Michael Jackson Casting Controversy

People make a big deal out of this is hilarious because its is on Sky Arts. If there wasn't so much controversy hardly anyone would of saw this film because next to no one watches Sky Arts. The channel is lucky if it gets 10,000 viewers.

 

It IS hilarious, at the end of the day ^^^^

He looks kind of Asian here

Love the story line! This is Rotten Tomatoes dream movie, lol!
To Wong Foo eat your heart out



Who are the other two celebs being portrayed?

 

Marlon Brando, and Elizabeth Taylor.

 

Liz makes sense. Marlon? Lol...l would have thought MM or Elvis. Even James Dean. Interesting.

 

I remember seeing a report on Entertainment Tonight some years ago about race bending in Hollywood films. Here's an example; Bones Hook. He was a cowboy who knew how to bring down a bull during a bull ride. He also broke in horses. He was very well known during those times. Bones Hook was a black man. There was a film made in the 40's or 50's in which Bones Hook makes an appearance. The actor portraying Hook was white.

Werner Oland, a European actor, played Charlie Chan. He also played a Japanese in the film Werewolf Of London. He looked very Asian.

Actor Kurt Jurgens played a Chinese soldier in the film In Of Course 6th Happiness.

Actor Paul Muni(from the first Scarface) played a Chinese farmer in The Good Earth, based on the novel by Pearl S. Buck.

Actor Ricardo Montalban(Armando from Escape From The Planet Of The Apes, Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes, Mr. Roarke from Fantasy Island) portrayed a Japanese stage actor in Sayonara with Marlon Brando.

I can't keep up with how many white actors and actresses who portrayed Native American Indians or even Mexicans and other persons of Latin/Hispanic descent.

I guess I can chalk it up to the fact that Hollywood didn't have the diversity then and like today, the safety is in familiarity.

 

Elizabeth Taylor herself as Cleopatra.

Chuck Conners as a blued Geronimo.

Christopher Lee as Fu Manchu.

Laurence Olivier and Orson Wells as Othello.

 

While Elizabeth Taylor was facially different than the daughter of Alexander the Great, Cleopatra's mainly Greek-Macedonian ethnicity was correct.

 

They say Cleopatra was an ugly woman but good in bed

 

Curious as to what you deduce from the coin and her being of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Inbreeding in order to keep the blood line "pure" Greek perhaps? Possible native Egyptian dna? Possible intermarrying between other European royal bloodlines?

 

Is this what you teach your students in drivers ed and woodshop class? Lol

 

I recall having a conversation sometime ago with one of my co-workers, who is a big "behind the scenes" movie facts buff and his relaying how Francis Ford Coppola had to convince the studio execs during the making of the original Godfather to let him cast both Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in the film because they felt they were "too ethnic" to play Italians because the execs wanted more established and less ethnic actors like Robert Redford and Paul Newman in the movie.

 

Yeah...your momma sucked my dick to pass the class

 

How old are you again? Lol

 

Lol. Your mom didn't commit a crime. It was legal.

She flunked the class.

 

Lol

Lol

Tell her to stop calling me and sending me live letters I don't love her....dang

 

Boris Karloff once played Fu Manchu . Peter Lorre once played Japanese detective Mr Moto.
Burton Lancaster, Elvis Presley, Nick Mancuso, Jeff Chandler played Native American Indians. Yvette Vickers played a black girl who passed for white in the remake of Imitation of Life.

 

That was true because Robert Redford and Paul Newman were blonde and had blue eyes. It was believed that Italians were all fair haired and I guess that was a quality Adolph Hitler saw in them and Mussolini, whom he had idolized.

Robert Redford was once considered to play Superman before Christopher Reeve was chosen.

 

Like I have said before, "It's not the face you fuck. It's the fuck you face." Even back in Cleopatra's time, sex was an asset. And soldiers and leaders need all thebmp pleasure they could get. It was said that Roman commanders had young boys with them to wash, massage and have sex with them because women didn't go into the battlefield with their husbands.
Cleopatra knew what she was doing.

 

In all honesty, my deduction from the coins is their Hellenic features. Those features which remarkably remain in the Greek community today.

You are absolutely correct on purported inbreeding... cousins, brother sister... very common in ruling blood lines of all cultures...
Here is an excerpt from Duane Roller, a Professor Emeritus of Greek and Latin history at Ohio State...

"For the first six generations the wives of the ruling Ptolemies also came from the same Macedonian background as their husbands. So until the time of Cleopatra’s great-grandfather, the ethnic makeup of the dynasty was still pure Macedonian Greek. In fact two of her ancestors married their sisters, thus reinforcing the Macedonian ethnicity."

(keep in mind though that even the mere concept of Greek-Macedonian is argued by some. As in, they cannot be "mixed" and that she was Macedonian. Just keep in mind that the Macedonia vs Greek arguing IN GENERAL, continues in both community to this day. (not unlike the Palestine and Jews or the Greeks and Turks)

Also, this Cleopatra spoke Greek AND Egyptian (the first to), suggesting that she had some egyptian in her blood via her mother, so good point Beasty on her possible DNA link.

 

They say she was very smart