IT'S hard for Hollywood pacifists like Brian De Palma to capture the hearts and minds of America if Americans won't see their movies.
While the public is staying away in droves from “Rendition," “Lions for Lambs" and “In the Valley of Elah," audiences are really avoiding “Redacted," De Palma's picture about US soldiers who rape a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, then kill her and her family. The message movie was produced by NBA Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who insisted on deleting grisly images of Iraqi war casualties from the montage at the film's end. Cuban offered to sell the film back to De Palma at cost, but the director was too smart to go for that deal.
“Redacted" - which “could be the worst movie I've ever seen," said critic Michael Medved -took in just $25,628 in its opening weekend in 15 theaters, which means roughly 3,000 people saw it in the entire country.
“This, despite an A-list director, a huge wave of publicity, high praise in the Times, The New Yorker, left-leaning sites like Salon, etc. A Joe Strummer documentary [of punk-rock band The Clash] playing in fewer theaters made more in its third week," e-mailed one cineaste. “Not even people who presumably agree with the movie's antiwar thesis made the effort to see it."
Well there's a number of problems here:
First off, American's can smell bullshit when they are near it. For example, with recent violence levels dropping significantly, even Democrats and liberals are at a loss to try to argue that the "surge" didn't work.
They know when someone's lying to them, and they can see how liberal Hollywood is trying to bullshit them.
Secondly, no one likes an elitist who tells them how to think and vote.
When someone tells me they way I'm thinking is wrong and how they are right without giving me a reason for it, they are simply elitists who deserve neither the attention or the respect that their opinion would normally get.
Would you listen to me if I told you "you're wrong in every way and I'm right" and never offer you an explanation as to how I came to that conclusion?
Just because you know how to make a film, doesn't mean you know jack shit about international relations and politics.
Third:
No one likes to see a film badmouthing their country. I don't care if you're from Iran, Canada or the US, no one likes their home country bashed, and that includes Americans.
Oh how I do enjoy when Hollywood elitists get a good slap of reality across the face.
Travis
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