Forum Index
»
Entertainment and Pop Culture
Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT - False Light claims
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
PP w/ list. I get that. And I understand view of her as a villain. To me, she thought she was saving the film. How could she promote this film as she promised if not-real-feminist director makes its message that DV husbands are sympathetic hunks? And like PP maybe says, threat was failure to promote, not to release SH claims. But agree to disagree! Enough from me for a while. |
Anonymous
I’d have to go back to the timeline, but where it gets muddy is that while the wayfarer parties we’re reviewing the 17 pt complaint, BL sent over other demands (can’t remember the specifics but they were producer/editor like access) essentially tying the two things together. To me, she linked them so the threat was strongly implied. This is when Baldoni said “I’m waiving the white flag and giving her what she wants”. |
Anonymous
| Why are we litigating these same issues for the 2000th time? It probably is time to close this thread. No one has anything new to say. |
Anonymous
|
I just don’t understand how people can find Blake trying to destroy Justin back in August as acceptable. You’re just glossing over the fact that she very publicly went after him, started the whisper campaign about fat shaming, started saying the cast was uncomfortable with him and that’s why no one wanted to do the promos with him when we now know she hired Ryan’s company and they took over marketing and deliberately excluded him from those promos.
It was her promo of the film that got backlash. Her selling her hair products as part of the promotion. Her selling her and Ryan’s alcohol brands as part of the promotion. Her coming up with the ingenious idea to name a drink after the abuser in the film. Her causing all that chaos in the red carpet and throwing the writer under the bush by saying that Ryan Reynolds when we now know that was used to everybody in the film because she had claimed she. That is what started this whole public thing. It just strikes me so utterly unprofessional and chaotic and mean girlish. It’s hard for me to understand why anyone would side with her and people are glossing over that like well then he did a smear campaign. No, he hired a PR crisis firm, which is what anyone in their right mind would’ve done. She was publicly smearing him, ruining his brand, and it seemed like they were on the verge of taking over the sequel. I don’t understand how any one on the thread would be like, “that’s totes it’s OK with me. Just gonna standby and let her do it.” Of course he would’ve hired that firm. Nathan and Abel reached out to Sloan to try to get control,get Blake to stop - her reaction was, Blake is fine. She’s making him a lot of money. Then immediately called press outlets to bash Justin behind their back. That’s just so utterly unfair. His reputation and his name was being smeared and they were knowingly trying to take over the second film. Just the bullying and the audacity really gets me. The PR crisis campaign didn’t have to do that much work because Blake has long been disliked and we all know that. She has a trail of failed businesses in her wake. She cannot front a brand. Her acting career was largely over. Her last movie was five years prior, the biggest bomb in cinematic history. Come on, Jed Wallace did not make people hate Blake. |
Anonymous
So don’t read it. There are plenty of other threads to read. Why stay here? And there’s tons more to discuss. The litigation is just getting started |
Anonymous
And yet the conversation is stuck in reverse. |
Anonymous
I agree that it's an open question whether she sought control over the editing/Final Cut of the film because either: 1) She was greedy and power mad, wanted to use the movie as a springboard to being considered a legitimate producer and potentially director for other projects, and she and Reynolds plotted this all along, OR 2) She became alarmed during the filming of the movie about how her character would be portrayed, how Baldoni's character would be portrayed, and how the sex scenes featuring both her and the actress playing the younger version of the chacracer would be handled in editing, and therefore fought for creative control over the Final Cut of the movie, and lobbied Sony on these specific issues, because she was worried about appearing in a movie that could wind up being an apologia for abusers or that could be seen as anti-feminist and problematic. I see arguments for both. There's a possibility it's actually a bit of a combination of both. I think likely there is evidence to come that will shed light on this, including especially evidence and testimony regarding Lively's communications with Sony during the editing phase of the movie. It really appears to me that Sony essentially handed over control of the movie to Lively during the spring of 2024. Did that happen because they were afraid of Reynolds and were just trying to appease him/protect their relationship with him and other people connected to him? Or did Lively make a case for why it was important to hand over control of the movie to a woman and to ensure that the final product had a feminist message that was empowering (as much for marketing reasons as political reasons -- this was always a movie with a primarily female audience and they knew that audience would buy feminist empowerment because of Barbie, whereas there was no evidence women would be eager to buy a movie that was about how maybe abusers can be saved)? I don't think it's possible to know the answer to this now but when communications between Lively and Sony come out, as well as when Sony execs are deposed/testify, this question could be answered. |
Anonymous
I actually think the conversation about whether Lively was just trying to steal the movie in a power grab, or was trying to rescue the movie from what she and others viewed as a bad framing by Baldoni, has not really been covered before. I can't say I've read every page of the thread, but I haven't seen this discussed (partly because a lot of posters don't believe it's an open question and think it's a settled matter when it isn't). |
Anonymous
There’s zero evidence of that, though. It’s just a theory you’ve concocted. We can all make up backstories to fit our preferred narrative. |
Anonymous
It all comes down to what it was actually like on set. If it turns out this was a really unprofessional set where women did not feel respected or comfortable, and that Baldoni and Heath did a bunch of stuff that bothered not only Lively, but the rest of the cast, then the "whisper campaign" was not a bunch of fake PR to attack Baldoni but just... the truth. Like if most of the actors from the movie are like "it was a super weird set, Baldoni gives me the creeps, I had zero interest in promoting this movie with him," it's hard for me to say that Blake was being a "mean girl" by participating in that. And based on comments from the rest of the cast, I think this is possible. Also, would love to find out where the reports about the cast not doing promo with him originated. If Baldoni can track it all to Blake's PR team, that looks bad for her. But if even some of those rumors stemmed from, say, Slate's or Sklenar's teams, that changes it for me. Because to me that looks like Slate and Sklenar knowing Baldoni is a problematic person and wanting to intentionally distance themselves from him in the press. If they were doing that independent of Blake, you can't say she orchestrated the whole thing, IMO. Basically, for me it comes down to whether the cast icing him out was the result of Blake forcing them to side with her in a spat between Lively and Baldoni only, or if it was an organic choice of a bunch of cast members and Hoover as they realized Baldoni is kind of a creep and not wanting to be associated with him. One thing to note is that Jennifer Abel has texts dating back to early in 2024 where SHE talks about Baldoni being creepy and gross, mocks him wanting to promote the movie with a men's retreat (???) and makes fun of him for acting like a victim in all of this when, it appears to me, she thinks he's earned a lot of what was happening to him at the time. Is the theory that Blake also poisoned Abel against Baldoni? Or maybe, just maybe, he sucks and his problems with the cast were his own fault. |
Anonymous
PP with list. Some of what you attribute to Lively above was Sloane, who was, I thought, herself trying to put out rumors that Lively was a problem that she thought had been started by Baldoni’s team. Much of the rest of the rumor stuff was Lively cutting Baldoni out without overtly saying anything bad to the press afaik. We can disagree. I’m not really trying to convince you of my view, just explaining how it’s possible for a perfectly normal, not plugged in longtime DCUM lawyer mom like me to believe Lively thought Baldoni harassed her, then was potentially messing up the movie, and then was doing a smear. I have both gone against and worked in tandem with attys like Bryan Freedman in my practice and am frankly skeptical of anything he says, in the same way some are skeptical of Lively. |
Anonymous
|
I don’t buy that she cared about the film or wanted the best for the film. If you care about the film, the cast, the crew, you don’t get your legal team to send six different emails over the course of filming, saying your gonna walk and make it wash for everybody.
I just don’t see how she can justify that, and that is one of the reasons people really don’t want her to get the PGA credit. The credit implies that you put the film first and that you were a good steward of the budget and acted in the best interest of the film. At every turn, Blake did not do that. She only wanted what was good for her. She couldn’t bother to read the book. She didn’t give a flying crap about this film. She signed on a couple weeks before shooting. It was Justin and his team who had worked for a four years to make it a reality. |
Anonymous
| I know I read somewhere early on, months ago, that part of Baldoni’s view of the film was that everyone could be “saved” no matter what they had done. And I know I have read more recently that what Lively thought was wrong with the rooftop scene was that the audience was supposed to be falling in love with Lily, and that it was reading too much like a scene where the audience was falling in love with both of them, or just Ryle. (Whether you agree with her artistically or not, I’m saying this was her view on what was wrong with Baldoni’s take.). |
Anonymous
I think this question is answered by the numerous emails between Baldoni and Hoover and the obvious disconnect between how Baldoni envisioned promoting the film and how Lively did. I do not for one second think Lively thought she was doing some feminist good and Baldoni had any intention of this being apologetic towards abusers. He was the one who very clearly thought this was a movie about domestic violence and worked through his vision for the film with Hoover. Lively, who we should not forget DIDN'T EVEN READ THE BOOK, was the one who wanted to bill and promote the film as a fun, flirty rom-com and seemed deeply uncomfortable with anyone bringing up the more serious themes of abuse in the plot. She was constantly pushing back that abuse was any significant part of the movie and really wanted this to be some "wear your florals!" fun time movie to see with your girlfriends. Saying Baldoni aimed to produce some kind of male abuser is redeemed narrative is basically slanderous after we have seen the emails and texts where he is very clear that he respects the source material and the delicate nature of what is being filmed while Lively is extremely flippant on that. |
Anonymous
One reason I believe Hollywood has turned so big against her and not one person has come out since December 21 in support of her, including her Bestie Taylor, is that this was a fairly low budget film and I think a lot of Hollywood film sets are chaotic and unprofessional. From what I know of other sets, I think Justin and wayfarer did a pretty good job. She was getting paid a lot of money for like six weeks of work and I think people just lose patience. You were right that the set wasn’t run perfectly, but that is a really high bar and she seemed to be so fragile. She also contributed to a lot of this by constantly missing because she was sick, and by doing things like crossing boundaries and inviting people into her trailer while she was getting makeup taken off for breast-feeding - she shouldn’t be shamed for doing those things, but she added to some of the chaos. Also, it was very chaotic to fire the composer after he had completely scored the movie and then hired a new person to score it. It was completely chaotic to not have the director have his 10 days in the editing bay. It was completely chaotic and unprofessional to hire her own editors and go against the director and the producers. It was completely chaotic to toss aside the marketing plan, have her husband do it, and do such a terrible job that the fans absolutely hated. It was also incredibly unprofessional to throw the head screenwriter under the bus like that. And she knows that because she wrote an over-the-top apology letter to her that we’ve all seen. |