Oscar Controversy Comes for Marty Supreme

0:28Hello and welcome to Little Gold Men, I went to the legendary Clive Davis gala, which was very cool. And then Sunday, I was at the Grammys with my colleague, Lindsay Underwood, and we were a part of the live blog inside the room. As someone who watched the show from afar, I thought it was pretty great. I mean, I think the Grammys, they really know how to make a show, you know? Like, there are moments you have to tune into, even if you're not following all these musicians all year round, as I don't. But I mean, obviously, I feel like the headline is the Bad Bunny win was such a huge moment. Did you feel like that was the biggest moment of the night?

1:07That and also that there was way more political speeches. I mean, there was way more politics and there was way more ice talk throughout the whole show or people had pins on. We saw a little bit of that in Sundance. So it'll be interesting to see if it carries into film awards season as the next shows come up. I actually would say that my biggest takeaway from the Grammys was I really found, Rebecca, that me and you have a connection in that we will not wait in a line. And we believe that a security guard is more of like a guardrail and less of like an official figure. So Gaga was performing and we had gone to go to the bathroom and like get a drink.

1:58And I saw Gaga was performing. I run back. They had closed the section and I just snuck under the rope and ran like the wind. I heard the security guard behind me be like, sir, sir, you can't do that. And I was like, I'm not going back. I got to see Gaga's performance. And I thought of you because I was like, there would be no way. Rebecca would be under that rope. I'd be looking down at my phone and looking up and she'd be gone. So that's something I learned. I want to go back to what you said about the politics because I feel like this show had the right balance of that. Like people were saying meaningful things when they won awards or even on the carpet, as you're saying, with the pins.

2:42And I think we need to see more of that. I mean, a lot of big devastating things have happened since the last film award show. But we have quite a few coming up, and I really hope that there is more of a genuine intention to talk about it on stage. But I don't know. I kind of think because these actors and filmmakers are still campaigning for the big one till the Oscars, I just don't know if they're going to say things like the SAG Awards or even Indie Spirits in the next month or so. Yeah, you mean they might save it for the big night? Yes, I think because it's sort of like, it's still a risk in some ways to say things so openly, maybe not to this community because everyone's sort of like-minded and how could you not be?

3:26But that's a whole nother thing. But I feel like they're just being so careful when they speak until the votes are closed, you know? I mean, it's really hard with Bad Bunny. Like, how could he not? I mean, there's the whole year, his narrative the whole year about what he's done for Puerto Rico with the residency, the sort of backlash, I guess, if you want to call it that, to him being the Super Bowl headliner, which is crazy because he's like the most popular artist in the world. I mean, I actually thought his speech was even better than you could have hoped for, the first speech, the second speech too.

4:09But he is more inclined, I guess, or his situation is more inclined to really give us that. And musicians are more outspoken in general. So we'll have to see. But I agree. It was nice to hear from our creative community being like, no, this is wrong. Like the audience was eating it up. Well, speaking of politics, I think we should jump back into film. And you saw a little movie this weekend called Melania, which I have not seen. This is the documentary. You don't need to. About the first lady that's directed by Brett Ratner. John, what were your thoughts on the film? It's my one-liner. It's a long, expensive audition tape for Melania to become a real housewife of whatever.

4:58I don't know, Palm Beach. It actually follows, like, all of the real housewives tropes down to a T, like where there's a lot of, like, how much attention she pays to detail. And she's just so busy running her family and her philanthropy and her schedule. It's also not really a documentary because so much of it feels so scripted. I mean, the production value is quite high. And it's sort of overperformed, I guess, at the box office. Yeah, I mean, they spent, it's like the most expensive marketing or one of the most expensive marketing campaigns for a documentary in history. Amazon spent an estimated, I think,$35 million to get people to pay attention to this movie.

5:45So some people did, I guess. Yeah. But it doesn't sound like a good or authentic documentary from what I've heard. I don't think I'll be checking it out. No, it's neither of those things. It's not even in the vein of the recent music docs that have popped up that are sort of co-signed by the artist. that's the closest that I would say this is, but this is even less dynamic and more controlled. I mean, we don't see even a single moment of Melania like under duress or any sort of real. Being a human. Yeah, being a human, really. That's my review. And that wasn't all the news that's happened in the past week.

6:37we've also got our first major scandal of Oscar season.

6:44So today on the show, we're going to be talking about the story that broke last week about an incident on the set of Josh and Benny Safdie's 2017 movie, Good Time, and what we think the story might mean for Marty Supreme's Oscar chances. And of course, scandals popping up around Oscar voting is not a new phenomenon. So we're going to be talking about some other controversies of the recent past. And joining us today is our BFF, Hilary Buses. Hello, Hilary. You can't get away from me. Here I am. Okay, let's get into it, though. We've got a lot to cover. So we should start by laying out the story as we know it.

7:22Rebecca, you have a piece up on VanityFair.com about the allegations. Hilary, you edited it. Can you both break down what we know as it relates to Josh Safdie and his previous films? Yeah, so this story was the cover of the new California Post. The West Coast answer to the New York Post. If that gives you a hint of their kind of sensibility. Yes, and it had some details from on the set of Good Time, which was directed by Josh and Benny Safdie, and alleged that there was a 17-year-old girl who was cast to play a sex worker in the film. And she was in a scene opposite a non-professional actor who allegedly exposed himself and said some pretty horrible things to her during the scene.

8:12And Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie were on set. Now, the article says that at the time, Josh and Benny were not aware of her age, but then Josh did find out that day, and Benny did not find out till a few years later in 2022 and that this became sort of the catalyst for them breaking up and going on to do their own projects more recently. And so some of these details had been reported before in a 2023 Variety article written by the same reporter, Tatiana Siegel. But it was all sort of packaged in this new piece as sort of explaining why the brothers broke up and came, you know, a few days after Oscar nominations, which is a very key time because Marty Supreme had, which Josh Safdie directed, had gotten a lot of nominations and was riding high on all of that.

9:04And Josh Safdie is the individual person nominated for the most Oscars this year. For directing the movie, for writing it, for editing it. Yes. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, as Best Picture. Yeah, there's a lot. Rebecca and Your Story, which is very concise and everyone should read because I think it really lays it out. Very simply, there's what allegedly happened, what people think will be the result of this as it relates to the overall movie's Oscars chances, is the timing suspect, and is it part of an Oscar whisper campaign, which is, I guess, what was originated by Harvey Weinstein, where it's like awards consultants and people behind the scenes are whispering to other people that are whispering to other people, and then it sort of bubbles up and it becomes more widespread.

9:54And that these campaigns are specifically launched by people who have a vested interest in one movie winning an award and another movie not winning an award. Right. Allegedly. Allegedly, yeah. All of this is allegedly. So this story came out last week and I think it had some legs. How are people receiving it in Hollywood? Well, I got to say, I talked to quite a lot of people off the record or on background about this. People who are tied to filmmakers or actors or people involved with Marty Supreme feel strongly that this is some sort of whisper campaign and that the timing is not a coincidence.

10:39And if it is, you know, it's impossible to prove that. Obviously, Tatiana Siegel had been reporting on this story before, so it's not like it just appeared. Which is a point that the California Post made in its strongly worded statement. In a shocking turn of events, the California Post gave me a statement in response to this, which is unusual, I'd say, for a publication to do, denying that that was any part of the equation. Denying that there was any motivation beyond, this is another beat in this story that she has been covering already. Exactly. I mean, the biggest question for me was like, if it was a Whisper campaign, what are we trying to take down here?

11:18I wouldn't say Marty Supreme is the frontrunner for Best Picture or most of the other categories. It's director, you know, Joss Safdie is nominated, but I think we're all pretty sure that's going to Paul Thomas Anderson, but also Ryan Coogler's in there. Like, what is the goal here? Screenplay? I mean, original is a little more wide open, I would say, where Marty Supreme is nominated. But yeah, I mean, it's really interesting because it's so dramatic internally. It's not as crazy as Amelia Perez last year, which we'll talk about, of course. But it does feel like this is creating waves in a bigger way than I thought for a story that has been reported before.

11:57Don't you think, though, am I just crazy? I just think the story came out after the Oscar nominations because that's when people are starting to pay attention. oh, was the timing of the story suspect? I was like, I think it's like more like the machinations of how newsrooms are run. But maybe I'm naive. No, I think it's a combination of things because also the California Post needed a cover for its first issue, which is when that came out. And yeah, that's the thing. I think with a lot of these Oscar scandals we'll talk about is like the movie and the filmmakers have a much higher profile once they get a bunch of nominations.

12:40Like people care more about these movies. If it's just a movie that comes and goes and doesn't get any nominations, no one's talking about it anymore. And then the other little wrinkle in this, the real life Marty Reisman, whose story sort of inspired Marty Supreme, his family has also come out recently saying, you know, basically that this story is not a fair representation of their father and makes him look like a lowlife and all these things. Although the filmmakers have been pretty open. It's like inspired by not a biography. And they also claim that they didn't make money from or were not consulted for the film.

13:19Right, they weren't consulted, which that is a, the true story isn't true. Criticism is a tale as old as time of awards season. So that's not a new thing, but the fact that it's sort of piling on to the same film being criticized in multiple ways by many people kind of adds to this theory. And in the span of just a couple of days, the Daily Mail story came out right before the California Post story. Right. And a few reporters at the trades and other places, I didn't get one directly, were sent this information about Marty Reisman's family being critical directly by some sort of anonymous sender, which also feels a little...

13:57Like deep throat? By Warby Heinstein. Yeah, from an anonymous sender. So there's another thing too, which is Odessa Zion was cast in this Sean Durkin movie where she's supposed to play a character who's half Mexican, half Jewish. They cast her. They make the announcement. There is backlash because she's not Mexican. She drops out. She made a very nice statement on Instagram. This is all happening in the same week. So it's like the way the world works, the Google machine, the algorithm, is like Marty Supreme, Marty Supreme. Like every five seconds on our social media, there's like one Marty. Yeah, yeah, Marty Supreme drama, Marty Supreme drama.

14:43Now, you know, the Odessa thing is completely separate from your story, from any other story, but it is, she's in the movie. I mean, she just got a BAFTA nomination. She was really, she has a SAG nomination. She was considered to be on the bubble for an Oscar nomination. and then she gets into it a little. So like all in all, it's like one of those things where it's like they're having a tough week. Yeah. And when you get hit in that many directions, how do you not feel like something is happening that's not just the full moon? But, you know, I don't know. When it rains, it pours. It feels a little like that, you know?

15:16Like it's like, what else? But we don't exactly know how the story is going to unfold, but later on we'll talk about how we think this might impact Marty Supreme at the Oscars this year. We're going to take a quick break and when we get back, the long history of Oscars scandals.

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17:36Are there any races you're watching, frontrunners you're not so sure about? Send us your questions to LittleGoldMen at VF.com. Okay, back to the show.

17:50Welcome back to Little Gold Men. So we already speculated a bit about why the Safdie story may be coming up now, but I got to say it does give me a real sense of deja vu because this is certainly the time of year between when nominations come out and voting starts when controversy tends to bubble up. And sometimes it really does affect the outcome at the Oscars. So let's go back in time. John, Hillary, what are the examples that you feel like we should talk about when these controversies have happened in the past? Amelia, Amelia. I don't know the rest of the song. I just say I will never forget that Oscar speech.

18:33So the Safdie thing, you can make an argument either way for why it may or may not have come from a like an inside source. But last year, the Carla-Sofia-Gascogne controversy around Amelia Perez seemed like a pretty cut-and-dried case of social media detectives working overtime, dredging up some racist and Islamophobic tweets that were written by the star of that film and putting them online. And things really devolving from there. Amelia Perez, what, it got 13 Oscar nominations? It was the frontrunner. It was the frontrunner. It was the frontrunner. Yeah. And then those hopes kind of came crashing down when the scandal broke.

19:16Yeah, that was the craziest downfall maybe since I've been working and covering this business, I think. Because it was like overnight. And it was so messy because Carla Sofia Gascon was originally like responding and defending herself on social media. She dug herself in deeper and deeper, I think. If she had apologized, said, I regret what I said, and then laid low for a couple of weeks, I think that things might have been different. They might have turned out differently for her at least. I don't know. I said might. I think there was two things happening. I think the movie was getting seen by a much broader audience on social media.

19:56There were clips that were going viral, yeah. Yeah, the From Penis to Vagina, the song. And so people were like, what is this film? And then coupled with the star who was sort of positioned as the spokeswoman for the trans story in the film and really the film overall, just taking an absolute nosedive, it was like kaput within a week. Yeah, it was a real case of the milkshake duck. You guys, you know that meme? It was a tweet from many years ago where the first part of it is like, everybody on the internet loves this duck. It's a milkshake duck, a duck who drinks milkshakes. And then the next thing after that is like, we regret to inform you that the milkshake duck is racist.

20:47There will be a main character on the internet that people rally behind. And then if there is something unsavory that is unearthed about that person or bird, then it will immediately cause a backlash. And, you know, then sometimes there's a backlash to the backlash and the whole cycle continues. But this was a very, like, open and shut case of this happening with Carla Sofia. I think what was interesting about that is the question became best pictures out of the picture. Carla is obviously not going to win, but what happens to like Zoe Saldana, who was very much a front runner for supporting actress or some of the other categories it was nominated in?

21:27And I think they did do a good job of navigating that. So Zoe spoke out like immediately about how she doesn't support those sorts of statements. And she ended up obviously winning the Oscar. And I think that part of it survived because it really was about this one individual's choices. I was watching very closely with how they would navigate that, and I think they actually did that part successfully. Yeah, I mean, Zoe Saldana navigated it perfectly, as did Selena Gomez. Yeah, but maybe because it wasn't her first. It wasn't her fault, but also Zoe Saldana has, it's not her first rodeo. Do you remember when she was torn apart by the internet for her Nina Simone movie?

22:10Oh, yeah. Yes. Yeah, that was a rough one. Which was never an Oscar contender, but maybe that's not what she thought when she was making that movie. Yes, which is why I felt actually she did a pretty good job of seeming compassionate to Carla. I mean, Carla did herself no favors. Yes. But so at a certain point, she had to just, you know, break free completely. But in the beginning, she did. It was a very smart and measured approach. But she also was like making sure people understood like, well, this isn't me. You know, this isn't my thoughts. And I performed my performance in this movie before even knowing about this.

22:53Yeah, you don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Yeah. And the other big scandal, the other medium-sized scandal last year was the brutalist AI revelation that the editor did an interview where he mentioned that AI was used. And that's how that came out. So obviously not a smear campaign. Nothing was unearthed. This was a volunteer. An editor just shared the information without realizing. In like a trade, in like an industry magazine. I don't think that he assumed that lay people were going to necessarily read it. Right. And I always have questions about how a story like that becomes so widespread and shared.

23:33And some of that is social media. but I'm not ruling out the fact that there are probably competing awards strategists who are... Oh, so you're conspiracy theorizing that one. I'm a little bit that it was maybe shared and talked about and you'd be in a room with a separate awards strategist and they'd be like, did you hear about that AI thing? You know, so I'm... But that to me is just the competition. It's a political campaign. That's what the Oscar race is. but that I feel like bubbled up for like two weeks and then kind of calmed down I don't know what do you guys how do you guys feel that one played out I read his interview and I thought it was like pretty like yeah people are doing this like this movie is made for a very low budget he said we used a vocal effect to make Adrian Brody's accent And Felicity Jones.

24:32Stronger. And Felicity Jones, sorry. And it's not like they changed their words. It wasn't, I think, invasive. I think it's like a tool that's being used. I think it's a tool that has been used for longer. I just think that AI has become, I mean, three years ago, when you asked people about AI, they were like, what is that? Steven Spielberg movie, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and now AI is, you know, the hottest issue in the world. So I think that was just kind of a case of, like, people kind of misreading this person's response because it was pretty candid, and I don't think he was, like, making, like, a broad statement being like, and next year, you know, I plan to have AI use edit my entire film.

25:23He just was like, yeah, we used it as a tool, as we all do. But it did maybe, you know, intentionally or not kind of set up this dichotomy between an admittedly low-budget movie that did use a shortcut and then like a Noro where Sean Baker every time he took a stage was talking about how it was handmade and how it was in theaters and how it is this, you know, bespoke piece of art where every single part of it was touched by a human being. And maybe that's more of like a subliminal message than something that was actively, you know, promoted. But I think that that could have been in the back of voters' minds.

25:57I mean, I don't know, but Adrian Brody won. That was actively promoted. You're right about that. When I was reporting out the Marty Supreme piece, another film that came up a lot was the Green Book year. The Green Book film because there were two scandals. There was a social media scandal in which one of the co-writers, Nick Vallelonga, tweets were dug up. Anti-Muslim tweets were dug up. And I remember that being a thing of like, is this movie going down with this? But they did what many publicists do and they sort of pulled him from press and he was never spoken of again. He didn't do the Carlos Sofia where he puts himself on like an Instagram live every day saying, I am being attacked.

26:39Right. Yeah. And then the second scandal was that the family of Don Shirley, who Mahershala Ali played in the film, was pretty outspoken about how the film portrayed his story. I think they called it a symphony of lies, which, as we have mentioned, the true story isn't true scandal comes up a lot this time of year. But that was two pretty big hits on a movie that would end up still winning Best Picture. that year. It won a lot. I mean, I actually think the Green Book case was an interesting example of its fan base feeling actually emboldened because I think they felt that they were getting a little under attack.

27:26I think there's a third thing, which was there was a lot of criticism about the film itself and whether or not it was regressive. And I think that the fans of the film felt a little under attack and they really sort of like bunkered down and really stood with it all the way to the end. And that is an interesting scenario where we don't always see that. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of the times with controversy, it's like the fans abandon you. This was a different case where I think the feeling that people had about it being a feel good movie during the current political climate, people really didn't want to be told that they weren't allowed to like it.