexican company. Karma!
You must love those what if the Nazis won the war movies- tv shows.
I absolutely respect everything you have said and salute your obvious belief in the autonomy of self. True libertarian views are spectacular. Having said that, I also believe that recognition of the achievements of those in the past that have helped created todays environment of hope, is noble.
Hollywood does love to dwell on the oppression of people and I agree it would nice to see something new but not at the expense of every good store. We need to see a mix of point of view and stories. Hollywood tend to be an echo chamber, I for one would like to see more of a mix. Each of us is different and needs a different story to help motivate us. No one answer is universal. (Autonomy of self at its best.)
Well I know what Sam’s got in HIS wallet…..more!
Sam’s role of who he truly is was in Coming to America
Samuel Jackson – glad they picked a black actor who hasn’t been completely overexposed, especially since there are no other talented black actors to choose from. Idris Elba not available?
Samuel Jackson is the mainstreams favorite black actor not political, loud with a little Stepin Fetchit.
Thelonious as usual has a unique and original insight on issues of the day. I always enjoy reading the comments of a genius whether I agree completely or not. Thank you again. Your writings have a fierceness and clarity we seldom get to see. I generally agree about 95% with you and I look forward to all your musings for our benefit.
JW