Trouble Sleeping? Try Aaron Sorkin’s New Biopic!
The Best Story Wins... I confess. I watched the Lucile Ball-Desi Arnaz biopic last night, "Being the Ricardos." Yes, it's come to that in this bleak, barren January. I won't discuss what Nicole Kidman has done to her face and body in the name of Hollywood stardom. Let's just say that she has turned herself into a mannequin. (I would've loved to see the REAL Nicole Kidman at age whatever. Where is the #MeToo backlash against the surgical assault on womanhood?) Back to "The Ricardos." Overall, it's a corny and slow resurrection of 1950s TV land -- so dull in spots that it put me temporarily to sleep. At its best (and there are few of these moments), it achieves the entertainment level of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," a superior (if often also soporific) recreation of a show biz past that never existed. But that's also not my main point here.
What roused me from slumber last night is when I heard that "Being the Ricardos" was written and directed by (ewww) Aaron Sorkin. The relationship between America's recent history and Sorkin is that, as they say, between a throat and a knife. Just ask those who were actually in the courtroom during the trial of the CHICAGO 8 (not 7). Sorkin -- one of the leading lights of Hollywood liberalism -- has taken it upon himself to repackage America's tumultuous past and make it all palatable and patriotic and SAFE.
The scene in "Being the Ricardos" that really made me retch was when Desi Arnaz (played by the great Javier Bardem) heroically saves his wife Lucy's career by denying before a studio audience that she was ever a Communist (she was briefly, in her radical youth) and then by getting FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover on the speaker phone, who tells the world that Lucy is a red-white-and-blue American. We're supposed to cheer this scene, along with the "I Love Lucy" TV audience and cast. But for anybody who knows something about U.S. history, it's another Sorkian cringe moment.
Here's the awful truth... Hoover was an American monster, the country's top secret policeman. He used his secret files -- and his unsavory relationships with Capitol Hill and the press -- to force numerous public figures (including Ball) to fall into his fascistic line. The fact that Hoover was a deeply closeted gay man made his crusades against American dissidents (including homosexuals) even more noxious. For "Hollywood liberal" Sorkin to trot out Hoover as a good guy is truly nauseating -- and another Sorkian whitewash of history.
If you're hankering for a good, entertaining Hollywood take on history, watch "The Last Duel" instead. Set in Medieval France, this Ridley Scott epic is overlong, dark and grimy. But, hey, it held my attention. The sexual politics in "The Last Duel" -- between stars Matt Damon, Adam Driver and Jodie Comer -- are a LOT more interesting than the adulterous tension cooked up in "The Ricardos."
A word to the wise: if you see Aaron Sorkin's name attached to anything, you're in for a good, long nap. We must demand more from our Hollywood historians. Like I always say, the best story wins.
