It seems just like yesterday that we were having a debate about Denzel avoiding onscreen intimacy with white women on the screen with me tossing in the example of how he wanted no part of an onscreen relationship with Kelly Lynch in "Virtuosity". I would have no interest in reliving this issue if not for the fact Lynch had something to say about it this very day. She did a detailed interview about her career on the A.V. Club website with some standout comments that were picked up by the media. One website, Vulture, posted her remarks about what happened during the filming of "Virtuosity". Here is the excerpt: http://www.vulture.com/2012/10/kelly-lynch-shares-murray-denzel-cimino-dirt.html She also told the interviewer that when Denzel Washington realized he was working with an inexperienced director on Virtuosity, he decided to basically take over and rewrite the entire script. Specifically, he took out the love story because, as he explained to Kelly, "White men bring women to movies, and they don’t want to watch a black man with their woman.” And we thought he could play any role. End of excerpt. Now since the last discussion I've come to the conclusion that perhaps I was too hard on Washington and blamed him far too much for trying to get out of any onscreen examples of him involved in "jungle fever". After all he may not have been the only ones making the decision. And to be fair to Mr. Washington years after "Virtuosity" was made, he would do love scenes with white women in films like "He Got Game" and "Man on Fire" (although the love scene from the latter film was left on the cutting room's floor). However as I also pointed out in that previous discussion there was a time in which he simply wouldn't go there in regards to white women. He made a choice which one can either see as a cynical business decision or a blatant act of cowardice. Folks who defended Denzel's decision did so by claiming he was smart to not insult his black female audience blah, blah blah (as if white guys worry about ticking off their white female fans when having black, Asian or Hispanic love interests). My counter was that he wasn't doing it for black women he was doing it to not insult his white masters...er...I mean the white men who may buy tickets to his films. Lynch (perfect name considering the topic) is on record again as saying so. And the fact that he felt that way at one time is kinda sad. Here is the main black leading man of his era, even back then, and he was fretting over what white guys would think if he had the audacity to be feeling all over one of "their women". SPOILER ALERT for the upcoming "Flight" By the way in Washington's upcoming film he has "relations' with women of various hues. I believe his leading lady, although you cannot tell by any trailer/commercial, is a white female who is included on the international posters of the film. Again as I pointed out before Washington appears to have gotten past his apprehension of being too intimate with white chicks. It obviously took him awhile to get to that point. I'll chalk it off as progress on his part.
Shit. Lynch's full remarks from the AV site are even more fascinating: http://www.avclub.com/articles/kelly-lynch-on-magic-city-john-hughes-and-playing,86567/ Virtuosity (1995)—“Madison Carter” KL: That was such an interesting experience. I learned so much from that movie. First of all, the Denzel Washington part was a role that written for Mel Gibson, and it was a romantic role. He played a character who was in prison for many years, and he gets out and hooks up with this computer forensic specialist who finds bad guys on the Internet, and they pursue this guy who’s a virtual-reality kind of creation. And Denzel decided… Well, we all had to audition with him, which they rarely do anymore. They just usually put the two biggest actors available for a part in the movie together, whether or not they really have any chemistry, and if you find out on day one that they don’t, then it’s like, “Whoops!” But for Denzel and I, it was very charged. It was really great. We really connected. It was really sexual, funny, we connected intellectually… Everything was working. They were thrilled. And it was a wonderful script. But when we showed up for rehearsal, Denzel… [Hesitates.] We had kind of an inexperienced director [Brett Leonard], who I think had only done a few movies before that and really didn’t have much experience with big movie stars. And when actors feel like there’s not a real captain of a ship, they can feel like, “I have to take this project under my wing, and I have to fix it, because no one is minding the store.” That’s the kind of feeling Denzel had, I think, so he took the script and rewrote it and decided that my character wasn’t really so much of an expert but worked at a company and had a child, who would have a bomb strapped to her back. So I would be some sort of a hostage, a child-in-jeopardy thing—which I absolutely hate—and there would not be a romantic relationship between these people. Even though this man had been in prison for many, many years, he didn’t feel any connection to women when he got out… or at least not any woman that we see him with. And then he took half of my part and incorporated it into his dialogue. That was kind of the beginning of the end. I mean, the whole script just unraveled. I was very nice, though. I said, “Denzel, what is it? Why don’t you believe that the man you’re playing couldn’t be attracted to me?” I mean, it wasn’t a cheesy love story. It was actually really well-written and moving. And he said, “You know what, Kelly? I hate to say it, but, you know, white men bring women to movies, and they don’t want to watch a black man with their woman.” I was like, “What? No. Really?” He said, “No, I’m sorry, but that’s truly what it is. That’s what the audience is.” I’m like, “But how about The Bodyguard? That was a huge hit movie.” “Well, that’s different. That’s a white man. It’s different.” I said, “So that’s your main motivating factor on this?” He said, “Yes.” So the love story wasn’t a love story anymore. So I said, “Okay.” Years later on The Larry Elder Show, they were talking about it because some crewmember called up, and he didn’t identify himself but he knew the whole thing. They talked about it, and he said, “Oh, I wish we could get a phone call from Kelly Lynch!” I was in my car, but I was like, “They absolutely have it right, but I’m just not going to talk about it right now.” But it made me very sad. Not only as an actress, because it totally turned the movie into a piece of crap, but… I get that Denzel got a little bit afraid of everything, and I’m sure he believed what he was saying, although I think he’s wrong. I think that people go to movies because they think they’re good movies, or they don’t go to them because they think they’re bad. I just don’t come from that place. And if that’s what people think, then I don’t want to make movies for them. So it was a really weird experience. But I learned a lot. I watched Russell Crowe, who’s a brilliant actor as well, and he made something out of that movie, which was a complete mess. He took it and he found his place, because he wasn’t involved in any of that weird black/white dynamic. There were all these things that I didn’t understand were happening or were allowed to happen, and not everybody was happy with those choices that Denzel had made, but no one stopped him. But Russell could come and hang out in my trailer, and we’d talk a little bit, and then he just said, “You know, I’m just doing what I’m doing.” He was really funny, because he decided to terrorize me as Sid 6.7 [Crowe’s villain android character] and started decorating my trailer every day. I’d come to work, and my trailer would have more decorations until finally I had flower boxes and trees, and the interior was like a bodega, with all these sort of Our Lady Of Guadalupe candles and banners and shrines. He went mental. It was really funny. And, uh, then it did get kind of scary. [Laughs.] You know, it’s always interesting, I guess is my point, no matter what it is. You always want the movies to turn out to be just the greatest thing ever, but what the audience doesn’t realize is that we’re still having a life experience, the crew and cast. And sometimes that can be highly entertaining or really bizarre. But it’s always interesting.
