The Upside (Neil Burger)

[TGM]

THE UPSIDE

Director: Neil Burger

imdb

[TGM]

I had reservations going into this due to its release date. But it actually turned out quite good. This was a really sweet, charming, and genuinely funny and heartfelt movie, and may well be Kevin Hart’s best at that. I don’t think it would’ve necessarily gotten any awards buzz, hence them skipping out on a December release, but even so, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

[Henry Gale]

It's so weird to think of this as a movie from 2019 since I remember it being at TIFF 2017 with only moderate profile to it. Then it gets out of the Weinstein woods, apparently gets re-edited a bunch and becomes a $100 million hit.

Go figure.

[Ivan Drago]

And does so despite the controversy around Hart at Oscar time.

[TGM]

I’m glad the controversy didn’t work against him here. What a load of utter BS that was.

[Peng]

Disliking one’s homophobia was bs? Especially when he doubled down after the fact?

[TGM]

I similarly feel the James Gunn situation was total BS. They made tasteless jokes. They then later apologized for those tasteless jokes, and tried to move on from them. Then years later, assholes dug up those tasteless jokes and tried to hold them against them and ruin their careers over it.

A. Jokes are jokes, and comedy is allowed to be tasteless or controversial.

B. People grow. People are allowed to grow and change. Or should we all be judged today for every dumb decision we made 10+ years ago, as opposed to the person we’ve since grown to become?

[Peng]

Putting asides what qualified as a joke (maybe I’m a humorless crank but saying you want to slam a dollhouse on your son’s head if you find him playing with it doesn’t tickle any funny bone, tasteless or controversial), Hart was never quoted as regretting his past way far before the controversy, like Gunn, or immediately after the controversy hit, sincerely apologize. Even after the tweets were dugged up he still had the job, but then he doubled down on a real narcissistic instagram post that put the blame on others that spread “negativity”. Even after *that*, he still *somehow* had the job because the Academy contacted him to please apologize, and he chose to step down instead. Not here for the revionist take on this Hart thing. He didn’t get ruined, he ruined himself by showing no remorse, growth, or thoughts about others at all (The actual apology came way later, and even then the Academy didn’t mind taking him back if he wanted; saying that he didn’t have any chance or opportunity was just not true).

[TGM]

He did apologize though, both in the past, and more recently. The only revision here is trying to claim that he didn’t. I admire him for refusing to bow to the mob though, and refusing to play along with the Academy’s game like a good little puppet, but rather turning THEM down for even suggesting their gross ultimatum. It’s a lose/lose situation, and it’s about time people stand up to the these online monsters when these sorts of nonsense “controversies” transpire.

He earned my respect, and I agree with him whole heartedly when he refused to cater to and called these people out for what they are: internet trolls.

[Peng]

Where Are Kevin Hart’s Past Apologies?

Hart is making a pretty bold claim here that the press has chosen to ignore previous apologies for his homophobic tweets and not put any work into finding them. But before we start hunting for said apologies, let’s establish what an apology is and isn’t. An apology is acknowledging a mistake, offense, or failure. An apology has words like “I’m sorry” or “I regret,” and these words are used without shifting the blame or burden to another person, place, or thing. An apology is not “I’m sorry if I offended you” or “I’m sorry if my words hurt your feelings” or “I don’t do that anymore because people are too sensitive these days.” An apology is what Samantha Bee made, twice, for calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless cunt.” An apology is Seth Rogen, when confronted about using blackface film stand-ins, saying, “I should start by saying this shouldn’t have happened, and I’m terribly sorry it did. I won’t give excuses for why it happened.” An apology is when Dan Harmon told former Community writer Megan Ganz that he was “deeply sorry” for sexually harassing her, then followed it up with a long reflection where he owned up to the bigger damage it caused.

Hart says he’s already done this, ten years ago and multiple times. When asked what apology he was referring to in a new interview with Variety, he said,“[W]hen people say, ‘Yo, I can’t find it,’ well, go ask the individual who dug up the stuff from 2009 to go do the same. I can’t put that energy into something that’s in my past. I can’t put that energy into negativity.” (We also reached out to Hart’s reps to ask about what apology he was referring to and will update this post if we hear back.)

Before getting into Hart’s claims of apologies, it’s important to know that Hart’s homophobia goes beyond tweeting homophobic insults at people using words like homo, fag, and tranny. He’s received a lot of criticism over the years, for example, for a bit in his special Seriously Funny,in which he says that while he doesn’t consider himself homophobic, one of his biggest fears is his son growing up to be gay. In the bit, Hart describes seeing another boy “grinding” against his son at a birthday party, after which he knocks both boys to the ground. (The following year, Hart tweeted a joke similar to the one in the special that has since been deleted, writing, “Yo if my son comes home & try’s 2 play with my daughters doll house I’m going 2 break it over his head & say n my voice ‘stop that’s gay.’”)

Also worth noting is that Seriously Funny premiered in 2010 — a year after the ten-year-old apology Hart told DeGeneres he made for his homophobic tweets. So let’s look for the other multiple apologies Hart says are being ignored.


The earliest interview where Hart addresses his homophobia appears to be a Men’s Health interview from 2013, three years after Seriously Funny,where he’s asked if there’s anything he won’t joke about and says “things have really changed” in comedy when it comes to jokes about gay people

[...]

In a 2014 interview with Playboy, he goes on, saying that “it’s too dangerous” to joke about gay people

And so on, more in the link. When both controversies broke, I started from the same place of shaking head with both Gunn and Hart, but their different behaviors whle being in the news couldn't be more different, such that my feeling branched out to begrudgingly respecting Gunn for handling this really well, while Hart just got actively loathesome and smug. And reading about his past supposed "apologies" and "change" just made it worse. The respect willing to extend to Hart, whose past reasons stated for why he stopped saying or joking homophobic things couldn't be more wishy-washy variation of "it's not me, it's them" and clearly lacking any "growth" or "change" as you said, is mind-boggling to me here.

[TGM]

I’ve pretty much said all I want to say on the matter. I just find this sort of thing exhausting, and seeing so many people on my social media feeds jump right in line with the mob mentality when such “controversies” break has largely contributed to why I don’t use sites like twitter in the same manner that I used to anymore, because it’s just become such an ugly, hateful, and unforgivingly remorseless place. This controversy was BS because it shouldn’t have ever been a controversy in the first place. Or are we prepared to dig up everything else that everyone’s ever said on the internet over the past decade? Because I know I’m certainly not proud of everything I’ve ever posted, and I’ve seen a lot of questionable things posted in the past by a lot of the same people who like to jump on board these online lynch mobs as well, where they really have no room to judge.

It’s different when we’re talking about something like what happened to Roseanne Barr last year, because people attacked her for something she said in the present. But when we’re attacking people and expecting apologies for things they said over a decade ago? Yeah, I just can’t get on board with that. I’ll judge you for who you are today, not who you were 10 years ago. And now I realize I’ve said far more on the matter once more than I intended to. >_>

[Peng]

Yeah it's fine to not like this kind of controversy, I just don't want Hart's behaviors/"apologies" during or before it misrepresented or satinized, when it's clear it goes the other way.

[Pop Trash]

The Oscars should have gone for Eddie Murphy amirite?!