I remember your post from when DWD was filming about how it seemed Florence was distancing herself from the film due to all the Harry and Olivia press and just can’t imagine how she feels today with a movie that is supposed to be a star vehicle for her & every headline is about how Olivia Wilde’s boyfriend goes down on her in the trailer. no matter how sexual movie trailers can be I’ve never seen explicit headlines about it before ??? I’m going crazy
I’ve only just woken up and I’ve only seen a handful of tweets and sound bites from CinemaCon and I’m so fucking baffled that they’re running with this blatantly crass PR.
Like, genuinely, thinking about it in fic terms: if I made something I was really proud of, that was witty, and creative, and interesting plot wise, that last thing I would want as a creator would be for the entire audience to be focused solely on the smut (even if it was great smut).
Putting it all together: your “boyfriend”, who’s your professional subordinate, who has been as vocal as he can be about his discomfort with being labeled a sex symbol, is now splashed across the internet in a trailer that is entirely focused on how he performs non-consensual oral sex on a very well respected Oscar nominated actress, who’s honestly barely mentioned in the PR if not to further highlight how she is the (“lucky”) recipient of said non-consensual sex acts.
Like, look, I wasn’t born yesterday. I know sex sells. But this reliance on Harry’s pull and this focus on getting his fans by essentially making them believe they get to watch soft porn of him in theaters speaks volumes about what the Director actually thinks about the movie she made. I would be so upset if something I worked hard on, that I believed deserved merit, as a woman in a field that’s still so widely male-dominated, were reduced to that. But if the still she chose to post on her Instagram says anything, she seems to be encouraging it and I’m honestly so insulted on behalf of the cast.
I get not wanting to give away the twist (kind of, since they let the ending leak and had like four screenings) but you can’t tell me there was really no other way to package this. It’s bananas.