Full circle
: Variety reports today:
* Warner Bros. (AOL) has asked Snoop Dogg to play the most famous snitch from ’70s TV. The rapper-actor has been offered the role of Huggy Bear in the big-screen version of cult series “Starsky and Hutch” opposite Ben Stiller (Starsky) and Owen Wilson (Hutch).
Now there’s irony you can sink your teeth into. Here’s a figure of the era’s black counterculture joining not just today’s pop culture but ’70s white-bread pop culture with all the baggage that brings, playing a character who, even back then — long before the age of the PC Crusades — could be called racist. Starsky is a hoot; this is certainly nothing to take too seriously. Still, a rap star plays a snitch who hands over his people to The Man? How long can it be before we read about Al Sharpton being cast in Amos ‘n’ Andy and Spike Lee being signed to lense a remake of Birth of a Nation?