Whoopi Goldberg names her favourite movies
Although Adam Sandler would possibly disagree, Whoopi Goldberg might be able to lay claim to the title of building the most stellar career on the back of the humble fart, with the performer’s flatulence giving rise to the stage name that would lead to decades of sustained success.
Caryn Johnson doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, with the star admitting that she got her moniker from her propensity for breaking wind, which led her friends and peers to compare her to a whoopee cushion. Not once has she ever been credited under her real name, so it’s hardly insane to suggest having such instantly identifiable nomenclature played at least a small part in getting her recognised.
That being said, Goldberg is one of the very select few in history to have secured EGOT status after filling up her trophy cabinet with an Academy Award, a Grammy, a Tony, and two Primetime Emmys to go along with her various other accolades including a Bafta and a pair of Golden Globes, so she may have been just fine without it.
Either way, she’s been a household name since the 1980s under a variety of guises including stand-up comedian, headline attraction, scene-stealing supporting player, and talk show host, and she’s curated a list of her own personal favourite movies to A.Frame along the way. All of them are ones that speak to both the Black experience and the way cinema has evolved over the years, making them of equal importance to Goldberg.
1974’s comedy Amazing Grace places community at the forefront as an elderly widow attempts to influence the outcome of a mayoral election upon the discovery her dim-witted neighbour has entered the race as little more than a puppet for unscrupulous money men, while all-singing and all-dancing classic Stormy Weather was one of the first major studio musicals to feature an entirely Black cast.
In the Heat of the Night boasts an iconic performance from Sidney Poitier as Virgil Tibbs in Norman Jewison’s ‘Best Picture’-winning mystery thriller, and Blacula became a certifiable cult favourite by combining blaxploitation with the horror genre, inspiring a wave of imitators that used it as the jumping-off point to continue combining the two throughout the rest of the 1970s.
She may have called it a “bad horror film with a great Shakespearean actor” in the lead role, but Goldberg’s love of all things spooky carries through from Blacula to Jordan Peele’s incredible debut feature Get Out by way of the seminal crime caper Shaft. She brands Peele’s Oscar winner as a “phenomenal horror film” before quickly running out of superlatives. “The performances. The story. What more can I say?,” she asked rhetorically. “It’s a metaphor about what we each really want from the other.”
Whoopi Goldberg’s favourite movies:
- Amazing Grace (Stan Lathan, 1974)
- Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017)
- Stormy Weather (Andrew L. Stone, 1943)
- In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison, 1967)
- Blacula (William Crain, 1972)
- Shaft (Gordon Parks, 1971)
