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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Lileks goes to the movies |
| 2007-11-14 |
| It is interesting that [The Transformers] made 403492 grillion dollars, whereas the Cruise / Redford / Streep oration about War Being Bad averaged thirty-seven cents per theater. As many have noted elsewhere at great length, anti-war movies are unpopular. The theories vary: the public is tired of the war, the movies are lousy, the public doesn’t want to see Uncle Sam portrayed as the sort of guy who can’t wait to hook up a Diehard to the harbls of an innocent exchange student rounded up in the Bushilter Mandatory Scoop-Up-The-Dusky Initiative. Both sides will probably come to rest on the last answer, but for different reasons. One side takes cruel comfort in the fact that Americans CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH, as another Cruise movie so memorably accused, and the other side is convinced that Hollywood is so besotted by the vapors in its ideological pleasure-dome it cannot conceive of making a war movie that isn’t a glass of warm spinach juice – or, if it’s slam-bang rah-rah in concept, is laden down with hints and tics and cues designed to insulate the producers from the inevitable protests from all corners. You can almost hear the sighs of a producer looking at an incredible script about the drive to Baghdad, a straight-forward story that complete with straight-ahead, matter-of-fact drama: it’s a great script, but my wife’s all hooked up with Code Pink. Not that I care; they’re a bunch of nuts. But I can’t stand the people who think they’re a bunch of nuts for reasons different than mine. Also I’m going to get CAIR writing letters to the editor, and my kid reads that paper. Well, she reads it online. Maybe. I don’t know. It would probably show up on MySpacebook or something. But no one’s going to get hard looks if Tom Cruise comes out against torture, right? I mean, who’s gonna boo that at Cannes? (Thank you, Mr. Strawman! Thank you for stating so succinctly what I suspect and believe. Remarkable.) It’s an old subject, and I was moaning about this years ago. And I probably said the same thing: where’s our “Casablanca”? |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #14 Crap. The Bleat is beginning to sound like the Buzz. Either that or he's spent too much time fisking Keillor. Or starting to descend into his winter depression. |
| Posted by: KBK 2007-11-14 20:04 |
| #13 It just knocks me out that right now, somebody with $1-2M could get a handful of recent vets as actors, go to Iraq, get cooperation out the wazoo from the US military and the Iraqis, and just make a movie about about real war stories. Sold back in the US as a "foreign" movie, ironically as all hell, it could portray the truth and make a butt-load of money, maybe $100-200M. The liberals would have a collective stroke, but the box office would be killer. Even if they banned it from theaters, it would be #1 in DVD sales for a year. If whoever made the movie really went for the gold, by showing US Army and Marines doing things like rescuing horribly injured children (Iraqi actors) from an elementary school blown up by al-Qaeda; show Iraqi torture rooms right out of the SAW movies; show terrorists trying to murder Iraqis with car bombs. And show soldiers and Marines just kicking butt all over the place, all by the book and by the numbers. With sky-high morale, and things like scenes of entire units reenlisting, wounded soldiers getting really pissed off and wanting to fight more, and crying over the bodies of murdered children and throwing up when they find mass graves. Show Iraqis fighting alongside Americans as disciplined and patriotic soldiers and police. No reason not to show them as really good guys, too. Of course, you could also throw in scenes of cowardly journalists hiding in Green Zone hotels and getting phoned-in propaganda from al-Qaeda as well. The leftists would hate it, but the public would love to see reporters portrayed as the utter traitorous scumbags they are. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-11-14 18:54 |
| #12 Not that it would ever be made but I'd like to see a movie/book based on Islamic Taliban-style occupation of America. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2007-11-14 14:28 |
| #11 Follow up... Awhile ago it was reported that Bruce Willis might play LTC Kurilla in a film about the Deuce-Four. I don't know if it will get green-lighted, but I'd go see it. And I don't go see much in theaters anymore. |
| Posted by: eLarson 2007-11-14 10:53 |
| #10 OS - I second the motion. Any executive producers in the house? |
| Posted by: eLarson 2007-11-14 10:41 |
| #9 Thanks, Eric - something ate my cookies... |
| Posted by: Sgt. Mom 2007-11-14 10:10 |
| #8 Maybe Hollywood can make a compromise & create a war movie based on the American invasion of Canada in 1775, led by -- of all people -- Benedict Arnold! The invasion failed, but it is a rattling good story, full of remarkable deeds and heroism on both sides. See Arundel by Kenneth Roberts. It would be a sure-fire hit in Canada, at least. Tom Cruise would be perfect as Benedict Arnold -- both were short men. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-11-14 09:24 |
| #7 They need to do a movie based on Michael Yon's coverage of the "Deuce-Four" battles in Mosul. True Heroes. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2007-11-14 09:15 |
| #6 Wonder what happened to Harrison Ford playing Gen. Mattis during the Falludja battle? |
| Posted by: ed 2007-11-14 08:42 |
| #5 What I wrote Sunday - They're whining in Hollyweird, no one wants war movies during war. Bull!!!. They don't want pure unadulterated anti-American screed. Check the box office takes for 2006. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) $423,032,628 Night at the Museum (2006) $250,863,268 Cars (2006) $244,052,771 X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) $234,360,014 The Da Vinci Code (2006) $217,536,138 300 (2006) $210,592,590 source:http://www.imdb.com/boxoffice/alltimegross The suits lie through their teeth when they say the public doesn't want 'war' movies. "300" was hardly family affair to take the 8 year olds to. Plenty of blood and gore. Even the main characters die in the end. Sacrifice is never pretty, but it holds a lot more virtue than cowardice. Production Budget: $65 million. Domestic: $210,614,939 46.2% + Foreign: $245,453,242 53.8% = Worldwide: $456,068,181 The 300 shows people want heroes. American people will pay to see American heroes. The web identifies plenty in the WoT and they're not the anti-war/American punks who inhabit Hollyweird's universe. There's nothing needed to make up. Hot reality. Real profits. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2007-11-14 08:32 |
| #4 Sgt. Mom, You should put the http: before your web site designation. Otherwise, browsers try to go to Rantburg. |
| Posted by: Eric Jablow 2007-11-14 08:29 |
| #3 That would be "stunts" over my house... |
| Posted by: Sgt. Mom 2007-11-14 07:52 |
| #2 Yeah, when squadrons of flying pigs begin performing precision formation aerial stunds over my house. |
| Posted by: Sgt. Mom 2007-11-14 07:51 |
| #1 You'd think someone in Hollywood would try to film “Raven 42: The Leigh Ann Hester Story”. |
| Posted by: Eric Jablow 2007-11-14 07:30 |