With Lindsay and Britney gone wild, I hope Dakota is better off ten years from now.
Posted on 01/03/2007 5:11:53 PM PST by Sybeck1
Maybe the most controversial film heading to this month's Sundance Film Festival concerns the rape of a 12-year-old girl while Elvis Presley is heard singing in the background. "HoundDog," written and directed by Deborah Kampmeier, is already getting more advance attention than "Chapter 27," the film about Mark David Chapman murdering John Lennon. That's because the character played by 12-year-old actress Dakota Fanning, who made her mark six years ago in "I Am Sam," is raped onscreen. Kampmeier doesn't show the actual rape, but it's quite clear, from sources who've seen the film, that as scripted and directed, the scenes in question are going to cause as big if not bigger uproar than when Brooke Shields played a pre-pubescent prostitute in Louis Malle's classic "Atlantic City." In a terrific piece in the new Premiere magazine, Fanning's agent, Cindy Osbrink, tells writer Henry Cabot Beck: "I've been working with Dakota since she was five, and this is something we haven't seen her do. Something that really challenged her talent. 'HoundDog' was one of the best experiences of her life, a story that needs to be told, and she tells it with her soul as no one else can." Apparently there are already a number of Web sites protesting this film, and lots of comments on the Internet Movie Data Base lamenting the potential exploitation of Fanning. What could do the movie in, though, is the soundtrack of Elvis Presley records. It's unclear whether the Presley estate will approve the licensing of the ultimate pop idol's voice as the film's backdrop, or even if the writers of the song "Hound Dog" — Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller —won't do something to keep their famous composition out of it. No producers are credited yet for "HoundDog," by the way, but the
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With Lindsay and Britney gone wild, I hope Dakota is better off ten years from now.
Brooke Shields was in "Pretty Baby," not "Atlantic City." Minor detail...
Just what we need, a pedophile's dream.
That was actually "Pretty Baby."
Beat me to it!
Movie trivia... basically my only talent... LOL!
Do journalists even do research any more so they don't sound like flipping morons?
Brooke Shields as a pre-pubescent prostitute was "Pretty Baby".
What's just wrong? Child rape or movies about unpleasant subjects? I agree with the former but not the latter.
Don't expect the media to get things right. Even with www.imdb.com a click away.
Editors don't use fact checkers anymore.
Regardless of the controversy surronding this film, Dakota Fanning is a brilliant actress. Truly a prodigy.
Darn hick Elvis fans.......:-0
Does this child have parents? relatives? Anyone with brains anywhere?
Bueller? Bueller?
I'm really trying to think about art here. What's it for? I can understand a novel about a rape of a pre-pubescent or just scarcely pubescent girl, I'm wondering about a movie. And it depends on what scenes are filemd and shown. I can barely imagine an artful portrayal of a rape, but it's hard for me to imagine that I would be in anyway edified by an "artful" portrayal of the rape of a child. And it sounds like that's what they're offering here.
UGH!!
And I thought Brooke Shields was the baby hooker in "Pretty Baby," not Susan Saran Wrap's Atlantic City.
Get me rewrite!!
Didn't see your post till after I posted mine ^^ above. We're right! :-)
Well any aspect of the human experience is fair game. Not having seen this I couldn't tell you whether it's in good taste (whatever that would mean in this case). Someone like Hitchcock was known for artful ellipsis in depicting various depravities but when he finally got free of the old Production Code he produced one of the most explicit rape scenes ever put on film at the time (Frenzy).
Both films were made by Louis Malle a couple of years apart that wa probably Friedman's mistaken train of thought.
If the songwriters are made aware of the controversy, I'd be very surprised if they allow a sync license to be issued.
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