Actually wearing my PR hat, he is spot on with the few statements that he has given. The information has been part of his unofficial biography on Wikipedia all this time. Even the family has spoken and said they do not wish to further discuss this. The media needs to let go. This is a two decade old story and doesn’t need revisionist theory applied and the story certainly doesn’t support the advocates who are trying to advance the theory that black men are more harshly punished. The media is probably not going to be able to “dig up” any more angles to this story.
On separating the art from the person
She makes a good point: The Cosby show just doesn’t seem that funny anymore. I’d add, we can’t smile at those old OJ Simpson Hertz commercials anymore. Can this film be viewed without thinking about what happened in that room at Penn State?
Another point - the gang rape of Nat Turner’s wife that is seen as the catalyst for the revolt in the film NEVER HAPPENED. Also, the filmmaker leaves out the innocent women and children that were killed, deliberately killed, during Turner’s revolt.
I hate when Hollywood does things like this. I understand that history is hard to pin down and they need to extrapolate or embroider or dramaticize some things. But seriously - for a gang rapist to add a fictional gang rape is really nailing the coffin shut on this film.
How can anyone possibly make a movie about the Nat Turner rebellion and leave out that they killed approximately 60 innocent men, women and children? That’s a big part of the whole story!
If a movie purportedly about history leaves out critical facts, it has no credibility.
"Should his role in the sexual assault in 1999 affect the success of his film? " Yes.
“A retrial was ordered only because a court decided he had poor representation.”
“Only”? The bar for overturning a conviction for inadequate representation is sky high (unjustifiably high, in my view). It’s not enough to show that your lawyer was incompetent; you have to show that he was a disaster, psychotic, didn’t show up, etc. Short of the judge taking bribes, there is nothing that renders a trial more meaningless than inadequate counsel.
I agree with others that there is no such thing as a trial or appellate decision that finds someone “innocent.” Sometimes guilty people walk, and that may have happened here. But in an adversarial system, a one-sided trial is not likely to get at the truth.
TatinG, thank you for posting the link to the op-ed. She did a good job of explaining her conflicting feelings. I think it will be very interesting to see how the “Academy” treats this film. Will the desire to diversify the Oscars trump the stigma of the past sexual assault by the film’s creators? The gory details of the assault, summarized in the Daily Beast article, leave little to the imagination as to the guilt of the two men. Her blood alcohol was estimated at almost 0.2 by the expert witness.
And as for the “not guilty” verdict at Parker’s trial I can only paraphrase a line spoken by Marlon Brando in the film A Dry White Season: “Justice and law are distant cousins…not on speaking terms at all”.
The story with the 3 guys don’t match. I find this troubling.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/nate-parker-told-rape-accuser-204508695.html