Legendary Director Peter Bogdanovich: What If Movies Are Part of the Problem?

Hollywood Reporter ^ | 07-24-12 | Gregg Kilday

[P.O.E.]

Peter Bogdanovich is no stranger to violence -- either onscreen or off. In an eerie foreshadowing of the Colorado tragedy, his very first film, 1968's Targets, starring Boris Karloff, ends with a sniper, an angry Vietnam War vet, picking off teenagers at a drive-in movie theater. But while that movie reflected the rising discord of the late '60s, it wasn't until 1980 that Bogdanovich experienced, first-hand, the full impact of violence when his companion, Dorothy Stratten, the Playboy model and actress, was brutally murdered by her estranged husband.

People go to a movie to have a good time, and they get killed. It's a horrible, horrible event. It makes me sick that I made a movie about it.

(snip)

Today, there's a general numbing of the audience. There's too much murder and killing. You make people insensitive by showing it all the time. The body count in pictures is huge. It numbs the audience into thinking it's not so terrible. Back in the '70s, I asked Orson Welles what he thought was happening to pictures, and he said, "We're brutalizing the audience. We're going to end up like the Roman circus, live at the Coliseum." The respect for human life seems to be eroding.

[sushiman]

He must listen to Michael Savage , who said as much last Friday on his show .

[P.O.E.]

Agreed.

I feel sorry for kids now - most of them never get to have a “kid life”. Gone are the days when you were just shooed out of the house on Saturday mornings to run around and play, make friends, fight, fall and scrape your knees, whatever.

Liberals closed the asylums and opened the prison doors. Their lawyers made everyone sue-happy and at the same time staunchly defended the thugs & creeps. Liberal parenting (I blame Dr. Spock) has led to a generation of spoiled brats. The liberal state has tried to replace fathers and religion.

[brent13a]

EVERY BIT of this issue is 100% the responsibility of liberalism. ALL OF IT. It all goes back to the same source

Movies, music, media has enormous INFLUENCE on all walks of life, but they don't FORCE anyone to do anything. No one makes that distinction.
There isn't some all powerful OZ puppeteer reaching out from each movie screen forcing anyone to go do anything.
If it isn't movies influencing, it's video games. If it isn't video games influencing, it's books. If it isn't books influencing, it's paintings and art, if it isn't art.....etc etc etc.
The weak and evil minded will always be influenced and latch onto something.

As you explained, shouldn't we be blaming the whole of the liberalism that has infected eery inch of our society. It seems like such an easy and weak-kneed copout to just blame movies or video games.

Like I've asked in other threads:
The muslim countries of the middle east have all banned western entertainment, no movies, no books, no video games, no alcohol, yet how can one explain their murderous, ultra-violent, pedophilia cultures if they don't have the evil influence of our movies and video games?

[ilovesarah2012]

Colorado Shooting Victim Suing Warner Bros For Making Violent Films

Read more at http://www.reagancoalition.com/articles/2012/20120725004-torrence-brown.html#XgGcWJPTfigscd2F.99

[stuck_in_new_orleans]

You guys are missing the fact that Holmes is a nut job and he was going to hurt people regardless if Hollywood churned out violent movies.

[brent13a]

He must listen to Michael Savage

Who just a couple years ago had a private screening of Rambo and went on an on about how awesome of a movie it and the Expendables was and even had Stallone on his show.
He's such an a$$hat hypocrite.

[dfwgator]

Guns don’t kill people.....Movies don’t kill people.

[GreyFriar]

This just reflects the breakdown of our society; the reign of those who consider that there is no such things as right and wrong or that good and evil are archaic superstitions at best and non-existent as even better.

And I wonder if the breakdown of the much maligned studio system may also play a part.

[Focault's Pendulum]

FYI Karloff's real name was William Henry Pratt. Lugosi's real name was Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó.

[Anti-Bubba182]

If the shooter had seen Bogdanovich’s, “At Long Last Love” he probably would have shot himself.

[Revolting cat!]

Karloff’s last picture was “Plan Nine from Outer Space” by Ed Wood.

I thought it was Warner Oland.

[Norm Lenhart]

In my decades of video gaming (I’m primarily an RPG/D&D/Final Fantasy style gamer) I have axe murdered, sword slashed, lazer blasted and nuked probably several hundred thousand virtual ‘humans’. Yet I haven’t been in a real life physical altercation in 20 years, much less actually killed anyone.

Now if the libs are right about the whole guns/game violence thing, I and other gamers should have long since raped, pillaged and killed a whole bunch of people.

Sooooo....why haven’t we? Because most of us still have a sense of morality, right, wrong...you know, the very things liberals intentionally breed out of people through the miseducation system. And there is a direct correlation between increasingly violent people/kids and increasingly hostile to traditional values blather spouted by liberals.

Amazing that simple traditional outlooks and morality have prevented me turning into Atila the Hun or Mr. Homes. But it would indeed seem that they have dispute me having 20+ years of being ‘influenced’ on him.

Same thing goes for the millions of ‘gun nuts’ that don’t suddenly go full auto on the wife and kids. SOMEHOW they manage to resist the evil spirit of “The Gun” taunting them at night and whispering “Kill everyone!”

I mean come on. Guns ALL do that right? ;)

[RichInOC]

Bela Lugosi. Karloff was around at least long enough to narrate “How The Grinch Stole Christmas”.

[P.O.E.]

What Is More Deadly, Guns or Secular Liberalism?

[yarddog]

Movies certainly do influence people for good or bad.

I watched a Roy Rogers half hour show this afternoon. It had Roy, Dale and all the rest. There was a little girl whose Father was in trouble.

They found his Bible and noticed he had been reading a verse about forgiveness. Also toward the end, Roy, Dale, The Girl and even Pat Buttram all sang the song “the Bible Tells Me So”’

I immediately realized they would never show that in a modern TV show.

[Mister Da]

I think it is safe to say that horrific murder, rape, & mayhem is as old as man himself. Today's mass murderers have nothing on the Vandals, Huns, Mongols, the Inquisition, & most despots up until the modern era. “Hatchet Man” long predates the movies & TV.

While violent films may encourage violence in some viewers, for other viewers it is a reminder that evil exists & vigilance must be maintained.

Recall that scary movie you attended as a child. Did you leave the movie thinking you were invincible, or highly vulnerable?

I don't much care for highly violent films. The daily news is violent enough. But I do enjoy a good action pic, & if the bad guys get hot lead, so much the better.

The problem is not the movies. The problem is watching Mom & Dad at home getting drunk & beating the crap out of each other, or parents too busy to bother with the kids. The problem is schools/churches that teach relativist crap rather than moral imperatives. The problem is a gov’t that encourages promiscuity, sloth, & corruption. The problem is a society that doesn't know what is right or wrong.

[World'sGoneInsane]

Bogdanovich mentioned the murder/suicide of Dorothy Stratten. Did he ever stop and think it may have turned out differently, if Stratten had her own gun.

It was her soon to be ex-husband that murdered her. How many women are beaten to death, strangled, or stabbed to death as a result of such domestic situations?!

I'd bet most do not involve a gun. He is trying to tie one thing to another and not very successfully.

[a fool in paradise]

The other point I would make: Even with all the murders in the United States since the Kennedys were killed, very few people have experienced murder directly. Generally speaking, the average person hasn't experienced it, and the average director hasn't experienced it.

50 million dead by abortion, plus those killed by legal botched abortions.

But nobody knows anyone who has experienced/perpetrated such violence. < /sarc >

"How did Nixon win? Nobody I know voted for him!" - Pauline Kael.

[a fool in paradise]

"... Guns don't kill people. People kill people" and all that bullsh!t from the NRA. Politicians are afraid to touch it because of the right wing. And nothing ever changes. We're living in the Wild West.

In the Wild West, you had a fighting chance. The audience in Aurora was told to leave the guns at home. The LAW ABIDING members of the audience were unarmed. Not so the villain.

[a fool in paradise]

I'm not sure what the solution is. I just know that the violence in this country is out of control. And the fact that guns are so easy to get is chilling. But nobody wants to blame the movies. Nobody wants to blame guns. And yet, it's so easy to buy them and there are more murders in this country than anywhere else.

If the Left was REALLY upset about gun violence, they would be up in arms over the Obama Administration's "Fast and Furious" criminal conspiracy and the subsequent coverup.