Automotive

Comment Of The Day: I’M A WINNER, BABY Edition

By TechKee Admin

Posted on June 16, 2016

So Ballaban and I decided that Berry Gordy’s 1975 Diana Ross epic Mahogany is the best movie we’ve seen in a long time, despite having a bullshit 23 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Idiots. Anything with Billy Dee Williams merits at least an 80 percent.

And that’s without any genuinely likable characters, as former Jalopnik Detroit scribe and current BLAC Magazine editor Aaron Foley helpfully explains:

http://jalopnik.com/no-shit-this-i…

Aaron Foley

6/17/16 2:42pm

No shit, this is one of my favorite movies of all time. But nearly everybody in this movie was an asshole.

-Billy Dee Williams’ character was a guy trying to get into politics (he rises from alderman to a senator-type by the end), but he was an asshole because he shit all over Diana Ross’ characters dreams of being a fashion designer.

-Anthony Perkins was definitely an asshole because once he found his muse, he became all obsessive and controlling and weird. The scene with the Iso Grifo is the culmination of him trying to destroy her, figuratively and physically.

-Diana Ross’ character, Tracy, is surprisingly the biggest asshole. “Mahogany” admittedly drags on a bit, but if you’ve made it from beginning to end like I have several (*cough*) times, she’s the worst. A lot of people shit on her on the way to the top. She’s mentally abused by a nutcase and almost fucking dies. She’s already got it tough because she’s a woman, twice as tough because she’s black. And what’s the first thing she does when she makes it to the top? Immediately becomes the asshole that everyone else is by treating everybody beneath her like shit. This is the part of the story that’s always, always overlooked because it ends with her reuniting with Billy Dee Williams’ character (and even this part of the plot is dubious), but yeah.

-On a side note, there’s always been this rumor that this movie was kind of a shitshow for Motown, Diana Ross and Berry Gordy. Supposedly Diana didn’t want to make this movie, and only agreed to it (at Berry’s request) if she could do all the costume design. This reluctance to do this film is sort of hinted at in the movie “Dreamgirls.” And while the soundtrack did well (the theme song was a No. 1 that year), the movie didn’t do much for Motown financially.

Alternate theory: Tracy actually dies in the Iso Grifo crash, and the rest of the movie is her afterlife: first a trial through purgatory, where she meets success but realizes it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, then goes off to heaven with Billy Dee Williams.

Good soundtrack either way.

TechKee

Comment Of The Day: I’M A WINNER, BABY Edition

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