Ep. 106 Larry Dorf Pt. 2 The Woman In The Window, The Oscars, Will Smith, Chris Rock and Kareem Abdul Jabbar

OPEN - Welcome to another episode of the Modern Moron and another very… long… intro.  We all could use a little respite from Russia’s violent invasion of Ukraine, not as much as the people of Ukraine could use it, but you get the idea.  So why not turn to the entertainment industry?  How about the Oscars?  Let's watch Hollywood celebrate itself.  Of course you know where I’m going with this and that is the incident where Will Smith walked on stage and slapped comedian Chris Rock after Rock made a joke about Smith’s wife Jada and her shaved head.  He made a G.I. Jane  joke, which wasn’t particularly good, it was made off the cuff, not in the rehearsed segment.  After slapping Rock, Will Smith yelled twice in a very full and articulate voice to, “Keep my wife’s name out your fucking mouth”.  It was at that point that everyone went beyond shock and dismay that it might be a rehearsed stunt, because you shouldn’t use the “F” word on live television… twice.

So now we’re all Monday Morning quarterbacking this whole thing.  Lucky for you I have all the answers because I am an omnipotent being who is all knowing.  My take on it is similar to the take Jimmy Kimmel had and the take is this: Chris Rock made the G.I. Jane joke about Jada Pinkett’s shaved head.  The camera cuts to the two of them and Will Smith appears to be chuckling and rolling with it.  His wife, however, is not.  The camera cuts back to Chris Rock and we can only ASSume, and you know I love to assume, that Will looked over at his  wife and his chuckle quickly disappeared.  I’m willing to bet it was a look like, “If you don't’ want to sleep on the couch for an indeterminate amount of time, you better do something.”  Or maybe he just saw that her feelings were hurt.  In any case, the rest is history and and it was ugly on so many levels.

So, on a night that should have been a celebration of his great achievement in his industry, instead he’s stuck in a very, very bad situation.

 

Chris Rock has made no statement but ticket sales to his standup performances have skyrocketed.  And there’s one other person we have not heard from and that is the person who was on the butt end of the Chris Rock joke and that is Jada Pinkett Smith.  She has only posted a cryptic message on Instagram stating, “This is a season for healing and I’m here for it.”

I’d like to say this is not a season for cryptic messages.  This is not a season to keep quiet, when you had some hand in this whole occurrence.  No, you’re not responsible for your husband’s foolish action, but you are responsible for your reaction.  While you didn’t like the comment, who would, it was your look of disapproval or disgust at your husband… who you’ve been married to for 24 years in what you have indicated was an open marriage, had to know what you were communicating to your husband in that moment.  Or even put that aside, you still have an opportunity to alleviate some of the pressure on your husband by making a clear statement owning some of your reaction or… making a statement about your medical condition having alopecia and how many people have it.  But you have not.  I would suggest folks look to Kareem Abdul Jabar.  Why in the world would I bring up his name?  By the time you listen to this, his essay on this incident will have gone viral and in it he goes over the myriad of issues this incident, in those few seconds, has created.  The piece is titled, “Will Smith Did a Bad, Bad Thing: Slapping Chris Rock was also a blow to men, women, the entertainment industry, and the Black community.”  I’m not sure where you will end up reading it but it’s source is a site called “Substack” which is similar to “Patreon”.  

If you’re like me you have no idea what either of those are.  They are both “platforms” meaning they are websites and mobile apps for people who what to make money from their blogs, podcasts, Tick-tock, Instagram, etc.  I digress…

Kareem’s subtitle says it all: Will Smith’s act was a blow to men, women, the entertainment industry and the black community.  Kareem addresses each of those things and says that Jada Pinkett was and is completely capable of defending herself, especially against words, namely a joke that she didn’t find funny.  On that note, I would like to read you a quote from a video on Jada Pinkett’s Instagram account from 2021 showing herself with a shaved head, she said, "Now at this point, I can only laugh.”  So, besides being extremely ironic, it also shows how it’s easy for anyone to say they have let go of something and realizing that “thing” they thought they let go of is still very raw.  Plus it’s one thing to make jokes about yourself and another to have them made at your expense.  I would also include that, I don’t know if she was ever a professional model specifically, but I think most folks would agree that Jada Pinkett is and has been very beautiful in terms of traditional beauty and features that are, on a broad scale, considered beautiful.  

Jesus, do you see how friggin careful I’m being right now, not to overtly show how shallow and superficial I am?  Political correctness takes wayyyy to much time to make sure I haven’t offended someone.  And I think taking too much time making sure you haven’t offended anyone, you haven’t impressed anyone either.  And by impressed I mean, have you provided value in terms of being either entertaining, educational or informative.  How’s that for being a blowhard.

Enough of that, and at the same time we can’t get enough of that.  We love a train wreck don’t we.  Especially when we’er not on either one of the trains.

This is part two with my friend Larry Dorf, creator, writer and producer of the Netflix hit, “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window”.  We spend the rest of our time talking about:

1.  what the promotions process was like in terms of doing interviews before the show was released.  They actually had to be coached on how to handle certain questions like a politician.  
2. What it was like shooting a production on location during the Covid Pandemic.  Once the cast was set, you couldn’t just bring someone in on short notice because of the Covid protocols at the time.  
3. We talk about one of the executive producers for the series which was Will Farrell and there’s an interesting story there. 
4. How to segue your business from hanging a shingle outside your door to actually having a company with a name and a logo.  How do you do that?
5. There’s a chat about Larry’s parents, and this fits right into the Modern Moron listener sweetspot demographics, we talk about senior living facilities… I’m sorry… communities.  Communities.  I think the main difference is cocktail hour.

All this and more on the Modern Moron and thank you for listening…

CLOSE - Another element in “The Woman in The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window” besides how tiring the Title gets after saying it a few times, is what I’m going to call an homage to, let’s call it the Scorsese montage.  If you’ve seen “Goodfellas”, you know what I’m talking about.  Scorsese grabs a hip, rocking piece of music, adds the narrator with some clips of what transpires.  To me, the most famous is in Goodfellas when we see all the Gangsters get whacked to the fantastic guitar of Eric Clapton in “Layla” by Derek and the Dominoes, in fact it’s in the second half of the song….

The Woman in the House, kills it - no pun intended- with their homage to that cinematic mechanism with the Rolling Stones “Can You Hear Me Knockin’”.  Why am I so excited about this?  Music is so, so powerful in evoking emotions and this song in particular has so many moments within it, so many builds and mood swings, from the iconic guitar intro with Mick Jagger in the background…To the chorus… To the incredible saxophone solo… to the cold ending.  Set to images, it’s fantastic and yes I’m going on and on like a nerd about this but when you watch it you’ll see and feel what I mean.  Great job by Rock, Paper, Scissors Productions.

That’s it for the Modern Moron for a while, unless you want to be on the show… I’m not going to babble about my opinions week after week just because I’m omnipotent.  If I find something interesting like the concept of Bitcoin mining, yes that’s a thing, and how much electricity is required to power the thousands of computers that engage in Bitcoin mining, so much so that the town of Hardin, Montana that had a coal fired power plant that was going to be closed down was purchased just to run the Bitcoin mining computers.  An entire powerplant.   It was going to be closed, but now it’s back to running around the clock burning coal.  To make money from Bitcoin.  The same thing is happening in New York near Ceneca Lake.  Reported 15,000 computers that could power something like 30,000 homes.  For bitcoin.

 

If I could get someone who claims to know about that, I would definitely talk to them.  So until next time, thank you for listening to The Modern Moron.

Will Smith Did a Bad, Bad Thing - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - Substack

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/03/29/will-smith-richard-williams/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/03/28/will-smith-jada-pinkett-slap-fallout/