Month: April 2022

Reviewing “Hard Kill,” a 2020 movie starring Willis as a tech C.E.O. whose daughter gets kidnapped, a critic for the Guardian described him as occupying “that grey area between zero fuss and not much effort.” This and other similarly disparaging assessments now exist in their own gray area, where public opinion of an actor’s craft meets public knowledge of his extenuating circumstances

Keaton is the chamber-music master of comedy, with the counterpoint clear and unmuddied by extraneous emotion. It may be that our new claustrophobia is mirrored in his old comedy. The hospital has blown away, and that house has fallen on us all.

It’s understandable that he doesn’t want to get into it, considering the other misconception top of mind tonight. Such as: “The misconception that I’m crazy, which people seem to enjoy, the madman or whatever—to which I simply say you can’t survive 43 years in Hollywood or star in over 120 movies if you’re crazy. You’re not going to get bonded. They’re not going to work with you,” he says.

But it’s important to note that this is not necessarily a natural social phenomenon. Rather it is the direct result of an algorithm developed by profit-seeking companies. “Social media is optimized for the quickest and hottest and most outrageous takes,” Max Stossel, an adviser at the Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reimagining digital infrastructure, told me. “It’s a process that’s really at odds with accuracy and thoughtfulness.”

Industry leaders are blunt about the business model: According to materials for a “boot camp” for aspiring mobile-home park investors prepared by Mobile Home University, which is run by two of the largest mobile-home park owners in the country, “the fact that tenants can’t afford the $5,000 it costs to move a mobile home keeps revenues stable and makes it easy to raise rents without losing any occupancy.”