Good Luck to You, Leo Grande

/

Align and Genesius Picture, Released January 22, 2022


Emma Thompson is no fan of Harvey Weinstein. Back in 2017 she spoke about him on the BBC’s Newsnight. Readers of this magazine may recall that she used the image of the iceberg1 to describe the scale of the ‘casting couch’ problem, as represented by Harvey Weinstein. To be fair to the lady, she was not simply jumping on the ‘moral-panic’2 bandwagon, inasmuch as she was speaking as someone who’d known and had dealings with Harvey Weinstein. In that same BBC interview, she explained that at least as far back as 2005 she’d had problems with the man. She recounted how she had once shouted down the phone at him, telling him in no uncertain terms that she would never work with him again. Ever after, she explained, whenever Harvey came into a room where she herself was, he would look “actually frightened,” and he would avoid her. This, she emphasised, is how they react when you “call bullies out on their behaviour.”3 To be clear, Ms Thompson’s anger at Harvey Weinstein, at that time, had nothing to do with sexual misconduct, but with Weinstein’s business practices. It seems that Weinstein’s “bullying behaviour patterns also existed in his business world.”4 Nevertheless, having managed, along with the producer of Nanny McPhee (2005), to extricate herself from the commercial clutches of Miramax, she had a clear sense that dodgy business dealing was not the only danger posed by Harvey Weinstein: “I often expressed the feeling that I had of, I mean, whenever I was in a room with him, he gave off the most appalling aura.”5

Now that Harvey Weinstein is behind bars, Emma Thompson’s perceptiveness can only be applauded. In that same interview she explained that it would be too convenient to designate Weinstein as a sex addict, when, according to her, he is a predator. What she did not say is that Harvey Weinstein is a Jew. I don’t blame her. If you live in England, pointing out that a convicted criminal happens to be a Jew could land you in very hot water, or, as Jez Turner will tell you, in prison. Now that Harvey Weinstein is in prison, it’s clear that Emma Thompson is under no illusion that the problems represented by Weinstein – the man ‘at the top of the ladder’ – have gone away. Far from it…

This is not about one man’s crimes against women. This is  about our system’s imbalances, our system’s gender crisis, and  we have to act on this. We have to turn this on its head. We  can’t allow this to continue because what it means is naturally  vulnerable people are going to continue to be preyed  upon whether Harvey Weinstein goes to jail or not.6

At this point, I almost began to feel sorry for Harvey Weinstein. I mean, the real problem is the system’s gender crisis, and Harvey Weinstein ends up in jail. Let’s hear it for Harvey fellas, that dude is taking one for the team. But seriously, according to Emma Thompson, it’s all very well putting Harvey Weinstein behind bars but that’s of very limited value. Why pretend that the problem boils down to one man when, in reality, all men are responsible? As a Catholic, I profess that all men are fallen, but it doesn’t follow that every man is a sex criminal. As an atheist Emma Thompson doesn’t think anyone is fallen, and yet all men are sex criminals. In other words, from Emma Thompson’s point of view, it looks like the iceberg is about the size of Planet Earth. And, sure, aspiring Hollywood actresses no longer need prostitute themselves with Harvey Weinstein, but what about all the other women?

I mean there are 66 million people in this country and maybe 35 million  of them are women. Now you speak to any of those women over the age of 15 and they will all have a story to tell you about some kind of harassment.7

Thanks Emma. This account is based on that peculiarly wooden-headed feminist notion that all men are irredeemable predators whilst all women are irreproachable victims. This was just the kind of analysis groups like the Simon Wiesenthal Centre must  have appreciated that very same month, October 2017, as they decided not to withdraw8 their Humanitarian of the Year Award for Harvey Weinstein, a title conferred back in 2015. In fact, if I were a Jew, I’d take great comfort in the fact that Harvey Weinstein is just a typical male with perhaps an above average sex drive, rather than a Jewish male with a rather typical penchant for the ‘schtupping of shiksas.’9 Emma Thompson sees it, anyone foolish enough to think that putting Harvey Weinstein behind bars solves the problem, had better wake up. As far as Emma Thompson is concerned, you can lock up all the Weinsteins and Epsteins and Singers of this world and you’re just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, oblivious to the aforementioned iceberg. Now I don’t know if Emma Thompson has connected the dots and has recognized that in terms of the casting couch problem, in the words of Dave Chappelle, “it’s’ a lot a Jews.”10 If she has connected the dots but isn’t prepared to say that it’s a Jewish problem not merely “a coincidence,”11 again, I don’t blame her one little bit. However, if you’re going to talk about icebergs but you’re not prepared to talk about the elephant in the room, then what good are you doing? Which is a very long-winded way of saying that I wish that Emma Thompson just held her tongue. But Emma Thompson describes herself as ‘bolshie’12 and she’s a self-confessed ‘card-carrying radical feminist atheist’ (since the age of 19)13 so I guess she feels duty bound to speak out. Having misdiagnosed the problem, her solution is hilariously predictable:

In fact, it’s about power. It’s about – how am I – that I have no  power and because in our systems there are not nearly enough  women – particularly in Hollywood – in positions of power. There  aren’t enough women at the top of the tree in the studios,  who could perhaps balance everything out14

Good luck to you, Leo Grande provides a helpful and timely test of the Thompson Top-of-the-Tree Theory.  This tale of an English widow hiring an Irish stud gives us some inkling of what a more gender-balanced, “women-at-the-top” world might look like. If you’ve been wondering how things might look when the ladders and/or treetops are occupied by more women, Leo Grande is the film for you. Now, let’s not be naïve and pretend that just because a film is written, produced and directed by women, the gender crisis is resolved overnight. Nevertheless, the film does give us a glimpse of the kind of world envisioned by writer Katy Brand, producer Debbie Gray, and director Sophie Hyde. As you may have guessed, Emma Thompson plays the lead role, for which she’s been nominated as best actress at this year’s BAFTA’s. The other lead, the male prostitute, is, perhaps inevitably, a man. But Darryl McCormack – nominated for best actor, as well as the Rising Star Award – is a mixed-race Irishman, so far be it from me to question his automatic exemption from membership of the patriarchy. So, what kind of world might we look forward to?

Emma Thompson Sleeping with a Gigolo

Well, you can throw away your rosary beads and you can get up off your knees and you can forget all that shame and all that guilt and all those neuroses, because in the brave new world of Leo Grande, sin has been abolished and Eden has been restored. In a nutshell, Leo Grande is the new Adam and Nancy Stokes is the new Eve. The regeneration of humanity starts with these two saints and there are just two commandments. The first and greatest is “Thou shalt have sexual pleasure with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength.” The second is this: “Thou shalt utter no word of displeasure at your neighbour’s pleasure.” Writing for British Vogue about her experience of making the film, and the film’s redemptive potential, Emma Thompson explains: “I think the root of it all (sorry) is that we simply do not respect our sexual desires.”15

This lofty sentiment is no doubt shared by Harvey Weinstein. I have it on good authority from sources at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles that Prisoner 6217733 has already Whatsapped his lawyer a link to Emma Thompson’s article, authorizing an immediate appeal against his conviction, on the grounds of lack of respect for his sexual desires. In fact, the whole film can quite reasonably be interpreted as an extended exoneration of Harvey Weinstein, consisting of a litany of excuses for his behaviour and a needs-based programme of nooky for his rehabilitation. You see, according to the Leo Grande Gospel, there are no sex criminals only sexual cravings, no sexual miscreants who need locking up, only the sexually misunderstood who need sexual healing. The Good News is that there are no sinners; the bad news is that there are some losers, namely, roll-on-roll-off husbands, Miss Trunchbull, and Hollywood.

Let’s begin with Hollywood. Bringing the tale of Leo Grande to the silver screen gives the lie to any notion that women have no head for finance. This film provides striking evidence that running a household budget is a highly transferable skill. One of the clear benefits of Emma Thompson’s gender revolution is a return to good old-fashioned thrift. This looks like very bad news for Hollywood, but it is very good news indeed for obscure county towns in England. Who needs to fly halfway round the world to Los Angeles when you can drive down the A11 to Norwich? Who needs the Beverly Hills Hotel when you have the Best Western Brook Hotel, a suite therein providing the setting for practically the whole film, sandwiched between opening and closing street scenes captured in that too-neglected town? And yet, the choice of the Brook was not simply a money saving expedient. The bland universality of the hotel room serves a key message of the film – Mrs Robinson’s sexual ambitions may seem rather extravagant, especially for a 60-something widow, but they should be regarded as what any ordinary decent woman on a modest budget can achieve without feeling either guilty or ashamed, what any self-respecting daughter of the New Eve deserves. Sexual heaven needn’t cost the Earth.

As far as the film itself is concerned, however, Norwich is the city that dare not speak its name. Hollywood and whoring may be synonymous, but let’s just say that if you put the word “orgasm” – a recurring theme of the film – and “Norwich” in the same sentence, an English audience will just burst out laughing. This would have been the case long before comedian and England’s foremost spoof specialist Steve Coogan established Norwich and Norfolk as veritable bywords for backward:   

Hello, I’m Alan Partridge. And I’d like to tell you about a very special place.  Whether you know it as “East Anglia,” “The Plump Peninsula,” “Home  of the Broads” (although that sounds like a refuge for fallen prostitutes) “Albion’s  Hind Quarters,” or quite simply “The Wales of the East,” this is Norfolk16

In the New Norfolk of Leo Grande, prostitutes, far from being fallen, are highly exalted as a kind of sacred caste, with Leo himself presented as a business-like but exquisitely sensitive Brahmin of the Broads, or as the Thompson character refers to Leo the Great, ‘a sort of sex-saint.’ As for Norwich itself, the county town of Norfolk, let’s just say that if you were to ask your average English man to name the city where a British film tipped for multiple award success was made, you’d have to wait a very long time before the name Norwich passed his lips. To put it another way, the good people of Norfolk have had quite enough of talk about low IQ scores and high rates of inbreeding, and are, quite frankly, sick to death of jokes about sexual relations with siblings and/ or sexual relations with sheep.

The closest thing in the film we get to sexual relations with sheep, is the revelation by male prostitute – sorry, “sex worker” – Leo Grande, that one of his clients asks him “to dress up as a cat, ignore him for an hour and go home.” Nice work if you can get it, and Leo is getting plenty. There was a hint of American Gigolo in the revelation by Leo that, yes, as a sex worker, he has faced danger “a couple of times,” once in the form of a dithering husband who, unlike the resolute Mr. Rheimann, changed his mind about the threesome for which he’d engaged Mr. Grande. Happily, there were no dead bodies, and unlike the unfortunate Julian Kaye, there was no jail time, just a cancelled booking. And anyway, Leo had the last laugh when the wife subsequently booked him for further one-on-one sessions. Paul Schrader can relax now. In the New Eden, prostitution is not really that dangerous. Emma Thompson acknowledges that it could take some time for the existing perception of prostitution as dangerous and abusive, to be adjusted: “It’s frightening to me, although I also think that under the right circumstances – legal safeguards, decent clients and so forth – it could be a very good job.”17

Recurring Q&A sessions with Leo about sex and sex work are the mainstay of the film, which is basically a vehicle for conjuring up a world of guilt-free fornication lubricated by unceasing mutual affirmation, internet-assembled sexual psychology, due regard for Health & Safety, and access to a mini-bar. 

The film is made up of three “Meetings” between retired religious education teacher, the recently widowed Mrs. Robinson alias Nancy Stokes, and Conor the uber-sexy Irishman alias Leo Grande, the stud hired by the Widow Stokes – who has endured 31 years of roll-on-roll-off  passionless sex with her prematurely deceased husband – to give her a good seeing to and for the first time in her life,  if possible, an orgasm. Nancy’s combination of orgasm anticipation and orgasm anxiety inevitably brought to mind another Jew who cannot be faulted for lack of interest in sex. The whole of the problem cannot be attributed to Harvey Weinstein, but it looks like the basis of a solution might be discovered in the work of Wilhelm Reich: “The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.”18

Good luck to you, Leo Grande might easily be subtitled, “A Card-carrying Feminist’s Tribute to Wilhelm Reich.” As readers of Culture Wars will know only too well, Reich believed that patriarchal religion caused mankind’s hitherto healthy attitude to sex to degenerate into that combination of fear and frustration by which it is caricatured to this very day. All that sublimated sexual energy got transformed, by a kind of reverse alchemy, into the great evils of Christian culture – respect for parental authority, chastity, marriage, love of family, love of country – more commonly known as fascism. When sex is no longer taboo, Christianity and its mass psychology of fascism will be rejected, and humanity will be restored to its pristine state, and sex will take its natural, if you’ll excuse the pun, position in society: “When social organization passed from matriarchy to patriarchy and class society, the unity of religious and sexual cult underwent a split; the religious cult became the antithesis of the sexual. With that, the cult of sexuality went out of existence. It was replaced by the brothel, pornography and backstairs-sexuality.”19

Wilhelm Reich will be relieved to hear that in this more gender-balanced world, the cult of sexuality is restored, with the accompanying end to pornography. This is not a porn film. In fact, anyone hoping to get a look at Emma Thompson in hard-core action will be sorely disappointed. The sex scenes are left, for the most part, to the imagination, stimulated by ecstatic but not excessive groanings and occasional but by no means overdone ecstasy eyes. Where the sex is on show, it’s all tastefully Olympian, with neither a private part nor indeed a pubic hair on display. Pubic hair makes one heroic appearance, if you can bare to sit through the 90-odd enervating minutes of Emma Thompson acting the part of, well, Emma Thompson. In a bewildering case of art imitating life, it becomes increasingly difficult to remember if you’re watching Emma Thompson playing a character in a film, or Emma Thompson being herself on a chat show promoting the film. Never have actress and character been so indistinguishable. Nancy likes her “stubby” thighs not one jot more than Emma Thompson likes hers. Emma Thompson confides… “I was very diffident about my looks and my body as a young actress.”20

With a furrowed brow, the increasingly confessional Widow Stokes admits…“And I wasn’t brimming with sexual confidence like they all are now.”

In the aforementioned Vogue article, itself a very creditable summary of Wilhelm Reich’s life’s work, Emma Thompson wonders…

Sexual assistance – why isn’t it on the National Health? Sex is free, natural, normal, delightful, good for us and, as  Leo says in the film, inaccessible to some for all kinds  of perfectly valid reasons. It’s a public health issue21

Right on cue, Nancy responds to Leo’s dewy-eyed recollections of a client who can’t walk but who wants ‘dirty talk’ while Leo bathes her and then joins her in the water because, well, that’s what she wants, and more importantly, it’s what she needs:  “You make it sound like it should be available from the local council. A public service.”

Seldom have so many jaded feminist tropes, a.k.a. Reichian truisms, been squeezed into one article: “Does anyone know or care if middle-aged women are getting any sexual satisfaction or pleasure?”22

Nancy and Leo pick up on this intriguing question in an early exchange concerning the sexual attractiveness of one of England’s most beloved TV chefs: 

LEO: Ah, Nigella. So sexy. Don’t you agree?

NANCY: Yes, no, I... I was waiting for you to say, “for her age.” Most people say, when a woman’s over about 42, that she’s sexy “for her age.” I was waiting...I was waiting for that.

LEO: Ah, right. Uh, no, Nigella Lawson is empirically sexy, at any age.

Leo’s perfect torso is almost permanently on show for empirical observation, but lest anyone accuse the filmmakers of mere titillation, or indeed blaxploitation, it becomes clear right from the get-go that Leo is no mere hunk of flesh. In one of the few authentic scenes, Nancy is quite naturally agog at his magnificent pectorals and bulging biceps, but as well as ogling his big muscles, she is equally impressed by his use of big words like “empirically” and “reductive.” And yet he’s teachable enough to appreciate learning the word “concupiscence.” You’d have thought that any self-respecting sex saint would know all about concupiscence, but I guess that for the New Adam it’s all so old school. 

Endowing the two main characters with expansive vocabularies is Katy Brand’s hilariously clunky effort to demonstrate that the energetic exchange of bodily fluids need not preclude the possibility of a well-expressed exchange of views about a whole host of topics from 1950s prudery to pole dancing, from online searches about oil rigs to orgasms, and how to fake them. In the New Eden, people will not only be well satisfied but well spoken. Lust, it seems, enlightens the mind.

But let’s not imagine that the new creation will not have some birth pangs. More than once, Nancy expresses a mixture of horror and incredulity that she – a retired religious education teacher with two grown-up children – has had the audacity and sheer depravity to go online and hire a sex worker. But Leo, the ultimate professional, using a mixture of flattery, reassurance, and sexual psychobabble – desires are never mundane – helps Nancy through her let’s-call-the-whole-thing-off moments. Once the pattern is set, it becomes clear that the film is really Katy Brand’s instruction manual on how to become a slut without losing your dignity or your being accused of…


 

[…] This is just an excerpt from the June 2023 Issue of Culture Wars magazine. To read the full article, please purchase a digital download of the magazine, or become a subscriber!

Culture Wars: Volume 42 Issue 7
Culture Wars: Volume 42 Issue 7
$4.00
Add To Cart
 

Endnotes

1  E. Michael Jones, “Who Shtupped the Shiksa? Harvey Weinstein Creates Moral Panic in Hollywood,” Culture Wars, Dec. 2017, Volume 37, Issue 1, p. 33.
2  Ibid, p. 30.
3  BBC Newsnight, “Emma Thompson: Harvey Weinstein ‘top of harassment ladder’ – BBC Newsnight,” Oct. 12, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV_W6kPqR9U, Location 0m09s
4  Ibid, 0m38s
5  Ibid, location 4m09s
6  Ibid, location 6m58s
7  Ibid, location 3m11s
8  Ben Sales, “Wiesenthal Center Won’t Withdraw Prize For Harvey Weinstein,” Forward, Oct. 9, 2017, https://forward.com/fast-forward/384680/wiesenthal-center-isn-t-withdrawing-prize-given-to-harvey-weinstein/
9  Culture Wars, p. 39.
10  Saturday Night, “Dave Chappelle Stand-Up Monologue – SNL,” Nov. 13, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m-gO0HSCYk&t=6s, location 6m44s
11  Ibid, 4m34s
12  Anne Thompson, “’Leo Grande’ Helped Emma Thompson Accept Who She Is: ‘I’ve Judged Myself All My Life,’” Yahoo!movies, June 15, 2022, https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/leo-grande-helped-emma-thompson-203056173.html
13  Mary Ward, “Emma Thompson says she is a ‘card-carrying, radical feminist,’” The Sydney Morning Herald, Sept. 3, 2015, https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/celebrity/emma-thompson-says-she-is-a-cardcarrying-radical-feminist-20150903-gjea1e.html
14  Newsnight, location 6:22
15  Emma Thompson, “Does Anyone Know Or Care if Middle-Aged Women Are Getting Any Sexual Satisfaction?” British Vogue, June 14, 2022, https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/emma-thompson-good-luck-to-you-leo-grande
16  The Poke, “Alan Partridge: Welcome to the Places of My Life [TRAILER], YouTube, June 25, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfx10y59S2U&t=18s
17  Emma Thompson, “Does Anyone Know Or Care if Middle-Aged Women Are Getting Any Sexual Satisfaction?” British Vogue, June 14, 2022, https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/emma-thompson-good-luck-to-you-leo-grande
18  William Reich, “The function of the orgasm: Sex-economic problems of biological energy’ (1942) English Edition (1973),” Translated from the German  by Vincent Carfagno (New York: Farrar, Straus And Giroux New York),  pp. 161-162.
19  Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition), location 2659.
20  Vogue
21  Ibid
22  Ibid
23  “Emma Thompson insists the sexual revolution of the 1970s and 80s made women ‘more available’ and encouraged predatory behaviour,” DailyMail.com, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-10920061/Emma-Thompson-says-sexual-revolution-women-available-encouraged-predatory-behaviour.html
24  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABBvBWRTQ0E, location7m32s
25  Sigurd d, “Katy Brand Amy Winehouse.subtitulado,” YouTube, Sep. 30, 2008, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVt9PBGu–w
26  Sara Michelle Fetters, “Pointing ‘outside the fame’: An interview with Good Luck to You, Leo Grand writer Katy Brand and director Sophie Hyde, SGN, June 17, 2022, https://www.sgn.org/story.php?316556
27  Animals (2018) Closer Productions, location 1h 10m 15s
28  Ibid, 1h 10m 24s
29  HeyUGuys, “Good Luck to You Leo Grande – Katy Brand on Peep Show, Prudishness & characters not often seen,” June 13, 2022,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqZqBMPCQ38, location 6.18
30  Ibid, p. 249.
31  Ken and Em, p. 126.
32  E. Michael Jones, Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation as Political Control (South Bend, Indiana: St Augustine’s Press, 2000), p. 74.
33  Sarah Sands, “Sarah Sands: Emma Thompson is the true lady of Brideshead,” Independent, Oct. 5, 2008, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/sarah-sands/sarah-sands-emma-thompson-is-the-true-lady-of-brideshead-951675.html
34  Jane Austen, The Complete Works of Jane Austen, Pandora’s Box. Kindle Edition, p. 89.
35  BAFTA Guru, Emma Thompson / BAFTA Screenwriters’ Lecture Series, YouTube, Dec. 9, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEWYzLDmoBI, location 19m53s
36  Ruben V. Nepales, “Emma Thompson: I am an atheist because religions oppress many women,” Inquirer.net, Aug. 31, 2018, https://entertainment.inquirer.net/291190/emma-thompson-atheist-religions-oppress-many-women
37  E. Michael Jones, Dangers of Beauty (South Bend, IN: Fidelity Press, 2022), p. 323.
38  Adina Howard, “Freak like Me,” https://genius.com/Adina-howard-freak-like-me-lyrics
39  “I’m So Uncool!’: Emma Thompson On Dancing To Adele, Biggest lcks & Good Luck To You Leo Grande,” YouTube, June 15, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ78Tx3dG24&t=9s, location 9m 48s
40  William Reich.
41  Thompson, Emma Screenplay Sense and Sensibility retrieved from https://thescriptlab.com/wp-content/uploads/scripts/SENSE-AND-SENSIBILITY.pdf, p. 51.
42  Chesterton, G. K. The Three Apologies of G.K. Chesterton: Heretics, Orthodoxy & The Everlasting Man Sanage Publishing. Kindle Edition, p. 12.
43  E. Michael Jones, Degenerate Moderns, p. 36.
44  Connelly, R W. Message of Walsingham (Shrines) Catholic Truth Society. Kindle Edition, p. 15.
45  St John Henry Newman (1845) Letters to the Duke of Norfolk – 5. Conscience retrieved from https://www.newmanreader.org/works/anglicans/volume2/gladstone/section5.html
46  Ibid