Very last Will Smith thing

There've been a couple of movies I've heard of with scenes where an adult slaps a kid and the child actor told them to just go ahead and slap them. It's hard to fake and it'd make their performance more realistic. Perhaps surprisingly, Frank Sinatra was horrified and didn't want to do it when Eddie Hodges said to hit him in A Hole in the Head. Jodie Foster did the same thing in The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane. She told the woman to hit her hard, which was probably better than having to do a retake.

Child actors should be warned, DO NOT DO THIS IN A SCENE WITH WILL SMITH!

They can probably use some kind of CGI now anyway.

They talked about the Oscar incident on the Thought Spiral podcast with J. "Elvis" Weinstein and Andy Kindler.

"I thought of you," Weinstein said, "because it's your worst nightmare, to tell a joke about somebody and have them come and punch you."

Ironically, Kindler tended to sympathize with Smith.

Roughly transcribed from the podcast, Kindler's side of the conversation in bold:

"There's no reason to [unintelligible] this but my--my sympathies are with Will---not to punch people---"

"Yeah."

I mean...you don't do that.

Sure.

But, but the fact that he made--he made this joke about her that was like a really horrible joke back, I remember he made it when he hosted that year, he goes, uh, You know Jada Pinkett Smith is, uh, says she's gonna---you remember it was the Oscars Too White--Oscars so White? Yeah. So, I'm gonna--she said she's going to, uh, boycott the Academy Awards. You weren't invited! How could you boy--now here's the thing. These types of jokes--the reason why Chris Rock--he has, he does these jokes a lot that don't work...

But he has more of a joke to it than that.

The addition wasn't better!

'It's like me boycotting Brianna's panties' thing.

Yeah. Her panties. Josh. You're defending--but, no, not fight. We'll be in a fight soon.

Okay, good.

I don't like Chri--I think I don't like Chris Rock. I think I like Will Smith.

All right.

So, I don't know why in that moment---I couldn't figure out---I mean, it was wrong, but anyway, you [unintelligible]. I'm a little confused. 

Well...if one is to believe that Chris Rock knew that Jada Smith had--

Had alapicia.

--had alapicia, then it was a super dick move to tell the joke.

Right.

You know. It's a dick move to tell the joke about someone's hair anyway at the Oscars, you know, especially someone who produced a movie about Black women's hair.

That's right and I was online last night and apparently, in the Black community, people don't like when you make fun of their hair. 

But, you know--

Still it's not the end of the world.

you can separate those issues in any number of ways.

Right.

On the basic human decency thing? You don't fucking hit somebody. Even if you're offended. You don't stand up and hit---And from a professionalism standpoint, if you're going to hit him, you wait until the commercial break to hit him....

He also didn't hit him---he didn't try to knock him out.

Well, who knows?

He slapped him, didn't?

He did slap him, but pretty fucking hard. And pretty unexpectedly.

...Here's how I could relate to Chris Rock. When he first--he goes Oh, look, he's coming up! He didn't know at first it was going to---so I can relate to that. Hey hey! This guy's coming!

Oh, we're doing a bit! is what Chris Rock thought.

That's right.

And...and...it was really funny as a comic, you could see that Chris Rock, once that initial--you know--that ringing in his ears left, as a comic he knew what just happened was fucking hilarious on some level because he just said, That was the greatest piece of TV ever. He didn't have the joke yet. He didn't have the joke formulated because I'm sure he was going wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa. But you could tell that it's just like he knew that the moment was bigger than just him getting hit. But, you know. We all tell jokes that don't work. You've been telling jokes about celebrities for thirty years. And there's a hit percentage involved with any of these things.

I think so. Just to address my own things and get it out of the way, I think my own thing come from my own issue. Like if I was going to, under any other circumstances, I happen to like Will Smith. I think he, like, I've always seen him as a positive influence.

I kind of see him more---I see him as a sort of seemingly nice guy, but I also see him as a Scientoligic megalomaniac.

Right, but now I did some research and he's not in Scientology anymore. He hasn't been in Scientology since 2015, they say. I'm not saying that's good... What did you read about that? Or is that not---did you read that he's still in Scientology?

No, I haven't. I'm just saying that's my overall---that's not yesterday's opinion of him. That's what I walk around with, is, you know. Seemingly a nice guy, and I know people who've worked with him and can back up that he's a nice guy to work with.

Right, right.

But if you look at the sort of weird sort of guru-like thing that he's taken on over the last several years---

Yeah, what's happened?

---he and his whole family have taken on this, you know, almost Cosbyesque role-modely bizarro version of it.

You're saying Cosby 'cause he's Black.

No, I'm saying it because it's sanctimonious and preachy.

And by the way, in defense of Jaden Smith---I've seen a couple of things talking about his acting career drying up. Hollywood doesn't want him anymore. It may just be that he's 23. In his age group, there are more roles for girls than boys. He can play high school kids or he can wait till he's in his 30's to make a come back. Who wants to watch a movie about a 23-year-old? I certainly don't.