Two weeks ago, Nate Parker was a different man — on the verge of making it on Hollywood’s A-list with his American period drama “The Birth of a Nation.” He strolled into a restaurant in Sherman Oaks, Calif., with his 6-year-old daughter in tow. “My wife just had a baby, so I’m taking the burden off her,” he told a Variety reporter about his fatherly duties. He talked about how his oldest of five daughters is gearing up for her freshman year in college, and how he recently surprised her with a visit to New York to see “Hamilton.” And he seemed most proud of the legacy he was leaving for his children as the director, star, producer, and writer of “The Birth of a Nation,” the Sundance Film Festival darling about the slave revolt of 1831 led by Nat Turner, which sold for a record-shattering $17.5 million to Fox Searchlight.But since then, all hell has broken loose. Parker spoke in this interview for the first time in years about a dark incident from his past that’s come to define him. In 1999, as an undergraduate at Penn State University, he and his roommate Jean Celestin (the co-writer of “The Birth of a Nation”) were charged with raping an 18-year-old student. Although he was acquitted in a 2001 trial, details from the case generated a media firestorm, and the blogosphere turned on Parker with calls to boycott his film. The situation heightened when Variety uncovered that the victim had committed Self Delete at 30 in 2012, a development that caught Fox Searchlight and Parker off guard. (Both declined request for a follow-up interview.)...Parker is still scheduled to appear at the Toronto Film Festival, but a source in communication with him says that he’s in a low place. He vacillates between thinking the case is resurfacing now after 17 years because of a Hollywood conspiracy against him or just bad luck. He’s disappointed over the backlash on social media and that the African-American online community hasn’t been more supportive. And he’s even mad at himself, for underestimating the public’s interest in a court case that happened so long ago.
I'd thought this was the kool kids klub-backed blockbuster of the 1910's right up until I actually googled it to make sure.
people are so hung up about the rape casewhere's BLM on this stuff
The people boycotting the film because he was ACQUITTED of rape are everything wrong with Americaforget those people,why don't you sit at home on your ass with a blindfold on if you don't want to see things that offend you
I still have no idea why the director would name his movie after such an infamously controversial movie, though.
They're about 100 years late.I still have no idea why the director would name his movie after such an infamously controversial movie, though.
