Friday, November 09, 2007

Is it because people don't like the war
or because they don't like leftists?

From Hollywood is a casualty of war comes this clueless quote:
Veteran television producer Steven Bochco, whose 2005 television series "Over There" about a platoon of soldiers fighting in Iraq ended after just one season, said it was hard to engage audiences in a "hugely unpopular war."

"TV is fully saturated with this war and I don't know if you can do a serious drama about this war and locate any angle that would overcome the negativity about it," he told the New York daily Newsday.


This is like saying people who hate George Bush shun the Dixie Chicks. Someone tell me you think the Dixie Chicks are washed up because the anti-war crowd hates them.

This guy doesn't suspect, even the tiniest bit, that audiences are tired of being preached to by the anti-war crowd? It couldn't be that audiences are not so sure that the war is wrong or that our soldiers are evil baby killers?

The Dixie Chicks, and Hollywood, are being shunned by mainstream America because 1. Mainstream American boys are fighting in Iraq and 2. Mainstream America doesn't think its sons are baby killers and 3. Mainstream America doesn't like Hollywood politics.

7 Comments:

Blogger Fish-2 said...

Well said. I hope what appears to be a swing away from the ultra-liberal nonsense is indeed a trend in this country. For too long the Gollywood crowd could put out any lefty garbage they wanted and make a killing, but a lot of their offerings are being ignored - it costs them when that happens, and tickles me no end.

9:00 PM  
Blogger Pamela said...

they can't even get along with their writers.

4:21 PM  
Blogger Junebug said...

Our preacher who is a Vietnam veteran today at church read an article about how today 39 Iraqi were killed and compared it to 35 people murdered in Chicago and 25 in Tulsa and so on. The media is so biased. The article talked about how many wars we entered not because we were attacked but for other reasons. Anyway the comparisons made a lot of sense.

9:32 PM  
Blogger kevinwillis.net said...

I often debate the issue with lefties at the entertainment site, aintitcool.com, and I argue the number one problems is movies made with an ideological axe to grind (or itch to scratch) tend to be boring. The "atheist themed" Golden Compass will do in box office what a half-dozen of the current anti-war movies haven't, because movies like Lions for Lambs or In The Valley of Elah look, and are, boring and tedious. The trailers for Rendition made the movie look tedious. I wouldn't have gone to see it if it had been on the right side of the issue. Frankly, political policy is important to me, but I don't go to movies to learn about social security reform. I want to see a good story, a romantic comedy, or giant robots.

It's not a coincidence that modern liberals, making movies with ideological axes to grind, make boring and tedious movies. It's just a bad place to start. Even if they have a decent story, if the writers are trying to inject some of their personal politics into a movie (such as the line about no occupying force ever winning a war, spaketh by Tim Robbins in "War of the Worlds"), then that's usually the stupidest part of the movie.

But it's not just the war. Fast Food Nation completely tanked at the box office, making under $2 million dollars--it couldn't have been begun to pay for marketing. And it was a totally "America is Bad, Look we kill cows" movie, and worse that watching all the graphic images of cow slaughter is listening to characters try to insert liberal talking points into "conversation" like it's a PowerPoint presentation. And I could go on and on and on . . .

5:14 PM  
Blogger kevinwillis.net said...

BTW, The Golden Compass will do good business, because it has Daniel Craig, and talking polar bears, and witches, and special effects, and all sorts of cook stuff, and isn't a bunch of eggheads sitting around talking about how stupid Christians are. But I guarantee you a lot of libs will see it as mainstream acceptance of atheism, anti-Christianity, etc. And then there will be the thoughtful Redford movie staring Meryl Streep as the reporter being harangued by Tom Cruise's fundamentalist paritioner. And that'll tank . . .

5:17 PM  
Blogger Gayle said...

I posted about the Golden Compass. It's not that the movie is really so bad... it's not as bad as the books that parents will be buying for their children and the books are totally anti-Christian!

Hollywood just doesn't have a clue, you're right. It's not about the fact that people won't watch movies about the war, it's the fact they are tired of Hollywood's complete BS propaganda regarding the war. But will Hollywood change it's ways? Not likely. Good post!

8:18 PM  
Blogger kevinwillis.net said...

Lions for Lambs is tanking. Redacted (Brian DePalma's depiction of U.S. soldiers as murdering child rapists), for which DePalma has already won some awards (despite the fact many liberal critics have panned the film as godawful as a film) . . . Redacted will be debuting on HDNet (a cable channel with not a lot of market penetration) before it hits theaters, which seems to me a tacit acknowledgement that it's going to tank at the box office.

Again, interesting stories make for good movies. "America is bad" is not an interesting story. "I'm a Hollywood writer, and thus smarter and more moral than you rubes in flyover country, and this movie will teach you how to be smart like me" is also not an interesting story--in fact, it's a story that Hollywood has done way too much and it wasn't any good the first time.

1:03 PM  

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