Howard Stern is a jerk—with a point to ponder

By Anne Kingston - Friday, March 12, 2010 at 4:19 PM - 42 Comments

Howard Stern can be a nasty bastard—but he’s also often the only one willing to voice unpleasant truths others won’t. So it was this week when the Sirius shock jock unleashed a tirade against the future prospects for Gabourey Sidibe, the Best Actress nominee for her role in Precious. “There’s the most enormous, fat black chick I’ve ever seen,” Stern proclaimed the day after the Academy Awards. He went on to slam Oprah Winfrey’s tribute to Sidibe during the telecast in which she called the actress “a true American Cinderella on the threshold of a brilliant new career.” Stern was having none of it: “Everyone’s pretending she’s a part of show business and she’s never going to be in another movie. She should have gotten the Best Actress award because she’s never going to have another shot. What movie is she gonna be in?”

Stern was pilloried for being racist. He was also attacked for getting his facts wrong: Sidibe has been cast in the new Showtime comedy The C Word and the upcoming movie Yelling To The Sky, though neither are leading roles. The C Word stars Laura Linney; in Yelling to the Sky Sidibe plays a bully, which is safe to say not a role Halle Barry turned down.

On Wednesday, Stern defended his comments, taking on the role of compassionate health crusader. He compared Sidibe to his co-star Artie Lange, who recently attempted to commit suicide: “Like, I kind of don’t see a difference between what our Artie did—Artie tried to kill himself. And I feel this girl, in a slower way…she’s gonna kill herself.”

Stern being Stern, he couldn’t leave it there. He went on to deride the newcomer’s acting ability, calling her a “prop” in Precious, which suggests he didn’t see the movie or slept through it. His sidekick Robin Quivers chimed in with another inaccuracy: “You don’t have to be unhealthy to do that part,” she said. But any actress playing Precious, a 16-year-old girl monstrously abused by her parents, did have to be seriously overweight. The character’s only comfort comes from scarfing down tubs of fried chicken. Her excess flesh is not only a salient class indicator but also protective armour.

Off the screen, the 26-year-old is also creating buzz for showing no indication of signing up for a celebrity weight-loss reality show. On Oprah, she revealed she has battled her weight all of her life; it wasn’t until she was in her early 20s that she finally became comfortable in her own skin, she said. That was evident on the Oscar red carpet where she was joy to watch—exuberant, confident, loving every second, very much in the character of Precious who sustained herself with fantasies of being a celebrity. The actress ordered a camera to pan back to get her entire cobalt blue Marchesa gown in the frame and told Ryan Seacrest: “If fashion was porn, this dress would be the money shot.”

Watching, one couldn’t help wish for Sidibe to luxuriate in every second because deep-down we know Stern is right: Precious was a unique role; the odds of her transitioning into an American Cinderella—at least the Cinderella created by Disney who is slender and white—are nil in today’s Hollywood where women are valued for their youth, beauty and willingness to aspire to invisibility size-wise. “Plus-sized” or “full-figured” actresses (read: anyone over size six) have a tough enough time of it. Consider Nikki Blonsky who received high praise for her performance in Hairspray but hasn’t been heard from since. The verdict remains out on Jennifer Hudson, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Dreamgirls; she just dropped 60 pounds to play Winnie Mandela in a bio-pic.

The double-standard is so ingrained, it’s tedious: when Renée Zellweger gained 20 pounds to play Bridget Jones it was a major news story (and one suspects part of the reason she won an Oscar). Yet when Jeff Bridges packed on 25 pounds for his Oscar-winning role as washed-up country singer Bad Blake, no one asked for his weight-loss secrets. Male actors can get soft and paunchy and age and still get work—and the girl. Jack Black is allowed to play romantic lead against Kate Winslet. And nobody’s complaining that Philip Seymour Hoffman isn’t buff.

But Sidibe isn’t just “full-figured,” she’s obese—which, as Stern points out, is a hot-button topic in the U.S. and also a serious health risk. In Hollywood, morbid obesity is cheap-laugh fodder—slap a fat suit on Gwyneth Paltrow (Shallow Hal) or Eddie Murphy (The Nutty Professor/Norbit) and let the pathetic yucks begin. The 500-pound Darlene Cates who starred in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape in 1993 is an exception: she went on a few other roles, all of which hinged on her weight.

People went overboard rooting for Sidibe, Stern argues, “because she’s a big fat lady.” Maybe he’s right again. Consider it the Susan Boyle effect—the righteous pleasure of being so broad-minded to see that talent can come in different-sized packages. But the craving for change, evidenced in the first U.S. Black president, is deeper than that. Hollywood is taking tiny steps: Kathryn Bigelow broke through the male Best Director Oscar barrier. Meryl Streep is hotter at age 60 than she’s ever been. Helen Mirren is an inspiration. And non-stick figure Queen Latifah is playing a romantic lead in the upcoming movie Just Wright.

Fat, however, is more impenetrable, reflected in Stern mocking Sidibe’s for saying “I’m going to hit a Chick-fil-A,” a L.A. fast-food chain, after the awards. “That’s so sad,” he said. Of course, when the slender Best Actress winner Sandra Bullock expressed similar sentiment, it was heralded as a sign of how down to earth she is: “I just want to eat!” Bullock told the press room. “I just want to sit down and take my shoes off, and take my dress off, and eat a burger—and not worry that my dress is going to bust open.” Nobody, even Howard Stern, sees anything wrong with that picture.

Newsmakers '09: Entrances

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 2:30 PM - 0 Comments

Victoria’s Secret
No longer will underwear aficionados have to gaze longingly south of the border: Victoria’s Secret, the lingerie chain synonymous with romance, glamour and Heidi Klum, is set to launch its first Canadian stores in the new year. For those who can’t wait, little sister store Victoria’s Secret Pink, aimed at university-age girls, opened a few Canadian outlets this year.

Micro pigs
The most in-demand accessory in Hollywood isn’t a handbag or pair of heels—it’s a tiny pig. Micro pigs start out as big as a teacup, and grow to be about the size of a spaniel; they’re clean and sweet-natured, and they love to be around people. David and Victoria Beckham have scooped up two, reportedly at a cost of over $1,200 each; Harry Potter actor Rupert Grint has one, too.

Chinese curling team
Who’ll win curling gold at Vancouver in 2010? China, which just began its curling program in 2000, could be a real contender. In March, the Chinese team defeated Sweden, Olympic champions in 2006, to win the Women’s Curling Championship, making history. Observers are calling the People’s Republic the new curling superpower.

Lottie the Otter
Eighty years after A. A. Milne’s beloved books were published, Winnie the Pooh has a new friend: Lottie the Otter, who appears in the first authorized Pooh sequel, Return to the Hundred Acre Wood. Author David Benedictus describes Lottie as an outspoken otter who’s a stickler for etiquette. Illustrated by Mark Burgess, who brought Paddington Bear to life, she’s a graceful and rare female addition to Pooh’s crew.

Joaquin ‘Shorty’ Guzman
This year saw an unusual addition to Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s wealthiest people. Alongside Bill Gates and Warren Buffett was Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, a Mexican drug lord. With an estimated net worth of US$1 billion, Guzman heads the Sinaloa cartel, one of the biggest suppliers of cocaine to the U.S. Mexican officials quickly slammed his inclusion as “deplorable.”

Nova Scotia’s first NDP government
June’s vote saw the province get its first-ever NDP government after a decade of Progressive Conservative rule. The NDP trounced the Tories, who were reduced to third-party status. Even Leader Darrell Dexter seemed surprised: “Who would believe that NDP orange would cover Nova Scotia?” he said after the win.

Ardi
Move over, Lucy: a hominid even more primitive than the famous 3.2-million-year-old fossil is now our earliest known ancestor. Ardi, short for Ardipithecus ramidus, is 4.4 million years old; an adult female, she likely stood about four feet tall and weighed 120 lb. With a brain the size of a chimp’s, Ardi could climb trees, yet walked upright on two legs.

Al Franken
Al Franken was once better known for his turn as self-help guru Stuart Smalley on Saturday Night Live. This year, he left the limelight to become Minnesota’s new Democratic senator. Declared the winner after a lengthy recount and legal battle against his Republican rival, Franken marked his arrival in Washington with a sober declaration: “I’m ready to get to work, thank you.”

Shawn A-in-chut Atleo
In Canada, roughly half the native population is under 25. Atleo, a hereditary chief of Vancouver Island’s Ahousaht First Nation, was a fitting choice to represent them: elected national chief of the Assembly of First Nations in July, he was the youngest candidate at age 42 (and the only one whose campaign had a Twitter account). Atleo is not known to shy from a challenge; in his new role he promises he’ll be “kicking down doors.”

Camilla
Canadians’ ambivalence to the royals was on show during the duchess of Cornwall’s first official visit, which was marked by inevitable comparisons to Diana’s. Still, Camilla has Canadian roots: one of her ancestors was premier of Canada West. On a stop at Hamilton’s Dundurn Castle, built for her great-great-great grandfather, she and Prince Charles received one of the largest turnouts of their trip, and were greeted with cries of, “We want the duchess!” Camilla, in a fur-lined cape, replied, “Oh, lovely.”

Gabourey Sidibe
Most of Hollywood’s leading ladies are rail thin, but Gabourey Sidibe, who stars in the film Precious, is just the opposite, reportedly weighing more than 300 lb. But that might be the least remarkable thing about her: Sidibe has received massive praise for her brave performance as a sexual-abuse victim, a poor, illiterate teenager who’s impregnated by her own father. She’ll next star in Yelling to the Sky opposite Don Cheadle.

Seal meat as political rite
On a trip to the Arctic, Governor General Michaëlle Jean sampled the heart of a freshly slaughtered seal, making headlines around the world. Now, everybody’s doing it: in Iqaluit a few months later, Stephen Harper dined on seal meat, offering a public rebuke to Europe’s ban on Canadian sealing products. Cabinet ministers followed suit, and it has been added to the menu at Parliament Hill’s exclusive restaurant, alongside more routine fare like beef tenderloin and salmon.

Nadya Suleman
In January, Suleman, a single mom with six children, gave birth to octuplets, the second set in U.S. history. The story quickly progressed from heartwarming tale to ethical quagmire: the American Society of Reproductive Medicine ejected her fertility doctor after revelations he transferred at least six embryos to the 33-year-old (guidelines would have recommended one or two). Suleman was soon a tabloid freak: reports suggested the so-called “Octomom” would appear alongside fellow reality train-wreck Jon Gosselin on a new show, though the dad of eight denied it.

Sri Lankan Tamil ship
After a decades-long insurgency, Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers, viewed by Canada as a terrorist organization, were defeated in that country this year. In the crackdown that followed, some ethnic Tamils fled, including 76 who travelled to B.C. aboard a run-down cargo ship. Seeking refugee status, most were kept in custody in a Vancouver-area detention centre as officials attempted to weed out any terrorists. Still, family members were reportedly relieved: “He’s in Canada, so he’s safe,” one said of his brother.

Jacob Zuma
A goatherd-turned-guerrilla leader, Jacob Zuma seemed an unlikely candidate for South Africa’s top office: the leader of the African National Congress was ridiculed in some quarters for his lack of education, for breaking into song and dance while out campaigning and for his three wives. Largely thanks to his grassroots appeal, he was sworn in as president in May. Arriving at his lavish inauguration, where he knelt at the feet of Nelson Mandela, Zuma had just one wife in tow, which must have meant a bit of a song and dance back home.

Amanda Seyfried
Following last year’s Mamma Mia!, in which she appeared alongside Meryl Streep, the 23-year-old rising star has shown off her remarkable range with two vastly different roles. In the dark comedy Jennifer’s Body (scripted by Oscar-winner Diablo Cody), Seyfried plays a nerdy bookworm. And in Atom Egoyan’s erotic drama Chloe, set in Toronto, she claimed the title role: a prostitute hired by a woman (Julianne Moore) to seduce her own husband (Liam Neeson). For those who prefer her lighter fare, Mamma Mia 2 is on its way.

‘Glee’
The high school musical comedy Glee is the hottest thing on TV, thanks in part to Cory Monteith, a Calgary native, who charms as Finn Hudson, a dreamy football jock who can sing. He appears alongside the rest of the gang at McKinley High, including the fabulously evil cheerleading coach, Sue Sylvester, played with gusto by Jane Lynch. Once the refuge of lonely nerds, glee clubs, thanks to Monteith and his crew, are finally cool.

The real reason to see 'Precious'

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 2:20 PM - 0 Comments

Sometimes a movie becomes more than a movie; it turns into a movement. That’s what has happened to Precious. It began in January, when its director, Lee Daniels, took a cellphone call from Oprah Winfrey as he was getting up to accept the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. Oprah told him his movie “split her open” and offered to throw her weight behind it. Precious went on to win the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and is generating massive Oscar buzz. It’s this year’s Slumdog Millionaire, another underdog drama of an abused ghetto child with showbiz dreams trying to overcome enormous odds. But Precious, the harrowing tale of a 350-lb. Harlem teen who’s impregnated for the second time by her father, makes Slumdog look like a Disney movie. No movie heroine has ever grappled with more issues at once: she’s black, poor, obese, abused, illiterate, unloved, pregnant and HIV positive.

Based on the novel Push by Sapphire, Precious is fiction. But as the movie morphs into a cause, its inspirational message has become inseparable from the real-life personalities behind it, who have embraced the film as a healing touchstone to their own childhood horrors of sexual or physical abuse. That includes Sapphire, Daniels—and the two iconic moguls who signed on to the film after its premiere, Winfrey and Tyler Perry. But no one incarnates the horror of abuse more vividly than Mo’Nique, the 41-year-old powerhouse who portrays the monstrous mother of the film’s teenage heroine. The actress says she drew directly on her own experience of suffering four years of abuse from her brother, starting at age seven. The director told her to “be a monster,” she told the New York Times. “And my brother was that monster to me. That’s who I became.” Continue…

'Precious' wins Oscar's Toronto primary

By Brian D. Johnson - Sunday, September 20, 2009 at 1:19 PM - 0 Comments

'Precious' star Gabourey 'Gabby' Sidibe

It was wrap yesterday for the Toronto International Film Festival, as it staged its awards ceremony at a hotel brunch. This is always a low-key affair. Unlike the othe major festivals—Cannes, Berlin, Venice and Sundance—Toronto prides itself on being a non-competitive event. Which is why a lot of filmmakers feel comfortable unveiling their work here. There are no losers. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t winners. Although there’s no formal competition, awards are given out, and this year there were more than ever. Juries honoured three categories of Canadian films with cash prizes—Ruba Nadda’s lush and delicate romance, Cairo Time, won $30,000 for best Canadian feature, Alexandre Franchi’s The Wild Hunt, about role-playing games, won $15,000 for best Canadian first feature, and Pedro Pires’s Dance Macabre, a dark ballet conceived by Robert Lepage, won $10,000 for best Canadian short. But the prize that has taken on more and more significance over the years is the People’s Choice Award, which is voted by audiences—and has come to serve as a bell-weather for Oscar success. Past winners have included Chariots of Fire, American Beauty, Crash and Slumdog Millionaire. To no one’s surprise, at least not mine, the 2009 winner was Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire. By turns harrowing and inspirational, this tale of an abused, obese, illiterate Harlem teen is this year’s Slumdog. Continue…