Wednesday, November 24, 2004
Hollywood Out of Touch? You Don't Say...
OpinionJournal - Extra: "One would think that in the name of artistic freedom, the creative community would take a stand against filmmakers being sent into hiding � la Salman Rushdie, or left bleeding in the street. Yet we've heard nary a peep from Hollywood about the van Gogh slaying. Indeed Hollywood has long walked on eggshells regarding the topic of Islamic fundamentalism. The film version of Tom Clancy's 'The Sum of All Fears' changed Palestinian terrorists to neo-Nazis out of a desire to avoid offending Arabs or Muslims. The war on terror is a Tinsel Town taboo, even though a Hollywood Reporter poll showed that roughly two-thirds of filmgoers surveyed would pay to see a film on the topic.
In a recent conversation with a struggling liberal screenwriter, I brought up the Clancy film as an example of Hollywood shying away from what really affects filmgoers--namely, the al Qaeda threat vs. the neo-Nazi threat. He vehemently defended the script switch. 'It's an easy target,' he said of Arab terrorism, repeating this like a parrot, then adding, 'It's a cheap shot.' How many American moviegoers would think that scripting Arab terrorists as the enemy in a fiction film is a 'cheap shot'? In fact, it's realism; it's what touches lives world-wide. It's this disconnect with filmgoers that has left the Hollywood box office bleeding by the side of the road."
Cheap shots are okay, even celebrated, when it is our own President, but too cheap when it is our enemies? Living in their own fantasyland, Hollywood has forgotten who the real black hats are.
In a recent conversation with a struggling liberal screenwriter, I brought up the Clancy film as an example of Hollywood shying away from what really affects filmgoers--namely, the al Qaeda threat vs. the neo-Nazi threat. He vehemently defended the script switch. 'It's an easy target,' he said of Arab terrorism, repeating this like a parrot, then adding, 'It's a cheap shot.' How many American moviegoers would think that scripting Arab terrorists as the enemy in a fiction film is a 'cheap shot'? In fact, it's realism; it's what touches lives world-wide. It's this disconnect with filmgoers that has left the Hollywood box office bleeding by the side of the road."
Cheap shots are okay, even celebrated, when it is our own President, but too cheap when it is our enemies? Living in their own fantasyland, Hollywood has forgotten who the real black hats are.
