The Uncomfortable Friendship of James Gunn and Huston Huddleston
Back in middle 2018, director James Gunn would found himself in the middle of a controversial situation. Several joke tweets that he had made were re-discovered and due to the dark nature of the subject of several of them he was fired from directing duties for Guardians of the Galaxy Part 3, the franchise he helped kick-start at Marvel by sidestepping screenwriter Nicole Pearlman.
Hidden among the trees, however, there was one very dark blog post that would make what were supposed to be considered “joke tweets” into a very disturbing confession. A blog post that is very hard to access to, as James Gunn himself requested that his entire website was removed from the Wayback Machine. Only the copyright holder of the website can request such a thing, but why would Gunn request that?
Enter Huston Huddleston, a writer and director that was best known for saving and restoring the set bridge used for the TV series “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” He is close friends with Gunn and was mentioned in a disturbing post that James Gunn made on his old website in 2010:
This was almost half a decade before he broke it big in Hollywood and directed the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, so the post went barely unnoticed, mostly by the fans of his previous, smaller films. By that time, the website had been revamped and his older content was no longer available.
Some years after that, in 2018 to be exact, Huston Huddleston would be arrested for possession of Child Pornography and would become a registered sex offender ever since. The excuse that this was a joke would work had it been made after the arrest of Huddleston, but it was made almost a decade before that.
Furthermore, as of today, August 5th 2021, James Gunn has yet to made any kind of comment or mention about this specific blog-post, as his apology was centered around his tweets and has not made any statement regarding his friendship with Huston Huddleston. His representatives refused to comment on the matter.
Rather than being punished, or questioned regarding this disturbing friendship, James Gunn was rewarded by the current heads at Warner Brothers. They gave him free reign to do whatever he wanted with their reboot of The Suicide Squad and even begged him to do Superman.
It is questionable why Hollywood tends to protect men with such friendships that are incredibly disturbing in nature. Him admitting to masturbating to Child Sexual Exploitation Material given to him by a Convicted Sex Offender should be something that makes him worthy of investigation, not of celebration.
The release of the movie that rewarded him is right around the corner, and he is enjoying the time of his life getting ready to do yet another Guardians of the Galaxy project at Disney. It seems that he dodged the bullet of accountability, or at least the one for questioning.
Should you watch “The Suicide Squad” this weekend? It depends of the kind of person that you want to contribute to, and what kind of behavior you want to enable. In an era where victims take decades to come out due to fear of retaliation (retaliation that is happening right now to negative criticism of The Suicide Squad) it might take years for him to see any accountability.
Only time will tell.
