Published at: Sept. 13, 2001, 3:35 a.m. CST by staff
I was called by the Hollywood Reporter to comment on the changes that Hollywood is making right now and what I thought of it all. Knowing full well that I would be soundbyted to a paragraph at most, I decided to fully speak my mind here.
First off, I've begun to see the media asking Hollywood if they would tone down the violence based upon the incidents of September 11th... Where the hell does that come from? Does anyone believe that the World Trade Center was blown up because of BLACK SUNDAY? Or any other Hollywood film? Of course not. I feel safe in saying the event had more to do with an insane group's perception of American policy in the Middle-East... which has nothing to do with Hollywood... so far as I can tell.
However, right now there is a disturbing trend of reaction from Hollywood that is sweeping across the film world.
This Sunday, INDEPENDENCE DAY was pulled from being aired on Fox. COLLATERAL DAMAGE posters and trailers have been pulled. And SUM OF ALL FEARS, well… we have no idea what all is going to happen to it. BIG TROUBLE is no longer on a release schedule, with all press screenings being canceled and the film indefinately held upon a shelf. And Sony is pulling all posters and trailers for SPIDER-MAN.
This is being done by the studios in order to be considerate of the incidents that took place in Washington D.C. and in New York City.
This isn’t a new trend, Hollywood pulled "O" for release for years it seemed due to COLUMBINE. But folks… I radically disagree with this practice.
The last day that lived in Infamy… Pearl Harbor… Well, Hollywood at the behest of the United States Government released just 6 months later, REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR. Throughout World War II film was used to ease pain and give Americans a feeling that we can survive defeat and overcome.
Take a look at WAKE ISLAND. Everybody died. Nobody lived. The Japanese wiped everyone out…. No survivors. Hollywood instantly went into production to shoot WAKE ISLAND… giving faces and hearts and feelings to those men on that island. Making their hearts pump, and showing them not dying as cowards, but fighting to the end. WHY? Because we need this.
Right now we are faced with a faceless enemy. Terrorism. An enemy that doesn’t live just between this longitude and that latitude… But that lives amongst people in cities filled with innocents. A seemingly impossible inoperable growth of societal cancer eating away at our sense of security and life. That takes the everyday sound of Airline Jets and creates a phobia out of it.
Right now we’re on a brink of an uncertain war against an enemy that will be difficult to find, but that can strike randomly out of nowhere amongst us.
This is TERROR…. Thus the term terrorist.
Meanwhile our televisions become an onslaught of images and information about what happened. Throwing image after image of the terrible event.
Right now Hollywood is very useful in creating a feeling that we can overcome this. That we can survive this. That we can emerge victorious.
During World War II America you had serials like BATMAN (vs the Japanese) and SPY SMASHER (vs Nazi Agents) where there was a melding of fantasy and reality… The Japanese and the Germans were responsible for thousands of deaths of Americans, yet here we had seemingly invincible heroes fighting and turning the tide against these real life villains. Why? Why the fantasy? Because it is a simple source of inspiration for kids… and for the adults it was a moment of respite against the harsh reality of how hard the fights were… of the very real toll on human life during the wars. There comes a time when reality needs to take a break.
First… SPIDER-MAN… Now I know why they pulled the ad. Sony doesn’t want any negative feelings associated with their hero. They believe that in a spot that is so short, to feature the World Trade Center so prominently… well that the distraction would be too much for the audience, and they would begin associating the tragedy with what they saw on screen.
Well, for me I don’t believe that I’ve ever seen more beautiful images of the World Trade Center than in its trailer. They had a fantastical glow about them. This was quite a reversal of feelings about the buildings, as since a child… I always looked at them as two big ugly rectangles, and my eyes always turned to the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building as my favorite New York Buildings….
BUT here… here the World Trade Center looked beautiful… Less like reality, more like the dream. A dream is what Super-Heroes are… Tuesday morning as I stared into the nightmare of my television set, my good friend Paul called… equally numb… Staring at the images of building tumbling from a distance, and he said, "Harry, I just feel like Superman should exist now more than ever." EXACTLY… In SPIDER-MAN’s New York, the World Trade Center would still stand. Somehow, he’d find a way to stop the plan, save the passengers and drop the terrorist in a webbed package hanging from a lamp post. This is fact… within fiction.
That isn’t reality. In reality the only heroes we have are the men and women that helped pull people out of that building while it burned. The men on the plane that charged the terrorist causing the plane to crash in the middle of nowhere possibly saving thousands at the sacrifice of their own lives. I understand them pulling the trailer for the time. It is so close, that it is impossible to indulge the fantasy. However, I hope that by the time SPIDER-MAN comes out in May of next year, that at least one last time I will see those buildings as beautiful as they are in that movie. Terrorists may be able to blow up our symbols, don’t let them blow up our dreams too.
INDEPENDENCE DAY… Here’s a film that on its absolute best day was popcorn fodder. Lots of bang, lots of noise and a helluvalot of goofy fun. For the first time since the release of the film, this movie has a chance to be meaningful to the nation. Watching three great cities fall… An impossible enemy to defeat… Men and women driven from their homes and out into the desert… Rallying together behind an unconvincing President to defeat those that would see us perish. My God… The entire world is united behind the cause and we win… To build a new world in the ashes of the old. THIS MOVIE IS THE SITUATION. Right now, this minute… The nation is rallying behind a President that it hadn’t believed in to fight the greatest evil and threat to the world. The world is uniting in the cause and it is unashamably patriotic. Instead they want to show us a movie about a group of male stalkers out to get in the pants of a beautiful woman? THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY? Please… For once in our lives this film could be more than what it was always intended to be… pure fun…
Then there is COLLATERAL DAMAGE… This isn’t your typical bang bang movie for Arnold. He never picks up a gun of any type in the whole movie. He plays a fireman whose family is killed in a Columbian Terrorist bombing by chance, and he seeks justice by traveling to Columbia and attempting to bring the men to justice. The fact that Arnold is doing this not as a bloodthirsty COMMANDO-esque infinite death count revenge monster… well that’s good. It is my belief that watching Arnold survive a terrible act, seek justice and finding a new life by the end… In the end he sets things right, but without killing hundreds upon hundreds of people with a billion bullets. We had one review of the film that came in advocating that COLLATERAL DAMAGE was a step in the right direction for Arnold. I was looking forward to seeing if he was right.
Watching films today with fictional heroes dealing with terrorism… I think it serves a purpose. I think stories that say you can overcome terrorism, that terrorists can be brought to justice… These are positive messages. The audience knows instantly that it is a fantasy when they see Arnold’s glorious mug… And it would serve some as a way to blow off a little steam…
Film is here for us to identify with, to talk about and to see in a communal fashion. To take it away, to hide it because it HAPPENS to be relevant to the situation or the feelings that we are going through at the moment… That’s to take away our mirror… a place where we can gather and experience as a whole. We need entertainment that while fantasy still reflects a bit of the world around us.
