Posted on 11/24/2005 7:41:24 PM PST by wagglebee
There will be no press junket, no premiere and, most importantly, no Oscar marketing campaign beyond trailers and posters for Steven Spielberg’s movie Munich, I have learned. This dicey decision to have no traditional publicity for the film before and after it opens December 23 is the director’s alone. He will not even be giving press or broadcast interviews. “The official strategy is for the movie to speak for itself,” an insider told me this week. “All they’re going to do is just show the movie to people. You have to be Steven Spielberg to get away with that.”
But competitors think that may also be because Spielberg may have snagged the cover of Time magazine, which no one will confirm.
For months now, Munich has been touted as the Oscar front-runner, even when no one had seen the film. The first invitation-only screenings of Munich will start after December 1. Executives for Universal, one of the producers/distributors of the film along with DreamWorks, are scheduled to see the completed movie November 30.
Even producer Kathleen Kennedy did not view the finished film, complete with John Williams score, until just a few days ago. A master of managing expectations, Kennedy came out of the film blown away by it, I’m told. “I’ve been making movies for 25 years and this could be his best,” she told a friend. That kind of praise has to be considered noteworthy since she produced Spielberg’s Oscar-winning Schindler’s List. (As the pal told me: “She wasn’t talking that way about War of the Worlds.”)
At the start of this year’s Oscar season, speculation centered on the tightness of Munich’s postproduction schedule because it began only on October 2. But the movie was finished scoring a week ago, a few days ahead of planning. As it is, Spielberg is telling friends that his only film that had a shorter postproduction period was Duel, and that was because it was a made-for-TV movie.
Last year, Mel Gibson announced that he wouldn’t engage in the usual Oscar marketing frenzy for his The Passion of the Christ, and it was overlooked at Academy Awards time even though it was a box-office blockbuster and artistic endeavor. The reason I suspected was that Oscar voters were uncomfortable with the zealotry of its subject matter. The chances of that happening to Spielberg’s Munich are slim to none this time around. Because of Spielberg’s involvement, I think Oscar voters are going to take on faith his view of this Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
However, the political minefield of the film’s subject matter — the tale of a secret Mossad hit squad ordered to assassinate the Palestinian terrorists who directly or even indirectly carried out the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich — will be the main issue at awards time. Specifically, it all comes down to how the movie portrays its principal characters: Will the Israelis be seen as too bloodthirsty? Will the Palestinians be seen as too stereotypical? Insiders say Spielberg and his screenwriter Tony Kushner worked hard to create multidimensional characters.
But, just in case, he has also assembled a team of pro advisers to confront the international protestations that are sure to occur.
The trio consists of Dennis Ross, a well-known U.S. diplomat who played a leading role in shaping Middle East policy in the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations and is now The Washington Institute’s counselor and Ziegler distinguished fellow; Mike McCurry, President Clinton’s White House spokesman who is now a senior political strategist; and Allan Mayer, a crisis PR specialist with Los Angeles-based Sitrick And Company who has advised Spielberg for several years.
Spielberg has been deliberately vague as to the origin of the much-disputed facts conveyed in his movie. He has said it comes from multiple sources, and not just from Vengeance, the controversial book by George Jonas. (HBO adapted that book in 1986.) Both Palestinian terrorist Abu Daoud and Israel’s former Mossad spy chief Zvi Zamir have gone public with their anger about not being consulted beforehand by Spielberg about the film. During the summer, Spielberg issued this carefully worded statement to an Israeli paper, an Arab TV station and The New York Times: “Viewing Israel’s response to Munich through the eyes of the men who were sent to avenge that tragedy adds a human dimension to a horrific episode that we usually think about only in political or military terms. By experiencing how the implacable resolve of these men to succeed in their mission slowly gave way to troubling doubts about what they were doing, I think we can learn something important about the tragic standoff we find ourselves in today.”
Even at this late date, I’m told that neither the Israeli government nor the Palestinian National Authority have yet seen the movie. “Nobody’s seen anything. We’ve, as a courtesy, been in touch unofficially at a fairly high level and they know what’s going on,” an insider told me. “Given a lot of the other things on their plate, they have much bigger fish to fry than even a Steven Spielberg movie.”
Yes! He's making another Jurassic Park! (Homer Simpson voice) - "Woo-hoo!"
But AI was just plain weird.
The Israeli hit teams were called off when one of them whacked an (apparently) innocent Pali expatriate in Sweden(?, IIRC). The entire team was rounded up and jailed. The resulting diplomatic flap helped to promote the "sympathy for the downtrodden Palis" movement in Europe. A PR nightmare. I'm sure the Spielberg movie will emphasize this as a sop to the Leftist Internationalists.
But, just in case, he has also assembled a team of pro advisers to confront the international protestations that are sure to occur. The trio consists of Dennis Ross, a well-known U.S. diplomat who played a leading role in shaping Middle East policy in the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations and is now The Washington Institute’s counselor and Ziegler distinguished fellow; Mike McCurry, President Clinton’s White House spokesman who is now a senior political strategist; and Allan Mayer, a crisis PR specialist with Los Angeles-based Sitrick And Company who has advised Spielberg for several years.
This plus Tony Kushner makes me very, very suspicious about this movie.
After reading this before bed, I saw an ad for Munich last night on TV.
The guy who digitally removed the guns and terrorist references from "ET" and who turned "Jurassic Park II" into an environmental screed leaves his politics out of movies?
The guy who turned a story about a man trapped in a French airport into a story of a man trapped in a US airporat by unfeeling homeland security agents leaves his politics out of his movies?
The guy who directed "the Color Purple" leaves his politics out of his movies?
Sure, up to about 1993 you were probably right, but over the last ten years he's just another agenda driven lefty. The fact he, like a lot of lefties, considers WWII "the good war," doesn't mean he left his politics out.
After the the opening bit where the first machine rose from beneath the street I thought it went downhill quickly. The whole bit with Tim Robbins in the basement was just stupid and unnecessary, and that's leaving out the casting of Tim Robbins. My complaints were mainly those aliens were so dumb: advanced as they were they didn't have infrared imaging technology, and they buried their machines here on earth, freezing the technology in place.
I think part of the minefield is that the Mossad was mistaken on at least one case and killed the wrong person. I'm no expert of the post-Munich operation, though.
Dont' want to sound callous but...... I'm more comfortable with the Mossad erring on the side of caution than Pallies indiscriminately murdering people. But I can see how that could cause a problem in the retelling. Best just to play out the facts straightforwardly. But this is a movie right!
I have no problem with the Mossad doing its business at all.
A major screw up is still a major screw up, though, and makes them come across as bad or at the very least, sloppy.
Anybody have any details of this screw up? I could be thinking of something else, though.
The Mossad killed an innocent person by accident. The Palis have killed thousands of innocent people ON PURPOSE. Yet the story here is about how wrong the Mossad is? Is that right?
Unless I hear differently, I'm passing on this crap.
Disgusting.
And theyy're overlooking the obvious.. central piece... the palis killed the wrong people. they killed the entire athelte team. how about those deaths? were they right or wrong people?
Right. Except for Shrek, A Band Of Brothers, Men in Black II, he's not done anything.
I was referring to the movies he has directed, not produced, or been the executive producer for.
"I recall reading in Time mag. that we did the same after the Beirut barracks bombing.
IIRC Mossad helped with that ."
Really? I hadn't heard about that. Has anybody else?
That's putting it mildly. It was stupendiously bad and totaly incomprehensible. Toward the end, there's a scene where you can see the boom mike in the top of the picture. Bad script, production, acting and editing. I couldn't believe it was a Speilburg picture.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm......................
TIME magazines' latest cover has Spielberg on it. Look to the RIGHT [the site would not let me link to the pik, unlike all the other piks on the page].
http://www.time.com/time/
Its always been my understanding that nothing happens in the MSM by coincidence.
"......You have to be Steven Spielberg to get away with that........
Dats fo shor!
It will star Barbra Streisand, who will sing at the end of the movie "There's a place for us", causing all the Pallies, ragheads, and Israelites to be moved to tears and start hugging each other and apologizing for past wrongs, blah, blah, blah...
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