“Frasier” star Kelsey Grammer spoke on “The Katie Miller Podcast” about how modern Hollywood keeps getting in its own way.
Podcaster Katie Miller, the wife of White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller, observed, “Hollywood seems determined to reinvent nearly every classic, like ‘The Odyssey,’ and distort it just a little bit to fit their views. Have you watched ‘The Odyssey’?”
“I haven’t seen ‘The Odyssey,’ so I’m not really too aware of that,” Grammer admitted, but added that there are times when certain entertainment “hits me over the head” to the point where, “it’s a little exhausting.”
He noted that the past was less multicultural than Hollywood would like to portray it, saying, “I think old England is probably full of White people” and that “I think historical significance should be respected a little bit, culturally.”
“Do you think Hollywood will ever get back there?” Miller asked.
“Yeah. Hollywood isn’t very good at telling people what they have to see, you know, because then they flop,’ Grammer replied.
“But they’ve had, like, successive years of just flops,” Miller replied.
One prominent example of a controversial adaptation that flopped was “Snow White,” which reportedly netted Disney an approximately $170 million loss. Pixar — under parent company Disney — has tried to pivot away from a series of flops by cutting LGBTQ themes and warning not to make films inspired by the creators’ own life stories.
Pixar Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter told The Wall Street Journal that he chose this pivot because “We’re making a movie, not hundreds of millions of dollars of therapy.”
“Yeah. They’re probably figuring it out. I think eventually flopping doesn’t work so well,” Grammer said. “We’re not shooting a lot of movies these days. But I mean, I’m glad they made ‘The Odyssey.’ I mean, I don’t know if they’ve, you know, pitched it too far in to our particular culture to divorce you from the idea of what actually happened.”
In recent years, there have been numerous movies in the culture-war spotlight, ranging from remakes like “The Little Mermaid” and “Snow White” to adaptations of ancient history like “Cleopatra” and “The Odyssey.”
Emily Wilson, who famously wrote what some call a feminist translation of Homer’s “The Odyssey” that helped influence the film, panned director Christopher Nolan’s adaptation for missing the spirit of the original heroic epic. The film has also been criticized for using modernized Americanized dialogue, reshaping the character of Odysseus as a more traumatized rather than heroic figure, and for removing many of the mythological aspects.
In contrast to other controversial adaptations of beloved works, Nolan’s adaptation of “The Odyssey” has managed to become a box office hit, though audiences and critics remain divided over whether its bold creative choices improved the story or missed the mark.
Grammer’s full interview with Miller will be published Tuesday night on the show’s YouTube page.
