Meghan Markle could make '$100 million' this year, media exec Simon Huck says - Fox News

Meghan Markle could be on her way to financial independence -- and then some -- after stepping down as a senior member of the royal family along with husband, Prince Harry.

The former American actress and her British hubby said they are focused on gaining financial independence as they navigate their new lives outside of the queen's control.

And there is no lack of opportunity for Markle to bring in the bacon; as soon as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex made their shocking announcement in January, leading branding mogul and Kim Kardashian BFF Simon Huck said his agency was "flooded" with "huge" offers for Markle.

MEGHAN MARKLE ‘REALLY REGRETS’ GIVING UP HER HOLLYWOOD CAREER FOR DUCHESS OF SUSSEX ROLE, ROYAL AUTHOR CLAIMS

Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex pictures here in September 2019, shocked the world — and the queen — when they announced in January that they would no longer be senior members of the royal family. (Getty)

"Obviously, our agency was flooded with inquiries for Meghan," Huck told "The Morning Toast" on Tuesday. When asked by co-host Claudia Oshy if he received 7-figure offers, Huck nodded and replied: "Oh huge! Equity offers."

Huck said if Markle accepted all of the deals his company, Command Entertainment Group, received she would make $100 million.

"If she did it all, she would make $100 million," Huck said before adding: "But she won't.

"She's not going to do traditional commercials, she's not going to be doing a perfume. She'll do things with...a Netflix."

MEGHAN MARKLE, PRINCE HARRY DUBBED 'JUNIOR OBAMAS,' SET TO BECOME 'BILLIONAIRES' AFTER MEGXIT

MEGHAN MARKLE WAS A 'DADDY'S GIRL' YEARS BEFORE RIFT WITH ESTRANGED DAD THOMAS, FAMILY FRIEND SAYS

Huck explained Markle "just can't do" a standard commercial endorsement as it wouldn't be a good "look" for her. Instead, she should follow "what Michelle and Barack [Obama] are doing."

"She'll follow in that path," Huck hypothesized. "She'll do a book deal, she'll do a TV show, she'll produce."

MEGHAN MARKLE, PRINCE HARRY ‘ARE RELIEVED’ TO BE LIVING IN CANADA AFTER MEGXIT, PAL CLAIMS

Huck's comments echoed what TMZ founder Harvey Levin told Fox News last month.

Per Levin, who executive produced FOX's "Harry & Meghan: The Royals in Crisis," Prince Harry, 35, and Markle, 38, will have no problem earning big money and will become billionaires.

“Make no mistake about it, Harry and Meghan are incredibly marketable," Levin said. "I mean, we talked to Mark Cuban, who knows a thing or two about branding and business and entertainment, and he thinks they're going to be billionaires, and the reason is simple.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

“They are sought-after people. They are young, beautiful, intelligent, interesting people and Oprah [Winfrey] has already partnered with Harry on a mental health docuseries,” the "Objectified" host continued of the pair, who said in their Jan. 8. announcement that they will "work to become financially independent" of the crown.

“So [Harry] put his foot in the entertainment pond and Meghan has been in it," Levin said.

"So they are... somebody we interviewed calls them the 'Junior Obamas' when it comes to making money because they are extremely marketable," Levin added.

Fox News' Julius Young contributed to this report.

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2020-02-06 19:08:11Z
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Prosecution rests in Harvey Weinstein's rape trial after 6 accusers testify - CNN

Over the past two weeks, prosecutors said Weinstein was a powerful movie producer who used that power to prey on young, inexperienced women hoping to establish their movie careers. Twenty-eight witnesses testified in all.

Weinstein is charged with five counts, including rape, criminal sexual act and predatory sexual assault, which is punishable by up to life in prison. The charges are based on Miriam Haley's testimony that Weinstein forced oral sex on her in 2006 and Jessica Mann's testimony that he raped her twice during an abusive relationship.

In addition, "The Sopranos" actress Annabella Sciorra testified last week that Weinstein raped her in the winter of 1993-94, which is relevant to the predatory sexual assault charges. Three other women testified as so-called "prior bad acts" witnesses as prosecutors sought to show that Weinstein had a pattern of sexual abuse.

The sixth and final accuser, Lauren Young, said Weinstein grabbed her breast and masturbated in front of her during a meeting that she thought would be about a movie script she wrote.

Weinstein's defense has argued that the sexual encounters were consensual, and as evidence, they have pointed to friendly messages that the women sent to Weinstein after the alleged attacks.

"I love you, I always do. but I hate feeling like a booty call. :)" Mann wrote in a message in February 2017, four years after the alleged rape.

To combat that point, a forensic psychiatrist testified for the prosecution that it was a "rape myth" that victims of sexual violence behave a certain way. Some victims continue to interact with their abusers afterward, Dr. Barbara Ziv testified.

Indeed, Mann testified that the 2017 message does not prove the attack didn't happen.

"I know the history of my relationship with him. I know it is complicated and different but it does not change the fact that he raped me," she testified.

Weinstein's attorneys closely cross-examined each of the women about what the attorneys say are inconsistencies in their stories. Mann's cross-examination spanned three days of court and had to be stopped at one point when she had a panic attack on the witness stand.

His defense can now call its own witnesses. Weinstein is not expected to testify.

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2020-02-06 18:19:00Z
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Oscars 2020 Predictions Category by Category, Using Math - Hollywood Reporter

A category-by-category forecast on which victories are the most likely at the 92nd Academy Awards.

Consider the following Oscar facts:

1. Since the creation of the best film editing award in 1934, no film has won best picture without either an editing or acting nomination.

2. Since the creation of the Directors Guild Awards in 1948, no film has won best picture without either a DGA win or an editing nomination.

3. No foreign-language film has ever won best picture.

4. No film produced by a streaming service has won best picture.

5. No comic book film has won best picture.

And yet, if 1917 wins, the first of those facts will fall. Same for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with the second fact, Parasite the third, The Irishman the fourth, and Joker the fifth. Does this mean we can rule out all five of these films on Sunday night? Of course not.

This is where statistics comes in. Statistics doesn’t mean hunting for absolutes and assigning 0 percent or 100 percent to everything. It means giving each piece of information the proper weight, and translating those weights into probabilities. Each year for the past nine years, I’ve predicted the Oscars using nothing but probability. On my computer, facts like the ones above and many more get converted into data, plugged into formulas, and output into the charts you see below. Math and Oscar history can’t guarantee any wins, but they can point the way to which wins are the most likely.

Best Picture

Turns out math is going with the first best picture nominee in history whose entire title is a number, 1917. Thanks to wins from groups including the Golden Globes, the Producers Guild, the Directors Guild, and the BAFTAs, the two-hour tracking shot is in front to win the top prize. But don’t count out Screen Actors Guild best cast victor Parasite or Golden Globe and Critics' Choice winner Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Keep in mind that The Irishman got 10 nominations and Joker got 11, and this race is far from over.

Best Director

It’s been 17 years since an Oscar nominee for best director won the DGA Award but lost the Oscar. That year, Rob Marshall (Chicago) won the DGA but Roman Polanski (The Pianist) took the Academy Award. In between, there was an odd year when Ben Affleck (Argo) won the DGA but wasn’t nominated for the Oscar. Still, it’s a nearly airtight rule that the DGA winner is the favorite in this category, and 2019 is no exception. Sam Mendes choreographed an epic war film with only a small number of nearly imperceptible cuts, and he is the odds-on favorite to be rewarded for his work with a golden trophy.

Best Actor

Joaquin Phoenix has dominated awards season for his terrifying portrayal of the title character in Joker. A four-time nominee (previous nominations for Gladiator, Walk the Line and The Master), this could finally be the year that puts Phoenix on top. No one has ever won — or even been nominated — for a lead acting category for a comic book film (Heath Ledger’s win for the same role was in the supporting race), but Phoenix appears all set to make history.

Best Actress

Renée Zellweger (Judy) has also run the table this awards season. Making her path (and Phoenix’s) even easier is that the two Golden Globe acting winners for comedy/musicals — Taron Egerton (Rocketman) and Awkwafina (The Farewell) — weren’t even nominated at the Oscars, while Phoenix and Zellweger took the drama categories. The last time that neither comedy/musical winner at the Globes received an Oscar nomination was 2008, when Colin Farrell (In Bruges) and Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky) went overlooked by the Academy.

Best Supporting Actor

Brad Pitt may play the stuntman to Leonardo DiCaprio’s leading man in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but there’s no denying he’s in the inner circle of A-list Hollywood stars. And yet, he’s never won an acting Oscar, with a lone trophy for producing 12 Years a Slave (2013). Whether due to the performance itself or due to wanting to push Pitt over the finish line — or perhaps a little of both — the major precursors all lined up behind him for the supporting actor race.

Best Supporting Actress

The acting categories all feel very similar this year. Once again, we have a contender who swept the Golden Globe, Critics' Choice, SAG and BAFTA awards, and has previous Oscar nominations. In this race, it’s Laura Dern out in front, trying to win her first Oscar for her role as a divorce attorney in Marriage Story.

Best Original Screenplay

Quentin Tarantino (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) seemed primed to tie Woody Allen for the most Oscar wins for best original screenplay, with three. And then, this past weekend, his lead collapsed. On Saturday night, Tarantino was ineligible at the Writers Guild Awards, which my model accounts for, and Parasite took the award. Less than 24 hours later, Parasite’s Bong Joon Ho and Han Jin-won repeated their win at the BAFTAs — this time going head-to-head with Tarantino — and that was barely enough to put the South Korean heart-pounder in first.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Just like its original counterpart, best adapted screenplay saw a last-second surge. Greta Gerwig (Little Women) began on top with wins from the USC Scripter Awards and a number of critics groups. But on the final pre-Oscars weekend, Little Women went head-to-head against Jojo Rabbit at the Writers Guild Awards and BAFTAs. Taika Waititi went two-for-two in those matchups, and the math now favors him to make it a third straight win at the Oscars.

Best Animated Feature

The most honored member of the bunch, Toy Story 4, holds the statistical lead. But there are reasons to doubt Buzz and Woody’s path to the podium. For one thing, no franchise has ever won this category twice, and Toy Story already had its turn for part three in 2010. For another, the previous awards were far from unanimous, with Missing Link taking the Golden Globe and Klaus winning the BAFTA.

Best Documentary Feature

The mathematical leader is American Factory, which garnered extra press as the first film produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company. But it’s a nail-biter: Honeyland is the first movie in Oscar history to be nominated for both best documentary feature and best international feature (the new name for best foreign-language film). And on Sunday, For Sama beat American Factory at the BAFTAs. Add in the fact that a number of precursor honors went to the unnominated Apollo 11, and this race is wide open.

Best International Feature

This is one of the most lopsided races of the night, for obvious reasons. Parasite has won so many accolades that it’s the second-most-likely film to win best picture, so surely it stands to reason that it’s the best international film of the year. Five previous films have been nominated for this category as well as best picture in the same year, and all five went on to win the International race: Z (1969); Life Is Beautiful (1998); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000); Amour (2012); and Roma (2018).

Best Production Design

1917 won the BAFTA for best production design. Parasite won the Art Directors Guild award for contemporary film. The critics groups were inconsistent. But the math likes Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, thanks to its Critics' Choice win and its Art Directors Guild win in the period film category (which all the non-Parasite Oscar nominees participated in). The film delivered a masterful and nostalgic re-creation of 1969 Los Angeles, and it might just be enough to win an Oscar on Sunday night in Hollywood.

Best Cinematography

It’s hard enough to capture each shot of a war film when the scenes will only last a few seconds before cutting. Now imagine the enormity of Roger Deakins’ challenge to make every moment of 1917 look perfect on the big screen, knowing that the next cut wouldn’t be for many minutes. It felt like this movie’s plot was constantly running, yet the camera kept up beautifully with the actors and the action. Deakins was once known for losing these awards, starting his Oscar career 0/13, but he may be about to win two in three years following his Blade Runner 2049 victory.

Best Original Score

Hildur Gudnadóttir has already made history as the first female solo winner of best original score at the Golden Globes for her haunting soundtrack to Joker. Add on a Critics' Choice and BAFTA win, and there’s your favorite. But don’t count out 1917, whose soaring score added as much to that film as Joker’s did to that one. Composer Thomas Newman is on his 14th nomination, and his fellow Academy members may be anxious to finally bestow him his first trophy.

Best Original Song

Elton John’s annual Oscars party might be a little more celebratory this year if he can follow up on his previous wins for “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again,” the song he co-wrote with Bernie Taupin for Rocketman. This would be Sir Elton’s second Oscar win, a quarter-century after “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” from The Lion King. But speaking of seconds, “Into the Unknown” from Frozen 2 also has a shot of winning that franchise’s second Oscar for best original song.

Best Film Editing

Boy is this close. This is the only category in which no nominee reached 30 percent or higher to win. But two of them almost reached that threshold. Ford v Ferrari won the BAFTA on Sunday to speed into first place for its slickly edited auto-racing scenes. But Parasite won the drama film category from the American Cinema Editors, which also has a decent track record in this category. Also complicating matters is that tracking-shot film 1917 won the Critics' Choice award for best editing but wasn’t nominated by the Oscars.

Best Visual Effects

This one makes best film editing look like a cakewalk to predict, as we’ve arrived at the single closest race of the night. I’ll admit I let out a small gasp when I saw what my computer spit out on this category. Just 0.1 percentage points separate the mathematical frontrunner Avengers: Endgame, winner of the majority of precursor awards in this category, from 1917, the leader in the betting markets (which are one of the factors in my model). It’s a battle between a film nominated in only this category and a film nominated in nine others.

Best Costume Design

The math likes BAFTA winner Little Women to win best costume design, but there are holes in its Oscar résumé. It doesn’t have a best production design nomination, a category often correlated with this one. It went unnominated by the Costume Designers Guild Awards. The only two Oscar nominees that did receive CDG nominations — Jojo Rabbit and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — sit in second and third place, respectively, and are also strong contenders to win this one.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

The top two nominees earn their places for very different tasks. The Bombshell makeup artists and hairstylists had to bring well-known Fox News personalities to the big screen, and did so with astonishing accuracy. Stepping away from the real world, the Joker team had to reinvent one of the most famous villains in the history of fiction, and in doing so aided in Joaquin Phoenix in his haunting performance. Statistics gives the edge to Bombshell.

Best Sound Editing

My model is based on a number of factors, one of them being the betting markets. But it’s not the only factor, so sometimes public perception and data will differ. This year, both sound categories fall into that bucket, as bettors favor 1917 but the math says Ford v Ferrari has the edge in each race. The Motion Picture Sound Editors and the Cinema Audio Society both went for the car-racing sounds of Ford v Ferrari, and we’ll see if Oscar voters do as well.

Best Sound Mixing

If the mathematical favorites were to run the table, this would conclude quite a special night for Ford v Ferrari, winning all of its nominations except Best Picture. Among films with four or more nominations, that’s only been done seven times: The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Miracle on 34th Street (1947), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Jaws (1975), Traffic (2000) and Bohemian Rhapsody (2018). But sweeping is going to be hard — all three of Ford’s potential wins are among the closest categories of the evening.

Note: There isn’t enough data to predict the short film categories with math. In total, there are predictions in 21 categories – 21 envelopes to be opened, 21 bursts of excitement, 21 speeches seen by millions. Who knows what will happen, but thanks to math, we might have just gotten a sneak peek.

Ben Zauzmer (@BensOscarMath) is the author of Oscarmetrics: The Math Behind the Biggest Night in Hollywood.

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2020-02-06 16:15:00Z
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Gayle King Rips CBS For Excerpting Her Lisa Leslie Interview About Kobe Bryant - Deadline

CBS This Morning anchor Gayle King posted a two-part video on social media Thursday morning, saying she was “mortified” and “very angry” at CBS for posting a “salacious” clip of her interview with Lisa Leslie about Kobe Bryant. (See King’s video below.)

In the clip, King asks Leslie, a former WNBA star, about the legacy of Bryant, who died along with eight others in a helicopter crash on January 26, given his sexual assault case in Colorado. While the criminal complaint against him was dropped, Bryant reached an out-of-court settlement with his 19-year-old accuser and issued a statement acknowledging that their sexual encounter may not have seemed consensual to her. The episode has proven a challenging aspect of remembering Bryant.

“It’s been said that his legacy is complicated … Is it complicated for you, as a woman, as a WNBA player?” King asked. Leslie said it was not and said in all her dealings with Bryant she never knew him to be “the kind of person that would … do something to violate a woman or be aggressive in that way.”

In the part that caused backlash on Wednesday, King then replied, “But Lisa, you wouldn’t see it though. As his friend, you wouldn’t see it.”

King blamed CBS (without specifying a division or group responsible) for releasing a clip that she felt was incapable of showing the full scope of the interview, in all of its nuance.

“Unbeknownst to me, my network put up a clip from a very wide-ranging interview,” [It was] totally out of context and when you see it that way, it’s very jarring.

“I’ve been advised to say nothing, just let it go. ‘People will drag you, people will troll you. It will be over in a couple of days.’ But that’s not good enough for me because I really want people to understand what happened here.”

King said Leslie’s perspective on the sexual assault case was important to hear because she is a member of the media, working as an on-air analyst for Fox Sports Florida. “It was very powerful when she looked me in the eye as a member of the media and said, ‘It is time for the media to leave it alone and back off,'” King said, adding that she posed followup questions (which were included in the clip CBS released) just to draw out further thoughts.

“For the network to take the most salacious part, when taken out of context, and put it up online … is very upsetting to me,” King said. When the full interview aired, she added, feedback was positive, including from Leslie.

King ended her message by saying she was still “in mourning” over Bryant’s death. “The last thing I would want to do is disparage him at this particular time.”

CBS News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Here is King’s two-part video message:

Here’s the segment of the interview that CBS This Morning has on its YouTube channel:

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2020-02-06 14:49:00Z
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Hollywood icon Kirk Douglas dies at 103 - ABC News

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2020-02-06 15:36:46Z
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Everybody Loves Martin Scorsese—Except Maybe the Oscars - The Ringer

Martin Scorsese’s most recent film, The Irishman, is up for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director—but if the oddsmakers and pundits can be believed, he won’t win a single one on Sunday night. It wouldn’t be the first time Scorsese walked away empty-handed. In a career stretching back to Who’s That Knocking at My Door in 1967, Scorsese’s 25 narrative feature films have earned 71 nominations and 20 wins, an impressive achievement in raw numbers. Yet the number of trophies doesn’t tell the whole story. Many of his wins have been in technical categories; others have been acting awards given to performances in films that left Scorsese himself unrewarded. Nine Scorsese films have received Best Picture nominations; only one has won. He’s also been nominated for Best Director nine times and won only once. That win came for the same film that won Best Picture, The Departed, achievements that were widely regarded as long-overdue, Academy-sanctioned penance for decades of overlooking the director.

The Academy has hardly ignored Scorsese, but more often than not, it’s walked up to the edge of bestowing awards and then walked back. That reluctance seems like an odd way to treat one of the greatest living American directors. It’s a peculiar habit, without a single explanation. But it’s also one that makes sense over the course of a career with twin roots in a love of filmmaking and a willingness to use that love to unsettle and surprise.

When Scorsese first accepted an Oscar, it belonged to somebody else. Smiling nervously beneath a bushy beard and a head of long hair, he picked up the Best Actress prize for his Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore star Ellen Burstyn, who was in New York working on a play. Widely regarded as a New York actress, Burstyn wasn’t expected to win. A few days earlier, oddsmaker Jimmy the Greek placed her behind Faye Dunaway, Gena Rowlands, and Valerie Perrine, giving her 8-1 odds and declaring the race “virtually a dead heat” between Dunaway and Rowlands. Visibly nervous, and in a seeming hurry to get off the stage, Scorsese conveyed Burstyn’s thanks to others involved in the film, briefly chuckled after saying “She also asked me to thank myself,” then brushed past Jack Lemmon on his way off the stage.

Burstyn’s was one of the film’s three nominations. The others went to Diane Ladd for Best Supporting Actress and Robert Getchell for Best Original Screenplay, with no nomination for Scorsese’s direction. This can’t have been entirely unexpected. Just four features into his career, Scorsese had picked up a reputation as a young director of note after the critically acclaimed Mean Streets, but he was still a relative newcomer. In many ways, he’d been a director for hire on Alice. He’d chosen it carefully from the many studio offers that came his way after Mean Streets, but the film began as Burstyn’s project. Its success, however, opened up new possibilities, among them a Paul Schrader script about a sleepless Vietnam veteran who takes a job driving the streets of New York.

Taxi Driver attracted acclaim and controversy in near-equal measure. Columbia had little trouble filling full-page ads with glowing blurbs from critics as temperamentally dissimilar as Pauline Kael (“horrifyingly funny and then just horrifying”) and Gene Shalit (“Adults who want to see a well-made film with a brilliant performance by Robert De Niro… will hail Taxi Driver”). But the film, and its ambiguous morality, made even admirers uneasy, while many others found little to admire. In the Los Angeles Times, writer Thomas Thompson penned the editorial “Worse Yet, the Audience Cheered. An Outburst of Gratuitous Movie Gore,” recounting an attempt to see Taxi Driver that resulted in him fleeing during the climactic massacre but not before growing disturbed by the audience’s applause and cheers. To Thompson, such reaction negated any sort of “moralistic explanation” Scorsese could produce for showing such outrageous imagery.

On March 28, 1977, Taxi Driver walked away from the Oscars empty-handed. The film lost Best Picture to Rocky, Network’s Peter Finch posthumously beat De Niro for the Best Actor prize, and Beatrice Straight took home Best Supporting Actress over Jodie Foster. “Hollywood proved it was not ready for 12-year-old prostitutes,” Philadelphia Inquirer critic Desmond Ryan noted in his follow-up column, even though Foster was “the clearly deserving choice.” Taxi Driver might have been too undeniable an achievement to ignore, but the Academy felt more comfortable awarding scrappy boxers and verbose Paddy Chayefsky monologues. Again, Scorsese’s direction didn’t even receive a nomination. His follow-up, New York, New York, went without nominations as the Academy ignored even the deathless “Theme From New York, New York” in the Best Original Song category.

Instantly acclaimed upon its 1980 release, Raging Bull picked up eight Oscar nominations. Its two wins went to longtime Scorsese collaborators Robert De Niro (his sole Best Actor trophy to date) and editor Thelma Schoonmaker. Best Picture and Best Director both went to the same film: Robert Redford’s directorial debut, Ordinary People. A good movie often unfairly maligned because it beat out Raging Bull, Ordinary People most likely also benefited from the process by which the Academy chooses nominations and winners. Nominations come from professionals in each field. That means Scorsese’s fellow directors, by experience more inclined to be attuned to his innovations and methods, deemed him worthy of a nomination. The entirety of the Academy, however, selects the awards, and what might sway directors might not appeal to the body as a whole. The Best Director field that year, for instance, also included Richard Rush, Roman Polanski, and David Lynch—the well-liked Redford undoubtedly felt like the most comfortable choice for many voters.

It’s probably worth noting that at this point in his career, Scorsese presented a much different public persona than the genial, loquacious Scorsese of today. Appearing alongside Brian De Palma on The Dick Cavett Show in 1978, he was content to let his pal do most of the talking, joining in as De Palma ribbed the host for trying to make some vague comparison between watching certain types of films and watching bubbling water. (“I just don’t look at the bubbling water,” Scorsese says. “I’m not a nature person.”) Clad entirely in black, the ex-seminarian looked intimidatingly monkish. Four years later, a similarly uncomfortable Scorsese made an awkward appearance on Late Night With David Letterman, smiling rarely and talking quickly but with little direction. It wouldn’t be hard to mistake him for the disturbing passenger he played in Taxi Driver.

Over the next decade, a different sort of Scorsese would emerge: the now-familiar friendly, scholarly auteur who could gracefully costar in a Coke Energy commercial alongside Jonah Hill. By the time of a later Letterman appearance in 1991, he looked perfectly at ease cooking Italian food alongside his mother and Bill Murray as he promoted Cape Fear and shared stories about making Goodfellas. But reputations can be tough to shake, and though Scorsese appeared to soften, his films didn’t. In the decades after Taxi Driver, the director and the Oscars fell into a familiar pattern: He remained noticed but unrewarded.

The ’80s found Scorsese producing some of his best work but also experiencing the sort of professional turbulence that rarely leads to Oscars. The King of Comedy and After Hours both went without nominations, and though 1986’s The Color of Money earned Paul Newman a long-overdue Best Actor trophy, it lost out in the three other categories in which it was nominated. (Scorsese once more went without a nomination.) He’d pick one up two years later for The Last Temptation of Christ, despite the controversy around that film—or perhaps as a display of solidarity because of it. Again, it’s hard to square the doting family man of the now 77-year-old Scorsese’s endearing Instagram account with a time when, for a swathe of Catholics and evangelical Christians, his name became more toxic than Anton LaVey’s. (That this came as a result of Scorsese making a film he considered a sincere act of religious devotion must have compounded his frustration.)

Released in 1990, Goodfellas’ awards experience played like a rerun of Raging Bull a decade before. It picked up six nominations but only one Oscar, a Best Supporting Actor award for Joe Pesci (who’d been nominated in the same category for Raging Bull). It lost out in every other category, including Best Supporting Actress (with Lorraine Bracco falling short, as Raging Bull’s Catherine Moriarty had before her), Best Director, and Best Picture. The winner in those latter two categories was Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves. With Wolves widely predicted to win, this didn’t come as a shock. The day before the awards, the Los Angeles Times’ Jack Matthews was already treating multiple Dances with Wolves wins as a done deal, predicting that the film would win in six of the 12 categories in which it was nominated. He was wrong—it won in seven.

As one did after Raging Bull’s near misses, a lean time followed Goodfellas’ lowly night. Cape Fear picked up two nominations, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress for, respectively, De Niro and Juliette Lewis. (De Niro and Lewis also picked up an icky joint MTV Movie Award nomination for “Best Kiss” for the same film but lost to My Girl’s Macaulay Culkin and Anna Chlumsky.) 1993’s The Age of Innocence won Best Costume Design but lost in three other categories; Sharon Stone’s Best Actress nod served as Casino’s sole nomination; Kundun received four nominations; Bringing Out the Dead received none.

Scorsese’s first 21st-century film, the sweeping Gangs of New York, released in 2002, started to reverse that pattern with 10 nominations, including in the Best Picture and Best Director categories. It was shut out, but his 2004 follow-up, The Aviator, won five of its 11 nominations, most notably a Best Supporting Actress prize for Cate Blanchett’s turn as Katharine Hepburn. Scorsese’s Best Director nomination and the film’s Best Picture nomination, however, came to nothing; both lost to the work of another actor turned director, albeit one with a few more reps behind the camera by then than Redford or Costner: Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby.

By then, Scorsese’s perennial also-ran status had become an Oscars story line, and such story lines have a way of taking on a life of their own. “On this nomination and Scorsese’s last one, for 2002’s Gangs of New York, there had been a sense in Hollywood that he might win as a sort of career-achievement honor,” the Associated Press’s David Germain wrote at the time, noting that Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Altman, King Vidor, and Clarence Brown had also been nominated five times without winning. Altman, Scorsese’s elder in years but contemporary in helping to reshape Hollywood in the 1970s, would have to wait for an honorary Oscar in 2006. For Scorsese, the sixth time would prove the charm. Yet whatever role momentum might have played, the film that broke Scorsese’s losing streak hardly looks like a gold-watch movie, the sort of nice-but-underachieving film that finally earns a director an award near the end of a long career.

A two-and-half-hour plunge into violence, paranoia, and twisted loyalties, The Departed is as edgy and unwelcoming a film as Scorsese ever made. Any comforting familiarity within it comes from recognizable Scorsese motifs, like a Rolling Stones song used to disquieting effect. Its violence, though generous, may not be as shocking as Taxi Driver’s bloodbath, but it does feature Jack Nicholson whipping out a dildo, so call it a draw. Either way, when Scorsese won the Best Director Oscar in 2007, it still felt like a fait accompli, a feeling driven home by the three directors handing out the award: Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg, all old friends. Scorsese accepted the award to a standing ovation and, after asking the presenters to double-check the envelope, jovially thanked everyone he needed to thank, including all the strangers who’d said they’d hoped he’d win over the years, and left the stage. And that was it. Scorsese looked on from the side of the stage as producer Graham King accepted the Best Picture prize at the end of the night. The director hasn’t won an Oscar since.

Not that he hasn’t had more chances. Hugo picked up 11 nominations—including Best Picture and Best Director—and won five, all for technical categories. The Wolf of Wall Street earned five nominations, all in major categories, including Best Picture and Best Director, but once again, Scorsese walked away without an award. Scorsese had become an institution, and a now (relatively) younger Academy membership was less easily shocked by his work, but it remained disinclined to reward films that forced viewers that deep into the minds of destructive characters, even if they wreaked havoc with junk bonds rather than handguns.

Unless it prevails against all predictions, The Irishman will continue Scorsese’s second Oscars losing streak. Maybe The Departed’s win wasn’t Scorsese finally winning after a series of should’ve-been near misses. Perhaps the win—not the losses—is the aberration. Scorsese has become the face of artistically ambitious American filmmaking, but he’s also never really embraced the establishment. From one perspective, this past fall’s dust-up with Marvel fans looked like a member of the old guard unable to adjust to changes in the movie industry. From another, it looked like another example of Scorsese lashing out at a profitable status quo he saw as artistically barren and demanding more. And maybe it’s that sort of attitude that ensures that an Oscar win, however well deserved and long in the making, happens only once in a lifetime.

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2020-02-06 14:44:47Z
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Gayle King Asked Lisa Leslie About Kobe Bryant's Rape Case. The Response Revealed How Much Further We Need to Go - The Root

Screenshot: CBS This Morning

Gayle King became the target of intense and widespread backlash this week after her interview with former WNBA star Lisa Leslie went viral. The subject: Kobe Bryant and his legacy.

The legendary basketball player sat down with King on CBS This Morning for a wide-ranging interview, speaking at length about their close friendship and the emotions he evoked as a player. So far, so good.

But the interview got tense as King shifted to the topic of Bryant’s sexual assault charge. From CBS This Morning:

It’s been said that his legacy is complicated because of a sexual assault charge, which was dismissed in 2003, 2004. Is it complicated for you as a woman, as a WNBA player?

It’s not complicated for me at all. Even if there’s a few times that we’ve been at a club at the same time, Kobe’s not the kind of guy—never been, like, you know, ‘Lis, go get that girl, or tell her or send her this.’ I have other NBA friends that are like that. Kobe was never like that. I just never, have ever seen him being the kind of person that would do something to violate a woman or be aggressive in that way. That’s just not the person that I know.

 But Lisa, you wouldn’t see it, though. As his friend, you wouldn’t see it.

And that’s possible. I just don’t believe that. And I’m not saying things didn’t happen. I just don’t believe that things didn’t happen with force.

If you scrolled through Twitter and took the reactions to the interview as Gospel™ (which you should refrain from doing), what you’d come away with is widespread disdain for King even asking the question.

The reasons varied: some bemoaned the timing, noting that Leslie was still grieving the sudden loss of her friend. Others suggested King was trying to control the narrative and complimented Leslie for smoothly pivoting away from the rape case. Love and Hip Hop’s Masika Kalysha accused King of weaponizing Leslie’s womanhood. Many accused King, who previously received kudos for her deft handling of R. Kelly during an interview last year, of being singularly focused on destroying black men’s legacies (to make this argument, folks lumped King and longtime best friend Oprah together). Many more said it was simply too soon to bring up the case, or that the media should have discussed it in when he was alive (they did, and I suspect the folks who find it improper today didn’t approve of it when Bryant was alive, either).

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After the torrent of vitriol hit King, she went online to clarify that the interview was, in fact, about far more than the rape case. King also expressed anger that the clip CBS circulated online focused exclusively on that one exchange.

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“During the course of the interview I asked follow-up questions because I wanted to make sure her position and perspective were very clear,” the reporter said. “And in the end when she said, it’s time to leave it alone...I thought that was powerful.”

In parsing this story, it’s important to be clear about what Leslie told King. Leslie said she didn’t believe Bryant raped a 19-year old hotel employee in Colorado. And she said she didn’t believe it because she had never known him to be violent or aggressive toward women. Because he didn’t seem to be running out on his wife when they were in the club together. Leslie also claimed (incorrectly) that the case went to trial.

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Leslie explicitly wants the case to be forgotten.

“The case was dismissed because the victim in the case refused to testify,” King pointed out.

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“And I think that that’s how we should leave it,” Leslie said. Dismissed.

As Bryant’s friend, Leslie has the right to her memories and recollections of the man. What is worth pushing back on is the notion that Leslie has the authority to dictate how Bryant should and should not be remembered. No one person, no one article, no one interview can do that.

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The honest assessment of Bryant’s history involves a rape charge not simply because this act of violence may have happened (and someone very famous and beloved may have done it), but because it had a real impact on real lives.

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Bryant’s defense did malign the alleged victim on the grounds of her mental health issues—an act that more of us now understand to be deeply unethical. Bryant’s defense did try to paint her suicide attempt as a grab for attention. Bryant’s defense did allege that because the accuser had consensual sex with other men it meant that she could not have been raped. The victim’s name was leaked to the press—an absolute breach of journalism ethics that all but guaranteed her life would be hell.

And after the powerful, sustained smear campaign against her, Bryant’s accuser refused to testify. She dropped the charges in exchange for an apology for the rape, which Bryant gave. They eventually settled a civil case out of court.

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It would be deeply dishonest to say it has no bearing on Bryant’s legacy because the case had a direct impact on the very things people love the most about him: his persona and how he played the game. In the wake of the rape accusations, Bryant lost endorsements, the trust of his wife and, for a moment, the narrative. That loss, as professor Amira Rose Davis lays out in a recent article in The New Republic, preceded and made necessary the birth of “Black Mamba”:

Black Mamba—as a name, as a symbol, as a mentality—was created by Bryant as a direct response to the sexual assault case. It spoke to his ferocity on the court. To his refusal to be “passive” any longer. He also hoped it would serve to “separate the personal stuff” still attached to the name Kobe Bryant. “The whole process for me was trying to figure out how to cope with this,” Bryant told The Washington Post in 2018. “I wasn’t going to be passive and let this thing just swallow me up.”

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Not only did the case have a profound effect on Bryant himself, it influenced how defense attorneys treated rape survivors in court, because lawyers always pay attention to successful strategies. It shaped survivors’ calculus on whether to go public or seek justice for the violence they endured. Bryant’s case was ultimately a reminder that in the best scenarios, the world may not be kind or compassionate to your story. And in the worst cases—it may even try to destroy you.

So it is fair for King to ask of a woman who knew Bryant well: How does she reconcile the allegations with the man she cared about and his impact on a game she loved? Leslie would have been well within her rights to say the time didn’t feel right to answer the question. But if you’re going to ask Leslie this question, there’s no reason it shouldn’t be asked of Bryant’s NBA pals as well—friends who have been vocal about social justice or the power of their platforms.

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If that equal opportunity reckoning feels gauche, that’s worth examining. The uncomfortable fact is that womanhood or race or fame doesn’t automatically confer upon you special insights into justice or abuse or power, nor does it grant you instant wisdom on how to address difficult, structural problems.

Ultimately, how we choose to look at Bryant (and it is a choice) is both an open and personal question. But if the goal is compassion, a world that is kinder to survivors and more critical of the structures that compound their trauma, it will be a collective effort. It will require hard questions and sitting with the answers that make us uneasy. It can only happen if understanding is the goal, and not redemption—the latter simply doesn’t feel like ours to give.

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Regardless of her answer, Lisa Leslie does not get to absolve Bryant’s rape case. Gayle King doesn’t have the power to litigate it, nor can any other journalist. The only person who has the authority to say whether Bryant vindicated himself for that night in Colorado is the alleged victim.

The rest of us just have what we choose to remember.

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2020-02-06 14:24:00Z
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