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Family and Friends is my everyday journal. Captain's Log is where I pontificate on religion and politics.

Saturday, February 05, 2011

Verboten

Huffpo has an article about fashion designers Duckie Brown denigrating Steve McQueen.
I grew up with the adage that you don't speak ill of the dead.
The designers are a little miffed by the perception in fashion that McQueen is concidered a real man. Then they start a character assassination. There no need for that thirty years after the man's dead. It riles up his fans and causes pain to his family for no reason at all.
Compared to celebrities today, whatever human failings McQueen had they are miniscule by comparison.
I have problems with Jane Fonda's politics, but she's a fantastic actress and I watch her movies like 9 to 5, Julia, Klute, Coming Home and Barbarella.
The same goes for Shirley McClain, Lindsay Lohan, Charlie Sheen, Robert Downy Jr., Mel Gibson and others. When I watch a movie I enjoy it or hate it based on the performances and if it had a good story. Their personal lives don't bother me.
Steve McQueen was a great actor. He could communicate more with a look than most actors with a soliloquy. His movies still stand up, Pappillon, The Great Escape, Bullet, Junior Bonner, and many others. If he has a reputatin as being a real man these movies are proof. Would any other actor today shoot a chase scene at over 120 mph over the hills of San Fransisco and still be in one piece after the brakes failed?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I have not seen anything about this controversy. But I have an interview with biographer Marshall Terrill coming up on my website. His latest book on McQueen answers many questions about an interesting actor, father, husband, race car driver, aviator and philanthropist.

P M Prescott said...

I'm looking forward to that interview, Michael. McQueen was human and made mistakes, but when you look at a lifetime that can't be all that's pointed out.