That is the single dumbest thing you’ve written on this article.

I think a lot of people are confusing children hurting from hypothetically not understanding the exercise with the fact that it is probably a painful exercise when understood.

Ok, one, there is no leaving the audition, there is no audition, they’re in the school or at their orphanage, If they give each kid the cookie as they leave, all the other kids know about it and they probably would have thought that would mess up their ‘game’ with the other kids. Two, a huge, huge part of the reason…

So what is the point of this article? Why are people upset? Why is Jolie upset? Why did VF release the transcript to show they didn’t misquote her? Your argument is that Jolie’s words were indeed twisted and she and her casting people did nothing wrong. According to her words, the casting people did exactly what…

Jesus. Ok, the interviewer understood her words in the way I did. The readers of the article understood them in the same way. VF has released the transcripts to show that they did portray her statements accurately. She SAYS, “THEY DIDN’T KNOW” What does she mean by that? Who didn’t know what? The only reasonable…

They’re the Tab of liberal media. Their overall persona and style is freshman year undergrad “insight.” They’re that kid in the coffeehouse that says, “It’s STUPID that we have so much war, we gotta STOP.”

I have two thoughts about that: 1. Then hopefully for the children who auditioned with the cookie, the process was less (I HATE to use the word triggering here but I can’t think of a better one right now) emotionally triggering. That doesn’t change what the filmmakers did on the whole, and 2. This really points to the…

I say this with complete sincerity: I can 100% absolutely guarantee you that some facilities in Cambodia, especially the ‘tourist’ orphanages (which are a disgusting and very real fact of life in Cambodia) that it is very common for Westerners to bring gifts (and ‘gifts’) to children in orphanages, children’s centres,…

Admittedly, I feel like ALL actors have some narcissism. You have to in order to think that people want to pay money to see you up on that screen.

Didn’t Jolie hire some Olivia Pope style DC Media Fixer last year? Not exactly earning her money at the moment.

I have met several children from orphanages and slums in my third world country. If you show them a wad of cash and tell them to pretend to take it, they will hope they get to keep it.

How on earth does the longer quote make it better? The kids didn’t know why these people were there, the kids didn’t know they were auditioning for a movie. They knew foreigners were coming in and filming them offering them money/food and asking them to pretend to steal it and then lie about it. God knows what they…

That’s valid but I think the larger point is that it’s not about what these kids understand intellectually, it’s that they were impoverished children being intentionally emotionally exploited with a scenario that was more meaningful to them than Jolie can seem to wrap her mind around, or at least be accountable for.

Yeah It’s really gross, but it is actually common for acting studios and schools to do these kinds of things. I had a friend at Tisch who had to basically relive her sexual assault in front of a lot of strangers for the sake of “method acting” or something. It’s just, as you said, really fucking weird that Jolie…

Exactly, it’s the ‘I do all my own stunts’ of the PR game.

Totally, like if you gave the kids something simple like a sandwich while they were also starving and played some mind game then took it back it’d totally be harmless.

I’m going to go ahead and guess you’ve never explored adoption options. Adopting as a single woman, it would have been cheaper, faster, and less parental-rights entangled to adopt abroad. In short, it is frequently more practical to adopt abroad rather than in the US.

She’s always had a management team, which has quietly run her PR so she can claim she has no PR. This has been well documented in The NY Times and The New Yorker.

I don’t think people actually think kids don’t understand reality. It’s more about the ethics of exploiting their pain in that way. If I haven’t eaten in two days and someone comes and makes me play a game in which I need to take a piece of bread and they’ll take it away from me, I’ll know it’s a game, but after they…

Hollywood wants the authenticity of children of poverty, parade them around at premieres, then dump them back into their previous life and adults from the West profit from them for years.