Barbara Kopple needs to get her facts straight before a 'news' organization prints what she says. She obviously doesn't know what she is talking about.
Posted on 10/08/2006 12:35:00 PM PDT by Hetty_Fauxvert
TORONTO -- After facing a barrage of insults, death threats and all kinds of broken records in the face of an offhand remark about the U.S. president, The Dixie Chicks are no longer chicks.
“It turned us into women,” says Natalie Maines, speaking about the past three years in near media exile, facing one of the largest pop culture controversies in recent history.
On the eve of the war in Iraq in 2003, Maines made an offhand comment about being against violence, and being embarrassed that the U.S. president, George W. Bush was from Texas, her home state.
Despite being the best-selling female act of all time, big fans turned into rabid haters. Record sales plummeted. Country radio excluded them from their playlists. People said their career at the top of country was over.
The conflict was so rich in scope and meaning, it attracted the attention of two-time Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple and her colleague (Gregory’s daughter), Cecilia Peck. The result is Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing! — one of the hottest documentary titles of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
Beginning the voyage with the actual comment recorded in a London amphitheatre, Kopple and Peck take a full immersion tour through the post-Bush-slag landscape, and follow the Chicks — Maines, Martie Maguire and Emily Robison — as they attempt to understand what happened, and how to move forward without their sturdy net of a solid fan base.
“In watching this movie, it felt like I was watching myself mature,” says Maines.
Robison echoes the sentiment. “I think for the most part, when your career is going great, you don’t really have the opportunity to soul search but we did. And we do think it happened for a reason.”
Looking fantastically glam as they address the media at a Shut Up and Sing! news conference, the Chicks say they have absolutely no regrets about speaking their mind. If anything, the experience made them realize just how vulnerable to censorship we are in the world of consolidated media ownership and nationally uniform radio playlists.
“Consolidation means one guy at the top decides everything and I don’t think the media has been successful in pointing out why it’s so dangerous,” Robison says.
“People don’t understand why this is so important,” Maines says. “But if you live in Lubbock, Texas, where I’m from — you just have one paper and one radio station and unless you’re savvy on the internet, that’s it for you. If Bush said get a gun and kill an Arab, they would do that.”
Maguire says if it had been just one — or even several — DJs who felt it was just too much of a hassle to spin Dixie Chicks singles, they would have been fine with the boycott. The problem was how the whole anti-Chicks campaign was orchestrated by a select few through a right-wing Internet site called the Free Republic.
“This wasn’t about us being women as much as it was about country music,” says Maines. “In our industry, they always blow off the liberal, Hollywood, pot-smoking celebrity For the (people who read the Free Republic), we were their wet dream.”
According to the research done by Kopple and the Chicks themselves, the Free Republic sent out form letters to their 30,000-thick subscription list with market-specific information, saying if the station did not stop playing their music, they would cease listening to the station.
The campaign worked, and the Chicks’ current tour for their new album is being booked at venues half the size of their previous tour.
“What was wrong was that (the decision to not play Dixie Chicks records) was coming from the top and that (DJs) were not allowed to play the records, even if they wanted to. I think that kind of censorship is dangerous,” says Maguire.
For a society that prides itself in the notion of free speech and the red, white and blue, the Dixie Chicks’ descent into the land of crispy Salem witches seemed like a betrayal of crucial American truths — which is something Kopple has been chronicling ever since she started creating documentaries with Harlan County, U.S.A, a disturbing look at a miner’s strike in Kentucky.
Kopple says what happened to the Dixie Chicks really struck a chord because it spoke to the changing times.
“In the '60s, there was a sense of a cultural movement that happened, and you really felt a sense of belonging to a community. They (Dixie Chicks) were on their own, and our hope is that people who see this film will become part of their community so the Chicks no longer have to stand alone,” Kopple says. Maines, who says she always felt the support of her bandmates and family, says she’s still a little surprised by the whole journey. Though she’s learned to really think hard about what she says to the press these days, she says she may well have said the very same thing — even with a little reflection. “Even if I had thought about what I wanted to say, I don’t think I ever could have imagined what happened. What I said was just so lame.”
Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing! Is slated for a fall /winter theatrical release.
Hey, where's my form letter? Jim, I wanna play too! Subscription list? Laura mercy, don't those Chicksies have a clue about fact checking?
They were turned into women huh?I don't think so!They were turned into such Bitch*s my dog would'nt even sniff em!
Typical libs though...lying, and blaming others for their problems.
LOL. These people don't have a clue.
Above all, don't make any bone-headed comments that might bring up a question that you are NOT out there with the rest of us on Attila's right flank. 8^)
Nam Vet
According to them, they're not DIXIE anymore because DIXIE = ignorant conservative rednecks and they're not CHICKS anymore because now they're intellectually mature women?
Sounds like time for a name change.
"... but seeing that this is FreeRepublic, the most powerful Internet presence in the World Wide Web and will blow your career clean off, you have to ask yourself a question, 'do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, Chick?"
LOL
Mrs. Maines has a very filthy mouth. And it *is* our right to free speech, Mrs. Maines; just as it was yours.
BTTT
Barbara Kopple needs to get her facts straight before a 'news' organization prints what she says. She obviously doesn't know what she is talking about.
Dixie Chicks? Who in the Hell are the Dixie Chicks?
Where's my letter?! Am I the black sheep of the family, AGAIN?!
2. Chicks whine. Real women opine.
3. A couple of other girl groups are also called the best-selling female act of all time.
4. “In our industry, they always blow off the liberal, Hollywood, pot-smoking celebrity."--Willie Nelson still manages to make money off his country music fans.
5. Governmental censorship is unconstitutional. Societal censorship isn't.
6. Comparing one's decrease in popularity and finances to being burned at the stake or getting dunked until drowned is just plain silly.
I didn't get the form letter either! To hell with the other 28,998. Buncha snobs. [kicks dirt]
Thanks for the instructions on how to use my secret decoder ring. I was wondering how it worked! LOL!
I've never heard of such a thing, but it gives me an idea. I've been instantly changing the station ever time their Stevie Nicks remake comes on, but from now on, I'll wait to identify the station, then write the station and let them know they've lost a customer. I'd thought Arbitron (or whoever) would've been able to track customers changing the station the moment that song came on, but now, thanks to Gnat's brilliance, I know what I can do.
I've never heard of such a thing, but it gives me an idea. I've been instantly changing the station ever time their Stevie Nicks remake comes on, but from now on, I'll wait to identify the station, then write the station and let them know they've lost a customer. I'd thought Arbitron (or whoever) would've been able to track customers changing the station the moment that song came on, but now, thanks to Gnat's brilliance, I know what I can do.
I guess we are being treated like step children. lol!
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