“Eagle snatches kid” sounds like some sort of sensationalist National Enquirer- type headline, and he makes the edgy, gross out joke that he gets “lucky” by snatching kids.
It’s silly, the twitter posts I’m reading are all about silly “politically incorrect” blue humor, about 9/11 or cancer or whatnot.
Again, Disney has the right to fire anybody for whatever perceived break of conduct they deem true. But calling the guy a pedophile is just nonsense.
I think you’re mistaken about the bolded part. I don’t get that at all from the line. Like, at all.
There’s always a context. If I’m reading this right, the pedophilia jokes might have been him mocking Victor Salva. He was asked why he was taking part in a reading with a convicted pedophile, he answered: “Yeah, that was the point of the tweets, dummy. I left. I showed up to the reading and there was a convicted pedophile there – Victor Salva, the director of Jeepers Creepers, and I was fucking horrified.”
Also, a lot of the tweets had hashtags from @Midnight and Twitter joke competitions they did. They were supposed to be shocking. Are they funny? I don’t know, but reading them so far out of context is like when police officers were reading Lenny Bruce’s routines in court.
The snippets I read were pretty awful. I liked Gunn, but it’s not surprising that he’s fired when he said stuff that disgusting, even in a joking matter. Maybe if he had been in his 20s this could have blown over. But it wasn’t that long ago, and he was in his 40s, so it’s not surprising at all.
Frankly I think the whole story that he thought it was funny that monkey ejaculated on kid on set of Max Keeble’s Big Move kinda soured me on “these tweets are all joke” defense. That’s pretty disturbing thing to find funny and it calls in to question whether or not Disney should put him in charge of another film.
The fact that some left-wing groups dredged up these exact same tweets a few years ago ahead of the release of his other Disney movies to no real effect make me wonder if this wasn’t just a calculated move by Disney to fire him using this as an excuse.
How bad of a slur is “tranny” considered and how long has it been that way? I’m asking because some of the biggest outrage I’ve read is over his use of “a slur for transgenders.” And, well, i’m not saying it’s not rude or offensive but I would say it’s pretty commonly used (at least until very recently) and I see it regularly used by like adult industry folks and other people who are “into” or involved in stuff with transgender people.
That’s rather interesting. Do you have a link?
Don’t see why. Disney has fired directors mercilessly and without any proper explanation before, some with a relevant fanbase. Names that include Edgar Wright (from Ant-Man) and the team composed of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (From Solo).
They just took the backlash and moved on.
Here’s a news article where GLAAD and other groups complained before the release of the first Guardians of the Galaxy about similar style blog statements he made before.
Here’s a Mary Sue article referencing those same events and saying that multiple people and groups at the time were asking for James Gunn to step-down from Guardians of the Galaxy 1.
My problem with it is it was a bad faith complaint. The tweets didn’t bother Mike Cernovich in the slightest. He weaponized outrage to hurt someone because he didn’t like that he was liberal. The people who were angry that Roseanne was a racist conspiracy theorist were at least sincere.
You know, Chris Pratt exposed himself to Amy Poehler on the set of Parks & Rec, Robert Downey Jr is a drug addict with an extensive felony record, and Stan Lee has had a long history of verbal sexual abuse claims against him. Compared to this, a comedic personality making deliberately outrageous comments on a social media platform is piddling offense by any rational standard.
Mike Cernovich is a professional shit-stirrer and conspiranoist on par with Alex Jones who manufactures outrage by innuendo, out-of-context citation, and outright lying, a fact he doesn’t really deny. Vice: “How Truth Lost It’s Meaning In Trump’s America”. He’s currently attempting to push a theory that there is a massive paedophilia ring that is pervasive in entertaiment circles, and Gunn was just the first target he successfully hit.
I give even odds this blows backwards and the apparently snap decision by Marvel Studios and/or corporate parent Disney is reversed. Or if not, I’m sure Fox would be happy to give Gunn free reign develop one of their Deadpool-associated properties as he sees fit, because that studio certainly isn’t afraid of some hard language and uncomfortable sexual humor.
Stranger
I wasn’t aware of the on-going campaign; I’ll have to keep an eye out for evidence of that going forward. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
I have to wonder if there aren’t a few people at Fox that haven’t already been discussing something like that.
And attacking the news media. But he’s got his own history as an accused rapist and avowed rape apologist.
As for Gunn, he made some crass, ostensibly humorous statements on what was then still a pretty casual social media site well before Twitter became an essential global phenomenon that people referenced for news and information. He has contritely apologized for the content and tone, and as yet no one has come forward to accused him of having made any kind of offense or insult to an individual, much less actually having committed any of the lewd acts he joked about. If he’d been smarter, and aware that his career would blow up into helming a trilogy of films inside of a major franchise run by a media-sensitive corporate behemoth he’d have been smarter to not make those posts, or better yet not have a private, unvented social media account at all, but in terms of life mistakes this is on the far side of inconsequential except for people looking to manufacture outrage.
Every working comedian or entertainer working in comedy knows about a joke colloquially referred to as “The Aristocrats”, which each comedian attempts to tell in such a way to be intentionally more offensive than anyone before, often involving descriptions of acts that even Thomas Pynchon refuses to write about. This joke has existed since the dawn of entertainment as an industry, and has probably been told by every comedian from Milton Berle to Tina Fey. That they’ve all told this joke does not mean that they endorse or promote the acts described within; just that there is a competition among comedians to make the most horrific things funny. Gunn is not a professional comedian (although he has reportedly done some standup) and his humor in this regard is sophomoric at best, but none of it is an offense, insult, or attack directed at a living person, and has not resulted in anyone entering a pizzeria with a rifle to ‘investigate’ fake conspiracy theories, so by any objective measure he’s still a better person than his accusers or for that matter the President.
Stranger
Disney has every right to fire Gunn. Gunn creates their entertainment product and Disney depends upon him, in part, to present their face positively to the public.
So I fully support Disney’s decision.
Exactly the way I supported ABC’s decision.
:rolleyes:
I see it as a savvy business move for Disney, Gunn’s weird past has always been a liability and lately Disney has been coming under fire for the sheer lack of female directors in their Marvel movies. So the obvious choice is to make a big public announcement of canning Gunn, then make an equally big announcement later that hes being replaced by a female director.
A “grossing over $1.5B with two movies” liability working on the 3rd in the series. I think we’ll have to wait and see if it was a savvy business move or not.
Doubtful. Disney is buying Fox. Hiring Gunn for Deadpool would be awkward and dumb. Good way to get fired though.
Good point about Disney buying Fox; that had slipped my mind.