“I can’t unsee that”: The classic movie Sharon Stone can no longer watch
Time is about the most cruel and unforgiving mistress there is, with plenty of classic movies failing to stand up under scrutiny when viewed through a modern lens. Sharon Stone used to hold one of them high as one of her favourites, only for that opinion to sour upon a rewatch.
Of course, Stone has been known to speak out on the nature of certain scenes in her own career that no longer hold up decades down the line, and she’s not exactly the first – nor will she be the last – person to discover that revisiting a film made during a different time when societal attitudes were nowhere near the same can be a disheartening experience.
It’s hardly revelatory to state that racism is bad in any walk of life, but it used to casually run rampant in Hollywood. Instead of hiring Black and/or Asian actors to play roles reflective of their ethnicity and/or culture, the productions would instead decide that the makeup chair was sufficient to get the job done.
The most infamously egregious example by far – although Marlon Brando might have something to say about that after playing interpreter Sakini in 1956’s The Teahouse of the Flower Moon – is Mickey Rooney’s offensive portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
An Academy Award-winning rom-com boasting Aubrey Hepburn in sparklingly iconic form as Holly Golightly, director Blake Edwards’ adaptation of Truman Capote’s novel would be in with a very good shot at finding itself among the many timeless films from the ‘Golden Age’ were it not for the New York City-born actor perpetuating the most exaggerated Japanese stereotype imaginable.
Nobody really batted an eyelid at the time because it was a fairly regular practice within the industry, but as each year goes by, Breakfast at Tiffany’s continues to leave new generations of cinephiles dumbfounded that anyone involved in the production decided it was a good idea to go ahead, plonk Rooney in the chair, and transform him into a Japanese character.
During her appearance on Films to be Buried With with Brett Goldstein, Stone admitted that Breakfast at Tiffany’s used to be one of her most beloved titles, and a solitary element has ruined it forever. “Mickey Rooney as a Chinese guy, Jesus Christ,” she exclaimed, despite getting the nationality completely wrong. “You can’t unsee that. You can’t unsee it, with the teeth! That has to go into the shredder. That can’t even be in the ‘we cleaned it up and put it in the vault'”.
Even though she got her countries mixed up, the point still stands. Anyone who still loves Breakfast at Tiffany’s, as Stone used to, faces a tough task in convincing somebody who’s never seen it before to get on its wavelength when Rooney shows up.