Natalie Portman shaded every man nominated for Best Director
The Golden Globes kicked off 2018 awards season last night with a series of groundbreaking moments for women in film and women in culture at large. There were powerful moments, tear-inducing moments and moments that made you want to jump out of your seat and pump your fist in the air.
And there was one exquisitely shady moment that will go down as the sickest burn in Golden Globe history: Natalie Portman shading all of the nominees for best director.
Natalie was presenting the award for best director alongside Ron Howard. After the typical stock intro, with Ron Howard saying he and Natalie were proud to present the award, blah blah blah, Natalie said this:
“And here are the all-male nominees.”
Here’s the video, posted by Galore fave The Art of Shade:
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After Natalie said this, the five old men nominated for best director — Guillermo Del Toro, Martin McDonagh, Christopher Nolan, Ridley Scott and Steven Spielberg — did not look amused. Instead, they were all making that face that men like Anthony Weiner make when they get caught sexting. The internet likes to call it “the sex scandal face.”
It’s true! Al Franken *DID* make the “sex scandal face”! https://t.co/li6pLgY3fC pic.twitter.com/Wt660QV8y3
— Brutalist (@brutalistPress) November 18, 2017
I mean:
Too good, right? And yes, these guys are caught up in a sex scandal — they’ve been given more opportunities and more accolades than the average woman has, and it’s because of their sex. They look ashamed, because they should be ashamed. Hopefully they’ll be asked about Natalie’s comment in the upcoming days and they won’t say anything too tone-deaf about it.
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Well, actually, Guillermo Del Toro already lost his chance at that. Guillermo Del Toro ended up winning, and in a super classy move, he opted not to address Natalie comments or the Time’s Up movement or the dress-in-black protest. Instead, he talked about… monster movies.
From The Verge:
Del Toro accepted the award with a speech about the value of monster movies, saying “I have been saved and absolved by them. Monsters are our way of making sense of imperfection.” When the orchestra tried to play him offstage, he hushed the conductor and continued, saying, “For 25 years, I have handcrafted very strange little tales made of motion, color, light, and shadow. And in many of these instances — three precise instances — these little stories have saved my life.”
The irony that Del Toro is standing up for movie monsters in a year when real-life monster Harvey Weinstein is top of mind for having gotten away with rape for decades because of a male-dominated system protecting him… seems kind of lost on Del Toro.
Anyway, back to Natalie Portman: this is not the first time she’s shown off a pretty on-point sense of humor. Despite her penchant for acting in dramas, she has shown serious comedic chops time and time again. Remember when she rapped about smoking weed every day at Harvard?
Natalie was right to point out that the nominees for best director this year were all male — especially in a year when “Lady Bird,” a film directed by a woman, broke the record for best-reviewed movie on Rotten Tomatoes and even won best picture at the Golden Globes.
And if some bro you went to middle school with posts on Facebook, “Maybe it’s because most directors are male,” send him this or this or this and remind him he’s a waste of male privilege for not having directed a blockbuster by now.
[CORRECTION: A previous version of this article stated that the men nominated for the Golden Globe for best director were white. A reader has suggested that Guillermo Del Toro might not consider himself white, as race is a complex and heavily debated topic in the Latin-American community. We are unable to determine whether Guillermo Del Toro considers himself to be a white person or a person of color, so we have removed the word white.]
