The Last Movie You Watched

[Rev. Rye]

This week in the Deep Hurting Project, in commemoration of Black History Month, Loqueesha. But before I get into this, I'm going to tell you a story: a few months ago, Defunctland had a segment on a park that celebrated American history. One of the rides was basically the Jungle Cruise except the skipper was a French Canadian fur trader. So, I started to come up with an idea: a struggling actor working on Disney's Jungle Cruise, on his last day, decides to do the whole spiel while pretending to be a French Canadian fur trapper, complete with an outrageous accent. They actually enjoy it, and eventually, when he comes home, he starts to do it, and the persona of this Coureur du Bois ends up taking over his life, and everybody starts to love him for it. He'd have been a Crazy Awesome French Canadian Stereotype (up to the point where he ends up going to a local restaurant and inventing poutine) living a lifestyle that would have died out around the 19th Century in America in the 21st. And then I did a bit of research into it and I figured out that they're still going through enough struggle that actually making it is probably not worth it, especially from someone who, the closest thing I've come to actually meeting a French Canadian was going to see Leonard Cohen's last concert in Chicago (and, even then, given that Leonard was a Montreal Jew, he probably didn't count as a French Canadian since they're all Anglophones). The fact that I named him Logan Tremblay and couldn't get a better title than Logan wouldn't have helped. In contrast, Jeremy Savile managed to go so far as to write, shoot, edit, and release, a movie where he's pretending to be a black woman and getting far more interest as a black woman instead of a white man, and not figure out what the fuck the problem was, even though he almost certainly has had some contact with black people (at least three major supporting characters are black) and he should probably know how much a hot-button issue race is by this point.

• Jeremy Saville. Not to be confused with Jimmy. Actually, Jimmy might have been preferable.
  
• The main character/director/writer always knows what to say.
  
• Gandhi didn't lie to his wife. That said, his real flaws were more fucked up.
  
• And he's making excuses for men, blaming a woman for her problems, and he's right.  Why do I get the feeling this is going to set the tone for the rest of the movie?
  
• Why does this want ad look like no want ad I've ever seen?
  
• What the Hell kind of show is "Trash Talkin'"? Two black women insulting each other over what is clearly a bluescreen with a drawing of what vaguely looks like the Jerry Springer Show.
  
• God-damn. That's supposed to be a black woman? It sounds more like a crap impersonation of an old black crossdresser, like what Belieze from Angels in America would sound like (probably time shifted to when he's old, in a COVID ward, and surviving lung cancer).
  
• So, they want Loqueesha? And they want to see her in person? This can't be good.
  
• You don't do talk radio, and yet you're hiring for a fucking talk radio host on your station? Did nobody notice how much of a story-breaking plot hole this was?
  
• Why would the President email you? Probably something petty, knowing Trump.
  
• A bout of xenophobia?
  
• Why not set  up a podcasting station? You know, given that this plot hinges on a radio personality hitting it big in the late 2010s, long past the point where radio lost most of its relevance and podcasters are pretty much the only ones who become huge now, that's a damn good question.
  
• That black producer seems to be taking this act of whatever the audio equivalent of blackface shockingly well.
  
• So, watching this long stretch of Loqueesha talking, I'm reminded of a production of M. Butterfly where the actor playing Song Liling did a damn good job of moving like a real woman, but then, once he opens his mouth, the illusion is ruined because he sounds like Divine. Some of Saville's body language seems like he's doing a fairly good job of mimicing that of some sassy black women I've seen in films (fucking Hell, sometimes, trying to figure out racial issues or even the black experience is like the old story about the blind men and the elephant) but the voice is absurdly unconvincing.
  
• Any man with a rash is not holding onto? And that's supposed to be good advice?
  
• White people are the slaves. Fucking Hell.
  
• Why does that woman look like she's not old enough to have been married for 25 years old.
  
• Loqueesha is talking about how misdirected the white man's perceptions are of black people getting some success, but meanwhile, her actor is DOING THE SAME FUCKING THING.
  
• And Loqueesha is getting successful on FM radio in 2019. And people wonder why this film is outdated.
  
• And nobody was concerned about the FCC penalysing Loqueesha for swearing when she was in the Coast to Coast AM slot?
  
• Wait, seen every episode? When it's radio and a huge portion of the plot hinges on the fact that nobody can see her?
  
• I was actually liking this black actress, but it's going so long that I'm starting to tire of her. Probably a function of the shitty writing.
  
• You know, maybe you should have elaborated on that "what?" And why does nobody notice that the live Loqueesha sounds nothing like the radio Loqueesha?
  
• It feels like I should be close to the end, but I'm about halfway through the film. I was hoping to criticise the cringy racial politics of this film and about how wrong-headed the assumption of black people have a better path to success because people are becoming more sensitive to race is, but I was not prepared for the agonisingly slow pacing of the film.
  
• I was so expecting for Joe's love interest to have figured out that hes Loqueesha, but she doesn't figure it out until he keeps talking like Loqueesha during sex. Actually, she doesn't even figure it out.
  
• It took almost an hour for the film to figure out that this whole "white guy pretending to be a black woman" thing is kinda fucked up.
  
• You know, Philosophy Tube came out as trans yesterday and this bizarre scene where he makes a fucking bizarre analogy for being trans to cover his ass just looks even weirder.
  
• And now that Loqueesha's turning into a full-blown alternate personality, she's sounding more like Eddie "Rochester" Anderson.
  
• You need to talk to Loqueesha? I can just see the whole Vaudeville Routine. "But, Doctor-Mom, I am Loqueesha." And it doesn't happen.
  
• Why do I get the feeling this is what Phil Hendrie's studio looked like when he was still doing radio, with multiple mics and one guy doing all the voices?
  
• What was that fucking split screen that was there for a few seconds when this scene has been going on for a few minutes with nothing of the sort. Is this is the director's jackasstic way of showing Joe's inner reaction to Loqueesha's spiel?
  
• Yeah, letting a woman plunge to her death on live radio would make Loqueesha famous. And then she'd get fired for her negligence. 
  
• And the black actress is finally explaining exactly what's fucked up with the whole scenario 75 minutes into the film. And, frankly, given the nature of the scam, I'm on her side when she blackmails him for a 70/30 split, even though she didn't seem to have a problem with the arrangement until Oprah came calling. 
  
• So, Joe retires the character and the black actress takes over the character immediately. And she's obviously different, not giving a shit about trying to help people and obviously sounding different. She has a meltdown on air and is punished by a 2 week vacation in Aruba. And this makes Joe decide to come clean about being Loqueesha. He even shuts down the bosses' suggestions that they just keep pretending to be Loqueesha, even if he doesn't seem to note that maybe coming out as Loqueesha might send any respect for him and her their audience may have had into freefall. And despite being compared to Enron, nobody seems to lose any respect for him, except maybe his mother and his love interest.
  
• You know, I wonder what it means about Jeremy Savile's opinion of his audience that he thinks they want him to hear an uneducated Black woman instead a man.
  
• And somehow, he manages to get his own show and keep Loqueesha as a side character. And nobody bats an eye at this minstrelsy. 
  
• Also, the production company for this film? The Best Movie LLC.
  

YOu know what, since the ending of this movie hinges on a poll, I'll give you a couple choices for what movie I'll take on next week:

• Alone in the Dark (Wherein The Reverend takes on an Uwe Boll movie for the first and only time)
  
• Apartment 1303 (Wherein they remake a J-horror movie for America with none of the redeeming qualities)
  
• Castle of Fu Manchu (Wherein Christopher Lee makes a movie so bad that the cast of MST3K riffed it specifically to show their critics that, no, not everyone could do what they cold do)
  
• Haunting of Sharon Tate (Wherein we make something as interesting as the Manson Family murders boring as Hell.)
  
• Jurassic Shark (Wherein people stranded on an island have to escape a shark even though they're clearly not on an island.)
  
• Krampus: The Reckoning (Wherein a mockbuster for Krampus does such a poor job they forget who Krampus even is.)
  
• Shark Exorcist (Wherein people somehow think it makes sense to film a shark movie in fucking NASHVILLE.)
  
• Things (Wherein some guy makes a shitty ripoff of Evil Dead where people are attacked by nonspecific "Things.")
  
• Werewolves of the Third Reich (Wherein Josef Mengele and Ilse Koch just spend their days running a concentration camp and werwolves only show up near the end.)