The Real Million Dollar Baby: Courage and the Sanctity of Life

BreakPoint with Charles Colson ^ | March 10, 2005 | Charles Colson

[Mr. Silverback]

My, isn't that interesting...

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[Mr. Silverback]

BreakPoint/Chuck Colson Ping!

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[Hildy]

It's not PROPOGANDA...It's just a one story. ONE STORY.

[ruoflaw]

This was a good article. Could you put me on your ping list?

[Mr. Silverback]

ProLife Ping!

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[MHGinTN]

Interesting indeed! Not surprisingly, hollyweird twists the truth to fit their secularist liberal societal engineering agenda. Thanks to Colson, perhaps America will hear 'the rest of the story'.

[Mr. Silverback]

Uncle Tom's Cabin was just one story, too. Not having seen the movie, I'm neutral on whether MDB is propaganda, but I have to ask: Why is it that you're so horrified (and very vocally so) that someone might call it that?

[Mr. Silverback]

You're added!

[ex-snook]

Thanks for that post. I can understand now how a depraved ending would cause a depraved Hollywood to call this a best picture. No wonder they wanted to 'keep the ending a secret'. Well now I understand why - people would not go to see propaganda.

Clint sure didn't make anyone's day, it would have been no different if had used his Magnum.

[Tax-chick]

In 1996, Katie began boxing. After just two months of training, her trainer urged her into a professional match ... Katie had received 150 blows to the head

This is just awful!

I think the "rags to riches through sports" scenario that's so common in entertainment is also very deceptive. It's more dramatic than "Go back to school, earn degree, get job, work, enjoy average middle-class life" - but it certainly encourages unrealistic expectations.

[Borges]

Not 'Hollywood fiction' but prose short stories fiction that was adapted by a screenwriter.

[Mr. Silverback]

I'm not sure what the intellectual property issues are, but if they did take her story unethically, then imagine what good the money from this movie could have done for her, and instead it was used to say that lives like hers aren't worth living.

There is some debate whether the movie was propaganda, a debate I'm neutral in. But if it's established that this screenplay was based on Katie Dallam, then in my mind there's no way it wasn't propaganda, because they took an inspirational and dramatic story and purposefully twisted it into a whole different animal.

[Borges]

It was based on short stories by F.X. Otoole written some years ago. He has since died. Sorry no 'Hollyweird consipacy' here.

[Borges]

The movie doesn't present the outcome as something positive or happy. Most of the people calling it depraved haven't seen it.

[Tax-chick]

Rope Burns, F.X. O'Toole
Hardcover: 237 pages
Publisher: Ecco (HarperCollins); 1st ed edition (September 1, 2000)

*****

2000 is "some years ago," true. But it's fewer years ago than the incident described by Charles Colson, so he could be correct that the actual events suggested the fiction plot.

[Mr. Silverback]

Thanks for the reminder.

[Borges]

Could be. In the same way that the Chuck Wepner fight inspired Stallone's screenplay for Rocky. I was just refuting the tired 'Hollyweird conspiracy' drivel. Esepcially since no one wanted to make this movie and Eastwood had to get indie financing to get WB to chip in even a little.

[Tax-chick]

"Conspiracy" is a pretty extreme claim. It's a dramatic story, obviously, and a well-made film, from what I understand. I will not see it, because I can't stand to watch boxing.

Clint Eastwood was looking like a death mask at the Oscars. I wonder if he's had a plastic surgery disaster, poor dear.

[Borges]

"Conspiracy" is a pretty extreme claim.

Lots of people trot it out even if its some far flung indie film or British or Canadian movie. It's amusing. But as for this one I heard Sandra Bullock wanted to do it and couldn't get any studio to bite because 'female boxing movies didn't sell'. Eastwood and Swank came in later.

[sevry]

the tired 'Hollyweird conspiracy' drivel.

Sounds like you're purposely refuting some cliched complaint. But would you, or Clint more to the point, really have objected if the Academy had, for that night, created a brand new Joseph Goebbels Excellence in Film Awards, in honor of Goebbels' award winning film or films of the 1930s, and given the inaugural prize to Eastwood? There have to be remarkable parallels between Goebbels 'awfully moving' propaganda and that of Eastwood, in 2004/2005.