That he went with a "date." And she was a woman.
You GO, Ben Brantley! Hit that! We thought we knew you... but did we? Truly? Suddenly you're so...human.
Seriously, it's the subtext of the whole review. Until he comes out and says it at the end.
About Me
- Freeman
- Matthew Freeman is a Brooklyn based playwright with a BFA from Emerson College. His plays include THE DEATH OF KING ARTHUR, REASONS FOR MOVING, THE GREAT ESCAPE, THE AMERICANS, THE WHITE SWALLOW, AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR, THE MOST WONDERFUL LOVE, WHEN IS A CLOCK, GLEE CLUB, THAT OLD SOFT SHOE and BRANDYWINE DISTILLERY FIRE. He served as Assistant Producer and Senior Writer for the live webcast from Times Square on New Year's Eve 2010-2012. As a freelance writer, he has contributed to Gamespy, Premiere, Complex Magazine, Maxim Online, and MTV Magazine. His plays have been published by Playscripts, Inc., New York Theatre Experience, and Samuel French.
7 comments:
I gotta ask ... so what? I mean, what possible relevance does this have to anything?
George, honestly...it's a joke.
I read that review and I gotta say , that piece of info also stuck out to me like a sore thumb.
I thought it was a pretty interesting review but it just really felt like he was trying to get that woman to go out with him again or something. Dunno , it was weird. Plus her comment was not that witty or smart or anything worth mentionning in the paper !
Oh well. Whatever.
that's lame baiting, george.
humans must be wonderfuly erudite and evolved, if utterly humorless and self-important, in the rarified stratosphere where you strum, strum, strum.
it stuns me that someone who prattles on and on about a theater that's erotic can be so... laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame
no one like a lame lover, hunka-burning-love.
do you fuck the way you take a joke?
anyway -- god bless brantely for taking a hot broad to the thea-tah,not to mention the museum piece that is foreman. if i had my way, i'd take a hot broad and a hot dude.
only i'd take them to something that afterwards, we could get all saucy and naked over.
Real quick:
1) John, your comment is inappropriate and unnecessary. In my opinion, it is also not funny. But that's kind of neither here nor there.
Just because George was doing what many of us do from time to time (seeing a joke and taking it seriously, usually due to some amount of passion about a subject, in this case Foreman, an artist George greatly admires) might make him look a little ridiculous. We've all done it on the blogosphere. Pointing it out and then criticizing the sexual performance of a near-complete stranger is petty, mean spirited and small minded.
We have to work harder as people to remember our own and other's humanity. We have to remember that making mistakes is fine. That sometimes having no sense of humor is fine. That, in John's case, thinking that putting together fuck jokes and the word "lame" stretched out to two lines might be funny, is also fine. Because we're all creatures in process. We're all learning and striving and dealing with a complicated, difficult, tragic world. We forget that sometimes. And we shouldn't.
I'm really sick and tired of all the viciousness that's floating around on the blogosphere, frankly, especially the theater blogosphere. What we do as artists is already fragile, and beautiful, and very very few people believe that what we do has any meaning or value at all. It's bad enough without attacking our each other all the goddamn time.
There's a difference between respectfully disagreeing with someone, or between pointing out someone's flaws, and having at them. There's a difference between Matt Freeman saying "George, honestly...it's a joke" and John going off on a long rant about how bad he must be in bed. There's a difference between saying you disagree with someone, and using your disagreement to try to prove how much smarter/more valuabe/better you are than someone else. This isn't contact sports. It's theorizing about an incredibly ephemeral thing. There is a difference between trying to debate someone and take into consideration what they're saying and really thinking about it and considering it and then responding and lashing out. One of the differences is that it is a lot harder to do. It takes actual intelligence and energy and talent and wisdom. Dismissing everything someone says and lashing into them might look clever (lord knows I think I'm being clever when I do it) but it is stupid and lazy and deep down I think we know that.
I'm sick of it. There's no reason to be so vicious. We're all nominally on the same side. It's a tragic waste of energy and time, and a tragic waste of people's talents. Why can't we respectfully disagree, ask each other questions, respectfully, not get annoyed when people challenge us or ask us to clarify or disagree with us and work together to build a conversation? Not agreement. Not reinforcement, just a many-voiced conversation. A rich group made up of very very different individuals.
Jesus Christ... this is like how the Left has eaten itself in America over the last fifty years. We all need to get a grip.
2) Not to gossip but... okay, fine, to gossip! I was at that performance. I hope this doesn't get me in trouble for saying, but... I was at the same show as Brantly. (I remember saying to my girlfriend "is that Fred Armisen? No wait... it's Ben Brantly...") and I'm pretty sure that that woman was not a "date" in the way we might think of "Date". I think this was "hanging out". Personally. But kudos to Brantly for trying to make oh-so-subtly make sure people don't wonder about his sexuality. I prefer Terry Teachout's take, which seems to be a someone more polite way of saying: "fuck you, it is none of your fucking business who I fuck." I applaud him for that. And for being gently mocking about it instead of out-and-out rude and hostile like I'd like him to be.
All right, crew. Time for a breather.
I, personally, was just trying to make a little, tiny joke. It's my blog, so I can do that. BUT, let's face the facts... this got a bit out of hand.
I think John is funny and I think I am funny. I also think George has the right to "not get the joke" and that Isaac has a point...this isn't all that much fun or particularly constructive.
I sort of made a rule for myself that I wouldn't delete posts. I think that's sort of against the whole nature of debate and the democracy of the blogsphere. That being said...I am considering deleting this one. If only to put the k'bosh on us going overboard on Ben Brantley's sex life (I mean seriously...I don't want him to google this and think "That Freeman is outlawed from the NY Times forever") and actually attacking each other.
Do we all get frustrated? Certainly. Is it in the nature of this sort of thing to do so? Yes.
I would like to say, though, that I mean NOTHING particularly personally. That's why I often pose questions, as opposed to making particularly hard-nosed statements.
I do think we can be overly rarefied, and take ourselves a bit too seriously. That doesn't mean, of course, that we should throw mud at each other either.
John is a brilliant, hilarious, passionate guy.
George is someone I don't know personally, but obviously loves theatre a great deal (something we share.)
So, gents... as I consider deleting this post...I ask you both to consider, um, the children.
i'm sorry, i didn't know i was being funny.
and i wasn't talking out of my ass. george knew exactly what he was doing. he was subtly putting the kibosh on a catty little post about a powerful reviewer who opened his private life to catty remarks the moment he ended his review with references to it. it was lame kicker to his normal review of foreman, which i sometimes find condescending to the man, who, don't get me wrong, is a fruitloop, but a glorious one.
george's post WAS humorless and school marmish. perhaps it didn't deserve napalm, but something tells me george would dismiss an opinion from someone like me anyhoo.
i don't need defending, but thank you matt. you have a decent and diplomatic heart. i don't. and please don't judge matt for his association with me. he's a sensitive, talented guy who'll i'll one day brag about knowing while getting bombed at a hooters.
and for the record, i'm not an artist. i'm a whore. somehow, i find that more... honest. if not honest, then i can wrap my lowbrow little brain around it. and i didn't lash out -- the post was calculated to get a superficial rise. i suppose i could have said "OH COME ON MAN LIGHTEN UP." but i had to entertain myself.
and why shouldn't this be a contact sport?
meanwhile, i will keep reading all of your sites. multiple times a day. booowahahahhaa. and until you learn how to block my various IP addresses, you'll have to deal with the downside of a public forum.
some people in the crowd are straight up dicks.
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