At a rally in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Thursday evening, Donald Trump took some time to offer his critique of the 2020 Oscars ceremony, which took place on February 9. The president appeared especially displeased that the South Korean film Parasite made history by becoming the first foreign-language movie to win the coveted Best Picture award .
“How bad were the Academy Awards this year?” Trump asked his audience at 8,100-seat Broadmoor World Arena, as quoted by Variety .
The president then noted that the winner was a South Korean film, asking “What the hell was that all about?”
Trump went on to say that the United States has “enough problems” with South Korea on issues of trade relations, adding that he did not know whether the movie was “good” or not. But he nonetheless made clear how his preference in Oscar-winning films would run.
“Let’s get Gone With the Wind ,” Trump said to the crowd, referencing the 1939 Civil War epic told from the perspective of a southern slave-owning family. “Can we get Gone With the Wind back, please?”
While Gone With The Wind remains the highest-grossing movie of all time in inflation-adjusted dollars, the film has been described as having “romanticized slavery,” according to an essay in New York Magazine .
Trump goes off on the Oscars for giving Best Picture to Parasite because it’s a South Korean movie pic.twitter.com/GUGKdExTbw
— Claudia Koerner (@ClaudiaKoerner) February 21, 2020
The film also portrayed the pre-Civil War south as a “lost paradise” for white slave-holders, according to the New York Magazine essay. The outlet added that it depicted Reconstruction — the government program following the Civil War to integrate freed slaves into society with full citizenship rights — as an “unalloyed horror.”
But Trump’s apparent disgust with the Best Picture award for Parasite was not his only problem with the Oscar telecast, as expressed in his Colorado rally speech. He also spent time deriding Best Supporting Actor winner Brad Pitt. The 56-year-old superstar won his first acting Oscar for his role in the Quentin Tarantino-directed Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood .
In his acceptance speech, Pitt referenced the president’s impeachment trial and the vote by Senate Republicans to bar witness testimony. Trump’s former national security advisor, John Bolton, had been expected to testify, offering potentially damaging information on him.
“He got up and said little wiseguy statements,” Trump said at the rally, referring to Pitt. “He’s a little wiseguy.”
The president also announced that he was “never a fan” of Pitt.
In a tweet that was quoted by Variety , the distributor of Parasite quickly responded to Trump’s derisive comments about the movie, which is generally screened in the Korean language with English subtitles.
The distributor, Neon, said in the Twitter post that the president’s failure to appreciate the film was “understandable” because “he can’t read.”