“This script is fantastic. Let’s get Julia Roberts to play Harriet Tubman.”

Completely unrealistic and unwatchable. Suit needs to be tan.
World's first white first black president.

So it was 30 years ago. I feel like, even though things are far from perfect now, nowadays a comment like this would draw quite a few more critical looks than back then.
- People in 1994 knew exactly how fucked this was.
- It was also 30 years closer to Harriet Tubman, in a time when black civil rights were not even as sanded smooth as they appear now.
- Why would you think that? I was around in 1994, and if anything, it got worse.
Look up who Alec McGuiness played in Lawrence of Arabia.
- Or look at Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Or Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra. Or John Wayne in Gengis Khan.
It's such an insane story that I wonder what the other side of it is. It's easy to imagine the guy just having got out of a meeting ten minutes earlier with "if you don't get Julia Roberts into a movie by the end of the week, I'll see you never work in this town again!" ringing in his ears.

This is obviously a perfect role for Ryan Gosling

AI Morgan Freeman
- Why AI? Wtf, you made me think he died. Don't do this to me.
I think he is already scheduled to star in the MLK movie, so not sure he would have the time

Hollywood Executives can collectively only name at most seven actors at a given time. An entire nine-digit annual industry run by a bunch of coked-up goldfish.

All of these large industries are run by idiots
- They're run by the same average people who work for them. You don't need to be an idiot to fuck up running something as large and complicated as a trans-national corporation. You don't need to be a genius to coast in a position that already prints money.
  
  We're simply not that different from one another. The genius/idiot dichotomy is far more about variances in education, culture, and propagandized bigotry than finding actual differences in intellect.

Hmmm so you need woman of colour? Maybe Gal Gadot? /s

If Hollywood ever did a film about Gaza they would unironically use Gal Godot in the role of a Palestinian woman.
- It also be “both sides have something to learn from each other!” Oscar bait a la Crash or Green Book.
- No doubt with lines like "They only hate Israel because of their religion" and "The IDF is protecting me, despite being Palestinian"

Am I the only one who doesn't know who Harriet Tubman is?

Probably not, but she's an important figure of the American history. The real question, though, is who will know about Harriet Tubman in a few years, once she gets erased from American history books.
- At least people will be able to remember she looked like Julia Roberts
Does the phrase "underground railroad" mean anything to you?
- Not everyone is from North America. That is like me asking you, does "Dr. Kwame Nkrumah" mean anything to you?
- ...no?
- Like the Eurostar
- We call it the subway or the metro nowadays.
TL;DR, she was an insanely brave black woman who helped a metric fuck ton of slaves escape the south.
She's the original free runner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1dhATC-ekQ
Never be afraid to ask a question to rectify a lack of knowledge.

"Hollywood is crazy. The Last Samurai, staring Tom Cruise..?!"

Halle Berry though... 🤔

Martin Lawrence would rock it in "Big Tubman's House"
- I’m going to hell for this upvote.
Would have been a better role than catwoman
- I'm a top exec for a very big movie company and I hear you on this. No more Julia Roberts. Got it. Roberts out, Catwoman in. ...
  
  Someone get me Michelle Pfeiffer on the phone. I have a great idea, Catwoman as Harry Tubmen.
  That's an Oscar winner, right there.
Halle Berry, or hallelujah

Queue Dave Chappelle and his sketch 'Negrodamas'

Quote

I predict a movie called The Last Black Man on Earth, starring Tom Hanks

For some reason you reminded me of this.
- Thanks for sharing! Had no idea NASSA existed 🫡

citation needed

Unproven
Did they not publish their casual conversation for peer review???

The article led me down a rabbit hole leading to an article about the ghost in the shell movie adaptation promo meme generator being used to criticise the whitewashing in the movie adaptation

Fuck whitewashing

https://pbfcomics.com/comics/now-showing/

Tbh - if you do any academic study of history, that’s what it all starts to look like.

I tried to watch Spartacus because Kubrick and… I couldn’t. Those fucking hairdos. The depiction of Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator upset me - like no, the man was not a proto Thomas Jefferson (and even the IRL Jefferson made his money on child slavery and raped children.) Wuxia is so much fun but there’s never going to be a period accurate Three Kingdoms (which is a 14th century novel anyway)

Medieval history especially…. That’s pages and pages, and I’m not even really that much of a medievalist.
- I do historical reenactment, so I have a hobby that involves researching the age of a certain embroidery stitch, for example.
  
  I've learned to just switch off that part of my brain for games and movies, or I'd cry a lot more. I just project them to an alternate reality where they totally had nylon in 1200.
- Medieval history especially
  
  At least we have Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
- pretty much any 'historical' movies are completely unwatchable to me

Tyler Perry?

Fun story - I went to a troubled teen facility, and we had “group.” There was no actual qualifications required for the people running “group.”

We watched Tyler Perry movies. (Also at one point Ip Man which is a goated film.) I learned the phrase “give head” or similar while watching How Did I Get Married. I was asked to think about the lessons that this movie could apply to my interpersonal relationships - I had never considered how the frequency of oral sex would decease after marriage.

Reminds me of the bit at the end of Deadpool when he says they were considering Keira Kightly for Cable because she has range.

They should get Lisa Kudrow to play Rosa Parks.

Conan O'Brien as Desmond Tutu.
- Rose O'Donnell as George Washington Carver.

This is what makeup is for

That would get them a lot of publicity
- She's the dude playing the dude disguised as another dude.

Same as when SNL wanted men to play female politicians in sketches when Amy Poehler and Tina Fey were right there and smashed it in the end.

SNL is comedy, and there's comedy in using a man to portray a woman. That's not the same as using the wrong sort of person because you think it doesn't matter
- Ok, you choose a man instead of Tina Fey to play a Sarah Palin and see how much funnier that won't be.

I mean they do this all time, for example, that amazon series about lord of the rings.

Not real people and their skin color has nothing to do with the story. Biopics about black people generally have to do with their struggles as a black person so having a white person play them is wrong and dilutes the value of that person's story because a white person doesn't have the same adversities.

This executive is drunk, and possibly racist, no one is doing blackface!

Edit: Changed the wording for clarity since people were downvoting