Yea, if only this guy could have played a crack scientist, he might have made something of himself.
Posted on 12/04/2003 5:40:01 PM PST by stainlessbanner
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. beverage giant Coca-Cola says it will stop showing a short film showing mafia toughs intimidating movie viewers after a barrage of complaints from Italian-American groups.
The film, "Mafia Movie Madness," by graduate student Jordan Ross, won the 2003 Coca-Cola Refreshing Filmmaker Award and was released as a pre-movie reel in early November to chains that included Loews Cineplex and Regal Entertainment Group.
"We regret that anyone was offended and we are removing it from theatres by tomorrow," a Coca-Cola spokeswoman said on Thursday.
The film shows one movie patron getting jumped after ignoring a gray-suited usher's order not to bring outside food or drink into the theatre.
A concession-stand vendor bullies a second patron into ordering a large Coke soft-drink, while a baseball-bat wielding usher tells the audience: "Any of yous makes any noise during this movie, you're dealing with me, capiche?"
The short movie prompted protests from the anti-defamation arm of the Sons of Italy, the National Italian American Foundation and other groups fighting a decades-long tide of movies, television shows and commercials portraying Italian-Americans as members of organised crime.
"There is nothing balancing it -- you never see an Italian-American character playing a crack scientist ... or the president of the United States," said Dona De Sanctis, deputy executive director of the Sons of Italy Commission for Social Justice.
De Sanctis said the organisation has lobbied for broader portrayals of Italian American culture since the first instalment of the "Godfather" movie trilogy was released in the 1970s and has continued that struggle up to the popular contemporary television show "The Sopranos (news - Y! TV)" on the HBO cable channel
"Generally our concerns are dismissed, which we also find very disturbing," she said. "We don't understand why we are the one ethnic group that it's still permissible to make fun of."
He should've directed it under the name Giordano Rossi. Then us touchy wops would've loved it like everyone else.
Yea, if only this guy could have played a crack scientist, he might have made something of himself.
Funny, they didn't seem so worried about this stereotype last year, when they were running those Vanilla Coke ads with that guy who looks like a young Joe Mantegna.
Well, a chemist *cooker* in a crack labratory, maybe. Most of the top Heroin cookers are Frenchies from Marseilles, after all.
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