After Donald Trump's controversial comments about Mexicans, NBC is dumping the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants (pictured); the 30th anniversary of "Back to the Future" is being marked with a screening and live orchestral performance; comedian and actress Julie Brister says she's tired of being seen as fat first and as a performer second.
NBC cuts Donald Trump ties over comments on immigrants
NBCUniversal is ceasing business with real estate developer/reality show producer/presidential candidate Donald Trump after he made derogatory comments during the announcement of his presidential bid.
"When Mexico sends its people they're not sending their best," Trump said. "They're sending people that have lots of problems. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. Some, I assume are good people."
When asked if he would retract his remarks on Mexico, Trump said that his comments were "100 percent right" but that he believes "Mexican people are fantastic" and that his relationship with the Mexican community is "great."
In reaction to his remarks, NBCUniversal is dropping Miss USA and Miss Universe from its repertoire. They released a statement saying:
"At NBC, respect and dignity for all people are cornerstones of our values. Due to the recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants, NBCUniversal is ending its business relationship with Mr. Trump. To that end, the annual Miss USA and Miss Universe Pageants, which are part of a joint venture between NBC and Trump, will no longer air on NBC. In addition, as Mr. Trump has already indicated, he will not be participating in 'The Apprentice' on NBC. 'Celebrity Apprentice' is licensed from Mark Burnett's United Artists Media Group and that relationship will continue."
west coast editor with Vulture.com, spoke with the Frame's John Horn to discuss the news.
Interview Highlights
What really forced NBC's hand here? Was it an online petition, outcry from other corners, or were the ratings really not that good?
The ratings for the show are fine. If anything, this was a decision that was months, if not years in the making. I think some people at NBC probably wanted to do this a long time ago, but for whatever reason they didn't, which is sad. It's sad that the Confederate Flag came down more quickly than Donald Trump got fired. Essentially, I think Trump's statements about Latino immigrants were sort of the final straw. As was Univision's decision, bravely, to sort of set out in front of this and say, "We're not going to televise the pageant."
Trump owns the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants. He operates a joint venture with NBC to produce them and to air it on English-language networks — Univision was the Spanish-language network. Univision last week, to its credit, said, "No, basta. This is gone," and they pulled the plug. That, I think put NBC in a corner. They could no longer sit by while another big media partner said "no" and it sort of was the one saying "yes."
What happens with the time slot? Will someone else pick it up up? What does NBC do with that hole in its schedule?
This is not a big issue for NBC financially. It's a big issue for it in turns of public relations, which is why they finally had to act. The only question is, what took them so long? It's sad to see that big organizations like this can sort of get so sclerotic in terms of making the right call.
What we don't know is what was going on behind the scenes. NBC has complex financial dealings with Trump, and as you know, is that Donald Trump can be very litigious. Trump has already threatened to sue NBC over this. It could be that they were trying to work this out behind the scenes and they eventually just finally said, "Forget about it, we got to jump."
Fat actresses still often defined by their weight while 'dadbods' become cool
Rebel Wilson broke out in in the first “Pitch Perfect” movie as "Fat Amy." Many of the film's jokes — and even more in this year's sequel — are about the size of the overweight singer. This focus on her weight is no laughing matter to some people, including comedian and actress Julie Brister.
Brister describes herself as a fat actress. She recently wrote about this for Slate, in a piece called "Large as Life: What it’s like being a Fat Amy-sized actress in Hollywood." She talked about her piece with the Frame.
Brister writes that fat actresses are often treated as fat first and as actresses in a distant second.
"A lot of things that I go out for are characters or roles that are totally defined by their weight, instead of being just a regular person. And so the choices that that character might have to make also usually relate to the weight, and as a fat woman, my life goes beyond my size. So I would love to see that reflected in what I see in TV and movies," Brister says.
The way the character of Fat Amy is portrayed goes from bold to mean-spirited in the sequel, Brister says — an example of how larger actresses are often portrayed.
"One of the main things that kind of sticks in my craw about that is that she's still referred to as 'Fat Amy.' And I feel like they get away with saying that, 'Well, I say that myself first so that other people don't do it behind my back.' But then it just gives everybody license to call her 'fat' to her face."
Brister moved to L.A. when she was almost 40 years old, which she says actually gave her access to a wider variety of roles than younger plus-sized actresses might find.
"The kinds of roles that I tend to go out for aren't necessarily exclusively fat-defined roles, nor are they the fat best friend roles. And I have friends who are younger who that is their niche. And those roles I think are far more offensive, because those roles are just exclusively the butt of a joke."
She hasn't always been able to be selective about her roles, especially when starting out, but having an agent has helped her to avoid feeling humiliated on camera.
"I've taken roles that are fat jokes, or where I've been hired exclusively because of my size, that I thought were hilarious. So it's not like I'm not able to laugh at myself or not laugh at the situation. But at some point, once I got representation, and once I sat down and had a conversation with my agent where we commonly decided, you know, there are certain kinds of roles that I would prefer not to do. I felt like I was taken care of in that matter."
One of the roles she played earlier that ended up being more humiliating involved Brister getting frozen yogurt poured on her chin and her chest — in the middle of an active commissary during lunch hour.
"It was a ROUGH day," Brister says. "Sometimes, when you do a day-player or one-day things on a show, you sometimes don't know what you're really doing until you talk to wardrobe. And that was one of those situations, where I knew that I was coming on and I was playing a celebrity, but I did not have the full context of the role."
Once she was in the situation, Brister says she didn't feel comfortable turning back.
"I didn't feel comfortable saying no in that situation, and I didn't have an advocate to kind of guide me. So I ended up doing something I didn't feel great about myself for doing, but I did it."
Brister says that experience changed her.
"I think of it often. And I think of it when I see other larger women doing things on TV and in movies, where I know that they've compromised their dignity. And I know that that was a rough day for them."
Still, there is hope — Brister says she thinks that being a particularly great actress can open doors, regardless of body image.
"Melissa McCarthy is a fantastic actress. Even before 'Bridesmaids,' she was working, playing parts that maybe weren't just defined by their size. And I think especially of the part she had on 'Gilmore Girls' as Sookie — which, you could say that that was a fat best friend role, but that would be like the best fat best friend role out there. Because she was a multidimensional person, and was not just exclusively defined by her size, and fit in with the other characters on the show. She was never a joke. Nothing was ever at her expense."
Another shining example for Brister is Kathy Bates, who is such a great actress that Brister says she's been able to largely supersede playing size-driven roles altogether.
There's plenty of fault in these roles to go around, from the writers to the actresses themselves, and even the audiences who laugh along. Still, Brister says she doesn't blame the actresses.
"The actor took that role, and there is an actress out there who might do something that compromises her dignity, and she doesn't care. And, you know, more power to her if she's numb to that experience. I have a hard time. I think I'm a pretty tough lady, but there are certain things that I think I would have a hard time numbing myself to."
Brister says that, sometimes, she's probably been on the other side of that equation.
"I've taken roles that maybe other actresses feel like, why would she do that? And that's just the way that it is. I hope that we would, as a society, and as a culture in this business, would aim higher, you know? There are definitely certain shows where you're going to see it more than other shows, but I don't think that people's views on fat people are going to change anytime soon."
Brister says she's happy to do a role that has a fat joke she thinks is funny. In a role on the show "Good Luck Charlie,"
, she plays a vacationing woman in a scene that includes a joke about her size.
"To me, it felt more benign. It didn't really bother me. There's nothing mean about it," Brister says. "And also, that lady — that lady was just an oblivious, loopy lady, and I enjoyed the loopiness of that lady a lot more than I was offended by a mild fat joke."
One issue that Brister isn't excited about — the double standard for larger men in TV and film.
"'Dadbods' are so cuddly and, as we've been hearing lately, so attractive to women these days. And a dadbod is essentially a fat guy. So I'm not going to call fat women a 'mombod,' and I think that 'curves,' there are plenty of people out there that appreciate curves. But like a fat, doughy lady is not going to be getting any love from young hot studs anytime soon," Brister says. "Those kinds of sitcoms with the fat dad and the skinny wife — oy. They drive me nuts."
Brister also teaches improv with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, but she says that teaching improv has been something where body image largely doesn't come up.
"I'll tell you why — because in improv, you can be whatever you want to be. I rarely set out in a scene and make myself a fat lady. In improv, it's all — we cater to your imagination, and to the improviser's imagination, and you can be whoever and whatever you want to be."
There are roles that Brister has had the opportunity to play that she says she's very proud of, and they aren't about her body.
"I was on 'Playing House' last year playing a nurse in an episode that actually won a GLAAD Award, called 'Let's Have A Baby.' I was very proud of my work in that, and I have a recurring role in the Comedy Central show 'Review,' where I play the attorney to the main character, Forrest MacNeil. And that role has nothing to do with my weight. I love it."
The Slate article has drawn a positive response, with people approaching Brister to talk to her about it.
"I've had a lot of thank yous from people, and so I'm glad that I could put something out there that people could respond to and relate to, and feel like that they could really learn something from."
Comedy Central's "Review," which Brister appears in, returns in August.
Watch Brister in this UCB comedy video:
'Back To The Future' gets new music in a live Hollywood Bowl performance for its 30th anniversary
Film music is often thought of and referred to as background music. But a growing number of “live-to-picture” concerts, where orchestras perform the scores for various movies live to the movie itself, are bringing the background to the foreground. The latest movie to get this treatment is "Back to the Future," scored by composer Alan Silvestri, which turns 30 this year.
The score was written by Silvestri, who went on to score every movie for director Robert Zemeckis.
“This was only the second time I had ever written anything for orchestra,” Silvestri says. “I was completely new to all of this.”
In the movie, Marty McFly travels 30 years into the past and tampers with his own timeline. It’s now been 30 years since "Back to the Future" was released, and Silvestri decided he wanted to travel back the same distance and only slightly tamper with his score.
“We added music to the film,” he says. “But everything that was in the film, originally, is just the way it was originally.”
When Silvestri’s agency decided to celebrate the score’s 30th anniversary by turning it into a live-to-picture concert experience, they realized there was only about 26 minutes of score in the entire film. They asked Silvestri to flesh it out for this concert, which is currently on an international tour, and he received an enthusiastic blessing from “the Bobs” (Zemeckis and producer/co-writer Bob Gale).
“The way the two Bobs constructed these films, they’re constantly promising things that they then deliver as the film goes on,” he says. “Like you see the plutonium box in the opening shot, and then you see what the plutonium means as you go on. And so this became, then, a fun opportunity for me to kind of do something like that with the music. I wound up finding material from the clocktower sequence that felt really appropriate in the lab when the phone rings. Just as the guys are promising things that happen later, I was able to start doing some of that musically.”
“There’s new cues, and they help my acting,” laughs Lea Thompson. Thompson played Marty’s mother, Lorraine, in the movie — both as an older woman and as a teenager in 1955, who unwittingly falls in love with her time-traveling son. “It makes it a little more poignant. And it’s interesting to celebrate, because there’s been a lot of great composers for film that have been kind of overlooked. I always thought that the score was brilliant, and Alan Silvestri didn’t quite get his due for how much of a contribution it made to 'Back to the Future.'”
Thompson will make an appearance at the Hollywood Bowl Tuesday night when the L.A. Philharmonic performs "Back to the Future — In Concert" — along with co-star Christopher Lloyd, Bob Gale and, of course, Alan Silvestri. She was at the show’s recent U.S. premiere at Wolf Trap in Virginia.
“It was really fun to watch it this way,” she says. “It’s almost like you get to turn one part of the headphones up and really watch something in a different way, with a different mix. This is a very powerful score. And, you know, I think it really enhanced the experience. It enhanced the power of the emotions. When you hear it, especially in the middle of a big orchestra, you can really see how much power he added to the movie.”
David Newman, a film composer in his own right, has the unenviable task of conducting the orchestra Tuesday night. He has to keep the L.A. Phil precisely on track with the movie and with Marty McFly’s time-traveling antics... so in a score like this one, timing is everything.
“Once he gets in the past and he’s going back to the future, they’re just chasing a lightning bolt,” says Newman. “They’re just desperately trying to get a car exactly at the right place at the right time. I always thought the score is like a ticking clock that is just going a little too fast. So when you’re conducting it, it needs to feel like it’s falling forward, like it’s almost going to trip on itself. There are a lot of what we call ‘hits,’ where the music hits a picture cut — especially in that clock tower scene. And it goes on and on and on and on and on. That’s the challenge in doing it.”
For Silvestri, there are many strange parallels to revisiting something he wrote 30 years in the past. But, he says, when he listens to the music now, it still feels like it came from the same guy.
“You know, it was both instantaneous and going back and seeing something after 30 years. It was just like the movie, in a funny way.”
"Back to the Future — In Concert" will be performed by the L.A. Philharmonic Tuesday night at 8:30 p.m. at the Hollywood Bowl.