SUMMARY

A woman is given the job of producer of a low budget HBO film that is documented for the HBO series Project Greenlight and proceeds to dutifully fulfill every stereotype possible that concerns race and gender while blaming everyone but herself.

BODY

I was going to post something about Effie Brown a couple of weeks ago as I watched the show but I held off in case the show's editing was responsible for hyping up the tension that Effie seemed to cause. That's all out the window now as a result of this article where she continues to play the victim and essentially blames everyone else for being racist and/or misogynists.

During the show she remarked about how she didn't want to come off as the angry black woman, even though she did come off that way, but she was true to what was important to her as a producer and a black woman. She fought to have a diverse crew even though the cast was almost 100% white. She even stepped in to make sure a black man didn't play the role of chauffeur so as not to play into stereotypes. All in all, while abrasive, I have no problem with any of this even if her delivery leaves something to be desired. Peter Farrelly quit the project so that he didn't have to deal with her. I would imagine it takes a lot of work to get under the skin of the guy responsible for Dumb and Dumber

The problem is that she jumped into the victim role EVERY chance she got and went on the offensive and started shooting with verbal bazookas anytime she felt she wasn't being heard or if she felt she was being slighted. And she felt this way A LOT. Numerous times she would tell the director that he would be able to do things his way only to backtrack later when she was under pressure from the people with the money. Never did she pull the director aside and have a conversation to tell him about this, she would wait until they were all in a group setting and then play dumb and would actually start gaslighting the director. It was fascinating to watch.

After seeing the article today, she lays it on so thick you need boots. I'll let you read the article for yourself but even without greater context, these few quotes tell you what you need to know:

I feel like I’m the queen of indie movies and I needed to do something where I could break out on a larger level and people could see how hard I worked, what I do, what I’m about, and hopefully bigger things would come to me.

She made herself the queen, how nice...

It’s the character of me, it’s not really me. It’s me, but it’s not a fully full picture of who I am as a producer.

uhhhhh, what??? It's a documentary, they show what you say and how you act. Editing plays a role, but c'mon.

I might sound cocky, but in the $3-5 million range, good luck on finding someone that can do it better.

She's a special snowflake...

There’s a hierarchy and there’s a path where you move up, and that was telling to me that they couldn’t even accept me as a producer, they had to knock me back.

This is in response to Ben Affleck, who wasn't involved on a day to day basis, calling her by the wrong title. It's about putting women in their place apparently.

A week or two ago, there was a controversy surrounding the title of the episode. Originally it was titled "Hot Ghetto Mess" because it was a phrase Effie used. People got pissed at racist HBO until they changed the title and issued an apology, but not before they released the deleted scene of her saying it (HBO has since removed the scene from YouTube). Her response...

The next day when [the deleted scene] came out, I was embarrassed. Now, look, I say a lot of things. Have I said “hot ghetto mess” before? Absolutely. I’ve said lots of things, but you can’t title an episode that. It’s like, I can talk about my mother, but you can’t. And then, I’m not even saying it in the episode, nor is there anything that was a hot ghetto mess in that episode.

Oh yes, the I'm black so I can say that but you can't defense.

In her defense, she does talk in the article about how she recognizes that "a little sugar will get me further" but immediately follows it up with this nugget...

I’m a hard worker, I bust my ass as a producer, I’m really great at my job, but I have a chip on my shoulder.

Yeah, she won't change.

LESSONS LEARNED

A woman is given a role of power in a traditionally male-dominated world. The men don't do anything out of the ordinary just because she's a woman but in her eyes this is happening everywhere around her and to her. In this case, it was put out there for all to see just how much all women are like that.