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UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: A Rebel Born, Revisited 🌭

Anyone know how to reach Lochlainn? There’s a job opening.

I’d like to make a referral.

While grieving matters, so does seizing the moment. My old rival Eric flamed out like a bald Duke Nukem, and I need a foil. Seabrook’s the third best Robert E. Lee scholar for children, and the only Nathan Bedford Forrest scholar for illiterates. He’d rock campus goose-stepping workshops. Defying the Volcel King sounds cooler than bullying a fake colonel (Col. Seabrook has an inherited title, like ā€œCountā€ or ā€œAlcoholicā€). I can feud with a failed screenwriter—that’s all art school is. But slapfighting the Hitler Youth chairman impresses dates.

And Goebbels Jr. wanted Lochlainn to take his place. Probably. I only know he liked cribbing 7chan and cutting water fountain lines in half, but you can stick his name to anything this week. In fact, Chuck wanted me to enjoy a hand-delivered pecan sundae. Someone honor the late Fuhrer. He’d prefer Ample Hills, but Cold Stone works.

What has Lochlainn been up to since pitching Hollywood? Seriously, now’s not the time to nap. Yes, there are black people outside, but Lochlainn has nothing to fear. No one knows he’s alive.

Holy shit. Did he do it? Did Seabrook make Nathan the new T-800?

He didn’t! Even better.

Oh, we’ve got a real shitpile on our hands.

A confusing one! A pile of mindless nonsense. I sought Birth of a Nation 2, but I’ll live with Whiter Chicks. Any movie’s fun with a fresh sundae. Thanks, Ezra.

Lochlainn hooked up with Christopher Forbes, a veteran director of Confederate tax fraud. Highlights include two films on the Dakota War (the first has ā€œSemicolon Revengeā€ in the title), at least three on General Sherman’s simple lesson, and one on Willilam Quantrell, the slave hunter contrarian nazis like more than Nathan. To stay organized, I’ll probably start with 2005’s The Battle of Aiken and then work my way through twenty years of white pride.

A Rebel Born limped out in 2019.

Forbes hasn’t learned much.

I’ll still be covering his flicks in 2035. Perhaps through another civil war, the kind of formalist gag I’d die for. A flag? A slogan? An economic model? Never. A historic punchline? I’ll defenestrate myself.

As survivors of Lochlainn’s script, we know which hate crimes to expect. First, the rough-edged, street hardened Nathan shoots two men to hide his uncle’s gambling debt.

I remembered it wrong: first a quiet, confused flyweight starts a blurry gunfight for mumbled reasons. I’m outside the master race, so I might’ve missed something. But this seems to huff shit.

The opening demands headphones. Though the visual failure’s classic, the sonic failure’s fresh. Pistols hit a sound between bubblegum and a light door. And the music’s the rumor of a soundtrack, preserved through generations of sign language. A baffling soup of failure, unless you caught Lochlainn’s music credit. Then you expected banjos, plus confidence, minus talent. Seabrook’s a multi-hyphenate failure.

That’s 1080p.

Nathan’s a heartthrob, if he’s the only teen on your plantation that survives eye contact. Ask Nathan’s future wife, who’s played as skillfully as she’s written.

Mary-Anne would sound less modern if she rode in on a stolen motorcycle, shouting ā€œWe have a city to burn.ā€ Or, in Edgerunners, ā€œWe have a ditch to bleed out in.ā€

One of the better performances. See, Lochlainn’s type likes bell curves. Me too! Period dialogue fits an inverse one. Check it:

The production’s everything I wanted. Well, that’s a lie: a blockbuster would make America face itself. The production’s everything Lochlainn deserves. I hope the sequel’s in post.

Granted, making movies is hard. If Lochlainn ever does it, I’ll go easy on him.

The book painted Nathan Bedford Forrest as a chimera of folk heroes, Horatio Alger leads, and civil rights leaders.The film hews closer to mainstream history: Nathan meets Hillibilly Merlin in the woods, who says he’ll be King of Bigots if he can light the cross on the stone.

We’re in new territory.

I should clarify where I’m fucking around, and what really happened. The movie really does open with an old witch, who rebukes a stock priest by declaring the moon and stars her temple. Nathan really does meet her, and she does exposit the soil-power handed down from her family and declare that Nathan can do anything. So I’m fucking around nowhere.

Confederate alt-medicine witchcraft. Lochlainn and I will do this forever.

Odd that this seer doesn’t define ā€œbusiness.ā€ Weasel language like that usually follows something unseemly. Like embezzling humans, or undeclared humans, or mourning George Lincoln Rockwell’s cover band. Though she’s not into op-eds, so I’ll give her some slack.

ā€œBusinessā€ returns in a Prezi slide that tiptoes past Nathan’s pre-war business. Starring wordart predating Nathan.

Forrest is all grown up, from a twinky Weevil to a man-owning Beedrill. Pokemon jokes are fun! I could talk about games all day instead of digging to the bottom of Nazi Letterboxd. I chose this.

Nathan’s rants about tariffs as backwards, mutually destructive economic poison are intact, and I wonder if that’d get the ā€œbusinessā€ treatment today. Alongside wooden dialogue his servant, who has interesting casting.

And refuses to show her face. A heartwarming moment: they couldn’t make a black actress touch this. And men showed the same soli—

Balls. What’s the scorecard?

We can come back. One Ruckus can’t fill Lochlainn’s imaginary army of Grey Panthers. If we dodge more unforced errors, it’s anyone’s game.

No-no-no–

There’s always next season.

After we’ve met his unpaid best friends/honor guard, Nathan’s business remains a mystery. The word slave is lost in adaptation. To make room for witchcraft, we even lose the auction. They couldn’t find a fourth Clarence to make this work. I can’t even call them sellouts. This movie visibly cost more to commute to than to make. They’re tap-dancing for the love of the game.

As for Nathan’s glow-up: Jerry Chesser’s a Christopher Forbes regular, and the eighth worst actor I’ve seen. Keep the URL in mind. Consider the number of Tuesdays in a year. It’s a dire milestone, and Nathan Bedford Forrest deserves it. If Jerry were sandbagging, he’d be the best actor I’ve ever seen. He’s played at least two other Confederate generals, so save your hope.

He says a lot, and then gives up. Only the first half of Lochlainn’s script really makes it to the screen, before other forces take over. His inspiring relationship with his son/future corpse Willie, survives. Unlike Willy.

I am not ugly.

The 3/5 Musketeers follow Nathan into the war against their freedom. Prompting new wordart.

The War Between the States. Rolls off the tongue, twice as naturally as The War of Northern Aggression or The Military Altercation Between the Gentlemen Minding Their Own Business and the Slave-Stealing Bullies (Bullying is Always Wrong, Especially in a Stovepipe Hat). I know Lochlainn can’t quite see me as a human, but hopefully he can hear a copywriter. Find a lie as short, or shorter, than ā€œThe Civil War.ā€

As a fan the fan of the book, I’m pissed. We’ve skipped Nathan’s entire takedown of a Real Racist from Boston. Delirious garbage like that gave the story heart. And there’s no mind, so you need the heart.

Otherwise, you’re trapped in an endless, meaningless montage.

Battle unfolds between a midi loop and your patience. It’s mixed just loudly enough to smother immersion, but not loudly enough to cover the non-gunshots. Still, this time, the visuals manage to keep up.

Without dialogue, we can focus on the beauty of this second-string reenactment group. A hardcore group would raise the aesthetic here from modern history channel to classic History Channel, so these must be washouts in rental gear. A group with afterparty hoods splitting the budget. The kind you join after saying Forrest practiced politics the right way.

Coon squad gets a few frames, shot separately from the others, without a hint of color correction. The film is rigidly segregated, the only question’s whether it’s de jury or de fuckup.

Look, I have a little extra default interest in the First U.S.Civil War. This is a bit much. Lochlainn’s remaking Glory in blackface, and can’t afford real polish. You need something to hold my attention.

That works.

After the minstrel triathlon, the witch wanders back onscreen. The soundtrack shifts to slide guitar worthy of a fast food ad, but not quite ready for a cheap truck. One composer’s trying, and I hope it’s Lochlainn. It’d be his first talent.

The still-unnamed witch tends to the white wounded—a reenactor that almost keeps a straight face as the root doctor chants in Nothing and waggles bones over his head. Her magick undulating builds into a confused, multitracked chorus, inspiring laughter that nearly killed me. I’m a little luckier than Nathan’s prisoners, so I lived to watch an AIMS witness in a very modern shirt rise like the Undertaker.

Mama Thorn–-finally named–then gives him a boot full of plot. With his +1 Boots of White Jumping, the patient can walk. I need to reiterate: this is fresh insanity. There’s no Mountain Gruntilda bumbling around the book. Something has changed in Lochlainn’s world, and turned him into a Gardenerian Klansman. Active club members might get ā€œSo Mote It Beā€ tattooed next to other symbols of white interest.

Note: the faith healing above unfolds three times, I just prefer these screenshots. During the first, it’s too dark to see shit. In the sequel, the shot’s more cluttered than Lochlainn’s psyche.

Mama Thorn seems like a saving throw against the script moving like a glacier. It’d work, if she weren’t more glacier. The root doctor even rattles off canards about the Yankees dividing people, since the spirits dig chattel slavery. Who knew?

It’s her movie now. Mama Thorn doesn’t quite have the screentime of a deuteragonist, but she’s the only time you pay attention. Everything else is Nathan and The Help riding in a diverse circle, or someone praising Nathan’s circle-riding skills. Like this:

In Lochlainn’s defense, Nathan’s the father of civil rights. You can’t free yourself without chains. Before a flash of bright, fiery rage lets you close the tab, we return to warfare. Dull, numbing warfare.

It’s really an achievement. War’s all pathos, explosions, and historic consequences. There’s something for every IQ. None of it touches A Rebel Born. Forbes reduces mass carnage to Halloween cowboys clomping through the fog. The shots tell a story: we lost at least half of A Rebel Born to a lens cap. You can’t see much, and what you can see sucks. Lochlainn’s script leaned heavily on action prose, the Fourth Horsemen of Film Failure.

Luckily, Nathan’s final discourse with Mama Thorn plays us out.

Anyway, in Birth of a Nation: Endgame, the inventor of racism gets groomed by a witch. Sheev is a genre.

I cut 40% of Lochlainn’s book, and he agrees. Nathan’s business in bedsheets gets one slide of wordart:

We yadda-yadda his founding Klan leadership. The two things children and manchildren know about Nathan Beford Forrest are horses and crosses. Forbes tells us he never did much with either.

I think Mama Thorn had a point about the stars, early on. Each dot of light is a new form of failure. I could recap a billion A Rebel Born without touching the edge of the abyss. Paradise. The second I learned some doomed bastard took Lochlainn Seabrook up on his dumbshit film pitch, I felt lighter. My world filled with color. Food tasted better. And now I have twenty years of Confederate cinema.

A relapse to joy. I love this stupid life. It’s my worst marriage. A nightclub I diss all week, and then line up for first on Thursday. I’m not kicking anyone out, but I’m not crying if the worst guests leave early.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Vooster, who tried to hire etsy witches to unmake this film, but they were, unfortunately, a bit busy at the time.