On June 25th, Playboy had published an interview with Gary Oldman, an actor who is best known for his portrayal of Commissioner Gordon, Count Dracula, and Sid Vicious. Within this ten page interview, Oldman talks at length about theory on acting and film, the politics behind Hollywood, and teaching his children the history of cinema. However, what people will take away is a small 5% of the article where he uses Mel Gibson and Alec Baldwin as examples of the hypocrisy found in Hollywood and Public Perception. First of all, the whole reason Baldwin was originally brought up was because Oldman was discussing how Baldwin’s documentary “Seduced and Abandoned” showed the ridiculousness of getting a movie produced. The interviewer David Hoffman asked leading questions which caused Oldman to digress into an interesting rant. The hypocrisy he was talking about is where social commentators like John Stewart, Bill Mahr, can get away with saying similar things because it’s deemed in context or socially acceptable whereas the people will publicly shame anyone else. If you don’t believe me, take a few moments and listen to Glenn Beck or Richard Pryor. Furthermore, John Stewart once discussed on Larry King that this knee jerk ostracizing is perplexing. Regardless, Oldman had quickly realized his rant didn’t come out as tactfully as he had hoped.

“So this interview has gone very badly. You have to edit and cut half of what I’ve said, because it’s going to make me sound like a bigot”

Now, Gary Oldman has released a public apology. This is where Oldman puts his “anti-semitic” statement in proper context by citing the award wining book An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. In hindsight, this is another form of yellow journalism where David Hoffman took a small fraction of an interview and spun it into something needlessly controversial. While CBS is going to continue the spin with headlines like, Gary Oldman Apologizes for Defending Alec Baldwin and Mel Gibson, I am going to look up some of Oldman’s inspirations such as, Stanley Kubrick’s Playboy Interview, The Loneliness of the Long Distant Runner, The Raging Moon, and An Empire of Their Own. Honestly, I don’t read interviews of my favorite artist in hopes for anything derogatory or controversial.