I trust you've all dashed out to grab SIFF Notes, the Stranger's annual guide to the Seattle International Film Festival, which begins tomorrow. It should be interesting to see which side of the Woody Allen debate Seattle's arts-gala types come down on—Alleged child molester? Cinema genius? Both? Neither? Despite Nicole Brodeur's passionate and logically faultless editorial in yesterday's Seattle Times urging the festival to reconsider booking Cafe Society for opening night, I'll be stunned if the house isn't packed tomorrow, and if there aren't a lot of sotto voce confessions of discomfort that have nothing to do with fancy clothes.

Or maybe people really will boycott. Could this be a crucial moment of Seattle's arts community deciding not to be an Amazon company town, or will we keep going through it because we need the eggs?

Meanwhile...

One of the most enjoyable films I saw in advance of the festival is the documentary Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You (Fri May 20 11am at Pacific Place, Sun May 22 1:30pm at SIFF Uptown), which is about the nonagenarian producer of groundbreaking TV sitcoms of the '70s. Like most extremely successful showbiz types, Lear is not hubris-free, but his soft-spoken outspokenness makes him a presence you want to spend more and more time with. There's a benevolent wizard vibe to Lear, and a genuine impulse for self-examination. Best of all, though, is the opportunity to revisit and recontextualize the footage from All In the Family, Good Times, The Jeffersons, and Maude.

And SPEAKING OF MAUDE, after watching the Lear doc, my thoughts naturally turned to this gem of a review, in which the formidable Ijeoma Oluo agreed to binge watch all six seasons of the Bea Arthur classic and report on her findings, which include:

We've been patting ourselves on the back for calling out privilege and racism in progressive movements with hashtags like #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen, but apparently this was something everyone figured out decades ago and then... forgot, I guess? In fact, it was so well-known in the '70s that even white people joked about it—and not in the shitty "hipster racism" way you see now (I'm talking to you, Tina Fey). Maude Findlay is offensively ignorant, patronizing, and bigoted when it comes to race and class. She is White Feminism incarnate. Some of the biggest laughs of the show are in watching Maude make a complete ass of herself in her attempts to "save" those she views as less fortunate while everyone else is all "White people. Amirite?" It would be really awesome if we could be as honest about racism in our modern-day progressive movements.

You gotta read the rest!