Woman’s Suicide And Movie Director
Variety‘s Ramin Setoodeh has just reported a double bombshell — one, that the woman who 17 years ago accused “Birth of a Nation” director Nate Parker (pictured) and co-story author Jean Celestin of rape at Penn State University committed suicide in 2012, at age 30, and two, that while there’s no evidence that the woman’s death was directly related to the rape and subsequent trial, her older brother, identified by Setoodeh only as “Johnny,†has told Setoodeh that her downward spiral in
life began with these incidents. The humane response to this story is sadness about the woman’s demise. The media angle, of course, is: how will the story affect Parker’s movie, which was highly praised this year at Sundance and had been assumed to be Oscar bait? We will see, but it isn’t looking good. Of the story, Parker says: “I should have used more wisdom.”
