Yes, folks, Hollywood finally did it. There was one powerful, influential, old and overweight man who wreaked havoc upon the lives upon many famous and wannabe-famous women in show business.
It's great to finally see a movie about the monster whose exposure got the whole #MeToo started.
You know the man I'm talking about....
Yes, folks, somehow when deciding to make a movie regarding a powerful man in show business demanding sexual favors in order to advance women's careers, the first choice for villain was Roger Ailes, and not Harvey Weinstein.
The movie "Bombshell" just released this week, and chronicles the supposed story of Ailes' antics at Fox News.
But okay, Roger Ailes indeed acted reprehensibly, and it's not unreasonable that they would want to make a movie about him.
They casted Nicole Kidman as Gretchen Carlson, and Charlize Theron as Megyn Kelly. They did a good job with the makeup, and both look like the women they're playing. Okay, so far, so good. John Lithgow plays Roger Ailes and doesn't really look like him, but whatever.
Then things go off the rails.
The third female lead character in the movie is Kayla Pospisil, played by Margot Robbie.
Ever heard of Fox News star Kayla Pospisil? Wait, you haven't??
That's because Kayla Pospisil isn't real. She's a fictional character made up by the writers of the movie, supposedly a "composite" of a lot of different women at Fox. This already starts to hurt the film's credibility. It's one thing to make a lookalike character when the original doesn't want their name or likeness used. It's another thing to invent a completely fictitious woman whose sexual harassment story we're supposed to care about, in a film which is supposed to be depicting close-to-actual events.
But the Kayla character actually isn't a composite. Kayla calls herself an "evangelical millennial", is young, blonde, and ambitious, and has a big social media presence. Sound like anyone you might know? Yup, she's clearly a fictional version of Tomi Lahren, who oddly enough wasn't even at Fox until August 2017, was only a "contributor" at that point, and never made any sexual harassment allegations against Ailes. Most of the film takes place in 2016, when Lahren was with The Blaze.
So why the fake Tomi Lahren as the third main character? No fucking clue.
But it gets worse.
Kayla eventually joins Bill O'Reilly's staff, and meets a show producer named Jess Carr (played by Kate McKinnon). Jess Carr is a closeted lesbian, you see, and is also a clandestine left-winger who secretly despises Fox and its politics, but hides all of this so she can keep her job.
Do you remember the story of O'Reilly producer Jess Carr? You don't? Well, guess what? She's fictitious, too.
Unlike the claim about the Kayla character, the producers of "Bombshell" admit that Jess Carr is completely fictitious, and isn't even a supposed "composite" of other women at Fox. In fact, McKinnon herself told Jimmy Fallon during an interview that the role was "invented for her".
Anyway, sorry if I'm spoiling this, but it turns out that evangelical Christian millennial Kayla Pospisil is also a hypocritical closeted lesbian, and she begins a secret sexual relationship with the Jess Carr character. Oh, how scandalous! You see, every evangelical Christian is actually a hypocritical closeted homosexual, and most of the women at Fox aren't really on board with the message, but are just faking it. The place is clearly infested with left wing lesbians pretending to be on the right so they can keep their jobs.
Why include this storyline at all, if this is supposed to be a movie of the bad, evil, goings-on at Fox News? Looks like the writers simply couldn't resist the temptation to bash Christians. Dumb.
Look, if Hollywood wants to do a dramatized version of some bad stuff that happened at Fox News, I have no issue. Go for it. Expose the truth. Exaggerate a bit for dramatic effect. Whatever.
If Hollywood wants to release a movie about a fictional story of unlikely lesbian love spawning among staffers at a fictional right wing talk show, I have no issue. It's not a very interesting storyline, but if they want to make it, I have no problem.
But here they're selling the movie as giving you the inside scoop of what happened to real people at Fox (Calson & Kelly), and then they have to contaminate it with fictional characters created to further the producers' social agenda. When you mix very real characters with very fictional ones, the viewer is left incredibly confused as to what really happened at Fox -- and I don't believe it's made very clear in the movie which characters are fictitious.
What a bunch of Hollywood crap.
Now, will we ever see a movie about Weinstein -- whose transgressions were worse and more numerous than those committed by Ailes? Or are they too afraid to make such a thing about one of their own?