Writing at Townhall, conservative filmaker Jason Apuzzo reveals a few of the politically-themed projects Hollywood has in the pipeline. From “Hollywood’s New War Effort: Terrorism Chic”:
Slow to awaken after the 9/11 attacks, Hollywood has finally come around to contributing what it can in the War on Terror: namely, glossy, star-studded movies that sympathize with the enemy.
Hard to believe? Here’s the pitch: with box-office numbers trending down, studio executives are suddenly greenlighting movies they can describe to shareholders as ‘controversial’ or ‘timely.’ Whether the films are anti-American or otherwise demoralizing to the war effort is apparently immaterial. Its appetite whetted by Fahrenheit 9/11‘s $222 million worldwide gross, Hollywood thinks it’s found a formula for both financial security and critical plaudits: noxious anti-American storylines, bathed in the warm glow of star power.
Here are just a few films already in the pipeline:
V For Vendetta. From Warner Brothers and the creators of The Matrix comes this film about a futuristic Great Britain that’s become a ‘fascist state.’ A masked ‘freedom fighter’ named V uses terror tactics (including bombing the London Underground) to undermine the government – leading to a climax in which the British Parliament is blown up. Natalie Portman stars as a skinhead who turns to ‘the revolution’ after doing time as a Guantanamo-style prisoner.
Munich. Steven Spielberg directs this film about the aftermath of the 1972 Olympic terror attacks that killed eleven Israeli athletes. “Munich“‘s screenplay is written by playwrite Tony Kushner (“Angels in America”), who has been quoted as saying: “I think the founding of the state of Israel was for the Jewish people a historical, moral, political calamity … I wish modern Israel hadn¹t been born.” The film focuses on the crisis of conscience undergone by Israeli commandos tasked with killing PLO terrorists – rather than on the barbarity of the terrorists themselves.
Untitled Oliver Stone 9/11 Project. Paramount will distribute Oliver Stone’s new film recounting the rescue of two Port Authority officers after the 9/11 attacks. The film will star Nicholas Cage and Maggie Gyllenhaal – who recently suggested that America was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
As for Stone, he had this to say only a month after 9/11: “This attack was pure chaos, and chaos is energy. All great changes have come from people or events that were initially misunderstood, and seemed frightening, like madmen.”
Syriana. Starring George Clooney and Matt Damon, this Warner Brothers film – set during the first Bush administration – features a plot by American oil companies and the U.S. government to redraw Middle East borders for greater oil profiteering. The film even depicts a handsome, ‘tragic’ suicide bomber driven to jihad after being fired by an American oil company! The film’s climax comes with the jihadist launching an explosive device into an oil tanker as American oil barons and Saudi officials look on.
The Scorpion’s Gate. Sony has optioned former terrorism-czar Richard Clarke’s novel about oil companies and Washington politicians colluding to reshape the map of the Middle East for greater oil profiteering—this time by launching a global nuclear war.
The Chancellor Manuscript. Paramount reworks Robert Ludlum¹s 1977 thriller into an anti-Patriot Act star vehicle for Leonardo DiCaprio. Here’s the film’s screenwriter, Michael Seitzman: “We live in this crazy post-Patriot Act environment where Benjamin Franklin¹s warning that ‘those that give up essential liberties for temporary security don¹t deserve either one’ are being ignored, so the subject matter seemed ripe.”
No True Glory: The Battle for Fallujah. Universal has attached Harrison Ford to star as real-life General Jim Mattis – in this story blaming the White House for the deaths of fifty Marines in one of the Iraq war’s deadliest battles. Based on the book of the same name by Bing West.
American Dreamz. This ‘satire’ from Universal Pictures deals with Pakistani suicide bombers out to kill the US president. The film stars Hugh Grant, Richard Dreyfuss, Willem Dafoe and Mandy Moore. According to writer-director Paul Weitz (“American Pie”), “The film is a comic examination of … cultural obsessions” like the War on Terror “and how they can anaesthetise us to the actual issues of our day.”
Terminus. Set in the Middle East of the future, this Warner Brothers film depicts a ‘disillusioned’ war correspondent covering an ‘insurgency’ he decides he must support. The producer, Basil Iwanyk, says: “It deals head on with what some call insurgency, what some call guerilla warfare and what some call freedom fighting.”
Jarhead. This Universal release, starring Jamie Foxx and Jake Gyllenhaal, deals with the ‘dehumanization’ of Marine trainees prior to and during the 1991 Gulf War. Based on Andrew Swofford’s notorious and questionable memoirs of the same name.
The above list, incidentally, should not be taken as comprehensive. For example, Paramount also has projects in the works about a ‘reformed’ al-Qaeda operative, and about the victim of an Iraqi suicide bomber. Little about these projects has been made public.
Wow! Now if Hollywood could just convince moviegoers to wear broad-shouldered suits and Betty Grable dresses, we’d be hard pressed to tell 2006 from 1942!
I just hope theaters spring for newsreels and pre-feature cartoons; because nothing gets me more in the mood for a 110-minute PG-13 piece of anti-military, anti-Bush doctrine agitprop than footage of US soldiers being wounded by roadside bombs, or shorts of Bugs Bunny in drag seducing a lecherous Donald Rumsfeld to distract him from launching a preemptive war against a Syrian orphanage.
But then, I’m nostalgic.
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(h/t Sister Toldjah; see also, JunkYard Blog, and Brian J. Noggle)
That’s satire, right? I mean, those aren’t actual pipeline projects. Are they? Just an on-target skewering of the caricature that is Hollywood? I’m frightened.
I agree, these must be spoofs of what Hollywood is working on today.
That sound just hilarious! Can hardly wait! GREAT JOB HOLLYWOOD!
V for Vendetta and Syriana are real… I saw trailers for them last night, and the descriptions above seem quite accurate.
V for Vendetta is an adaptation of a well-regarded comic, and the fascist Britain in the film really is fascist, in the classical sense.
Re. Munich, I think it’s probably a better film if you concentrate on the virtuous inner life of the Good Guys than merely the barbarity of the Bad Guys.
And complaining about films that have been optioned? Yeah, I’ll care when it’s in production. Pipeline my ass; lots of things are optioned and never see the screen. Hell, lots of them never even hit principal photography.
It all reads to me like trying a little too hard. Which is kind of a shame, since the rest of the list is apt, though really nothing new – I mean, it’s not like Hollywood’s tendency to attack Evil Multinational Corporations began when President Bush was elected; now they just have more incentive to have the government on the side of the EMCs.
I saw this the other day, and I agree that a lot of these look like a waste of time, if not total crap.
But I think the author of the piece is being a little unfair in including V for Vendetta on the list. After all, it was originally written back in 1982. And while Alan Moore wrote it in what was doubtlessly a haze of anti-Thatcher anger, it’s still an interesting story.
I’d also imagine that the project was greenlighted well before the 7/7 terrorist attacks.
Just my $0.02.
Project: Not Without My Burqua!
Starring: Sally Field, Omar Sharif
Project: The Burger Memorandum
Starring: Sean Penn, Heraldo Rivera
feel free…
Wow. If those aren’t spoofs, I can’t imagine any legitimate defense against accusations that they go well beyond mere opposition to Bush. Hollywood is a self-parody on so many levels, but this is bad even for them. Once again, people who are ostensibly on my side of the ideological divide manage to make me question my beliefs, and not in the way they were hoping.
I guess the only thing I can say is that Apuzzo obviously has as much of an agenda as any of the filmmakers he references, so maybe some of them aren’t quite as bad as he makes them out to be… like for example, some of the plotlines he describes might be relatively minor elements of the movies in question, but it’s those elements on which he chooses to focus.
But that’s not really a defense, just a little devil’s advocacy. If these movies – particularly “Terminus” and “No True Glory”, in my mind – actually make it to production, then Hollywood needs a solid kick to their collective nuts. Preferably by making sure at least some of these movies flop like Michael Moore’s breasts during his morning jumping jack. I’d say a boycott is probably the best bet.
> Michael Moore’s breasts during his morning jumping jack.
Morning jumping jack… now you’re just talking crazy. And no, I won’t mention the other image in that sentence that is simply too awful to contemplate.
Will the propaganda newsreel series be called “Why We Mustn’t Fight” or “V for Victimization”?
“Dial ‘M’ for Mohammed”?
-Sigh- Another wasted movie year. Nothing to see, nothing to cheer for.
Get ready for yet another season of remakes and sequels. I predict Victory will be redone with a middle-east flavor. The residents of Abu Ghraib beat England and her train on the field, and the reverse happens off the field.
Any takers?
Can’t tell whether this is a ominous sign or not, but Alan Moore has apparently been expressing public dissatisfaction with the screen treatment of V For Vendetta, which, as noted above, did have its origins in a critique of Thatcher-era Britain.
And, to be fair, the “V” character in Moore’s original comic was presented in a rather ambiguous fashion, leaving readers to judge for themselves whether his actions were a proper response to the actions of a fascist state.
Whats the problem with V for vendetta? does it support the other side to be against fascism?
Well, I think Apuzzo is suggesting that, according to the film’s allegorical logic, the West is fascist, and the terrorists are freedom fighters born in fascist western military prisons.
But who knows.
when in doubt read the review….from amazon.
Amazon.com
Hey, they should go ahead and make these movies; it would be enough to end several careers that are moribund already…
“Well, I think Apuzzo is suggesting that, according to the film’s allegorical logic, the West is fascist, and the terrorists are freedom fighters born in fascist western military prisons.”
Its an alternate history of the west. But I can see how in these times people have trouble distinguishing fact from fiction.
Holly wood is missing their audience “ . . . like Michael Bay missed the point when he made Pearl Harbor.”
(via TEAM AMERICA)
Dang, that’s bad news about Syriana. I had heard it was loosely based on “See No Evil”, it must be “barely based”. Odd to hear about a sympathetic portrayal of a suicide bombing in a movie based on the story of a CIA officer who was obsessed with bringing to justice those responsible for the suicide bombing of 241 Marines in Beirut.
Dorkafork was here, but now he’s gone, his last sentence remains, to run on and on and on and on…