I believe part of why Cohen eventually did not take on the role was because the direction he wanted to take the movie in (namely, delving deeply into the debauchery of his personal life) didn’t gel with what Brian and Roger wanted for the film. My understanding was that he wanted more of an emphasis on his personal…

Agree. There is far more to recreating a real person besides physically looking like a carbon-copy of them. He looked enough like Mercury for any differences to not be distracting, but the real feat was his ability to inhabit Mercury as a performer and person, which he did fantastically.

Definitely. That he behaves recklessly in full knowledge of the consequence, and almost with an acceptance of what his fate will eventually be.

Yup, that’s exactly how it happens.

This is true. I think generally people knew it was a sad ending, but there’s a big difference between “a main character dies” and “ main character commits suicide.” And one isn’t going to look up every sad movie ending to ensure they won’t be triggered.

I seem to recall in the Streisand/Kristofferson version, it was left almost as a question whether or not his accident was intentional or a true accident. They didn’t make it as explicit as the previous versions, but definitely let it open to interpretation.

It’s actually the fourth version. Judy Garland/James Mason was a remake of the 1937 Janet Gaynor/Fredric March original film.

Not that I know of. But there’s definitely always been a weird level of sensitivity in my family.

I posted this story a couple of years ago, but when my brother was two, barely speaking anything close to full sentences, he and my dad were in the car outside of a store waiting for my mom. The Doors “Break On Through” came on the radio and my brother proceeds to sing it, word for word, perfectly.

THIS. I was just having this conversation with my husband this weekend. I endured horrible sexual abuse and trauma as a very young child, and yet there are so few people in my life who know anything about it. I’ve spent so much of my life keeping it quiet that I realized there was an episode of abuse my husband of 14…

Paper Moon is a fantastic movie, easily one of Kahn’s best roles.

Drink your NeHi and eat your Coney Island!

I’ve always been of the belief that she is a far better actor than her reputation gives her credit for. I think some of that stems from the fact that she seems to have trouble picking the right project to actually show off her skills appropriately.

But, why should they have to caveat it with a whole list of past traumas? Why should that even have to be referenced? Why can we not take at their word that this happened, and it was traumatic enough that they felt they couldn’t continue on in their career?

Let’s not compare one trauma to another. You never know a person’s background, what they’ve been through previously, what sort of effect that’s had on them. For all we know, these women could have been in incredible fear during the episode: if a famous and respected man is going to whip out his dick and masturbate in…

I totally understand that. But since these are women who have said they actively left the world of comedy, as opposed to just never really succeeding, I think this is much different than just a failure of reaching your dream position.

Well, there you go. Very interesting.

I truly hope you’re not equating the judgment of someone’s trauma from harassment to the inconvenience of the harasser to not being in a position of power.

May I ask why you think it’s ridiculous? I mean, it takes a pretty significant trauma to stop pursuing something. You say you don’t disbelieve them, but it sounds like you do judge their trauma. People leave jobs all the time because of harassment; do you think that’s ridiculous?

But . . . that’s exactly what they said. The trauma caused them to stop pursuing their career. The trauma forced on them by Louis C.K.