Oscar-winning filmmaker and playwright Kenneth Lonergan has come out in support of actor Mark Ruffalo, who has become a focal point in an increasingly heated public fight that involves the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger.
In a letter sent to The Hollywood Reporter, Lonergan defended Ruffalo from accusations of antisemitism after the Marvel star wrote an Aug. 21 social media post to his 20.6 million Instagram followers linking the billionaire Ellison family with Israel’s military effort in Gaza and called the conflict a “genocide” that “was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle.”
Lonergan, the Manchester by the Sea Oscar winner who worked with Ruffalo on You Can Count on Me and has been friends with the actor for decades, took on some of Ruffalo’s accusers, and writes in his letter shared with THR, “I have no problem with anybody who wants to contest Mark’s – or anyone’s – ideas. But like all such deflections, the tissue-paper accusations levied at him by his targets lead directly back to the soft places in their own positions, which they can’t or won’t defend by actually addressing what he has to say. It’s an old trick, and a sorry one.”
In his post, Ruffalo wrote that Larry Ellison, the Oracle founder worth about $200 billion who’s the father of Paramount CEO David Ellison, was fueling a machine “crushing workers and consolidating the wealth of the world for their own power and concentrated dominance.”
