Story here.
An excellent solution to the tragic shortage of black actors. :rolleyes:
Well, in all fairness (Who? Us Dopers? 
), he’s playing an actor who’s blackfacing for a movie:
…although it’s pretty hard to glean that from the atrocious way that sentence is constructed.
As noted, a black actor would have to don whiteface to play the part. Downey is playing a white man in the movie. Not sure what your beef is about.
It’s a gag that’s part of the movie, like Soul Man. The only objection here would be if you’re against blackface in any form, even satire.
I agree, that is a clunky sentence–I found a clearer one here:
So Downey’s playing a ridiculously earnest white actor who’s taking on a blackface role–the whole thing is about ridiculously pretentious actors who get dumped into a very real situation by their fed up writer and director. The whole movie is a big meta joke and the blackface role is just another layer of the overall recursive plot.
I think it’s a hilarious premise and I also think Downey makes an incredibly realistic looking black man. I also really enjoyed the comment to the article which equates getting pissed about Downey playing black to getting pissed because the role of “Tootsie” was played by a man.
What sense would it make when the role is a white man playing a black man to cast a black man?
D’oh! :smack:
Yes, I did think he was playing a black man from start to finish, not a white man pretending to be black.
I’ll go get some rest now. 
What would be cool would be if they combined it with Victor-Victoria, Shirley Q Liquor, and the M’dea movies:
An out of work black actress pretends to be a white man pretending to be a black man who plays a black woman. The great thing is that it could be the most open casting call in Hollywood history- anyone from Halle Berry to Robin Williams to Eddie Murphy to Julia Roberts could be considered. Andy Griffith, Mark Wahlberg, and Adrienne Barbeau are attached.
Early in his career, black British comedian Lenny Henry was briefly a member of the infamous Black And White Minstrel troupe. This meant that he was a black man playing a white man playing a black man.
A bit of a hijack, but I remember the furor over Reagan’s inauguration when Ben Vereen performed in black face. There were all sorts of accusations: that he was doing it to mock the Republicans, that the Republicans required him to do it, that Vereen [whose wife at the time was white as well] was a self-loathing black man, etc…
The truth was much plainer: at the time Vereen was doing a hit one-man show in which he portrayed several historical black entertainers, one of whom was Bert Williams, a turn of the century Vaudeville and Broadway performer and occasional film star [a superstar of his own time], a light skinned black man who performed in black-face. Vereen’s performance at the inaugural gala was a scene from his show (no different in intent than had the girl from Annie [a hit show at the time] sung Tomorrow), but it caused a fury because of the racial implications.
Then of course there was Ted Danson…
I find it odd that people are convieniently overlooking the fact that the movie also stars Jack Black, who unlike his name might suggest, is white.
But, Barry White is Black, so what does that mean?
No, he wasn’t. He was with the Black and White Mintrels, but he did his standard stand-up/impressions act between musical numbers – he wasn’t one of the mintrels himself, and he didn’t black up.
He was in a film called True Identity, though, where he played a black man who disguises himself as a white man to escape the mob.
Where was the outrage when Eddie Murphy started playing multiple characters in his movies, some of which were white? Oh right, no one saw those horrible movies.
Nobody saw Coming to America? You must be a studio accountant.
No, but it was probably the movie that started Murphy’s obsession with playing multiple roles in several more films culminating in Norbert and therefore it deserves disdain for that connection.
The (first) Nutty Professor movie was also pretty funny. And Murphy was hilarious playing the part of a Richard Simmons parody (who was, of course, white).
No mention of Stir Crazy yet?
That’s the best makeup job I’ve ever seen. Would have never pegged that guy as Downey in a million years.
You can see it in the side-by-side comparison (it’s the eyes), but yeah, I had to look really close to see it.