Posted on 06/25/2004 11:37:33 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
When Lion's Gate Films went before the ratings board this week to appeal the R given Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore's hotly debated documentary about the Iraq war, the studio made an unusual argument.
Moore would not delete one profane utterance or disturbing image to appease the board. Nevertheless, president Tom Ortenberg argued unsuccessfully, the rating should be changed to the less restrictive PG-13 because the film is important and deserves to be widely seen.
"We need more public debate of the issues facing us today, not less debate," he said. "The 15- and 16-year-olds who are going to be asked to fight in the next war need to be allowed a chance to see what this war is like."
If that sounds more like a political argument than an artistic one, it's in keeping with the film's spirit. The scathing attack on President Bush is being released with all the trappings of a campaign event.
Ronald Reagan once joked about the thin line between politics and entertainment. This year, in the nation's movie theaters, the line has been obliterated. A wide array of politically tinged films is joining summer's traditionally escapist fare.
Some were made with the clear intent of influencing debate, if not the presidential election. It remains to be seen if movies can sway voters, but either way, film is emerging as an important voice of liberal politics, just as talk radio became a medium of conservative political expression in the 1980s and '90s.
Robert J. Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University, says this is a far-reaching and culturally significant development: "The other side of the argument seems to have finally found its medium."
Fahrenheit 9/11 is the most prominent example. Never before has such a nakedly political movie been released this close to an election. Sight unseen, it has inflamed passions.
The California-based Move America Forward lobbied theaters not to show it. Moore hired former Bill Clinton political advisers Chris Lehane and Mark Fabiani to set up a "war room" to counter attacks on the movie's accuracy.
Although Ortenberg said Fahrenheit 9/11 opened yesterday on 868 screens -- the most ever for a documentary -- Sal Russo, a Republican political consultant, maintained that the Move America Forward effort was successful.
"We've increased awareness that the film is neither a documentary or entertainment but only an effort by Moore, as he says, to help to defeat President Bush, even if it's at the cost of our war effort against terrorism," said Russo.
Both sides are using election-style campaign tools, including the Internet, talk radio and cable news shows.
MoveOn, a liberal, Internet-based advocacy group, is urging members to pack theaters this weekend and to hand out leaflets. The group will attempt to mobilize moviegoers by inviting them to house parties across the country on Monday. Moore will address the gatherings -- which MoveOn estimates at 1,000 -- and answer questions via a conference call. 'The Hunting of the President' premiere, June 16, New York
Lion's Gate hired Mario Cuomo, the former New York governor, to help appeal the R rating and to promote the movie on shows such as CNBC's Hardball. Cuomo helped craft the studio's statement and would've delivered it, had the ratings board not banned him from the hearing.
Before Fahrenheit 9/11, the year's biggest political movie was The Day After Tomorrow, a disaster epic about global warming that got more ink on op-ed pages than on entertainment pages. It featured a president and vice president who seemed based on Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Coming up are the documentaries The Hunting of the President -- about the "vast right-wing conspiracy" to damage Bill Clinton -- and Bush's Brain, a critical appraisal of political adviser Karl Rove.
Next month, Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep will star in Jonathan Demme's remake of The Manchurian Candidate, a political thriller whose updated plot involves the first Gulf War. Filmmaker John Sayles' new Silver City offers an unflattering portrait of a Republican gubernatorial candidate who resembles Bush. It's scheduled for September release. Sayles told ABC news he wrote the script in two weeks because it was important to rush the film into theaters before the election, "just to get into the conversation at the right time."
One of the few political movies with a conservative bent, a low-budget documentary titled Michael Moore Hates America, doesn't yet have a distributor. First-time Minneapolis filmmaker Mike Wilson turns the tables on Moore, needling the firebrand director and subjecting him to the same critical treatment Moore has given to corporate and political targets.
"The movie theater is a terrific place for public discussion and debate about the issues facing our country today," said Ortenberg, who welcomes the efforts of MoveOn and others on behalf of Fahrenheit 9/11.
Why is this happening now?
The explosion of political movies seems part of a larger phenomenon. Perhaps not since the 1960s has politics been so central to American life. Events such as the Monica Lewinsky scandal and Clinton's subsequent impeachment, the controversial 2000 presidential election and the response to 9/11 have galvanized the public.
"Politics has become like an enormous miniseries, very much in the public eye," said Thompson.
Sales of political books have mushroomed. Political debate fills radio airwaves and is a mainstay of cable news. Political satire is flourishing. Statistics show that young people get less information from newspapers and television news programs than previous generations, but turn increasingly to liberal and conservative Web sites.
Advancing technology has a lot to do with the increased interest in politics.
"Twenty years ago, we only got a little dose of politics on television -- a half hour on the evening news," Thompson said. Now, the rise of cable television, talk radio and the Internet "allows so much more information about politics to be out there."
As the number and type of news sources grow and audiences become fragmented, the traditional goal of objectivity has been devalued. People increasingly seek their news from sources that match their ideology.
Fox, the top ranked cable news network, has a conservative slant. The Daily Show, Jon Stewart's satirical news program on Comedy Central, is popular among young liberals. Conservative and liberal Internet users turn to openly biased sites such as the Drudge Report, TomPaine.com and Buzzflash.com.
Moore's work is firmly in the trend of advocacy journalism. He is at the forefront of filmmakers changing the definition of documentary film. Though he is probably now the most influential documentarian, his work angers some more traditional directors. Pioneer Albert Maysles, for example, called Moore in a 1998 interview "the most evil man in the business. He targets people for his own purpose. His point of view is everything."
Russo, a leader of the effort last year to block the showing of a miniseries about Ronald Reagan on network television, maintains that Moore's point of view isn't the problem. Russo doesn't object to Farenheit because it attacks Bush, he said, but because it might undermine the war on terrorism.
"We're in a time in American history when we need national resolve," Russo said. "We just celebrated the anniversary of D-Day. Just as during World War II, even though there were dissenters, we had to muster national resolve to defeat fascism. Now we need national resolve to win the war on terrorism. That's pretty non-negotiable."
Thompson thinks factionalism -- the way liberals and conservatives tune each other out and listen only to opinions they agree with -- is potentially harmful.
"A truly informed person wants to listen to ideas he disagrees with," he said. "It would be a healthy thing for Rush Limbaugh's audience to go to Michael Moore's movie and for Michael Moore's audience to listen to Bill O'Reilly."
Good! Our word "idiot" comes from the ancient Greek word for a private person uninvolved in public affairs. The Greeks thought any free man who failed to interest himself in his own present and future was an idiot.
Let discussions in public affairs happen everywhere and revel in the discourse.
Only a coward or a fool is afraid to hear what the other side says - a coward because they are afraid they may be "turned" and a fool because they have no counter argument.
The Democrat Party is the party of "Hateriotism"
They can't compete in the talk radio arena because they have no ideas or logic. They're rely on lies, fantasy, and cut and paste.
Only a coward would allow a scumbag like Michael Moore and his propaganda to go unchallenged. A debate is based on a position one takes, based on facts.... Michael has great difficulty with facts
here = hear
Yeah!!! Cause, like, before the internet everything was OBJECTIVE. Sure. Go get some more koolaid from the "there is no bias in the "main stream" media" stand.
Bill O'Reilly??
They're going to pull out every stop on this.
It's going to be down and dirty - this is a fight to the finish.
If Moore is challened by the fact we can easily make a movie on how Bush is the oppossite of how Moore portrays him.
Not to mention "special-effects" and "groovy soundtracks." They can't get their ideas to float on their own merits, so they have to resort to grafting it on to something more appetizing, like say mass entertainment. God forbid they simply state their opinions in as boring a medium as possible, people might actually look at it critically.
Well hey, he won't drink the leftist koolaide, which in the leftist mind more then accounts for the fact that O'Reilly's views cut pretty much straight down the American center.
"God forbid they simply state their opinions in as boring a medium as possible, people might actually look at it critically."
You aren't supposed to be critical of liberal work, because it hurts their feeeeeeeelings. You are supposed to "play nice" and say only good things. They can't help it if they can't put together an honest, complete thought, cause their brains are wired all wrong.
Seems like we're making the same mistake with this film as the left made with The Passion... Giving it all kinds of free publicity.
I figure just ignore it. Let the leftists see it and squeal to each other in their little echo chamber. We only help their cause by going along with the "controversy"..
My brother moved into an apartment in Hoboken that used to belong to John Sayles.
One day, my brother got a beautiful invitation in the mail. He neglected to read the addressee before opening it (yeah right) and turns out it was from Martin Scorcese, of all people!
It was an invitation to a screening and party in Manhattan celebrating Scorcese's rerelease of the restored version of Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren's classic "El Cid."
So, after the initial brouhaha at the door over the fact that my brother and I were not John Sayles and guest, we found ourselves in a sweet little party.
My brother and I sat one row in front of, and six or seven seats to the left of Mr. Heston and Ms. Loren. You could watch them on the screen, thirty or so years younger, or you could turn around and watch them watching themselves.
Plus, we got to drink for free after the show with the stars and a bunch of celebrities like Scorsece and John Turturro and Marissa Tomei.
This is not very relevant to the thread, but it was just cool that we were at a super exclusive Charlton Heston event on that Marxist John Sayles name. It was a good time.
From the late 40s to the early 60s the real differences between the American left and right were fairly small.
As such, the press could claim objectivity while in reality it reported with a strong bias because said bias was shared through out most of America.
In the late 60s that began to change as the "New" Left took over the old anti-communist, traditionalist Left.
The press joined up with the New Left early, and changed their broadcasting bias to reflect their new ideology.
As this bias drifted ever further from the American norm, people began to notice its Leftist tint.
The press then claimed that just like those before them they were being "objective". This was partially a lie to take some of the heat off, and partially a poor understanding of history of the sort that is so endemic to the Left.
They continue to parrot this line primarily because they need to control the press. WIthout a powerful propaganda machine the Left knows it is in deep trouble in America - as Moore's comments on Americans, for example, indicates.
FATSO is laughing all the way to the bank.
I'm a bit surprised about Hollywierdos throwing a party around the movie El Cid. Spanish crusader in the Reconquest of Spain right?
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