Posted on 07/18/2005 3:32:19 PM PDT by rang1995
Hollywood tiptoes around terror
David Koepp, who wrote the screenplay for "War of the Worlds," says the Martian attackers in the film represent the American military, while the Americans being slaughtered at random represent Iraqi civilians. I see it differently. I think the Martians symbolize normal Americans, while those being attacked are the numbskulls who run Hollywood. Perhaps the normals went a bit too far in this easy-to-understand allegory, but think of the provocation.
Koepp made the "there-is-no-Internet" mistake, carefully masking his analysis in U.S. interviews, but saying it flat-out in Rue Morgue, an obscure Canadian horror magazine, which he apparently thought nobody would notice.
But as the movie makes clear, once the normals begin to track you with their newfangled technology, there is no escape. They can find you even in Canada.
Hollywood has grown eye-poppingly angry with the rest of the country, mostly over Bush and Iraq, but partly, at least, because the left-coasters apparently thought they were somehow entitled to a string of Democratic Presidents after Clinton.
"There is a tremendous drive in Hollywood to exculpate Islamofascist terrorists," columnist Michael Medved says. No movie has been made about the terrorists since 9/11, nothing on Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Daniel Pearl, Saddam Hussein, the USS Cole, the embassy attacks, the daring and impressive attempts to track down terrorists. Nothing.
Not even a movie about heroic action after 9/11 - the firemen who ran upstairs to their deaths to save others in the twin towers, the people who drove all night from Texas and the South to help New Yorkers cope with the disaster.
But wait. Help is on the way. Hollywood is still reluctant to irritate terrorists, but a few movies about 9/11 heroes are on the way.
And whom did Paramount pick for the highest-profile one? Oliver Stone, the unhinged director/screenwriter who refers to 9/11 as a justified "revolt" against the established order and the six companies he thinks control the world.
At a panel after 9/11, Stone said that the Palestinians who danced at the news of the attack were reacting just as people responded after the revolutions in France and Russia.
He thinks 9/11 may have unleashed as much creative energy as the birth of Einstein.
Internet commentators are going berserk over the idea of a wacky pro-terrorist paranoid directing the first big 9/11 movie. It will focus on two American heroes, not terrorists.
But it could well turn out badly. Besides, why pick Stone? What can be done about the Hollywood brain? And where are those Martian attackers when you really need them?
Originally published on July 18, 2005
I'm not a big Coppola fan. I'm one of only two or three living people who think that the Godfather was just so-so. Scocese I always thought was hit and miss, but I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed The Aviator.
In my experience, study and opinion, I've always found movie makers who didn't arrive on the set fresh out of film school always had a creative edge. John Huston comes to mind -- he grew up in a show biz family, but did some living before he stepped behind the camera. James Cameron also did some living and it shows in his movies. And yes, I confess to liking Titanic.
These guys -- and I put Spielberg in with them -- are more academics than artists.
If Jerry Lewis is such a cinematic genius, when are we gonna see the world premier of the Day the Clown Cried?
Spielberg may not have the academic credentials, but he's got that academic heart. Actually, it's a "film head" heart. Empire of the Sun is the only movie of his that I thought was good, but I attribute that more to J.G. Ballard than Spielberg.
What's the old line that was knocking around about the time AI came out -- Spielberg always sees the glass as half full. Kubrick sees it as smashed and ground in the audience's face.
Actually, Sugarland Express wasn't bad. I have to give you that. Duel was a "gimmick" film. If you watched it with half attention you'd confuse it with Hitchcock on a bad day. Jaws was okay, but I was a big Roy Scheider fan. Here's some RS trivia -- after he did All That Jazz, he couldn't get out of the Bob Fosse character for months. I actually half blame Fosse for driving Eric Roberts nuts.
It's a buck o' five....
Scheider is apparently very ill these days. He has Lukemia. Hope he recovers. Duel was a gimmick done as well as it could be. It's virtuso stuff from a 24 year old.
I heard that about RS. That's too bad, he was a good actor that never got his due. I've seen everything he was in with the exception of Sorcerer, which was an apparent re-make of Wages of Fear.
Wasn't Duel a "Movie of the Week?" Be interesting to see how many people came out of that...now all the directors come out of commercials and music videos.
Robert Altman started off on the TV show The Millionaire --where the rich guy would give a million bucks to some poor shnook.
bttt
Wow. Okay. You're a stickler...
So, where did Russ Meyer start?
Making films for the Army! He served under Patton.
He was also the still photog on the set of Giant.
I thought the villians were Nazi-wanna bes trying to push the Arian Nation bit. They even referred to themselves as "conservatives" at one point (the movie, not the book}.
Yes, I was just being slightly sarcastic in my reference to blond blue-eyed Norwegians.
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