I have been annoyed at Glen Powell since the weekend for dressing as Ricky Bobby from Talladega Nights for the Casamigos Halloween party. Talladega Nights is owned by Sony, an AMPTP member company and thus, a struck company. The SAG-AFTRA leadership specifically asked members NOT to dress as characters from movies produced/distributed/owned by struck companies, and some of the actors are showing their asses. Glen has been the focus of my ire because I genuinely like him—he’s talented and charismatic and has the makings of the kind of star we used to get all the time, but now only get every 10 years or so. I was rooting for him to be that guy for the 2020s!
But wait, because Bradley Cooper took a look at Glen Powell dressing as a random movie character and said hold my beer, because he dressed as ROCKET RACOON.
HE DRESSED AS HIS OWN CHARACTER. WHAT KIND OF THEATER KID LEAVING THEIR MAKEUP ON IN CLASS AFTER DRESS REHEARSAL BULLSH-T IS THIS.
You know what? Lainey is right. Keanu would never. Keanu is the Halloween king just for keeping his sh-t tight and NOT F-CKING SCABBING.
You know who else isn’t a scab? Fellow Halloween king and queen Jesse Plemons and Kirsten Dunst, who trick-or-treated with their family dressed as a zombie cowboy and skeleton, respectively. Look, skeletons are our enemies, we are the flesh prisons that entrap them, and they resent us for it, but at least dressing as our eternal bony enemies isn’t undermining your union during a critical junction in a months-long strike!
Bradley Cooper started out so strong, declining to go to film festivals even though, as the director of Maestro, he technically could. But now he’s turning the technicalities the other way. Like, HE didn’t post the Halloween picture on his social media, so I guess it’s okay? Except for how the guild leaders specifically asked actors not to do this, but maybe the assumption from the actors is—if I don’t post it myself, then I am not guilty? I don’t care what their logic is, it’s a sh-tty show of un-solidarity with their fellow actors.
You know who we’re seeing this from? The rich actors. The ones who can ride out the strike comfortably. The ones least affected by it, and by the issues over which their guild is bargaining right now. You know who we’re not seeing it from? The gigging actors who have been striking every f-cking day for the last three-plus months. The ones whose livelihoods have already been decimated and now are under threat of being torpedoed entirely. Who knew that HALLOWEEN was going to be the straw that broke the camel’s back, but after a few weeks of the A-listers obviously getting itchy to do awards season, f-cking Halloween is when they decided to toss #SAGAFTRAStrong out the window.
It's such a minor thing, you might be tempted to say it doesn’t matter. It’s just Halloween costumes, it’s just one weekend, one day, who cares? Well, obviously the guild leadership who explicitly asked their members not to do this very thing, but to me, it’s like a direct taunt from the most visible actors—again, the ones with the least to lose—to their guild leaders just as those leaders are engaged in protracted, hard-fought conversations with AMPTP that might actually bring an end to the strike. Now is the time for solidarity, not this asinine bullsh-t that is SO easily avoided. Plenty of actors dressed like other famous people, or in generically spooky costumes like Jesse and Kirsten, to do otherwise is deliberate. It’s a willfull act. And it’s sh-tty, given everything on the line, and the pressure these high-profile stars could be applying in the other direction, to AMPTP, pressuring the producers and studio bosses to bring the strike to the end. Instead, they’re thumbing their noses at their own union during a strike, because the strike is getting in the way of the party vibes, I guess.
What a bunch of f-cking babies.
