“An abominable fraud of a movie”: The classic film Sean Penn hates
There’s no denying that he’s very good at his job, but Sean Penn also comes across as being a very angry man who treats himself with the utmost seriousness, while also occasionally displaying flashes of a surprisingly thin skin given his outspoken nature.
One of the most accomplished actors of his generation and a proven filmmaker, Penn has notched two Academy Award wins from five nominations to go along with a Golden Globe win from five nods, with his trademark intensity leading to a number of acclaimed, incendiary, and multifaceted performances.
At the top of his game there’s few better, but there’s also that very short temper of his. Penn has been charged with assault five times, made controversial comments on his opinions of what masculinity should be, caught fire for his views on the Falkland Islands, and can regularly be found weighing in with his thoughts on various social, economic, political, and environmental issues.
When he presumably saw Liam Neeson reinventing himself as a late-stage action star, Penn decided to get in on the act by recruiting the director of Taken to best capture his ripped and regularly shirtless physique in The Gunman, which he also co-wrote and produced. A midlife crisis made flesh, it was rightfully savaged on its way to box office failure.
This is also the same guy who enjoyed his characterisation in Team America: World Police so much he penned an open letter to Trey Parker and Matt Stone that he signed off with “a sincere fuck you,” so it’s really not surprising to discover that he’s got a bizarrely heated perspective on a movie that’s famed for being one of the greatest to ever emerge from Hollywood.
Penn seems like the type of person who’d have something to say about Gone with the Wind getting slapped with a disclaimer catering to modern audiences, if it wasn’t for the fact he hated it so much. Film preservation is not part of his mindset, with Victor Fleming’s 1939 epic “an abominable fraud of a movie” according to him.
Further outlining his position to the Los Angeles Times, he believes that when it comes to the finest films to emerge from the industry’s ‘Golden Age’, “I sometimes feel that they should just burn them all and start anew.” Why Gone with the Wind specifically, though? Not a clue, because Penn doesn’t elaborate beyond branding it an “abominable fraud.”
The fact it’s one of the most popular titles in Tinseltown’s history does at least ensure he’s not the voice of popular opinion, but there must be something about Gone with the Wind that irritates him to his very core, even if he wasn’t in the mood for explaining on what exactly it is.
