“What Is This Gay Shit?” and More Morehouse College Football Reactions to Dear White People

UPDATE, OCT. 30, 12:45 P.M.: One quote about a movie deserves a bunch of others:

“What kind of movie is this?”
“Man, you looked at that, I saw you!”
“What is this gay shit?”
“Some of y'all didn't turn your heads away!”
“Man, I must've watched every episode of Everybody Hates Chris back in the day. Can't believe he'd go out like that. Shit kills me.”

-Members of the football team from the mostly all-black Morehouse College of Atlanta, while watching Dear White People in a Columbia, South Carolina, theater before playing Benedict College last Saturday.

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Ashley F. Miller deconstructs the scene brilliantly at FreeThoughtBlogs.com–and updates with an apology from a member of the Maroon Tigers.

Morehouse went on to lose, 33-15, to the Benedict Tigers, who were celebrating their homecoming.

ORIGINAL POST, OCT. 29, 6:08 A.M.: “There was a lot of ignorance about people who were different.”

Justin Simien, on his days at Chapman University in Orange that inspired his first full-length feature Dear White People.

Simien, who shared that sentiment with Yahoo's Kevin Polowy, came to Orange County from Houston and not only experienced culture shock because he's African American but also because he's gay.

Dear White People, which is about four black college students navigating a predominantly white Ivy League campus, culminating in the brouhaha over a “ghetto”-themed party, was five years in the making.

So the script was already being developed when UC San Diego students made headlines in February 2010 for hosting a “Compton Cookout” party. The week shooting began, a similar party was held at Dartmouth, and as the film was premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in January, Arizona State Sun Devils were throwing such a party as well.

During its opening weekend last weekend, Dear White People earned $347,959. That may not sound like much to box office bean counters, but since the dramedy only played in 11 theaters across America, its $30,702 per-screen average is impressive.

By the way, none of those theaters were in Orange, let alone Orange County.

Here's the trailer:

Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!

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