Whoopi Goldberg Speaks Candidly About Color Purple Blowback

I agree with her. That was a stupid boycott.

She should have won Best Actress that year, and Oprah should have won Best Supporting Actress (Oprah never gave a performance like that again).

Spike isn't happy that Spielberg made a better black movie than he could ever make.

Whoopi is much more alive here than she is on the View, and the only times she has appeared energized on that show is when she's talking about acting. She needs to leave the View, get her ass back to LA and get some streaming show.

Spike Lee's "how dare he!" B.S. bullied Norman Jewison out of directing "Malcolm X", but in this case Spike actually "put up" and directed it himself.

Well, I for one, LOVED "The Colored People" - it was an important milestone in cinematic history!

We have Eliza Doolittle on the phone to talk about the famous movie "The Colored People with Money". Thank you for joining us Eliza.

Mish Shelie

Yeah, I remember the blowback. There was definitely a kerfluffle over the depiction of Black men in the book--spoiler: Alice Walker was not a fan.

Spielberg got some excellent performances out if his cast--career bests for a lot of them.

One of the best movies ever, a favorite of mine I can watch over and over.

This is so disingenuous. Once Spielberg was interested there was no way John Singleton or Spike Lee could have gotten the property--so saying "Why don't you make the movie?" is a bit like saying "If you don't like the royal family, why don't you move into Buckingham Palace."

And to claim that the film had to avoid depictions of lesbian characters because it was 1984...also not exactly true.

Why didn't Spike or John make the movie before Spielberg, surely as real black men they were aware of the novel prior to Jewish man?

So the movie includes the depiction of a lesbian character, now less people go to see it and less people are able to have their minds changed on race and it delays the overall education on civil rights. Things aren't always black and white, even if social media has lead people to believe they are.

"You ought to bash Mr. ________ head open. Think about heaven later."

[quote] Alice Walker was not a fan.

It might be more accurate to say she had mixed feelings about it. She has her own hangups and issues but yeah, Spielberg telling her his favorite movie was Gone With The Wind probably didn't set her at ease.

The book she wrote about the process of the movie, The Same River Twice, is very interesting. And apparently, the way it was done for the musical is closer to what she'd originally envisoned.

She did appear in this, though.

Writers NEVER like the movie versions of their work. Hell, Steinbeck didn't even like John Ford's movie of The Grapes of Wrath.

But Steinbeck did like the adaptation in 1939 for OF MICE AND MEN.

Against my aesthetic judgment, I enjoy "Color Purple." Whoopi was as great as the bad material (the last 1/5) allowed her. The Best Supporting Actress worthy wasn't Oprah, who gave a mannered, rather clumsy performance, but Margaret Avery. Alas.

As for writers never liking movie versions of their work, GB Shaw famously permitted a "happy ending" to PYGMALION but acted out being highly insulted that the Americans could presume to "award" him with anything concerning his work, as if a man of his stature were to be besmirched by anyone thinking he possibly could care about it.

R11, ummm The Color Purple was not some small press book that found an audience. It was a major listing from a major publisher. It was an immediate best seller. It was a Pulitzer Prize winner.

So no, it was not a book that black people would have known before white people.

Also, if the usual patter of the time was in place, the rights were probably already sold before the book came out. And they went to the highest bidder who then controlled who would be hired (or have the rights re-sold to). So most the rights holder wanted the biggest name so that they could get the biggest return on investment.

[quote]Once Spielberg was interested there was no way John Singleton or Spike Lee could have gotten the property

Singleton was only 17 in 1985 and didn't direct his first feature until BOYS 'N THE HOOD when he was in his early twenties.

As for Lee, would TCP have been a blockbuster hit had he directed it? TCP was #4 film of the year, after BACK TO THE FUTURE, RAMBO II, and ROCKY IV.

People forget how much the African-American community detested TCP. I believe that is why it went home empty-handed despite 11 Oscar nominations. The Academy likes to stay away from controversy, so when prominent black figures strongly objected to the movie, they decided not to disturb that hornet's nest. Of course, now black people think that the Academy was being racist for not awarding TCP, because the AA community now embraces the film. Go figure!

Don't kill the messenger, just sharing some observations....

In many ways TCP was considered radical for its time. Black leaders in the 80s were concerned with looking very respectable and proper (readL whatever makes white people comfortable) in a way that today, young black leaders would reject as "respectability politics."

I don't know that it was radical, but as with Toni Morrison and other authors, these ideas and thoughts, these stories, were new and emerging from both a literary pespective and an academic one.

40 years later I think culturally these ideas and stories are more familiar to us, and not seen - as so many stories in the 80s were - to be A Representation Of All Black People Forever. We understand now that this is a universal story, but also these people in a time and place.

(sorry, just getting around to this thread now after saving it weeks ago)...

I've written this in other threads. Listening to everything Whoopie said, only further validates my idea that now would be a great time to do a remake. But instead of a feature film, make it a 6-hr miniseries. That way it can be entirely faithful to the book, and bring the story to a whole new generation of people. Have Oprah produce it for her OWN Network, she can hire someone like Ava Du Varney to direct, and I bet Spielberg would not only give his blessing but would executive produce. Whoopie could have a cameo of some sort.

Only in Hollywood could bland dreck like THE COLOR PURPLE be considered controversial. The only things I remember are the ridiculously drawn out knife/cutthroat scene and the ridiculously out-of-tune "Keystone cops" scene (a classic instance of Spielberg's reliably bad taste).

You know his being a white Jew also set them off.

How about let Ang Lee direct it? You know how the blacks love Asians.

TCP is my second or third favorite lesbian ensemble flick after FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL.

[R23] True enough, but Caryn Johnson (Whoopi's real name) certainly knows how to play the white liberal Jews like a violin.

Margaret Avery was the most luminous presence in that movie. The final scene always reduces me to tears when the sisters are reunited after Mister repents of keeping them apart. The movie had its flaws , but the relationship between Celie and Nettie is gorgeous. Whoopi Goldberg was outstanding, and Oprah was serviceable. Danny Glover I thought was a small miracle in that role.

[quote] Whoopi Goldberg was outstanding, and Oprah was serviceable

I suppose some people would service her for the money.

Just like Nikole Hannah Jones, Spike Lee is a BOTTOMLESS well of grievances.

Fuck Spike Jones - he would have ruined TCP if he'd gotten his short little hands on it.

R22 black activists objected to it mainly because the film was written/directed by white men and they thought the black men were portrayed as buffoons and/or sexual predators. Some also didn't like the hints of lesbianism that remained in the movie. In short, they thought that TCP was one big minstrel show perpetuating stereotypes of African-Americans as incompetent clowns and sexual deviants.

The book is so much better than the film. It's not even funny. The movie is beautiful and well-scored by Quincy Jones but the narrative in the film is so much more shallow and black-and-white than the book which is more nuanced, symbolic and multi-layered. I agree the film could not have shown everything in the book due to the sociopolitical climate of the 80s. But apart from Celie being explicitly a lesbian and sleeping with Shug. The book also had a lot of social commentary on the psychological damage on Black women that comes from organized religion, white supremacy and misogyny. And also how Black men benefited from patriarchy and became oppressors of Black women and children usually bringing their frustration from being oppressed by white men in mainstream society. That said, the film did capture a lot of the book's themes but it still is an incomplete adaptation.

I really would prefer The Color Purple to get a more faithful adaptation as a miniseries.

I presume it will be remade with DL fave Cynthia Erivo.

I like early Spike Jones films but honestly, he is more than a bit sexist thus he would not have done The Color Purple justice. A black female director like Ava DuVarney, Kasi Lemmons and Julie Dash would be ideal.

1984? Yeah, we did that in 1983. It was just Spielberg's repulsion of anything sexy that neutered the film.

I bet he's terrible in bed.

I don't think The Hunger is comparable. Celie is not a character that could take part in lesbian chic.

Totally agree with R36. Hot lipstick lesbian sex in the 80s was a thing. The reality of an actual lesbian relationship between two regular looking women - let alone regular looking black women - was not going to fly.

Two black women having sex on screen would have ended both their careers.

This was also the first big budgeted African American movie since The WIz. A lot was riding on this. The studios did not want to touch African American movies with a ten foot pole. Norman Jewison and all the actors of A Soldiers Story were forced to work for little pay to get it made.

So sick and tired of this rancid cunt.

Whoopi has this kind of has this snobbery to her I don't like. She is a fine actress but she seems conservative and dismissive to younger people just like many other rich older people who made it on their own.

I have the DVD signed by her.

Mo'Nique is not "younger people."